The Boy Who Invented the Bubble Gun (23 page)

He said, “The filing fee. The sixty-five dollars. They told me about it. I haven’t got it. I spent almost all my money getting here.”

Sisson nodded gravely. “Hmmmm, I see, that would be a problem. Look here, would you let me give . . . ?”

Julian was positive and immediate, “Oh, no, sir, I couldn’t. I wanted to make my own money to show my dad.”

“Show your dad what?”

Julian considered. Here they were again, always with their grown-up questions that had to be answered somehow. He replied, “That my invention would work. He didn’t care. I mean, I guess he didn’t think it would or anything.”

The colonel, reflecting for a moment, wondered about the boy’s father and what he was like and what truth there had been in everything which at one time or another Julian had told him, and then he thought about himself being a father too and up popped instances where he could have been too short with answers to his son or daughter. How could one ever really know with youngsters?

He said, “Julian, have you any idea of the hook you got me off? Would you let me lend it to you?”

“How could I pay you back?”

“Royalties from your patent.”

Julian was still doubtful. He said, “Sir, what if somebody else got there first? The man said it would have to be looked up.”

Sisson smiled. “In that case, the government, in its benevolence, returns your filing fee. You could give me a note. Here, I’ll fix it up.”

He took a pen and a sheet of paper, speaking as he wrote, “I, Julian West, of—.” He looked up. “What was your address again?” Julian gave it to him. “Promise to pay Colonel John Sisson, on demand, the sum of sixty-five dollars.” He counted out the money from a billfold and handed it over. “There, now, you sign it and it’s all correct and legal. It’s a loan and you’re under no further obligation.” At the same time he handed back the Bubble Gun and said, “Here, we won’t be needing this.”

“That’s terrific, sir. Thank you very much. What time do you think the drawing will be ready?”

“Say ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

“Julian said, “I’ll come back for it, sir.”

The colonel looked up and made an assumption. He said, “Oh, then you’ve got a place to stay.”

Julian said nothing. It was the colonel’s assertion, not his. He didn’t wish to burden the colonel any further. He thought he had enough money left for a cheap room somewhere. The cab driver could help him find one.

The colonel picked up the diagram, again and glanced over it. He said, “Hang on a sec while I have a word with my assistant about the changes. I want to be sure.” He left the office to return a few minutes later to find his sergeant alone in the office.

“Hello”, he said, “where’s the boy?”

The sergeant replied, “He said he’d be back in the morning.”

The colonel looked puzzled for a moment, then glanced at the note that Julian had signed. He no longer had the diagram, which he had turned over to a draftsman. He thought for a moment and then said to his sergeant, “Get me a Mr. West at 137 Floral Heights, San Diego, California, on the phone.”

The sergeant balked. He said, “Aw, look here, sir, you ain’t gonna give him away, are you? That’s the kid who was in the papers with the hijacker on the bus. I recognized him.”

The colonel said, “Well, if you read the papers then you ought to realize that by now his parents must be frantic what with his disappearance and all that. Put the call through. By the time his father gets here it’ll be morning, the kid will have his drawing and be at the Patent Office. Mission accomplished.”

It had been a good hour since Julian had vanished into the interior of the Pentagon. Meech Morrow had slumped a little into his seat and was talking to himself. “Boy, you’re sure one smart cab driver. I’ll bet they must have got on to the kid and are holding him to send home to his folks and you got yourself about nine dollars worth of nothing on the clock besides wasting half the day. Wait till I tell Mother about Meech Morrow, the great philanthropist . . .” At this point Julian emerged from the doorway ten feet tall and beaming.

Morrow sat up blinking and then said, “Julian, I mean, Herman, what happened?”

Julian said, “Say, the colonel was okay. They’re gonna make me the design and everything and there were a whole lot of generals sitting around yakking. I gotta be back at ten o’clock in the morning.”

Meech Morrow was a normal man who liked things to make sense. This did not. But then nothing had since the time he had encountered Julian, including his own behaviour. He said, “Come on, now, what really happened? What was it all about? Let’s quit kidding. You’re the boy that shot that hijacker with your little old water pistol, aren’t you?”

