“Produce it!” cried the Irishman with a rich scorn.  “I’ll produce it in a week if you’ll pay for the ink and paper.”

“Would it have much authority?” asked Pym, sitting down.

“Oh, authority!” said Moon lightly; “that depends on a fellow’s religion.”

Dr. Pym jumped up again.  “Our authority is based on masses of accurate detail,” he said.  “It deals with a region in which things can be handled and tested.  My opponent will at least admit that death is a fact of experience.”

“Not of mine,” said Moon mournfully, shaking his head. 
“I’ve never experienced such a thing in all my life.”

“Well, really,” said Dr. Pym, and sat down sharply amid a crackle of papers.

“So we see,” resumed Moon, in the same melancholy voice, “that a man like Dr. Warner is, in the mysterious workings of evolution, doomed to such attacks.  My client’s onslaught, even if it occurred, was not unique.  I have in my hand letters from more than one acquaintance of Dr. Warner whom that remarkable man has affected in the same way.  Following the example of my learned friends I will read only two of them.  The first is from an honest and laborious matron living off the Harrow Road.

“Mr. Moon, Sir,—­Yes, I did throw a sorsepan at him.  Wot then?  It was all I had to throw, all the soft things being porned, and if your Docter Warner doesn’t like having sorsepans thrown at him, don’t let him wear his hat in a respectable woman’s parler, and tell him to leave orf smiling or tell us the joke.—­Yours respectfully,
                                               Hannah Miles.

“The other letter is from a physician of some note in Dublin, with whom Dr. Warner was once engaged in consultation.  He writes as follows:—­

“Dear Sir,—­The incident to which you refer is one which I regret, and which, moreover, I have never been able to explain.  My own branch of medicine is not mental; and I should be glad to have the view of a mental specialist on my singular momentary and indeed almost automatic action.  To say that I `pulled Dr. Warner’s nose,’ is, however, inaccurate in a respect that strikes me as important.  That I punched his nose I must cheerfully admit (I need not say with what regret); but pulling seems to me to imply a precision of objective with which I cannot reproach myself.  In comparison with this, the act of punching was an outward, instantaneous, and even natural gesture.—­ Believe me, yours faithfully, Burton Lestrange.

“I have numberless other letters,” continued Moon, “all bearing witness to this widespread feeling about my eminent friend; and I therefore think that Dr. Pym should have admitted this side of the question in his survey.  We are in the presence, as Dr. Pym so truly says, of a natural force.  As soon stay the cataract of the London water-works as stay the great tendency of Dr. Warner to be assassinated by somebody.  Place that man in a Quakers’