"Are you convinced of it?" asked Thorpe.
"I've never seen this one, but it's my opinion all professional mediums are fakes," Shelby replied, seriously; "it may not be so, but I believe I can tell after one investigation. I shall pretend to be greatly impressed and all that, but I'll keep my eyes open. And I'm not going to upset Mr. Crane unnecessarily. But if I think she's just fooling him along for the money that's in it, I'm going to tell him so."
"Even at that," Blair put in, "maybe it's worth the money to him to be fooled. He's rich enough."
"Maybe. But I hate to see a man swindled. However, I've agreed to go with him once, and I'm glad to go. Good-by, I'll report results later."
"You see," Blair said to Thorpe after Shelby had gone, "Kit and I can't help feeling a sort of responsibility for this fad of Mr. Crane's. It may be foolish and sentimental, but we feel an interest in Peter's father, and we watch over him as if Peter had asked us to do so, which, of course, he never did."
"But the medium business is such awful rubbish," objected Thorpe.
"It is and it isn't," Blair said, musingly. "It's six weeks now since we came home, and all that time Mr. Crane has been receiving messages from Peter, and every one of them that I've heard are sane and believable. Moreover, Carlotta Harper has almost convinced me there's something in it. That girl is a sort of medium herself. She denies it, says she only uses her common sense, but I think she's clairvoyant."
"There's a heap of difference between being clairvoyant, in a common sense way, and being a fake medium! I don't care what Miss Harper does with a foolish Ouija Board, but I'm like Kit Shelby, I hate to see Benjamin Crane stung by a wily faker!"
Meantime Mr. Benjamin Crane was altogether enjoying the process that Thorpe called stinging.