The Magicians

by J. B. Priestley

  “Are you telling us, Big Boy?” cried Prisk, trying the American end of his Character act. Mervil smiled frostily. Evidently Prisk in these surroundings was the licensed court fool.

  “I take it, you’re bored these days, Ravenstreet,” Mervil continued. “You’ve come to the end of something without having started anything else. A mistake, by the way. I always make sure that things overlap.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” said Karney, grinning.

  “I like to put it mildly. If you’ve had enough to eat, we’ll move into the other room. Get the coffee, Prisk—and cigars and brandy if anybody wants them.”

  “I do,” cried Prisk, bouncing ahead of them.

  “Lavatory behind those book-shelves in the far corner,” said Mervil as they moved out. “By the way, Ravenstreet, don’t imagine that Prisk’s an idiot, though he tries to talk like one.”

  “It never occurred to me he was. I saw at once he was giving a performance. Rather too obvious, I thought in fact.”

  “You can’t be too obvious for most people. And fools relax when they think they’re with a bigger fool. So it’s useful, besides amusing him. Not that Prisk isn’t a fool. He is. He has intelligence, but he’s a sensualist—too much food, too much drink, too many women. He’s admirable as a personal assistant, carrying out definite orders, but that’s all. Let’s sit here.” Prisk, humming cheerfully, arrived with a trolley on which were cigars and cigarettes, liqueurs and glasses, a Thermos jug of coffee. “Help yourselves. I’ll just have a little black coffee.”

  A few minutes later, Prisk at a word from Mervil produced what seemed to be a small pillbox, which he placed carefully before his chief. Karney, who had been talking, now kept silent as Mervil opened the box and took from it a white tablet that might have been aspirin. “I’d like your word that you’ll treat this matter as being absolutely confidential, before we go any further, Ravenstreet.” And Mervil stared hard at him, making him feel that if he did give his word and then broke it something unpleasant might happen to him.

  “It’s a promise,” said Ravenstreet. “And I’m generally regarded as a fairly close-mouthed type.”

  “I know that,” said Mervil. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here. I couldn’t afford to risk anything at this stage with a blabber. Now you see this tablet. It’s a new drug. You’re not a chemist but probably you know some chemistry. However, we’ll leave the chemical part of it now. I want you to take this tablet—just crush it and swallow it with water—like aspirin. I’d ask you to do it now—we’ve all tried it, by the way—but it wouldn’t be a satisfactory test. You’ve had a good dinner, some drinks, and are probably feeling easy in your mind. I want you to take it sometime when you’re not feeling easy, haven’t had any drinks but are telling yourself you need a few. You’re not a heavy drinker, I believe.”

  “No, I’m not. But there are certainly times when I suddenly feel I need a few quick ones——”

  “You’re a man and a brother, Sir Charles,” cried Prisk. “Allee same here, Old Top. But try our little white pill. Hoy!”

  “What’s it supposed to do to you?” asked Raven­street, as he took the tablet and put it into the stamp compartment of his wallet. “What a few drinks ought to do?”

  “I’ve ordered a medical report on it,” said Mervil briskly. “That’ll show us exactly how it works. It’s not just another sedative, and it’s not intended to be used like the barbiturates. It’s not a painkiller either. It doesn’t compete with aspirin and similar products. It’s something quite new and special. What it does is to stop worry, anxiety, feelings of guilt or inadequacy. It makes you feel comfortable, easy. It acts as a buffer between the brain and reality in its less pleasant aspects.”

  “So do morphia, cocaine and heroin, I imagine,” said Ravenstreet. “But they insist upon too high a price for their charms.”

  “Apparently this stuff doesn’t. The man who discovered it makes three claims for it, all of which I’m having carefully investigated. He claims that it will do people no more harm than aspirin does, that an habitual user may need slightly increased doses but that is all, and that it can be cheaply manufactured if done on a very large scale. If these claims are proved to be correct, then we have in our hands something at least as important as aspirin. We can sell millions of boxes a day. But what I want you to do first, Ravenstreet, is to test the stuff for yourself, as soon as possible but at a time when you feel you need something. Mean­while, I’ll be getting the results from the various specialists.”

