The Last Days of Night(84)

“And so, sir, I don’t mean to tell you your business, but when we’re faced with a problem, Mr. Tesla has us, first and foremost, categorize it. We have to determine if it’s known or unknown. Have you done that with yours?”

“I suppose,” said Paul, “that defeating Edison is an unknown problem, since no one has ever…”

Paul stopped himself. “No, wait,” he continued. “Edison has been beaten before. He told me so himself when I deposed him.”

“Well,” explained Robert, “if it’s that type of problem that you’re trying to solve, then your first step should probably be to go to someone who’s solved it already.”

“There is exactly one person who’s gone up against Thomas Edison and won,” said Paul. “And you’re suggesting that he might have some interesting advice to share?”

Agnes smiled. She had already realized whom Paul meant.

“Your epiphany is pleasing,” said Tesla.

“Well,” said Erastus impatiently, “who is it?”

Paul told them. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of this earlier.

“How do you think you might reach him?” asked Erastus.

“I imagine I’ll give him a ring on a telephone,” said Paul. “After all, he did invent the thing.”





That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.

—STEVE JOBS



IT TURNED OUT that Alexander Graham Bell did not own a telephone.

Fourteen years earlier, Bell had patented an “apparatus for transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically.” A dozen other inventors, chief among them Thomas Edison, had been working on similar designs for a telegraph that could transmit the human voice itself. The uses and applications were tantalizingly lucrative. But Bell had beaten all his rivals, filing his patent mere hours before a nearly identical claim from Elisha Gray, and weeks ahead of another, from Edison. The lawsuits that resulted were still ongoing, and yet thus far Bell had won them resoundingly. His telephone patent was ironclad.

The invention, easily among the most significant in the world, had positioned him to be the most important inventor of his age. However, to the great shock of the scientific community, Bell had opted not to build the devices himself, nor to bring them to the market. Instead, he appointed a distant relative to manage the company that bore his name. Bell and his wife controlled more shares of the Bell Telephone Company than anyone else, and yet he steadfastly refused to have any involvement in its operation. Once his shares were comfortably generating millions per year in revenue, Bell had taken his family and moved to a remote Canadian peninsula.

Alexander Graham Bell had beaten Thomas Edison at his own game, and then vanished.

Paul and Agnes spent a week traveling from the dusty fields of Nashville to the quiet harbor of Bell’s frozen lake. Before they left, Agnes sent Henry Jayne a note to say that she was taking a last-minute trip with her mother. She sent her mother a note to say that she was staying another week in Nashville. Paul pointed out that Fannie would be sure to send a sternly worded reply, but Agnes only shrugged. She wouldn’t be there to receive it.

“What can she do? She’ll yell when I get home. There will be a great row. She’ll lock me up till the very day of my wedding, I’m sure. But at least, before all of that, I will have done this.”

They passed the 1,800-mile trip to Canada pleasantly. Happily, even. He finally brought himself to ask about her engagement, but they skipped through the painful details as quickly as possible. The wedding would not take place until the following July. It would take some time to organize. Everyone in New York, not to mention Philadelphia, would be in attendance. Everyone, Paul assumed, but himself.

That unpleasantness concluded, Paul and Agnes then had six days on a train together. The train became its own world—a glowing filament enclosed in a vacuum. Removed from the society of New York, they had only to be themselves. Paul wasn’t a young lawyer on the make. Agnes was not the star chanteuse of the Metropolitan Opera. They were just a good strong boy from Tennessee and a whip-smart wit from Kalamazoo. In the midst of all that was happening, it was actually…fun.

They made friends with a newlywed couple just across the border. When the bride gestured to Agnes’s ring and asked about their coming nuptials, Paul realized that this trip was almost like a honeymoon. Before he could correct their assumption, Agnes answered, “September!” To Paul’s surprise he found himself joining in her lie. Together they concocted an entire story of their lives—names, dates, a fictional romance that was soon to culminate in an imagined wedding. “Alice Boone” and “Peter Sheldon” were Tennessee mining heirs off to visit distant Canadian relatives. The foursome played bridge till all hours of the night.

The irony was not lost on Paul that he felt most himself here, on the train, at play under a false name. Agnes seemed to feel the same way. Agnes Gouge was pretending to be Agnes Huntington pretending to be Alice Boone. Paul was pretending to be someone who was permitted to love her. They were the king and queen of the first-class dining car.

But a proper honeymoon this was not. Each night they returned to their separate sleeping cars. Paul was not an adulterer, he assured himself. They shared not one stolen kiss as their train skirted the snowy Gulf of Maine. Not even their fingertips touched over six days. The only occasion on which Paul felt the soft warmth of her skin took place within the safety of his dreams.