“Not know? I?” Gaylor laughed hysterically. “I am his lawyer. I am his best friend! Who will you believe?” He stepped to the table and pressed an electric button, and Garrett appeared in the hall. “Tell Dr. Rainey I want to see him,” Gaylor commanded, “and return with him.”
As they waited, Judge Gaylor paced quickly to and fro. “I’ve had to deny some pretty silly stories about Mr. Hallowell,” he said, “but of all the absurd, malicious—There’s some enemy back of this; some one in Wall Street is doing this. But I’ll find him—I’ll—” he was interrupted by the entrance of the butler and Dr. Rainey, Mr. Hallowell’s personal physician.
Rainey was a young man with a weak face, and knowing, shifting eyes that blinked behind a pair of eyeglasses. To conceal an indecision of character of which he was quite conscious, he assumed a manner that, according to whom he addressed, was familiar or condescending. At one of the big hospitals he had been an ambulance surgeon and resident physician, later he had started upon a somewhat doubtful career as a medical “expert.” Only two years had passed since the police and the reporters of the Tenderloin had ceased calling him “Doc.” In a celebrated criminal case in which Gaylor had acted as chief counsel, he had found Rainey complaisant and apparently totally without the moral sense. And when in Garrett he had discovered for Mr. Hallowell a model servant, he had also urged upon his friend, for his resident physician, his protege Rainey.
Still at white heat, the older man began abruptly: “This gentleman is from the Republic. He is going to publish a story that Mr. Hallowell has fallen under the influence of mediums, clairvoyants; that everything he does is on advice from the spirit world—” he turned sharply upon Lee. “Is that right?” The reporter nodded.
“You can see the effect of such a story. It would invalidate every act of Mr. Hallowell’s!”
Dr. Rainey laughed offensively.
“It might,” he said, “but who’d believe it?”
“He believes it!” cried Gaylor, “or he pretends to believe it. Tell him!” he commanded. “He won’t believe me. Does Mr. Hallowell associate with mediums, and spirits—and spooks?”
Again the young doctor laughed.
“Of course not!” he exclaimed. “It’s not worth answering, Judge. You ought to treat it with silent contempt.” From behind his glasses he winked at the reporter with a jocular, intimate smile. He was adapting himself to what he imagined was his company. “Where did you pick up that pipe dream?” he asked.