  “Has it a name yet?” asked Ravenstreet.

  “Sepman Eighteen. Sepman is the chemist who discovered it, after some years of experiment, he says, and this is the eighteenth formula. But of course if we decide to put it on the market, we’ll find a good name for it, something easy to remember.” And Mervil waved the topic away.

  “Well, I’ll try the stuff,” said Ravenstreet. “You say you’ve all tried it——?”

  Mervil and Karney nodded. Prisk cried: “We’ve only this one little box of it as yet, Matey. Otherwise there’s a boy here would be taking his daily dose and keeping some for the girls. Whoa—steady!”

  “And I’ll tell you frankly what I think about it.” Ravenstreet looked enquiringly across at Mervil. “But I don’t see where I come in. You two can handle the finance and publicity, nobody better, and all you want, I imagine, is a manufacturing chemist and a sales organiser, and I’m neither one nor the other.”

  “Quite,” said Karney, and then looked at Mervil as if asking for permission to continue. “We’ll be frank about this, Ravenstreet. If there’d been a first-class manufacturing chemist situated as you are, he’d be here and you wouldn’t. But there isn’t. And we can’t hand this over to one of the big chemical combines, because after we’d done all the preliminary work and given it all the publicity it requires, we might find ourselves out in the cold. Lord Mervil——”

  “I’ll take over, Karney,” Mervil cut in, his clipped high-pitched voice slicing through Karney’s smooth bass. “I never feel embarrassed talking about myself. I like to handle things my own way, Ravenstreet, particularly enterprises of this sort, which are something more than mere commercial enterprises. This could be a very big thing indeed. We don’t need your capital, but you can come in with us and then make yourself responsible for the manufacturing end, with the help of technical staff of course. If you think you can’t do it, just because up to now you’ve only been in electrical engineering, then you’re certainly not the man I want. I have strong views on this subject. As Karney may have told you, I don’t believe in specialists on a really high level. A man who insists on specialising must take orders, not give them. He’s merely a superior technician. I believe in an élite, a small group who understand one another, who shape things.” He stopped and stared at Ravenstreet as if to take fresh stock of him.

  Ravenstreet raised his eyebrows, waiting to hear more. During this tiny interval there flashed into his mind, without any encouragement from his rational self, some absurd notions and feelings about this fellow Mervil, that he wasn’t real in the sense that Karney and Prisk were real, that somehow this smallish grey figure was a mere appearance, that the essential Mervil, somewhere else and not to be comprehended, merely spoke through the mouth of this figure; all of which was ridiculous from any point of view. But that is what he felt, and the flavour of it lingered throughout the evening.

  “I’ve succeeded, Ravenstreet,” Mervil continued, coldly and without complacency, “largely because I’ve been able to see a little further ahead than most men. I know what’s really happening. My investments and enterprises are guided by that knowledge. The newspapers and periodicals I control reflect it. Now we’re rapidly arriving at a time when a few men, who know their own minds, can dominate and use millions of people who have to have their minds made up for them. It’s as simple as that. Don’t think the trend can be reversed; it’s gone too far and is moving too fast. Mass communications become stronger in their effects ever
y year. This is inevitable. People in the mass are not only losing their independence but are losing any desire to be independent and active-minded, sharply differentiated individuals. They prefer a mass existence, mass standards, with which they feel more comfortable in their circles. You agree?”

  “I agree,” said Ravenstreet rather curtly. “But I don’t know that I like it.”

  Karney laughed, not pleasantly. Prisk did a noisy clucking and reproachful head-shaking act. They were both supporting their chief, who was staring at Raven­street in mild astonishment.

  “I’ll ask you one question,” said Mervil, “before I return to the general situation. And I’d like you to reply in a spirit of honest realism. We know your record at New Central Electric. What do you think of the way you’ve been treated there?”

