“Why should he cry?” The boy knew that he was supposed to be naive, so that his father would have the fun of telling it.
“I hurt his feelings by suggesting that we should require observers in the Vickers plants, to check their production under our licenses.”
“Is he going to let you?”
“He said it was a very serious matter to admit strangers to a munitions factory in wartime. I answered that they wouldn't be strangers very long; he would know how to become acquainted with them.” Robbie began to laugh; he enjoyed nothing more than such a battle over property rights — especially when he held the good cards close to his chest. “They really need our patents,” he said; “and, believe me, they won't get them without paying. Why should they?”
Lanny didn't know any reason, and said so.
“Well, the old devil thought he knew a number of them. He was horrified at the schedule of royalties I put before him; he said he had been given to understand that America wanted to help the Allies, not to bleed them to death, or drive them to bankruptcy. I said I hadn't heard of any bankruptcies among the hundred and eighty Vickers companies in England, or the two hundred and sixty of them abroad. He said they had cut their prices to the bone as a patriotic duty to the British and French governments. I told him it was generally understood that his companies were getting the full twenty percent profit allowed them by British law.
You can see it wasn't a conversation for a duquesa to hear. Was she nice to you?”
“Very,” said Lanny. “I liked her.”
“Oh, sure,” said the father. “But you can't like the consort of a wolf beyond a certain point.”
Lanny saw that his father was not going to like Basil Zaharoff under any circumstances. He said so, and Robbie replied that a wolf didn't want to be liked; what he wanted was to eat, and when it was a question of dividing up food with him, you had to have a sharp-pointed goad in hand. “We have paid out good American money, financing inventions and perfecting complicated machines. We're not going to give those secrets to Zaharoff, not even in return for a tea party and a smile from a duquesa. We're going to have our share of the profits, paid right on the barrel-head, and I'm sent here to tell him so, and to put before him a contract which our lawyers have constructed like a wolf trap. I said that very politely, but in plain language.”