"Oh, sort of an outside man--look after the grounds and help out generally with the patients and all. And now, say, lady, if that'll satisfy you I guess I better be stepping along. I got to see about getting this here patient and the matron off the train; that's the matron that's setting with her." "Just a moment more, please." She felt in a fob set under the cuff of her left sleeve and brought forth a small gold badge and held it cupped in her gloved hand for him to see. As he bent his head and made out the meaning of the badge the gruff air dropped from him magically. "Oh, I see!" he said. "Secret Service, eh? All right, ma'am, what more did you want to know? Only I'd ask you speak brisk because there ain't so much time." "Tell me briefly what you know of that child." "Not such a lot, excepting she's a dangerous lunatic, having been legally adjudged so yestiddy. And her mother's paying for her keep at a high-class place where she can have special treatment and special care instead of letting her be put away in one of the state asylums. And so I'm taking her there--me and the matron yonder. That's about all, I guess." "I don't believe it." "You don't believe what?" He was beginning to bristle anew. "Don't believe she is insane at all, much less dangerously so. Why, I've just been talking with her. We exchanged only a few words, but in all that she said she was so perfectly rational, so perfectly sensible. Besides, one has only to look at her to feel sure some terrible mistake or some terrible injustice is being done. Surely there is nothing eccentric, nothing erratic about her; now is there? You must have been studying her. Don't you yourself feel that there might have been something wrong about her commitment?" He shook his head. "Not a chancet. Everything's been positively regular and aboveboard. You can't railroad folks into Doctor Shorter's place; he's got too high a standing. Shorter takes no chances with anybody." "But she seemed so absolutely normal in speech, manner--everything. I've seen insane persons before now and--" "Excuse me, but about how many have you seen?" "Not many, I admit, but--" "Well, excuse me again, lady, but I thought as much. Well, I have--plenty of 'em I've seen in my time. See 'em every day for the matter of that. Listen to me! For instance, now, we've got a case up there with us now. He's been there going on fifteen years; used to be a preacher, highly educated and all that. Look at him and you wouldn't see a thing out of the way with him except that he'd be wearing a strait-jacket. Talk to him for maybe a week and you wouldn't notice a single thing wrong about him. He'd just strike you all along as being one of the nicest, mildest, old Christian gents you ever met up with in your whole life. But get him on a certain subject; just mention a certain word to him and he'd tear your throat out with his bare hands if he could get at you."