“A wandering quack oculist?”
“Optician, rather, since he carried his own stock of glasses. In fact that’s where his profit came in. He advertised treatment free and charged two or three dollars for the glasses, special rates to schoolchildren. The scheme is an old one and a devilish. Half of the children in San Luis Obispo County, where I chanced upon his trail, were wearing his vision-twisters by the time he was through with them.”
“What kind of glasses were they?”
“Sometimes magnifying lenses. Mostly just plain window glass. Few children escaped him, for he would tell the parents that only prompt action could avert blindness.”
“At least the plain glass couldn’t hurt the children,” suggested Mrs. Clyde.
“Couldn’t it! It couldn’t fail to hurt them. Modify the sight of a delicate instrument like a child’s eye continuously by the most transparent of barriers, and it is bound to go wrong soon. The magnifying glasses are far worse. There are hundreds of children in that one locality alone who will carry the stigma of his quackery throughout their lives.”
“Do you think he is here with a view to practicing his amiable trade?” inquired Clyde.
“Only in part, if at all. I understand that he has changed his line.”
“How comes he by all that showy money, then?”
“By murder.”