Rogers is an expert and would run through your notebook and get the
whole thing in a few seconds. I knew that he would watch his time, try
out the experiments at the furnace, and get the patent while you were
deliberating about proceeding in a Chesterfieldian manner with an
injunction drawn slowly and literarily by your friend, Judge Luttrell.
Rogers was fully equipped by his association with me to do you
and--quick. I took no such chances as having you and the Judge's
Byrdsvillianism mixed up in the affair. I stole your secret that had
been stolen, left for a Pennsylvania furnace the next morning, had
experimental furnaces built, tried out the experiments before the
company, keeping dust in Rogers's eyes by demanding to be in on his
robbery, patented it by push-legislation in Washington, and am back
with an offer of fifty thousand dollars down and a royalty to be
decided upon in a ten-year contract. I have a great mind to put it in
trust for you, idiotic dreamer that you are--and perhaps the most
noted man in the field of commercial invention for this year at any
rate! How did you come to think out that process of a disturbance of
atomic arrangement at that temperature?"
"Why, you see, Mr.
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