Carringford had slipped back into his chair and motioned his guest to another. Wizard or unbalanced, he was likely to prove a diversion. When the cigars were pushed in his direction, he took one, lighted it, and smoked silently. Carringford smoked, too, and looked into the fire.
“You were saying,” he began presently, “that you pick up interesting thought-currents as one might overhear bits of conversation. I suppose you find the process quite as simple as hearing in the ordinary way. Only it seems a little—well, unusual. Of course that is only my opinion.”
The slender man in black assented with a slight nod.
“The faculty is not unusual; it is universal. It is only undeveloped, uncontrolled, as yet. It was the same with electricity a generation ago. Now it has become our most useful servant.”
Carringford gave his visitor an intent look. This did not seem the inconsequential phrasing of an addled brain.
“You interest me,” he said. “Of course I have heard a good deal of such things, and all of us have had manifestations; but I think I have never before met any one who was able to control—to demonstrate, if you will—this particular force. It is a sort of mental wireless, I suppose—wordless, if you will permit the term.”
“Yes, the true wireless, the thing we are approaching—speech of mind to mind. Our minds are easily attuned to waves of mutual interest. When one vibrates, another in the same wave will answer to it. We are just musical instruments: a chord struck on the piano answers on the attuned harp. Any strong mutual interest forms the key-note of mental harmonic vibration. We need only develop the mental ear to hear, the mental eye to see.”
The look of weariness returned to Carringford’s face. These were trite, familiar phrases.
“I seem to have heard most of those things before,” he said. Then, as his guest smoked silently, he added, “I am only wondering how it came that my thought of the past and its hopelessness should have struck a chord or key-note which would send you up my stair.”
The slender, black figure rose and took a turn across the room, pausing in front of Carringford.