  “I’m bitter about it. Some men I thought were my friends or, if not that, at least decent colleagues ratted on me. I’ll admit there are more rats about than I imagined. Perhaps it’s the new style. I don’t like it one little bit.”

  “Rather naïve, if you’ll allow me to say so,” said Mervil, “but honest. Now I can continue. The question isn’t whether you like the way things are going—for there they are and you can’t stop them—but whether you’re ready to use them or merely let them use you, with more bitterness to follow. And it must be one or the other quite soon. This mass process is rapidly accelerating as it was bound to do. It’s one of the prime factors, perhaps the chief feature, of our civilisation. It’s all round politics, which are being carried along, making a lot of fuss, but quite helpless. The drift is the same in New York as it is in Moscow. Manchester and Peiping are already huddling in the same boat. Oratory—eh, Prisk?”

  “Didn’t I always say you had it in you, Chief?” Prisk chuckled. “Change that barley water for brandy—and you’d have us crying.”

  “There’s no need to shake our heads over it,” Mervil continued, “even if we’re feeling benevolent and noble. At last people in the mass are getting what they want. They want reasonable security, food and clothes and shelter and medical attention, some education but not too much, easy work, no trouble, no worry, no loneliness and fear, mass emotions, mass entertainment, a smooth road from the cradle to the grave. They’ve known for some time now that life is essentially mean­ingless, so they want to get through their share of it as painlessly as possible. Now here is something I’ve proved over and over again, risking my fortune, my career. Move in that direction, along that smooth road, and at once you succeed. Go the other way and you’re up against a wall. Just try selling the mob some real freedom and not just empty talk about it, some hard work, responsibility, solitude and thought, any prospect of suffering—and see how many buyers you have. Very well, we can give them what they want, are giving them what they want.”

  Ravenstreet merely nodded. He did not know exactly what he wanted to say, and he sensed a certain impatience in Mervil.

  “Now this new stuff, if it’s what this fellow Sepman claims it is, will help them and will help us.” Mervil was brisker now. “No more worry, no more anxiety, no more queer thoughts and unpleasant feelings. Remember, that’s the freedom they want. We’ll have to lay on a very big publicity campaign at first of course, just to establish the name of the stuff, but that’s routine—the battle will be more than half won before it starts. If the stuff begins to replace alcohol, as it easily might if it can be manufactured cheaply on a gigantic scale, then that’s a gain too, because it looks like being more dependable in its effect and the manufacture of it can be a monopoly. Well, Ravenstreet, test the stuff.” He got up and was clearly anxious to rid himself of his guest, so Ravenstreet rose too. “I might manage another tablet or two if you’re uncertain, but these samples are precious at the moment. Give me your answer as soon as you can. You come in with Karney and myself, with the idea of organising and controlling the manufacturing end. Once you’ve agreed, I’ll put you in touch with Sepman, of course. Glad to have seen you here.” He turned abruptly, almost as if Ravenstreet had now ceased to exist for him. “Prisk, when and where’s my next appointment?”

  “Here in ten minutes, Chief.”

  “I’ll drop you, Ravenstreet,” said Karney. And as they went out together, he added: “It’s quite early. Perhaps a drink somewhere.”

  “No, thanks. Just drop me at my club, if you don’t mind.” And he named it, saying no more until they were sitting in Karney’s landaulette.

  “Well, what about his lordship?” asked Karney as soon as he had given his chauffeur his orders.

  “It’s a new type to me,” Ravenstreet began carefully.

  “No, no, not a type at all. Don’t make a mistake there. Only one Mervil. But go on.”

  “Impressive—in a queer way. Though I wasn’t impressed by that performance at the end. That I’ve-done-with-you-who’s-next performance. I’ve caught it before, and I much prefer ordinary polite­ness.”

  “Sorry, Ravenstreet, but you’re wrong again. It wasn’t laid on to impress you. Mervil just is like that. He has a hell of a lot to do, and he just goes ahead and does it. He isn’t quite human. Ask Prisk.”

  “I don’t think I want to ask Prisk,” said Ravenstreet, rather sourly.

