The Last Days of Night(87)

We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.

—THOMAS EDISON



“I DIDN’T BEAT EDISON,” continued Bell. “The silly fool beat himself. I was just clever enough to let him do it.”

“What do you mean?”

“The most dangerous enemy that Thomas Edison will ever face is Thomas Edison. And even after all this time, he still hasn’t learned his lesson.”

“You’re being terribly cryptic.”

“Have you ever picked up one of those papers—The Wall Street Journal?”

“Yes,” answered Paul.

“Rubbish things, but a friend was here last week, brought a stack along. All the information you need to know to beat Edison is in one of those.”

“Edison’s stock price? It’s at an all-time high. I don’t understand how that helps us.”

“Edison’s stock is valued highly,” said Agnes, “because everyone believes that he’s going to defeat Westinghouse.”

“Go on,” said Bell.

“And that is the primary source of its value,” suggested Agnes.

Bell smiled. “Honestly,” he said to Paul, “your fiancée has a much better head for business than you do.”

Paul did his best to ignore this comment. “You’re suggesting that we spread rumors? To depress the value of his stock?”

“You’ve no need to lie. The truth is damning enough.”

“And the truth is…?”

“All right,” said Bell. “You asked how I beat him. It was exceptionally simple. I invented the damned thing before he did. I was quick. He was late. That’s the thing that kills him, even to this day. It wasn’t that I was a better inventor than he was. It was that he was so obsessed with solving a different problem that he didn’t even notice the answer to the telephone problem was lying right at his feet. He was consumed with telegraphs; he’d been working on them for a decade, even then. He’d done some early work on the telephone but felt it was a distraction. Why would he waste time on some silly talking box when his telegraph lines were getting finer and finer? He actually had the idea for the ’phone at the same time as I did, you know. It’s not a secret. And this is what will haunt that poor man until his dying day—he had the idea at the same time, but I patented it. And the law is the law. Do you know, I think that’s why he’s been so rough with Westinghouse? He must have vowed never to make such a mistake again.”

“I already showed that he lied on his patent application for the incandescent lamp,” said Paul. “It did no good.”

“No,” said Agnes. “That’s not the point that Mr. Bell is trying to make.”

“Correct,” said Bell.

“He’s saying,” said Agnes, “that Edison is an obsessive. Like someone else I know. And this is Edison’s weakness. He becomes so fixated on one line of attack that he becomes completely oblivious to another one.”

“Clever girl,” said Bell.

“A reverse salient?” asked Agnes. Bell laughed approvingly.

“What?” Paul was confused.

“Sometimes an army will intentionally create a reverse salient in its forward line,” she said. “A point of such obvious weakness that its enemy cannot help but take advantage. Do you know much about military history?”

“How do you know much about military history?” asked Paul.

“I was once friendly with a general. In London. Anyhow. What is the obvious weakness of Westinghouse’s? What is his reverse salient that has so consumed Edison?”

Paul struggled not to let his thoughts stray to this general in Agnes’s past.

“I would think,” said Bell, “that Mr. Cravath would know the singular obsession of Thomas Edison better than just about anyone else in the world.”

“The lawsuit!” exclaimed Agnes. “Paul, you’ve been saying for months that this lawsuit is costing Westinghouse a fortune.”

“Yes…”

“Do you think it’s costing Edison any less?”

As Paul finally understood the point that Bell and Agnes had been making, he began to smile.

“Edison is so focused on winning the patent war,” he said, “that he’s forgotten that he also needs to win the corporate war. The Edison General Electric Company…it’s not actually profitable. He’s running the thing into the red to beat Westinghouse. Undercutting his prices so severely that he’s barely eking out a profit. Throwing a fortune away on legal fees, a fortune that I cannot imagine that his attorneys have so graciously deferred.”

“You’re deferring your legal fees?” said Bell. “Remind me to hire you the next time Edison sues me.”

“Sooner or later Edison’s shareholders will notice their lack of profit,” said Paul, “and they will not be pleased.”

“The question you need to ask yourself,” said Bell, “is: Who is the largest shareholder in EGE? Besides Edison himself?”

Paul and Agnes both knew the answer.

“Sixty percent,” she said very quietly. “It’s hard to get much larger than that.”

Paul remained silent as he put the pieces together.