Julian said, “It wasn’t a water pistol. It was my Bubble Gun, my invention, and the colonel said . . .” Thereupon he remembered and continued, “I’m not allowed to say. Look,” and he exhibited the back of his hand to Morrow.

The cab driver stared and then grinned. “Top Secret, are you?” He said, “Well, you won’t be for long with every cop in town on the lookout for you. What are you going to do now?”

Julian stared at Morrow without replying. He hadn’t thought.

Morrow said, “You haven’t got any place to go, have you?”

Julian shook his head and admitted it, “No.”

It dawned suddenly upon Morrow that although things like a nine-year-old boy fugitive from San Diego trying to patent a pistol that shot bubbles instead of bullets wasn’t exactly the normal run of affairs, neither was the story in the newspapers about a hijacking and Julian was no liar. There had been the colonel’s card in his pocket and if Julian said the colonel was going to have his drawing and everything and to come back at ten in the morning, well by then the drawing and everything would be there. Aloud he said to Julian, “Look here, you better come along home with me or you won’t be making it to any Patent Office in the morning. And just to keep it strictly business let’s say you pay me off now. That’ll be nine dollars and a half.”

Julian handed him a ten dollar bill. Morrow asked, “Okay I keep the fifty cent tip?”

Julian nodded, “Uh huh.”

Morrow said, “Right! then get in.”

Julian opened the back door, but Morrow said, “No, no, up front here with me. From now on, Julian, you’re my guest.”

The race to the wire, on the face of it, appeared to be unfair and stacked against Julian who at 2.30 in the afternoon of that day was finishing lunch with Mrs. Morrow and the baby, the other two Morrow children, a boy and a girl, being at school. And, at exactly the same hour Frank Marshall was opening the door of one of the inner offices of the drafting firm of Peabody and Wilson to find the draftsman waiting for him with a grin on his face and the drawing ready.

The draftsman said, “Here you are. Have you worked out the rest of the forms?”

Marshall exhibited the sheaf of papers. The draftsman said, “You getting a patent attorney—a practitioner?”

Marshall said, “Can’t afford to. I’m down to my last five C’s.”

The draftsman tapped the beautiful inked design. He said, “You can’t afford not to. This is a pretty simple little idea. You’d better have someone who knows his way about and can give you protection. They’ll run you ragged over there if you try to push this through by yourself. Go to Shine, Williams and Burdett on the eighth floor and ask for Jim Williams. Say I sent you. They’re reasonable and won’t sting you. Here, I’ll give you my card.” He scribbled a few words on a business card and gave it to Marshall.

Jim Williams was a fat, pursy little man but he had vivid, alert and intelligent eyes and a brisk manner.

“I’m in a hurry,” Marshall began.

And Williams said, “Yes, yes, I know,” and glanced at his watch. He then said, “Two hundred bucks retainer. If the patent is denied it won’t cost you any more. If it’s granted, another three hundred. What you want to do is get this in before closing. I know all the examiners over there.” And he was on his way out of the office with Marshall trooping after him.

Two hundred dollars was pretty steep, but at least Williams was a hustler. At twenty minutes past four they were in the office of an examiner and Frank Marshall’s papers had been dated and time-stamped as well as given a registry number, and Marshall had further been relieved of his sixty-five dollar filing fee. The examiner and the lawyer then exchanged some gobbledygook after which Williams told Marshall, “There’s some more processing before we start the search, but it’s too late this afternoon. We can come back tomorrow morning and get it done. Anyway,” and he indicated the stamps and numbers on the material, “you’re registered as of now, so you can sleep tonight.”

Walking down the corridor to the exit, for the first time Frank Marshall found himself wondering whether he could sleep.

C H A P T E R
1 6

A
t 10.15 the following morning, for the second time Julian emerged from the imposing portals of the Pentagon Building except that this time he was accompanied by Colonel Sisson. Meech Morrow’s cab was faithfully drawn up at the curb behind the black Cadillac limousine belonging to a one-star general. A sergeant sat at the driver’s wheel.

Sisson said, “There you are, young man. A general’s car. How does that suit you? Everything in style.”

Julian thought that he would die of excitement. He said, “Say, gee, for me? How did you . . .?”

