"I don't see that that has any necessary connection with your experience this afternoon."
"But it does. I'm sure of it. Auntie felt grateful to this young doctor and wanted to reward him. Morton, it was a big check!" She uttered this impressively.
"Five thousand dollars."
He faced her with a whistle of surprise. "Well, well! that isn't so amusing. Are we to pay it? Is that the idea?"
"If I am sure—if the letter is what they 'phoned it to be, we've got to pay it, I'm her sole legatee, and she was very angry because it hadn't been paid; but that's not the really important part. How did Viola Lambert know of that letter—and that check?"
He was deeply impressed, and did not try to conceal it. "That is very puzzling; but it may be a case of mind-reading, which, I believe, the modern psychologists admit has been proved." He began to muse. "It may be, as Weissmann says, that there is always some basis for a claim such as Clarke makes for this girl. It may be that she has a faculty for reading what lies in the brain of another—"
"Morton Serviss, you shall not condemn that girl unheard. You have taken Britt's word about her, and you've listened to my story, but you must see her yourself and talk with her alone, so that she will be free to tell you just how she feels."
"No. I am going to bed and try to forget the whole disconcerting group."
"That's the way with you scientists. You'll pursue the tail of a comet—or a germ—till you're black in the face, but when something really important to the human race comes under your nose you can't see it."