“Now,” she said to Mundin, “the background. I’ll make it short.” Her voice was satiric, hate-filled.
“Don and I were born of rich but honest parents in Cos-hocton, Ohio. Daddy—Don Senior—was rather elderly when
we came along; he spent the first fifty years of his life working. He started out as a plastics man with a small factory—bus bodies, fire trucks, that kind of thing. He happened to have gone to school with a man named Beraie German, who happened to have specialized hi electronics und electrical stuff. The two of them worked together, when they could find time, dreaming dreams and weaving visions. They were dedicated men. They invented, designed and constructed the first pilot model of the G.M.L. Home, otherwise known as the bubble-house.”
Mundin said frostily, “I happen to know a little about G.M.L., Miss Lavin. Wasn’t there a man named Moffatt involved?”
“Involved he was, but not until later. Much later. For almost thirty years, Daddy and Mr. German worked like dogs, starved themselves, gave up everything for their dream. Mother said she scarcely saw Daddy from month’s end to month’s end. Mr. German died a bachelor. They had designed the bubble-house, they had built it, but they didn’t have the capital to put it on the market.”
“Oh, come now,” objected Mundin. “They could have teased the rights——”
“And had them bottled up. Didn’t I already say they were dedicated men? They had designed a home that was cheaper than the cheapest and better than the best. It was a breakthrough in housing, like nothing that had gone before except, perhaps, the synthetic revolution in textiles or the advent of the Model T Ford. Don’t you see that even a millionaire could not have owned a better house than the G.M.L.? Daddy and Mr. Gorman wanted to give them to the people at only a reasonable profit; no manufacturer would dream of it until the top-price market had been filled. They weren’t big businessmen, Mundin. They were dreamers. They were out of their field. Then Moffatt came along with his plan.”
Ryan stirred himself. “Most ingenious, really,” he said. “Adapted to the tax situation. By leasing manufacturing rights to large corporations, G.M.L. avoided capital outlay; the corporations gave their employees what could not be had elsewhere—and good-by to labor troubles. At first, G.M.L. leased the rights for money. Later, when they got bigger, the consideration was blocks of stock, equities in the firms.”
The girl nodded soberly. “Within ten years, G.M.L. owned sizable shares of forty corporations, and Daddy and Mr. Gorman owned half of G.M.L. Then Daddy found out\what was happening. He told Mr. Gorman, and I think it killed him—he was an old man by then, you see. Contract status. One word of back-talk and you get thrown out of your GM.L. house. Get thrown out of your G.M.L. house and you find yourself——” she hesitated, and her eyes roved around the sordid room “—here.”
Mundin said wonderingly, “But if your father was one of
the owners——”
“Only twenty-five per cent, Mundin. And Mr. German’s twenty-five per cent went to distant cousins after the embolism. So there was Daddy at sixty-five. His vision was a reality; his bubble-homes housed a hundred million people. And they had become a weapon, and he was frozen out of the firm.” Don Lavin said dreamily, “They gave the plant guards his picture. He was arrested as drunk and disorderly when he tried to go to the stockholders’ meeting. He hanged himself in his cell.” He stared absently at Mundin’s shoe.
Mundin cleared his throat. “I—I’m sorry. Wasn’t there anything to be done at all?”
Ryan said, with a touch of professional admiration, “Very little Mr. Mundin. Oh, he still had stock. They impounded it. A trumped-up creditors’ committee got an order on his safe-deposit box against dissipation of assets when he died. They kept it impounded for twelve years. Then somebody got careless, or somebody quit or got fired and the new man didn’t know what the impoundment was for—anyway, G.M.L. blinked. The order expired. Norma and Don Lavin are twenty-five per cent owners of G.M.L.”
Mundin looked around the shabby room and didn’t say a
word.
“There’s just one little thing,” Norma said bitterly. “Don got the stock out of the box and put it away. Tell us where