Colonel Sisson said smoothly, “Borrowed it. He was only too delighted. The driver will look after you.”

The sergeant was around and holding the door open. The scene was almost grotesque in its absurdity, the great car, the smartly uniformed officer and the rumpled little boy.

Sitting in his cab Meech Morrow grinned to himself and wondered whether Julian would remember.

He did. Julian suddenly cried, “Oh say, excuse me,” and he ran over to the cab. The colonel sauntered after him. Julian said, “Look Mr. Morrow, I’m going in a general’s car.”

Morrow nodded and said, “I see that. I guess you’re in good hands. You won’t be needing me any more.”

Julian was aware that the colonel was standing beside them and said, “Mr. Morrow here looked after me. I stayed with him last night.”

The colonel nodded and said, “So that’s where you were. I wondered,” bent down to the driver and said, “That was very kind of you, Mr. Morrow,” and then added, “Do we owe you anything?” And having asked it, he wished he hadn’t.

But Morrow was not offended. He merely said, “No sir, thank you, nobody owes me anything. He’s a great kid. We were proud to have him in our home.”

Julian held out his hand and said, “Thanks, Mr. Morrow, and thank Mrs. Morrow again too, please.”

Morrow nodded, held the small hand for a moment, then eased his car into gear. “Good luck, kid, and you might let me know how things turn out.”

Julian said, “Yes sir, I will,” as the car moved off and Colonel Sisson gave him a good-bye salute. And it wasn’t until it turned the corner out of sight that he realized he had not asked Morrow for his address, which he had failed to observe.

An hour later Julian sat in a straight-backed government utility chair in the office of an examiner of applications for patents in the United States Patent Office. On the desk lay an expertly and properly executed drawing of the diagram of the Bubble Gun plus the various forms filled out carefully and neatly in Julian’s large print in which he had been aided by Meech Morrow’s wife who had been a school teacher. Each sheet was in proper order including the receipt for the sixty-five dollar filing fee. The examiner leafed through these and several times during his inspection, looked up at Julian rather sharply. Yet this no longer brought any fear to Julian. He had become used to it, this look of people trying to remember where they had seen him before. But now it no longer mattered. He was at the end of his quest, at least the part which had come to mean the most, the patenting of his invention.

He was a wiser boy and wasted no time in regrets over his former innocence or even the manner in which he had embarked upon his voyage, and the dreams and the golden fantasies of millions of dollars with which it had been coloured. These would be entertained again but one of the things he had learned was that first things come first. A patent granted to him for his Bubble Gun would be something to show his father.

The examiner indeed had been wondering what was familiar about this boy but the problems which were posed by these papers before him and the subsequent happenings quickly drove this thought from his mind.

He leafed through the papers again, picked them up in a bunch and once more kid them down on his desk. Then he asked, “Where did you get these? You did say these drawings were original?”

Julian replied, “Yes sir. It’s my Bubble Gun. I invented it, but the drawings were made by a friend of mine in the Pentagon Building. Are they okay?”

The examiner looked at Julian even more sharply now. He repeated, “The Pentagon Building. I don’t understand.”

Julian said, “Colonel Sisson. He’s a friend of mine. I didn’t have the right kind of paper or ink or anything and so he said . . .” He then bethought himself of something which would surely put an end to this line of questioning and reached into his pocket. “But here’s
my
diagram.”

The official took it and examined it, comparing it with the work done by the draftsman. He asked, “What’s this
TOP SECRET
stamp on it?”

For the first time since the triumphant parade of happy events that had led him to this point, Julian had a momentary feeling of alarm. He replied, “I’m not allowed to say.”

The examiner inquired, “Is this an army job? Who’s this Colonel Sisson?”

Julian had his precious card which had opened so many doors for him and he produced it. The examiner took it, looked at it and copied it down on a pad. Then he asked, holding up the draftsman’s sheet, “Why isn’t the
TOP SECRET
stamp on this one as well then? I don’t get it.” And then he looked at Julian even more questioningly, as his eye caught the words on the back of Julian’s hand. Mrs. Morrow had wanted to wash it off the night before, but Julian had refused to let her. He was never going to wash it off. He had been careful to soap and dry only the palm.