"It can't be touched, mind you," he added suspiciously; "I've taken
out the provisional patents. There's one man I know wants to fight it in
the courts as an infringement on Wilkinson's own patent, but it can't be
touched!" He shook his head decisively. "No! my lawyer's certain of
that--and so'm I!"
Here there was a break in his communications, so to speak, and he had
apparently run out. It was not for me to wind him up again. I watched
him with a sombre relief as he stood up again to full height, leaned his
head back, and sighed profoundly with satisfaction and with completion.
He folded up his specification and put it in his pocket again. He tore
off the incomprehensible sketch he had made with his pencil while he was
speaking, and put it by me on the mantelshelf. "You might like to keep
it," he said pathetically; "it's a document, that is; it will be famous
some day." He looked at it lovingly, almost as though he was going to
take it back again: but he thought better of it.
I was waiting, I will not say itching, for him to take his leave, when a
god or demon, that same perhaps which had treated the poor fellow as a
jest for a whole lifetime, inspired him to take a very false step
indeed. He had already taken up his hat and was turning as though to go
to the door, when the unfortunate thought struck him.
"What would you do?" he said.
"How do you mean?" I answered.
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