“No, not exactly. Not exactly that.”
Dr. Crane moved his shoulders about in his tight coat and looked embarrassed and unhappy.
“More than once he said, in a general way, that he hoped it would go, on my account as well as on his own, and that we would use the income for further experiments.”
“Did he talk much about the possible commercial value of the gas while he was trying to make it?”
“Not much. No, very seldom. Perhaps not more than half a dozen times in the three years he was working in my laboratory. But whenever he did, he spoke as if there would be something in it for both of us if our gas became remunerative.”
“Just how much was it ‘our gas,’ Crane?”
“Strictly speaking, of course, it wasn’t. The idea was Outland’s. He benefited by my criticism, and I often helped him with his experiments. He never acquired a nice laboratory technic. He would fail repeatedly in some perfectly sound experiment because of careless procedure.”
“Do you think he would have arrived at his results without your help?”
Dr. Crane was clenching the paper-knife with both hands.
“That I cannot say. He was impatient. He might have got discouraged and turned to something else. He would have been much slower in getting his results, at any rate. His conception was right, but very delicate manipulation was necessary, and he was a careless experimentor.”
St. Peter felt that this was becoming nothing less than cross-examination. He tried to change the tone of it.