"There you go! You're ready to swallow the whole lump of humbuggery, just because there is one little puzzling plum in it."
Kate was not to be put down. "What did uncle say?"
He submitted. "Nothing else. Like most of those dead folk, he was there just to manifest, not to impart wisdom."
Kate leaned back in her chair and grew thoughtful. "Morton, that was wonderful. No one knew you were coming, no one knew you except those people, and they're from, the other end of the earth—and yet somebody speaks, using a pet name we've both forgotten. Now, I call that a most important thing to dwell upon. How can you, a scientist, overlook it?"
"But you must remember all this happened in the house of jugglery. There is no value in a performance of that kind. There was no test applied. Confederates had full opportunity to come and go. To have weight with me these wonders must take place under conditions of my making, not theirs."
"That's what she wants."
"I don't believe it. Pardon me, Kate, but you've been taken in. Whatever this girl was two years ago, she is now a part of Clarke's scheme, which is to secure a tremendous lot of advertising and then—emit a book."
Kate transfixed him with a finger. "Morton Serviss, there is nothing so convincing as a tone. I know that girl is honest—she may be deceived, she may be made a tool of, unconsciously, by Clarke, but she does not wilfully deceive. I will not let you off with this experience; you must see her in private—talk with her as I did."
"I will have nothing further to do with her or hers," he replied, with determined quiet, knocking the ashes from his pipe. "I have other and better business in the world."
"I don't believe it is better business. Now, wait a moment, I have something to tell of my own evening. While you were gone I 'phoned Uncle Harrison and Aunt Nancy about that debt of my great-aunt—who came to me through Viola to-day; they knew nothing about it, but they set to work looking over her old papers, and found that there was a sealed letter addressed to a doctor in Michigan, and in the letter was a check made out to him and which she intended to send him. Now, what do you think of that?"