"So? I find her quite charming."
Morton dryly answered: "I noticed that. Yes, she's Western born, but of Eastern stock. Mr. Clarke is a New-Yorker, I believe."
"I was born in Maryland, sir, but all my early life was spent in Brooklyn."
Weissmann turned his telescopic eyes upon Clarke and studied him in silence somewhat as a pop-eyed crab might regard a clam. "So, so," he said, softly. "You are the one who is preparing to assault the scientific world—the Clarke mentioned in the papers to-day?"
Clarke folded his arms in defiant mood. "I am."
"And this charming girl is your victim—the one for whom you make such claims, eh?"
Clarke regarded the old man with imperious lift of the head. "She is, without question, the most marvellous psychic in the world."
"'Psychic!'" Weissmann barked this word at him like an angry mastiff. "'Psychic!' What business has she to be a 'psychic'? She is too lovely to be anything but a wife and mother—a happy hausfrau. And you would make her infamous? My friend, I do not understand you."
Clarke's eyes blazed. "If I had the power I would lay her message before every living soul on the globe. Infamy? Sir, I know no higher honor than that of being cup-bearer to despairing souls thirsting for the water of life." Then a direct answer to the old man's prolonged stare: "You need have no fear. I will not go one jot beyond the advice of her 'guides.'"
"Her 'guides'? Who are they?"