As for surprising a telepath, I knew it wouldn't work, but I had to try it anyway. I put both Mrs. Wood and Florence through a number of mental hurdles. To this, Mr. Wood took a quietly tolerant attitude. He understood and was prepared to accept as healthily normal a certain amount of lust and carnal conjecture in the minds of males who were interested in his daughter. He forgave me for mentally insulting his wife because he knew that my mental peregrinations were only aimed at determining whether his wife was telepathic. Finally he came out flatly and told me to stop wasting my effort, because neither Florence nor Mrs. Wood had a trace of extra-sensory power. Their lack of shocked or outraged response was not a case of the well-trained telepath divining my intention and planning a blank response.
Furthermore, Mr. Wood asserted that neither of them knew of his extra-sensory faculty, that he fully intended to keep it that way, and that I should know damned well that such stunts wouldn't work in the first place.
And so I continued to enjoy a dinner now and then, and occasionally the company of Florence.
Ultimately the lack of progress brought Chief Weston's nervous system to the blowup point. He called me in and I went, knowing that trouble cannot always be avoided, and when it can't, it's just plain sense to kick out the props and have done with it.
He plowed right in: "And what in hell have you been doing?"
"Chief, I've been—"
"You put a make-team on some half-baked writer named Wood."
"Edward Hazlett—"
"Because," he yelled, "the first person you saw when you stuck your nose outside of Gordon Andrews' apartment was Florence Wood!"
"Well, Chief, you see—"