Wolfe resumed his seat and Mart leaned forward. “You heard Baird,” said Mart. “So you know what kind he is. I want to use him, but I can’t do it directly. He’d balk at anything I even intimated.
“What I want is a congressional investigation — of me, and of the whole Patent System. I believe that Baird could bring it off. He’s just the kind to shake an old bone until everybody is so tired they will agree to anything he says. But he needs to be pushed into it. You’re the man to do the pushing.”
“What could I do?” said Wolfe.
“Simply tell him your story. You offered me a generous deal on the rocket toy principle, but I refused to turn it over. Tell him the aviation industry has got to have it for vital national defense work. Wave the flag. He’ll go for that. Lay it on thick enough and he’ll be braying at congressional doors the same day.”
“He might do it too well.”
“We’ll take that chance. Will you do it? There will be a little pay, but not much.”
“Never mind the pay — if this is the crusade I think it is.”
“Thanks. Let me hear from you as soon as you contact Baird.”
Mart and Berk expected results from Baird’s broadcast. By noon these began to appear in abundance. There were telegrams from Mart’s former students, who were now respected engineers and physicists in commercial laboratories throughout the country. His colleagues on a half dozen teaching staffs sent messages also. And strangers whom he had never known, but whose signatures were over the names of some of the largest concerns in the country, added their observations.
Doris, their secretary in the outer office, had long since been given instructions that they were out to all phone callers except their families and important business associates. In Mart’s office he and Berk sorted the messages one by one, dividing them into two piles.