"I didn't know what they meant to do," Robert Morton stammered. "I just thought they were going to lend us a hand at working up the thing."
"A likely story!" sniffed Janoah with scorn. "No siree! You came here as a tool—you were paid for it, I'll bet a hat!"
"You lie."
"Prove it," was the taunting response.
"I—I—can't prove it," confessed the young man wretchedly, "but Willie knows that what you accuse me of isn't so."
With face alight with hope he turned toward the old man at his elbow; but no denial came from the expected source. Willie had sunk down on a pile of boards and buried his face in his hands.
"An' I thought they were my friends," they heard him moan.
Robert Morton hesitated, then bent over the bowed figure, and as he did so Janoah, casting one last look of gloating delight at the ruin he had wrought, slipped softly from the room.
As he went out he heard a broken murmur from the inventor:
"I'll—I'll—not—believe it," asserted he feebly.