I

Now Dr. Holdman Stedding had a great friend and crony, a bachelor like himself and a queer imaginative talker, Professor Ernest Keppel. He was nominally professor of philosophy, but latterly he had engaged more and more in psycho–therapy. He was accused of psychologizing his philosophy away into a descriptive science and he was a frequent and formidable controversialist, more often in hot water than not.

He was a dark, scarred, halting man. He had been scarred by the explosion of a hidden mine in the German trenches during the September advance in 1918. The scar ran as a dark red suture from the middle of his forehead across the left brow, where an overhanging exostosis thrust his eye into a deep and sinister cavern. Moreover, the explosion had stiffened the joint of his forearm, injured his pelvis, and left him lame. Before that he must have been very animated and attractive indeed. But his mutilation had left a curious bitterness in his nature. He understood why he was bitter; he did his best not to be bitter, but taking thought about it could not make him sweet. He was over–sensitive to the effect of his scar when he met new people; his incurable delusion that he was repulsive made him abrupt and rude, more particularly with women, and perhaps he exaggerated the delights of the normal experiences from which he felt he was shut off. He was prosperous and he lived well, and his energy and persistence in research and speculation were making a great reputation for him.

The doctor found his company extremely stimulating. He was accustomed to bring new ideas to him and toast them, so to speak, in front of his glowing mind. Indeed he hardly ever took an idea to himself and assimilated it until he had warmed it up first before Professor Keppel. And now accordingly he took advantage of a lunch engagement to bring up the matter of the Martians. They often arranged by telephone to lunch together, because Keppel's place was so much nearer than clubland.

'I was talking to a lunatic yesterday,' said the doctor, 'and he broached a most remarkable idea.'

He sketched Mr. Davis's alleged discovery in a tone of appreciative scepticism as lunch went on.

'It's nonsense,' he concluded.

'It's nonsense,' Professor Keppel agreed. 'But—'

'Exactly! But—'

'But—' repeated Keppel and waved the hand of his inferior arm stiffly, while his trim parlourmaid stood at his elbow with the savoury.

A certain brightness appeared in his overhung eye. His expression became profound.

Dr. Holdman Stedding waited.

'The interesting point,' said Professor Keppel, helping himself to his Gruyere a la Roi Alphonse, 'the interesting point is, as you say, that we do in fact know nothing about what human modification may be going on at the present time. Nothing. Demographic science has hardly begun to be a precise science—much less an exact science. Our social statistics are extravagently clumsy. (A) We don't know what to count or measure and (B) we haven't an idea how to measure it. It is quite possible that new human types may be appearing in the world, or that once rare types may be increasing in number relatively. More geniuses—more aberrant gifts. And the queer thing is that, when this lunatic comes to you and starts this idea in your head, you don't say Pish or Tush and just turn it down; you begin to have a vague sense that somehow you have felt something—you hardly know what.'

'That's it.'

'And when you bring it to me (Do try this savoury. Don't pass it. I got the recipe from Martinez at that Spanish restaurant in Swallow Street) I begin to have the same feeling.'