But here was daylight; here was a healthy, square-shouldered man in tweeds, not odd save for the accident of his ugly spectacles, not glaring or grinning at all, but smiling steadily and not saying a word.

The whole had a sense of unbearable reality.

Under the increasing sunlight the colours of the Doctor's complexion, the pattern of his tweeds, grew and expanded outrageously, as such things grow too important in a realistic novel.
But his smile was quite slight, the pose of his head polite; the only uncanny thing was his silence.
"As I say," resumed the Professor, like a man toiling through heavy sand, "the incident that has occurred to us and has led us to ask for information about the Marquis, is one which you may think it better to have narrated; but as it came in the way of Comrade Syme rather than me--" His words he seemed to be dragging out like words in an anthem; but Syme, who was watching, saw his long fingers rattle quickly on the edge of the crazy table.

He read the message, "You must go on.

This devil has sucked me dry!" Syme plunged into the breach with that bravado of improvisation which always came to him when he was alarmed.
"Yes, the thing really happened to me," he said hastily.