  “Well, take my word for it. I’m tough—as most men around town will tell you—but that little man, who’s anything really but a little man, can turn me inside out in ten minutes. You must know what I mean.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  “You sound depressed.”

  “I am. Though I can’t tell you exactly why. Nothing that was actually said. Nothing that was done. Not Mervil’s personality, I think, though I don’t find him very inspiring——”

  “You will if you really start working with him. It’s terrific. But of course he’s not exactly the genial host, doesn’t pretend to be. You know, if you still feel like this in half an hour’s time, you’d better try your sample of Sepman Eighteen. The conditions might be just right, and it’s a case of the-sooner-the-better, isn’t it?”

  Up in his rather cheerless club bedroom, feeling rather worse if anything, with some nameless anxiety gnawing away at the back of his mind, he decided to take Karney’s advice. He crushed the tablet and washed it down with water. Then he undressed slowly, put a dressing-gown over his pyjamas, lit a cigarette and stretched out in the arm-chair, waiting for results. But soon he forgot he was making an experiment. He told himself what a fool he had been not to see the meeting with Mervil for what it was—a wonderful opportunity to be productive and busy and important again. With some technical assistance he could soon get a big new factory going or if necessary adapt a suitable old one to the job. He had had several good ideas that were not much use to New Central Electric but might be wanted here. He saw himself picking a staff of keen youngsters, making a fresh start with the right types. Then there would be some large-scale planning with Mervil, giving the masses what they wanted; fun and games on a high level behind the scenes with Karney and Prisk. Life was all right, a good show really, so long as you didn’t expect too much from it, didn’t sit about moping, tore into some work all day and then amused yourself at night. Why had it taken him so long to be sensible?

  He had a telephone in his bedroom and now it rang, startling him out of his cheerful reverie. Prisk was at the other end, chuckling. “Took a chance on your not having turned in, Ravenstreet, old boy. Had a sort of a kind of a hunch you might be trying out our Sepman sample. Right? How’s it doing?”

  Of course it must have been Sepman’s stuff that had blotted out his mysterious feeling of anxiety and had made him look at things sensibly and cheerfully. “Seems to work with me, Prisk. In fact you can tell Lord Mervil that so far I’m all for it and I’m looking forward to another meeting as soon as he can manage one. And of course I’d like to talk to this chap Sepman.”

  “I’ll fix it, chummy.” Prisk sounded delighted. “Just get the okay first from the Chief. I’ll tell him what you said. He’ll be pleased. You wouldn’t know the
difference, but I can read the signs now. All the best, old boy, of bloody luck!”

  Ravenstreet went to bed already feeling like one of Mervil’s élite.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Three Magicians

  Ravenstreet’s country house was called Broxley Manor; it was some twenty miles south of Birmingham and about ten miles west of Stratford-on-Avon. In the middle of the week following his dinner with Mervil he was driving himself down there, for once using the big touring Rolls the Company had given him just after the end of the War. It was a close day, its heavy heat like a curtain behind which thunder might roll at any moment. He had lunched at the Bear at Woodstock and had then left the main road to go north by way of Moreton-in-Marsh and Chipping Campden. He was in no hurry and rolled with majestical ease through the pleasant grey places and the sultry afternoon. Just beyond Chipping Campden he heard a jet fighter tearing and screaming somewhere up high, and then after a few moments he stopped the car to listen properly, and if possible to see what was happening, for there were signs now that the aircraft was in trouble. He thought he saw it come down like a screeching rocket only a few miles ahead of him. He waited, then saw the flash in the blue haze over the rise and heard the explosion; as if part of the idle, heat-heavy afternoon had grown tired of waiting for something to happen and had blown up. He drove on, making speed.

  At the crossroads about three miles south of Broxley was an admirable old inn, the White Horse, where he had sometimes had a meal and had often had a drink. Well, he would have no more meals and drinks there. It was a smoking ruin. He pushed his way through the little crowd that had already assembled, to see if he could do anything to help. The local police sergeant, whom he knew, was there.