Paul did not have a creative mind. He knew that men like Edison, Tesla, and Westinghouse possessed something he did not. An extra organ, an extra region of the brain, a God-lit candle such as the one that gave Saint Augustine faith—there was a creative thing, and Paul knew he didn’t have it.
What would it feel like to be a creative man? To experience their eurekas, to thrill at their inventive madnesses? Paul tried to imagine what an Edison, a Tesla, a Westinghouse might feel in the moment of pure inspiration…but he couldn’t do it. Paul did not invent; he solved. Problems came across his desk, and he solved them. Questions answered, mistakes corrected. The way Paul thought of it, if you asked him a question, he was exceptionally good at providing the right answer. But he wasn’t the sort of person who came up with the questions.
In the strangest sense, Paul felt that he saw these men more clearly than they would ever see one another. Because he was not of them, he could peer at them remotely, three great giants in the misty distance. Three entirely incompatible ways of approaching science, industry, and business.
“Farewell,” said Tesla before turning away and walking out the door. “You may consider me no longer any part of your Westinghouse Company.”
Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
—THOMAS EDISON
“WE’RE HERE TO help,” lied Charles Hughes. He was leaning against the frame of Paul’s office door in an attempt to appear casual. It wasn’t working.
Carter stood behind him. The elder partner’s scowl disarmed the younger partner’s imitation of friendliness.
“I appreciate that,” lied Paul in return.
“I doubt it,” said Carter. He made no effort to conceal his condescension toward his onetime protégé.
“Where are you with Tesla?” asked Hughes. It was two weeks after Westinghouse and Tesla’s ill-fated dinner. Paul had sent a few letters care of Lemuel Serrell, but had heard nothing back.
“I’ve received no response. But he’s been seen in Manhattan a few times—dining with high society, if you can believe it. My theory is that he’s seeking financiers for his own company. Setting up shop somewhere in New York, but Serrell either won’t tell me exactly where he is, or doesn’t know himself.” Why were his partners so focused on Tesla? Of all the crises before them, the loss of Tesla seemed the most manageable.
“We must convince him to go back to Westinghouse,” said Carter.
“Or find someone else to help Westinghouse create a non-infringing A/C lamp.” Paul knew that geniuses of Tesla’s caliber did not grow on trees. But they had to grow somewhere. “The loss of Tesla’s expertise is a problem, to be sure, but it’s a scientific one, not a legal one. The patents remain firmly in Mr. Westinghouse’s hands.”
“Yes,” said Hughes. “That’s what concerns us.”
It seemed that Paul’s partners knew something he did not.
“We looked over the contracts,” said Carter.
“Two dollars and fifty cents per horsepower on every unit sold?” asked Hughes.
“I don’t have the papers in front of me, but yes, I believe that’s the royalty Westinghouse is paying.”
“And he’s paying them whether or not Tesla is working with him to make the patents useful.”
“Yes,” said Paul. “Westinghouse keeps the patents even if Tesla leaves, no change in conditions. This is a good thing.”
“Well,” said Hughes with a carefully feigned humility, “the thing of it is, it’s not.”
“…How do you mean?”
“Oh my,” said Carter. “He genuinely doesn’t understand.”
“Walter,” said Hughes, “we don’t need to make Mr. Cravath feel any worse about this, do we?”
“Make me feel worse about what?” asked Paul.
“When you negotiated with Mr. Serrell,” said Hughes, “on your own, without our guidance, you negotiated a flat fee and a royalty structure that covered both Mr. Tesla’s patents and his future work. And of course this structure was quite generous, wasn’t it?”
“Well worth it, I believe,” said Paul. “So does Westinghouse.”
“Well worth it if it covered both the patents and their future refinement. But now that same fee only covers the patents. Mr. Westinghouse will have to bring on new men to replace Tesla, but he’s still paying Tesla his full rate. In perpetuity.”
“You thought you were negotiating a patent deal, Paul,” interrupted Hughes, “but you were actually negotiating a labor contract. And now your client—a client of this firm—is paying a usurious royalty rate for work that the other party is not obligated to perform.”
“But…” Paul tried to think of a response, his cheeks flaming with shame. “How else could I have—”
“You could have put another goddamned clause into the deal,” barked Carter. “?‘If and when Tesla leaves, the royalty rate cuts to fifty cents,’ or twenty-five cents—who knows what you could have gotten.”
“We employ such clauses frequently in these sorts of deals,” said Hughes. “American Steel has them with Benjamin Marc. I’ve worked on similar deals with Serrell before. He was expecting the ask. But you didn’t think of it. And you didn’t consult us. He must be laughing himself silly.”
How could Serrell have manipulated him so thoroughly? As Paul replayed the negotiation in his head, Serrell’s wicked ingenuity at last revealed itself.
Carter came to the same realization. “He offered you a position, didn’t he?” Carter crossed his arms with the worn exasperation of looking at someone who might once have been so promising but had turned out to be so very, very dim.
Hughes put the matter more sympathetically than his father-in-law. “He offered you a position at his firm so that you wouldn’t confer with us. He knew you were inexperienced. And he knew you were ambitious, eager to take all the credit yourself. So by offering some simple conspiracy against us, he drove a wedge between you and your more experienced partners.”
Paul’s shame curdled in his stomach. “I did not know that such a clause was an option,” he said with all the control he could muster.
“You did not know,” said Carter, “because you are twenty-seven years old. You are buried over your head in dirt and you are too stupid to realize it’s quicksand.”
“Walter,” ventured Hughes. “There’s no need.”
“I do not require your false pity,” said Paul with a force he hadn’t intended. “You’re to play the angel on one shoulder while Mr. Carter is the devil on the other? Spare me the penny theater.”
“This is hundreds of thousands of dollars Westinghouse will lose because of your arrogance,” said Carter. “Millions, possibly.”
“The patents only last six more years,” pleaded Paul lamely. “It’s a lot of money, to be sure, but in six years the damage will be done, and once we prevail over Edison it won’t matter.”
“Prevail?” said Carter. “How in the hell is Westinghouse supposed to beat Edison when he’s locked into paying a two-fifty-per-unit royalty that Edison is not? Westinghouse will either have to make his units more expensive than Edison’s, which will be death in the marketplace, or sell them for a price such that he’s barely making a profit, and then the whole corporation will sink. A fine position you’ve put him in.”
It was the “you” that stung the most. This disaster was of Paul’s making.
“I made a mistake.”
“You made a mistake,” repeated Hughes. “But you won’t again. That’s all we ask.”
Paul looked to Hughes for a rope of any kind with which to pull himself up.
“What do you want?” asked Paul. But as soon as he said it, he realized what was coming. And he realized that he was powerless to fight it.