So I proposed that we get smaller instead of bigger-license Hired Girl and Window Willie, let someone else build and sell them while we raked in the royalties. When Flexible Frank was ready we would license him too. If Mannix wanted the licenses and would outbid the market, swell! Meantime, we’d change our name to Davis & Gentry Research Corporation and hold it down to just the three of us, with a machinist or two to help me jackleg new gadgets. Miles and Belie could sit back and count the money as it rolled in.
Miles shook his head slowly. “No, Dan. Licensing would make us some money, granted. But not nearly the money we would make if we did it ourselves.”
“Confound it, Miles, we wouldn’t be doing it ourselves; that’s just the point. We’d be selling our souls to the Mannix people. As for money, how much do you want? You can use only one yacht or one swimming pool at a time . . . and you’ll have both before the year is out if you want them.”
“I don’t want them.”
“What do you want?”
He looked up. “Dan, you want to invent things. This plan lets you do so, with all the facilities and all the help and all the expense money in the world. Me, I want to run a big business. A big business. I’ve got the talent for it.” He glanced at Belle. “I don’t want to spend my life sitting out here in the middle of the Mojave Desert acting as business manager to one lonely inventor.”
I stared at him. “You didn’t talk that way at Sandia. You want out, Pappy? Belle and I would hate to see you go. . . but if that is the way you feel, I guess I could mortgage the place or something and buy you out. I wouldn’t want any man to feel tied down.” I was shocked to my heels, but if old Miles was restless I had no right to hold him to my pattern.
“No, I don’t want out; I want us to grow. You heard my proposal. It’s a formal motion for action by the corporation. I so move.”
I guess I looked puzzled. “You insist on doing it the hard way? Okay, Belle, the vote is `no.’ Record it. But I won’t put up my counterproposal tonight. We’ll talk it over and exchange views. I want you to be happy, Miles.”
Miles said stubbornly, “Let’s do this properiy. Roll call, Belle.”
“Very well, sir. Miles Gentry, voting stock shares number-” She read off the serial numbers. “How say you?”
“Aye.”
She wrote in her book.
“Daniel B. Davis, voting stock shares number-” She read off a string of telephone numbers again; 1 didn’t listen to the formality. “How say you?”
“No. And that settles it. I’m sorry, Miles.”
“Belle S. Darkin,” she went on, “voting shares number-” She recited figures again. “I vote `aye.'”
My mouth dropped open, then I managed to stop gasping and say, “But, baby, you can’t do that! Those are your shares, sure, but you know perfectly well that-”
“Announce the tally,” Miles growled.
“The `ayes’ have it. The proposal is carried.”
“Record it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The next few minutes were confused. First I yelled at her, then I reasoned with her, then I snarled and told her that what she had done was not honest-true, I had assigned the stock to her but she knew as well as I did that I always voted it, that I had had no intention of parting with control of the company, that it was an engagement present, pure and simple. Hell, I had even paid the income tax on it last April. If she could pull a stunt like this when we were engaged, what was our marriage going to be like?
She looked right at me and her face was utterly strange to me. “Dan Davis, if you think we are still engaged after the way you have talked to me, you are even stupider than I’ve always known you were.” She turned to Gentry. “Wifi you take me home, Miles?”
“Certainly, my dear.”
I started to say something, then shut up and stalked out of there without my hat. It was high time to leave, or I would probably have killed Miles, since I couldn’t touch Belle.