By most of the rules of society, both Mr. Wood and I were guilty of
gross gentility. He greeted me overtly as the welcome guest and needled
me with a show of patronizing tolerance as he implied that my basic
interest was in Florence.
To match him, I accepted his hospitality and made use of the proximity
to spy on him and his family.
There are ways and means of making a pretended deaf-mute reveal
himself--the human being does not live who will not leap halfway out
of his skin at the shock of an unexpected revolver shot, no matter how
well trained he is at feigning deafness.
As for surprising a telepath, I knew it wouldn't work, but I had to
try it anyway. I put both Mrs. Wood and Florence through a number of
mental hurdles. To this, Mr. Wood took a quietly tolerant attitude. He
understood and was prepared to accept as healthily normal a certain
amount of lust and carnal conjecture in the minds of males who were
interested in his daughter. He forgave me for mentally insulting his
wife because he knew that my mental peregrinations were only aimed at
determining whether his wife was telepathic. Finally he came out flatly
and told me to stop wasting my effort, because neither Florence nor
Mrs. Wood had a trace of extra-sensory power. Their lack of shocked or
outraged response was not a case of the well-trained telepath divining
my intention and planning a blank response.
Furthermore, Mr. Wood asserted that neither of them knew of his
extra-sensory faculty, that he fully intended to keep it that way, and
that I should know damned well that such stunts wouldn't work in the
first place.
And so I continued to enjoy a dinner now and then, and occasionally the
company of Florence.
Ultimately the lack of progress brought Chief Weston's nervous system
to the blowup point. He called me in and I went, knowing that trouble
cannot always be avoided, and when it can't, it's just plain sense to
kick out the props and have done with it.