"
Mrs. Willoughby was on the verge of hysterics as her husband
supported her out of the room. The door had scarcely shut before
Kennedy threw open a window and seemed to beckon into the
darkness. As if from nowhere, Donnelly and Bentley sprang no and
were admitted.
Dr. Guthrie had now returned from the music-room, bearing a sheet
of paper on which was traced a long irregular curve at various
points on which marginal notes had been written hastily.
Kennedy leaped directly into the middle of things with his
characteristic ardour. "You recall," he began, "that no one seemed
to know just who took the jewels in both the cases you first
reported? 'Seeing is believing,' is an old saying, but in the face
of such reports as you detectives gathered it is in a fair way to
lose its force. And you were not at fault, either, for modern
psychology is proving by experiments that people do not see even a
fraction of the things they confidently believe they see.
"For example, a friend of mine, a professor in a Western
university, has carried on experiments with scores of people and
has not found one who could give a completely accurate description
of what he had seen, even in the direct testimony; while under the
influence of questions, particularly if they were at all leading,
witnesses all showed extensive inaccuracies in one or more
particulars, and that even though they are in a more advantageous
position for giving reports than were your clerks who were not
prepared.
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