I nodded reluctantly. "Y-yes. I suppose she knows—something."
"The same thing was the case," he continued, "on such words as 'bull,' 'serpent,' and 'face,' all of which, you recollect from her dreams, were significant words. Even on the words which she did not change the second time there was frequently a marked hesitation. Thus, on the word 'dream' the first time she hesitated a fraction of a second before answering 'Lathrop,' whose name evidently was suggested to her by his treatment of her nervous troubles and asking her about her dreams. But the second time there was no hesitation when she answered 'Lathrop' to the word 'dream.' The same thing was true of other words which she did not change. She hesitated the first time, but not the second. They were such groups as 'money-poor-poor,' 'friend-none-none,' 'bottle-stopper-stopper,' and 'glass-empty-empty.'"
"What do you think it indicates?" I asked.
"From some you can draw your own conclusions," he replied. "They are perfectly evident. She feels alone, friendless, and almost penniless. As to the bean sequence, I am inclined to think she knows much about the Calabar bean—both before and after the use in this case. Perhaps even she knows of the drug from it. But whether that knowledge is such that it has given her a first-hand direct acquaintance with the use of it—well, that is another question.
"So, also, she was guarded in her reply to the words 'bottle' and 'glass.' She remembered the belladonna bottle and eagerly seized on the innocuous word, 'stopper,' referring to the ground-glass stopper, no doubt. As to the glass, or glasses, found on Wilford's desk, which must have been in her mind, because by the words I was planting and leading up to that, she was equally guarded. To reply 'empty,' could certainly not be construed as anything but innocuous, she probably thought."
"How about the changes?" I questioned. "Do they show anything that is evidential?"
Craig considered a moment. "They are, of course, the most important of all, those changes," he replied, taking the list and checking off the words at the third column. "She actually changed her answers seven times, and there was hesitation each time, both on the original answer and the change in this third column."
Kennedy studied the list before him for some minutes.
"Let's run down this list," he said, finally. "Take the first—'foot-shoe-shoe.' Nothing there, of course. Wasn't intended to be. Here—'dream-Lathrop-Lathrop.' We have already discussed that. Consciously, she refuses to tell me anything in 'struggle-escape-escape' with reference to that dream of hers of her husband. 'Ship-ocean-ocean'—I put that word in for camouflage and she seizes it eagerly, falling over herself to answer in her best reaction time, thus helping me to locate her hesitations.
"Now we come to the crucial word, 'bean.' She hesitated, and in that moment of hesitation she probably reasoned something like this: 'I must just get as far from the Calabar bean which they tell me he has discovered as I can.' So she answered 'baked.' Yet that did not satisfy her. It wasn't definite enough. Any bean could be baked. So to make it absolutely explicit she corrected that to 'white bean.' She knows, all right."