I had heard of cases of people in whom there was no record of hereditary predisposition to cancer, people apparently in perfect health, who had moved into houses where cancer patients had lived and died and had themselves developed the disease. Though I had, of course, never even remotely experienced such a feeling as she described, I could well fancy what it must be to her.
Kennedy watched her sympathetically. "But why do you come to me?" he asked gently. "Don't you think a cancer specialist would be more likely to help you?"
"A specialist?" she repeated with a peculiar hopelessness. "Professor Kennedy, five years ago, when my Uncle Frank was attacked by cancer, father was so foolish as to persuade him to consult a specialist whose advertisement he saw in the papers, a Dr. Adam Loeb on Forty-second Street here in New York. Specialist! Oh, I'm worried sick every time I have a sore or anything like this on my neck or anywhere else."
She had worked herself from her unnatural calm almost into a state of hysterics as she displayed a little sore on her delicate white throat.
"That?" reassured Kennedy. "Oh, that may be nothing but a little boil. But this Dr. Loeb—he must be a quack. No doctor who advertises—"
"Perhaps," she interrupted. "That is what Dr. Goode out at Norwood tells me. But father has faith in him, even has him at the house sometimes. I cannot bear the sight of him. Since I first saw him my uncle, his wife, another aunt, my cousin have died, and then, last week, my—my mother."
Her voice broke, but with a great effort she managed to get herself together. "Now I—I fear that my father may go next. Perhaps it will strike me—or my brother, Lionel—who can tell? Think of it—the whole family wiped out by this terrible thing. Can it be natural, I ask myself? Is there not something back of it?"
"Who is this Dr. Loeb?" asked Kennedy, more for the purpose of aiding her in giving vent to her feelings than anything else.
"He is a New York doctor," she reiterated. "I believe he claims to have a sure cure for cancer, by the use of radium and such means. My father has absolute confidence in him—visits him at his office and, as I told you, even has him at Norwood. In fact they are quite friendly. So was Lionel until lately."
"What happened to shake your brother's faith?" asked Craig.