St. Peter was breakfasting at six-thirty, alone, reading last night’s letters while he waited for the coffee to percolate. It had been long since he had had an eight o’clock class, but this year the schedule committee had slyly put him down for one. “He can afford to take a taxi over now,” the Dean remarked.

After breakfast he went upstairs and into his wife’s room. “I have a rendezvous with a lady,” he said, tossing an envelope upon her counterpane. She read a note from Mrs. Crane, the least attractive of the faculty ladies, requesting an interview with the professor at his earliest convenience: as she wished to see him quite alone, might she come to his study in the old house, where she understood he still worked?

“Poor Godfrey!” murmured his wife.

“One ought not to joke about it — ” St. Peter went into his room to get a handkerchief and came back, taking up his suspended sentence. “I’m afraid it means poor Crane is coming up for another operation. Or, worse still, that the surgeons tell her another would be useless. It’s like The Pit and the Pendulum. I feel as if the poor fellow were strapped down on a revolving disk that comes around under the knife just so often.”

Mrs. St. Peter looked judicially at the letter, then at her husband’s back. She didn’t believe that surgery would be the subject of discussion when they met. Mrs. Crane had been behaving very strangely of late.

Doctor Crane had married a girl whom no other man ever thought of courting, a girl of whom people always said: “Oh, she’s so good!” chiefly because she was so homely. They had three very plain daughters, and only Crane’s salary to live upon. Doctors and surgeons kept them poor enough.

St. Peter kissed his wife and went forth quite unconscious of what was going on in her mind. During the morning he telephoned Mrs. Crane, and arranged a meeting with her at five o’clock. As the bell in the old house didn’t work now, he waited downstairs on the front porch, to receive his visitor and conduct her up to his study. It was raining drearily, and Mrs. Crane arrived in a rubber coat, and a knitted sport hat belonging to one of her daughters. St. Peter took her wet umbrella and led her up the two flights of stairs.

“I’m not very well appointed to receive ladies, Mrs. Crane. This was the sewing-room, you know. There’s Augusta’s chair, which she insisted was comfortable.”

“Thank you.” Mrs. Crane sat down, took off her gloves, and tucked wisps of damp hair up under her crocheted hat. Her bleak, plain face wore an expression of grievance.

“I’ve come without my husband’s knowledge, Doctor St. Peter, to ask you what you think can be done about our rights in the Outland patent. You know how my husband’s health has crippled us financially, and we never know when his trouble may come on worse again. Myself, I’ve never doubted that you would see it is only right to share with us.”

St. Peter looked at her in amazement. “But, my dear Mrs. Crane, how can I share with you what I haven’t got? Tom willed his estate and royalties in a perfectly regular way. The fact that he named my daughter as his sole beneficiary doesn’t affect me, any more than if he had named some relative of his own. I tell you frankly, I have never received one dollar from the Outland patent.”

“It’s all the same if it goes to your family, Doctor St. Peter. My husband must be considered in this matter. He spent days and nights working with Outland. Tom never could have worked his theory out without Robert’s help. He said so, more than once, in my presence and in the presence of others.”

“Oh, I believe that, Mrs. Crane. But the difficulty is that Tom didn’t make any recognition of that assistance in his will.”

Mrs. Crane had set her head and advanced her 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 he had taken the papers to court then, with all the evidence we have, we could easily have got an equity. But Mr. Marsellus is very smooth. He flattered Robert and got everything there was.”

“But he didn’t get anything from your husband. Outland’s papers and apparatus were delivered to his executor, as was inevitable.”

“That was poor subterfuge,” said Mrs. Crane, with deep meaning. “You know how unworldly Robert is, and as an old friend you might have warned us.”

“Of what, Mrs. Crane?”

“Why, that Marsellus saw there was a fortune in the gas my husband and his pupil had made, and we could have asked for our equity before we gave your son-inlaw a free hand with everything.”

St. Peter felt very unhappy. He began walking up and down the little room. “Heaven knows I’d like to see Crane get something out of it, but how? How? I’ve thought a great deal about this matter, and I’ve blamed Tom for making that kind of will. I don’t think it occurred to the boy that the will would ever be probated. He expected to come back from the war and develop the thing himself. I doubt whether Robert, with all his superior knowledge, would have known the twists and turns by which the patent could be commercialized. It took a great deal of wor............