“I call my wonderful invention a stabilizer, because that’s the use it’s really intended for,” continued Hiram, as though wishing to fully impress that fact upon their minds. “To tell the truth, I’ve had the legal documents showing that a patent had been applied for, quite some time now, though for reasons of my own I kept it all a dead secret from everybody. Mebbe yeou fellers may have noticed that I’ve been looking kinder mysterious the last month or two? Well, guess with such a tremenjous secret on your mind either of you’d a been equally absent minded. But that is past now, and I’ve accomplished my aim.”
“Good!” Andy burst out with. “Let go your bowstring then and shoot, for goodness sake, Hiram.”
“Well, of course I had it all laid out,” continued the other composedly, as if it was beneath him to pay any attention to these pins that Andy was sticking into him, “and my first thought was to get in communication with some enterprising big corporation that manufactured aëroplanes for the market. All inventors have to sell their first few patents, you know, so’s to get money enough to push other ideas; and if I could pick up a few thousand that way, why I’d have to let my stabilizer go.”
“Then you’ve been corresponding with such a company, have you?” asked Rob, knowing that he could tempt the other to hurry his story in this way, just as a witness in court is drawn on by a clever lawyer’s questions.
“Oh! several of them, in fact,” admitted Hiram, as if that were only a minor matter, after all, “but in the end I found that a certain concern meant strictly business, and consequently I dropped all the rest.”
“Have they actually made you a definite offer for your valuable invention?” asked Rob, taking considerable more interest in the matter, now that Hiram’s undoubted though erratic genius seemed to be steadying down with some tangible results.
“Pretty much that way, I should call it,” remarked the inventor, trying hard to appear natural, though trembling all over with excitement. “They went so far as to enclose a check big enough to cover all expenses of myself and a companion—for I was smart enough to say I’d insist on having company for advice along with me—to run out to their main works, and talk the matter over with a view to disposing of my patent rights to the device.”
At that Andy’s face lost the look of sneering incredulity that had been a marked feature of his listening to all this talk.
“Whew! is that a fact, Hiram?” he exclaimed. “Shake hands on it, will you? Didn’t we always say that some fine day you’d be famous, and make the Eagles proud to reckon you as a member? A real check, and not on a sand bank, you mean?”
“Well, I went right away to Rob’s father’s bank and saw the president. He said the check was O. K. and that I could get the hard cash any time I wanted it. Why, he even called it a certified bank draft, which meant the money had been set aside in the San Francisco bank for that purpose, deducted from the account of the Golden Gate Aëroplane Manufacturing Company.”