"When you talk about the probable tendencies of human nature, you don't know what you're up against," said Cayley, retreating. "San Francisco is a town where people are likely to do anything. There's no limit, no predicting for them. They were buying air-ship stock on the street down at Lotta's fountain, the last thing I heard."
The old gentleman in evening dress, still wearing his Chinese paper crown, took him up enthusiastically.
"You can be more foolish here without getting into the insane asylum than any place on earth, but you have to be a thoroughbred spiritualist before you can really call yourself bug-house. Look at old man Bennett! You couldn't make anything up he wouldn't believe!"
"What about him?" said Cayley. "I would like to have him for my collection of freaks.
"Oh, he was a furniture manufacturer here. I knew him well, but I forget the details. It was something fierce though, the way they worked him."
Granthope smiled. "I can tell you something about Bennett," he offered. "I happened to hear the whole story nearly at first hand."
"Let's have it," Cayley proposed.
Granthope leaned back in his chair and began, rather pleased at having an audience.
"Why, he went to investigating spiritualism and fell into the hands of a man named Harry Wing and a gang of mediums here. They won Bennett over to a firm belief, step by step, till he was the dupe of every ghost that appeared in the materializing circles, which cost him twenty-five dollars an evening, by the way. One man that helped Wing out, played spirit, pretended to be his dead son, and used to ask him for jewelry so that he could dematerialize it, and then rematerialize it for identification. If Bennett went down to Los Angeles he'd take the same train and turn up at a circle there, proving he was the same spirit by the rings that had been given him up here. Well, Bennett got so strong for it that after a while they didn't bother with cabinets and dark séances—the players used to walk right in the door. Then they'd tell him that, as partly materialized spirits, they ought to have dinner to increase their magnetism, and he'd send out for chicken and wine. Finally they got him so they'd point out people on the street and assert that they were spirits. The prettiest test was when they materialized Cleopatra. I've never seen the Egyptian queen, but she certainly wasn't a bit prettier than the girl who played her part. Bennett, as an extraordinary test of her strength, was allowed to take her out to the Cliff House in a hack. The curtains of the carriage had to be pulled down to keep the daylight from burning her."
"Oh, Cliff House, what crimes have been committed in thy name!" Fernigan murmured.