“Jim! How you frightened me! I’m deadly sleepy.” He rubbed his eyes, where tears were. “I’m not quite fit, and I dropped into a chair—” The words trailed off.
But Jimmy Pendleton was looking at him as he would have let no man but Jimmy Pendleton look. He was searching into his soul, without pretence of doing otherwise.
“Johnny, old boy, get it out of your system. We didn’t room together three years for nothing. I know something is on your mind, and I know you’d be better if you could talk it over with a man. You know I’m to be trusted.”
Across the torture that wrung him it seemed that a strong hand had laid a check. The twist of the rack had stopped; slowly, as he stared into the face of the man beside him, dim things that looked, far off, like hope and courage and peace, stirred out of the dark of his consciousness. Jimmy Pendleton’s hand was on his; it was Jimmy’s face he saw, but it was a transfigured face. Jimmy might be fat and short and bald, but how had it happened that one had never before seen the strength in the square jaw and the keenness in the eyes, the air of power in the man? He knew in that second that here was a personality on which he might lean.
“Tell me, old chap,” said Jimmy, and pressed down the weight of his steady hand.
Ellsworth told. He poured out the aches that had festered through sore years; the things which even Margaret had only half known. The sting of long misery washed away in the cool river of the other’s understanding silence. He talked on disjointedly, easing his soul at every breathless sentence. At last the tale was told, all of it. A tale of fortune failing by a hairbreadth; inventions patented and never known; discoveries anticipated, a month, a week, by some other; years of patient experiment come to nothing. He spoke haltingly of his wife, the girl whom Pendleton had also known, of her unfailing courage; of the two dead children, of the boy who could not have his birthright of opportunity.
“I haven’t been lazy, you know, Jim,” he explained. “I’ve worked. But it does seem as if I played in bad luck. And lately I’ve lost confidence. Except in this last thing; I have to believe in that; it’s the real thing. If—” He stopped.
“What, Johnny?”
Ellsworth put his hand in his pocket, hesitated, looked at the other man doubtfully. The truth was that he had kept a small drawing of his beloved machine by him, with a half-formulated idea of being ready if any chance should come. Here was, perhaps, the chance. It flashed into his mind, it was a pity that it was only Jimmy Pendleton. But he drew the drawing out slowly; a thin paper with orderly, intricate lines, numbered and lettered. The sight of them made a new man of him.
“Look, Jimmy!” He spread the paper. “Isn’t it a miracle that nobody has thought of this? It’s the simplest thing—it’s inevitable—it’s sure.” His face was brilliant. Pendleton bent over the paper. “You see, it’s this way,” Ellsworth said, and explained.