“Reason is a good thing sometimes, and sometimes it isn’t. This, I’m thinking, is one of the times when it isn’t. The trouble with your whole argument, Billy, lies in an additional fact; that a sheet of music can’t tell you where a certain hole in the ground may chance to be.”
“Why not?” Billy’s question came tartly.
Roy replied with a hint of disdain in his voice, such as is often characteristic of the musical person in speaking of his art to one unlearned.
“The reason would be obvious to you, if you knew anything of music,” he declared.
“Then, it’s lucky I don’t,” was the other’s retort; “because, in some way that we don’t know yet, the clue we need is set down on that manuscript. It is logically certain, and, if you musical sharps can’t guess as much, it’s fortunate I’m along to give you the pointer.”
David, also, expressed himself as skeptical of the announcement made by Billy:
“If it had been anybody except Billy who had been hit by this idea, I should feel quite differently about it,” he asserted, chuckling in response to the glare of indignation with which the oracle received the words. “Of course, you know my feeling in the matter. I’m expecting some sort of inspiration to hit us; I have been, ever since Roy had his hunch. But Billy isn’t of the sensitive temperament, which is receptive to impressions of a psychic sort. If Roy had received this idea, without a bit of reason to back it up, I should have had high hopes—or if it had come to Saxe even, because he has the sensitiveness of the artistic temperament.”
“Or even if it had come to your delicately susceptible self, I suppose,” Billy suggested, acrimoniously.
David nodded assent.
“With all humility, yes,” he answered, unabashed. “And you needn’t be peevish, Billy, for the simple reason that you’d be furious if anyone were to accuse you of being a psychic subject. Eh, wouldn’t you?”