Yet here was this sane man, taking this
fantastic nonsense as if there were really something in it. He had
first heard him speak of the subject at a small bachelor dinner party
of four in the rooms of a mutual friend; and, as he had listened, he
had had the same sensation as one would have upon hearing a Cabinet
Minister, let us say, discussing stump-cricket with enthusiasm.
Cathcart had said all kinds of things when once he was started--all
with that air of businesslike briskness that was so characteristic of
him and so disconcerting in such a connection. If he had apologized
for it as an amiable weakness, if he had been in the least shamefaced
or deprecatory, it would have been another matter; one would have
forgiven it as one forgives any little exceptional eccentricity. But
to hear him speak of materialization as of a process as normal (though
unusual) as the production of radium, and of planchette as of wireless
telegraphy--as established, indubitable facts, though out of the range
of common experience--this had amazed this very practical man.
Cathcart had hinted too of other things--things which he would not
amplify--of a still more disconcertingly impossible nature--matters
which Morton had scarcely thought had been credible even to the
darkest medievalists; and all this with that same sharp, sane humor
that lent an air of reality to all that he said.
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