"Captain Schnell," breathed Florence Wood, "what on Earth are you talking about?"
"Your father," I said.
Mr. Wood stepped into the breach. "Captain Schnell was dramatizing for your benefit, I'm sure. Because Captain Schnell knows very well how impossible it is to surprise a telepath into revealing himself."
Florence Wood's expression changed to a mildly bothered smile. "It certainly sounded as if he were accusing you of something."
"You mean—like—mind reading?" he asked with a big belly laugh that closed the subject.
IV
By most of the rules of society, both Mr. Wood and I were guilty of gross gentility. He greeted me overtly as the welcome guest and needled me with a show of patronizing tolerance as he implied that my basic interest was in Florence.
To match him, I accepted his hospitality and made use of the proximity to spy on him and his family.
There are ways and means of making a pretended deaf-mute reveal himself—the human being does not live who will not leap halfway out of his skin at the shock of an unexpected revolver shot, no matter how well trained he is at feigning deafness.