The Family
He had no time to communicate his discovery or
to commercialize it—simply bolted to the front
and left the most important discovery of his time to take care of itself."
Sir Edgar, fork arrested, looked a trifle dazed. "Am I to understand that you are referring to the inventor of the Outland vacuum?"
Louie was delighted. "Exactly that! Of course you would know all about it. My wife was young Outland's fiancée-is virtually his widow. Before he went to France he made a will in her favour; he had no living relatives, indeed. Toward the close of the war we began to sense the importance of what Outland had been doing in his laboratory—I am an electrical engineer by profession. We called in the assistance of experts and got the idea over from the laboratory to the trade. The monetary returns have been and are, of course, large." While Louie paused long enough to have some intercourse with the roast before it was taken away, Sir Édgar remarked that he himself had been in the Air Service during the war, in the construction department, and that it was most extraordinary to come thus by chance upon the genesis of the Outland vacuum.
"You see," Louie told him, "Outland got nothing out of it but death and glory. Naturally, we feel terribly indebted. We feel it's our first duty in life to use that money as he would have
—41—
