But if they felt like me they both felt like laying right down there and having a fit. They looks at him and he jest sets there and grins at them.
But after a while Jane, she says:
"Well, now you KNOW! What are you going to do about it?"Henry, he starts to say something too. But--"Don't start anything," says the perfessor to him. "YOU aren't going to do anything." Or they was words to that effect.
"Professor Booth," he says, seeing he has got to say something or else Jane will think the worse of him, "I am--""Keep still," says the perfessor, real quiet. "I'll tend to you in a minute or two. YOU don't count for much. This thing is mostly between me and my wife."When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that perfessor has got something into him besides science after all. Jane, she looks kind o' surprised herself. But she says nothing, except:
"What are you going to do, Frederick?" And she laughs one of them mean kind of laughs, and looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a little more, and says: "What CAN you do, Fred-erick?"
Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:
"There's quite a number of things I COULD do that would look bad when they got into the news-papers. But it's none of them, unless one of you forces me to it." Then he says:
"You DID want to see the children, Jane?"
She nodded.
"Jane," he says, "can't you see I'm the better man?"The perfessor, he was woke up after all them years of scientifics, and he didn't want to see her go. "Look at him," he says, pointing to the feller with the brown beard, "he's scared stiff right now."Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been ketched that-a-way like Henry was, and the per-fessor's voice sounding like you was chopping ice every time he spoke. I seen the perfessor didn't want to have no blood on the carpet without he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his mind about something, too. Jane, she says:
"YOU a better man? YOU? You think you've been a model husband just because you've never beaten me, don't you?""No," says the perfessor, "I've been a blamed fool all right. I've been a worse fool, maybe, than if I HAD beaten you." Then he turns to Henry and he says:
"Duels are out of fashion, aren't they? And a plain killing looks bad in the papers, doesn't it?
Well, you just wait for me." With which he gets up and trots out, and I hearn him running down stairs to his labertory.
Henry, he'd ruther go now. He don't want to wait. But with Jane a-looking at him he's shamed not to wait. It's his place to make some kind of a strong action now to show Jane he is a great man.
But he don't do it. And Jane is too much of a thoroughbred to show him she expects it. And me, I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself, "What is that there perfessor up to now? What-ever it is, it ain't like no one else. He is looney, that perfessor is. And she is kind o' looney, too.
I wonder if they is any one that ain't looney some-times?" I been around the country a good 'eal, too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or less looney when the SEARCH US THE FEMM comes into the case. Which is a Dago word I got out'n a newspaper and it means: "Who was the dead gent's lady friend?" And we all set and sweat and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to come back.
Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin onto his face and a pill box in his hand. They was two pills in the box. He says, placid and chilly:
"Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion. This is the age of science. All the same, the one that gets her has got to fight for her. If she isn't worth fighting for, she isn't worth having. Here are two pills. I made 'em myself. One has enough poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to working well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is taken. The other one has got nothing harmful in it. If you get the poison one, I keep her. If Iget it, you can have her. Only I hope you will wait long enough after I'm dead so there won't be any scandal around town."Henry, he never said a word. He opened his mouth, but nothing come of it. When he done that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his cheek on the inside like a piece of sand-paper.
He was scared, Henry was.
"But YOU know which is which," Jane sings out.
"The thing's not fair!"
"That is the reason my dear Jane is going to shuffle these pills around each other herself," says the perfessor, "and then pick out one for him and one for me. YOU don't know which is which, Jane. And as he is the favourite, he is going to get the first chance. If he gets the one I want him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live after taking it. In that fifteen minutes he will please to walk so far from my house that he won't die near it and make a scandal. I won't have a scandal without I have to. Everything is going to be nice and quiet and respectable. The effect of the poison is similar to heart failure. No one can tell the difference on the corpse. There's going to be no blood anywhere. I will be found dead in my house in the morning with heart failure, or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far enough away so as to make no talk." Or they was words to that effect.
He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that perfessor is. I wonder if I better jump in and stop the hull thing. Then I thinks: "No, it's between them three." Besides, I want to see which one is going to get that there loaded pill. I always been intrusted in games of chancet of all kinds, and when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm sorry I been misjudging him all this time.
Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard and quick.
"I won't touch 'em," she says. "I refuse to be a party to any murder of that kind.""Huh? You do?" says the perfessor. "But the time when you might have refused has gone by.
You have made yourself a party to it already.
You're really the MAIN party to it.
"But do as you like," he goes on. "I'm giving him more chance than I ought to with those pills.
