Septimus Part 45

"No. The old ones. I was trying to count them up. I've taken out about fifty patents, and there are heaps of things half worked out which might be valuable. Now I was thinking that if I made them all over to Sypher he might get in some practical fellow to set them right, and start companies and things to work them, and so make a lot of money."

He took off his cap and ran his hand up his hair. "There's also the new gun. I do wish you'd have that, too," he added, anxiously. "In fact, it was our talk yesterday that put the other idea into my head."

Sypher clapped him on the shoulder and called him his dear, generous fellow. But how could he accept?

"They're not all rot," said Septimus pleadingly. "There's a patent corkscrew which works beautifully. Wiggleswick always uses it."

Sypher laughed. "Well, I'll tell you what we can do. We can get a syndicate together to run the Dix inventions, and pay you royalties on sales."

"That seems a very good idea," said Zora judicially.

But Septimus looked dissatisfied. "I wanted to give them to Sypher," said he.

Zora reminded him laughingly that he would have to provide for the future member of Parliament's election expenses. The royalties would come in handy. She could not take Septimus's inventions seriously. But Sypher spoke of them later in his enthusiastic way.

"Who knows? There may be things hidden among his models and specifications of enormous commercial value. Lots of his inventions are crazy, but some are bound to be practical. This field gun, for instance. The genius who could have hit on that is capable of inventing anything. Why shouldn't I devote my life to spreading the Dix inventions over the earth? It's a colossal idea. Not one invention, but fifty--from a corkscrew to a machine gun. It's better than Sypher's Cure, isn't it?"

She glanced swiftly at him to see whether the last words were spoken in bitterness. They were not. His face beamed as it had beamed in the days when he had rhapsodied over the vision of an earth, one scab, to be healed by Sypher's Cure.

"Say you think it's better," he urged.

"Yes. It's better," she a.s.sented. "But it's chimerical."

"So are all the dreams ever dreamed by man. I shouldn't like to pa.s.s my life without dreams, Zora. I could give up tobacco and alcohol and clean collars and servants, and everything you could think of--but not dreams.

Without them the earth is just a sort of backyard of a place."

"And with them?" said Zora.

"An infinite garden."

"I'm afraid you'll be disillusioned over poor Septimus," she said, "but I shouldn't like you to take up anything you didn't believe in. What would be quite honest in another man wouldn't be honest in you."

"That means," said Sypher, "you wouldn't like to see me going on dealing in quack medicines?"

Zora flushed red.

"It was at the back of my mind," she confessed. "But I did put my thoughts into the form of a compliment."

"Zora," said he, "if I fell below what I want to appear in your eyes, I should lose the dearest dream of all."

In the evening came Septimus to Penton Court to discuss the new scheme with Sypher. Wiggleswick, with the fear of Zora heavy upon him, had laid out his master's dinner suit, and Septimus had meekly put it on. He had also dined in a Christian fas.h.i.+on, for the old villain could cook a plain dinner creditably when he chose. Septimus proclaimed the regeneration of his body servant as one of the innumerable debts he owed to Zora.

"Why do you repay them to me?" asked Sypher.

Then he rose, laughed into the distressed face, and put both his hands on Septimus's shoulders.

"No, don't try to answer. I know more about you than you can possibly conceive, and to me you're transparency itself. But you see that I can't accept your patents, don't you?"

"I shall never do anything with them."

"Have you tried?"

"No."

"Then I will. It will be a partners.h.i.+p between my business knowledge and energy and your brains. That will be right and honorable for the two of us."

Septimus yielded. "If both you and Zora think so, it must be" he said. But in his heart he was disappointed.

A few days afterwards Shuttleworth came into Sypher's office, with an expression of cheerfulness on his dismal countenance.

"Can I have a few moments with you, sir?"

Sypher bade him be seated. Since his defection to the enemy, Shuttleworth had avoided his chief as much as possible, the excess of sorrow over anger in the latter's demeanor toward him being hard to bear. He had slunk about, not daring to meet his eyes. This morning, however, he reeked of conscious virtue.

"I have a proposal to put before you, with which I think you'll be pleased," said he.

"I'm glad to hear it," said Sypher.

"I'm proud to say," continued Shuttleworth, "that it was my suggestion, and that I've carried it through. I was anxious to show you that I wasn't ungrateful for all your past kindnesses, and my leaving you was not as disloyal as you may have thought."

"I never accused you of disloyalty," said Sypher. "You had your wife and children. You did the only thing possible."

"You take a load off my mind," said Shuttleworth.

He drew a long breath, as though relieved from an intolerable burden.

"What is your proposal?" asked Sypher.

"I am authorized by the Jebusa Jones Company to approach you with regard to a most advantageous arrangement for both parties. It's your present intention to close down the factory and shut up this office as soon as things can be wound up."

"That's my intention," said Sypher.

"You'll come out of it solvent, with just a thousand pounds or so in your pocket. The Cure will disappear from the face of the earth."

"Quite so," said Sypher. He leaned back in his chair, and held an ivory paper-knife in both hands.

"But wouldn't that be an enormous pity?" said Shuttleworth. "The Cure is known far and wide. Economically financed, and put, more or less, out of reach of compet.i.tion it can still be a most valuable property. Now, it occurred to me that there was no reason why the Jebusa Jones Company could not run Sypher's Cure side by side with the Cuticle Remedy. They agree with me. They are willing to come to terms, whereby they will take over the whole concern as it stands, with your name, of course, and advertis.e.m.e.nts and trade-marks, and pay you a percentage of the profits."

Sypher made no reply. The ivory paper-knife snapped, and he laid the pieces absently on his desk.

"The advantage to you is obvious," remarked Shuttleworth, who was beginning to grow uneasy before the sphinx-like att.i.tude of his chief.

"Quite obvious," said Sypher. Then, after a pause: "Do they propose to ask me to manage the Sypher Cure branch?"

The irony was lost on Shuttleworth.