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Show 50 Fifteen Robeck sits in the low chair beside his own desk, and Liller leans across its edge. "I think I know what to do," Robeck is saying, and he gestures from the chair with great excitement. He thumps his hand down on the pile of manuscript pages. "This is the first part," he says, "just as it is. Now I'll write a refutation, to show what's wrong with it." He stands up behind the desk, takes out another yellow pad, puts 'it down on the surface of the desk. "The Reports will have to give me another thirty pages," he says with a twinkle. But Liller does not move. "I don't see what's wrong with it," he says, primarily to himself. Then he turns towards Robeck, wholly guileless, like a pupil seeking praise for an unexpected piece of work. "I was going to do the same thing myself," he says, "you know, with the cyanide. When the time came." Robeck looks at him, with the unrestrained, urgent stare that had intimidated so many other researchers, and had won him such wide respect. "That's certainly part of the problem," he says. "I have to figure out the rest." |