ou're pretending what you don't command. But I'm playing straight
across the board, Mark, as my custom is, and I know you are too sane
and ambitious a lad to let false pride or self-assurance resent my
calling you an ass over this thing."

"Prove it, Ganns, and I'll be the first to climb down. I know I've
been an ass for that matter--knew it long ago," confessed Brendon.

"Yes, I'll prove it--that's easy. But what's going to be harder is
to find out why you've been an ass. You've no right to be an ass.
It's unlike your record and unlike your looks and your general
make-up of mind. I mostly read a strange man's brain through his
eyes; and your eyes do you justice. So perhaps you'll tell me
presently where you went off your rocker. Or perhaps you don't know
and I shall have to tell you--when I find the nigger in the
woodpile. Now take a look round, and its dollars to doughnuts you'll
begin to see the light."

He paused again, applied himself to his gold box, and then
proceeded.

"To put it bluntly and drop everybody else but you out of it, for
the minute, you went on false assumption from the kick-off, Brendon.
To start wrong was not strange. I should have done exactly the same
and nobody outside a detective story would have done differently;
but to go on wrong--to pile false assumption on false assumption in
face of your own reasoning powers and native wits--that strikes me
as a very curious catastrophe."

"But you can't get away from facts."

"Nothing easier, surely. You said good-bye to facts when you left
Princetown. You don't know the facts any more than I do--or anybody
but those responsible for the appearances. You have assumed that the
phenomena observed by yourself and reported by other professionals
and various members of the public were facts, whereas a little solid
thinking must have convinced you that they couldn't be. You didn't
give your reason a chance, Mark.

"Now follow me and be honest. You say certain things have happened.
I say they didn't, for the very sound reason that they couldn't. I
am not going to tell you the truth, because I am a long way from
that myself, and I dare say you'll strike it yet before I do; but I
am going to prove that a good few things you think are true can't
be--that events you take for granted never happened at all. We've
got but few senses and they are easily deluded. In fact a man's a
darned clumsy box of tricks at his best and I wouldn't swap a hill
of beans for