"Charles L. Harness-An Ornament to His Profession" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

"Yes, I mailed them the examples for the patent application. They took them and changed them around
a little bit, the same way we do here in the Patent Department. They added the standard gobbledygook
at the front, and eight or ten claims at the back. They sent the final draft back to me for execution. The
standard procedure. They sent me a bill for three hundred dollars. I paid that out of the money Mr. Jayne
sent them, when he bought the invention. I still have the rest-- four thousand and seven hundred dollars. I
haven't spent any of it." He looked uncertainly at Patrick. "You won't tell Dad about this, will you?"
"Certainly not." Patrick looked at him with genuine curiosity. "But how were you able to make the
oath? What notary would notarize the signature of 'Percy B. Shelley'?"
"Absolutely any, Con. They all just assume you are who you say you are, so long as you pay the fee."
Patrick was momentarily shaken. "But that's the whole idea of notarizing, to make the inventor swear
he's truly the inventor, the person named in the oath."
Cord smiled faintly. "Not all notaries waive identification, Con."
"Well," said Patrick, "now we've committed perjury, sworn falsely to the United States Patent Office.
So far, all they can do to you, Paul, besides disbarring you, followed by imprisonment in the Federal
Penitentiary, is to strike your Shelley case from the files in the Patent Office."
The young man was silent.
Cord said: "Harvey Jayne bought the patent application only after he knew it worked. The whole thing
depended on whether John Fast could reproduce it in the lab. Paul, how could you be so sure it would
work?"
"If John did it right, it couldn't not work. I copied the examples right out of something in the library.
Somebody's college thesis."
Patrick brightened. "Alec?"
Cord shook his head. "Nothing like that ever turned up in our literature searches. We hit the
Dissertation Abstracts, all the way back to the beginning."
Patrick turned back to Paul Bleeker. "You'll have to tell us more about this thesis. What was the name
of the student? We'd also like the name of the university, and the year. In fact, anything and everything
you can remember."
"All I can remember is these runs, tucked away in the back pages. They didn't really seem pertinent to
the main body of the thesis. Other than that, I can't remember anything."
"You must have seen the title page," pressed Patrick.
"I guess so."
"You could identify it if you saw the thesis again?"
"Sure, but it's gone."
"Gone?"
"The library just had it on loan. They have hundreds come in, this way. Our people keep them a while,
then send them back. You know the procedure."
"There must be some record."
Cord shook his head. "We've checked all the inter-library loans for the past five years. We found
nothing. If Paul's memory is correct on the facts, that it was within the last five years, and the library did
have it on loan, we are led to the conclusion that the thesis was done by somebody here at Hope, and
lent on a personal basis to the library, without any formal record."
Patrick groaned. "Our own inventor, here all the time? That's all we need. He'll scream. He'll take it to
court. We've got to find him first, before he finds us." He turned to Cord. "Alec, add it all up for us, will
you?"
"It admits of precise calculation," said Cord, "in the manner of a chess combination. There are two
primary variations. Each of these has several main subvariations. None of them is really difficult. The only
problem is to recognize that our tactics are absolutely controlled, move by move, events as they
develop."
Patrick raised his hand. "Not so fast. Let's take the main angles. The primary variations."
"First primary. We do nothing. If we're senior party in the interference, this means we take no