"Cut it out, Larry! What's the answer?"
He took off his glasses and rubbed his watery eyes. He grumbled, "Don't
you read the papers? It went off a yard away."
"Larry," I said gently, "I was there."
He slumped back in his chair, staring at me. Larry Connaught was a small
man, but he never looked smaller than he did in that big chair, looking
at me as though I were Mr. Nemesis himself.
Then he laughed. He surprised me; he sounded almost happy. He said,
"Well, hell, Dick--I had to tell somebody about it sooner or later. Why
not you?"
I can't tell you all of what he said. I'll tell most of it--but not the
part that matters.
I'll never tell _that_ part to _anybody_.
Larry said, "I should have known you'd remember." He smiled at me
ruefully, affectionately. "Those bull sessions in the cafeterias, eh?
Talking all night about everything. But you remembered."
"You claimed that the human mind possessed powers of psychokinesis," I
said. "You argued that just by the mind, without moving a finger or
using a machine, a man could move his body anywhere, instantly. You said
that nothing was impossible to the mind."
I felt like an absolute fool saying those things; they were ridiculous
notions. Imagine a man _thinking_ himself from one place to another!
But--I had been on that gallery.