“It’s a discovery! A great discovery!” he whispered at last, “and the discoverer, instead of bettering the world with it, is playing with it just to make one person most awfully uneasy and unhappy. And yet,” he paused to think, “and yet he did send that chap gliding away from the vault door as if his life depended upon it.”
In spite of all his forebodings, nothing further disturbed the vast silence of the night, and Johnny was ready, upon the arrival of his employer in the morning, to make his report. He had decided to tell of the lunch-box and twist drill episode, but to say nothing, for the present, of the strange white fire. He felt that his employer would simply be perplexed and disturbed by this news, without in any way offering a contribution to the solution of the problem. This was an affair which a single individual might best work upon alone.
“No,” said his employer, as Johnny displayed the small twist drill and told how he came into possession of it, “we’re not, as you have already suggested, interested in that sort of thing. If there is a sneak-thief in our factory, he will receive his just deserts in due time, and that with no assistance from us. Our factory is run on the honor plan. Every man is put upon his honor. If he proves unworthy of the trust, his fellow-workmen will find it out first of all, and, since the honor of the entire group is at stake, they will request him to mend his ways or draw the pay due him and leave. It is useless for him to attempt to deceive them. He must be on the square or get out.
“In this case,” he smiled, “it is probably not a case of theft at all; it is very probable that this drill was borrowed by the workman for some work at home, with the consent of his foreman.”
Johnny blushed uncomfortably.
“Your plan, though,” the manager hastened to assure him, “is a good one. Keep it up, and you may catch something yet.
“I have said,” he went on, “that we are not interested in petty thefts. We are not. This perhaps makes you wonder that you are employed as you are at the present time. But this is quite another matter. The taking of those two bars of steel, insignificant as they may seem—a few pounds in all—is of great importance to us, since, as I have explained to you, it may mean the revealing of a valuable secret.
“The question of one’s right to keep a commercial secret is a delicate one. From a moral standpoint it depends entirely upon the type of secret. Unquestionably there are some secrets which no one has a right to keep. Many great secrets have been thrown open to the world as soon as they are discovered. Radium is a case in point. If our nation were at war with some other nation at the present time, it would undoubtedly be our duty to share our secret steel process, should we be so fortunate as to unravel all its mysteries, with the Government. Since we are not at war, it does not appear to be our duty.
“The law allows us to retain our secret until it has been patented. However, if another should discover it, we would hardly be in a position to claim a share in the patent right, since no one can prove that the other person did not possess the secret first.
“You will see then, that any person who attempts to discover our secret can hardly be classed as a criminal; he is simply playing the game in a rather unfair way. There have been secrets enough carried from one manufacturing plant to another. Retaining one’s commercial secrets and reaping advantages from them is part of the romance of business. You will find few manufacturing plants, big or little, but have their secrets. In one with the magnitude of our own there are many secrets; the one you are guarding is but one of them.”