"He caught me along the line of least resistance, and I was greatly
flattered to be able to give him the desired information; but it was
only when he had thanked me and was gone that I realised I had been in
the presence of an unusual individuality. For the life of me I could not
quite seize and label the peculiarities of what I felt to be a very
striking personality, but it was borne in upon me that he was a man
apart from his fellows, a mind that followed a line leading away from
ordinary human intercourse and human interests, and into regions that
left in his atmosphere something remote, rarefied, chilling.
"The moment he was gone I became conscious of two things--an intense
curiosity to know more about this man and what his real interests were,
and secondly, the fact that my skin was crawling and that my hair had a
tendency to rise."
The doctor paused a moment here to puff hard at his pipe, which,
however, had gone out beyond recall without the assistance of a match;
and in the deep silence, which testified to the genuine interest of his
listeners, someone poked the fire up into a little blaze, and one or two
others glanced over their shoulders into the dark distances of the big
hall.
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