Page:The Professor's House - Willa Cather.pdf/142

 long chin with meek determination. “Well, this is how it was, Professor. Mr. Marsellus came here a stranger, to put in the Edison power plant, just at the time the city was stirred up about Outland’s being killed at the front. Everybody was wanting to do something in recognition of the young man. You brought Mr. Marsellus to our house and introduced him. After that he came alone, again and again, and he got round my husband. Robert thought he was disinterested, and was only taking a scientific interest, and he told him a great deal about what he and Outland had been working on. Then Rosamond’s lawyers came for the papers. Tom Outland had no laboratory of his own. He was allowed the use of a room in the physics building, at my husband’s request. He wanted to be there, because he constantly needed Robert’s help. The first thing we knew, your daughter’s engagement to Marsellus was announced, and then we heard that all Outland’s papers had been given over to him.”

Here St. Peter anticipated her. “But, Mrs. Crane, your husband couldn’t, and wouldn’t, have kept Tom’s papers. They had to be given over to his executor, who was my daughter’s attorney.”

“Well, I could have kept them, if he couldn’t!”— Mrs. Crane threw up her head as if to show that the worm had turned at last—“kept them until justice was done us, and some recognition had been made of my husband’s part in all that research work. If