Read the following passage and questions, then choose the right answer from options, the answer should be one of A, B, C, D.

<passage>:
the sprawling automatic brain's silver gauges and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison." "Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor. all alone in the dark?" I asked. "Just circle up the wagon train and see how the Indians fall," McCain said anxiously. "It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported gangsters. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?" "Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains. like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City." "So I'll just lock his burned fingers. Catching the direction of my glance, he said, "Company is worth a few scalds, Mr. Madison." I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve. "I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?" crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country." "There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck." Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita." operating. You are all deliberately faking these falls and fires—" "We're not," Thompson snapped. "Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the it's happened before." Thompson laughed. "Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid." "That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums before they pay their grocery bills." I shrugged, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around." "Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not "That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns The low, level snarl had come from a burly character in a syn-leather jacket and narrow-brimmed Stetson. "The reason you have so many accidents here," I said frankly. "I'm from the insurance company. Name's Madison." "Yeah, I know." I had supposed he would. "What do you mean by that!" Kelvin demanded savagely. "I mean the way you work it. No system to it. No stratification, no plateau work..." "Listen, Madison, don't talk about what you don't know anything about. The stuff in these walls isn't just rock it isn't even plain "It's too bad." "What's too bad?" "If this quarry has anything to do with defrauding Manhattan-Universal, I can tell you that I will do something about that!" the teen-age clerk's offer of a shot of white lightning from the Pepsi-Cola fountain syrup jug for a quarter. "Positive. Ten cents, Professor." fingered it thoughtfully. "I suppose the letter can wait," he said resignedly. "I believe I will buy a pair of doughnuts, Mr. Haskel." "Why not get a hamburger, Professor? Special sale today. Only a dime. And since you're such a good customer I'll throw in a cup of coffee and the two sinkers for nothing." "That's—kind of you," the old man said awkwardly. ignoring me. The clerk dialed his hamburger and served it. I stayed with my beer and my thoughts. More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. I glanced at the old man. The proprietor of the store knew him and evidently thought him harmless enough to feed. "I think I can make it down the mountain before dark, Old Timer," I called over to him. "You can come along if you like." The acne-faced kid behind the counter stared at me. I looked over and the old professor turned on his stool, his face pale and his eyes sad and resigned. "I doubt very much if either of us will be leaving, Mr. Madison," he said. "Now." I took my beer and the professor his coffee over to the single booth. "I am Doctor Arnold Parnell of Duke University," the professor said. "I "I," he said, "have enough traveler's checks with me to paper a washroom. Nobody in this town will cash them for me." "They know the checks are good. It's me they refuse to trust to leave "Unfriendly of them," I said conservatively. "But how can they stop you granite itself? How do they ship it out?" "It's an artificial demand product, like diamonds," Professor Parnell walking out?" "Fifty miles down a steep mountain road? I'm an old man, Mr. Madison, and I've gotten even older since I came to Granite City." Wordlessly, he handed over his billfold, letters, enough identification to have satisfied Allen Pinkerton or John Edgar Hoover. "Okay," I drawled. "I'll accept your story for the moment. Now answer me the big query: Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?" "I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman "No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." with you." "Madison, understand me, I insist. Ethnologically speaking, it is well of Granite City have the most unusual deficency on record, I admit. "Because they aren't supermen, that doesn't mean that they are submen," I protested. "I don't have any psionic abilities either." "But you do!" Parnell said earnestly. "Everybody has some psionics ability, but we don't realize it. We don't have the fabulous abilities "I tell you they do," he said hoarsely. "We never realize it but we all have some power of precognition. If we didn't, we would have a hundred accidents a day—just as these people do . They can't foresee the granite it be? It's that granite that they are shipping all over the To the people of Granite City that means ruining their only industry, putting them all out of work. They are used to this psionic sterility they don't see anything so bad about it. Besides, like everybody else, they have some doubts that there really are such things as telepathy We had better get back to my car. I've got good lights to get down the mountain." Parnell jumped up eagerly, and brushed over his china mug, staining the tabletop with brown caffeine. "Sorry," he said. "I should have been precognizant of that. I try to

<question>:
What would best describe Madison's attitude towards Professor Parnell upon learning Parnell's reasoning for calling the people of Granite City "subhuman"?

<options>:
A Madison unquestionably believes Parnell's story.
B Madison dismisses Parnell as a liar.
C Madison is reluctant to believe Parnell.
D Madison pretends to believe Parnell's story for the mean-time.

<answer>:

C