The Gap in the Curtain

by John Buchan

  I had moments of considering the whole business a farce, and wondering if I had not made a fool of myself in consenting to it. But I could not continue long in that mood. The professor’s ardent face would come before me like a reproachful schoolmaster’s, and under those compelling eyes of his I was forced back into something which was acquiescence, if not conviction. There was a shadow of anxiety at the back of my mind. The man was an extraordinary force, with elemental powers of brain and will; was it wise to let such an influence loose on commonplace people who happened to be at the moment a little loose from their moorings? I was not afraid of myself, but what about the high-strung Sally, and the concussed Reggie, and Charles Ottery in the throes of an emotional crisis? I kept telling myself that there was no danger, that nothing could happen . . . And then I discovered, to my amazement, that, if that forecast proved true, I should be disappointed. I wanted something to happen. Nay, I believed at the bottom of my heart that something would happen.

  In the smoking room, before dinner, I found Charles Ottery and Reggie Daker—a rather pale and subdued Reggie, with a bandage round his head and a black eye. They were talking on the window seat, and when I entered they suddenly stopped. When they saw who it was, Charles called to me to join them.

  “I hear you’re in this business, Ned,” he said. “I got the surprise of my life when the professor told me that you had consented. It’s a new line of country for a staid old bird like you.”

  “The man’s a genius,” I replied. “I see no harm in helping him in his experiment. Did you understand his argument?”

  “I didn’t try. He didn’t argue much, but one could see that he had any quantity of scientific stuff behind him. He hopes to make us dream while we’re awake, and I thought it such a sporting proposition that I couldn’t refuse. It must all be kept deadly secret, of course. We have to get into the right atmosphere, and tune our minds to the proper pitch, and it would never do to rope in a born idiot like George Lamington. He’d guy it from the start.”

  “You were convinced by the professor?” I asked.

  “I won’t say convinced. I was interested. It’s an amusing game anyhow, and I want to be amused.”

  Charles spoke with a lightness which seemed to me to be assumed. He had obviously been far more impressed than he cared to admit. I could see that, since Pamela was giving him a difficult time, he longed for something to distract him, something which was associated with that world of new emotions in which he was living.

  The lady’s other suitor made no concealment. Reggie was honestly excited. He was flattered, perhaps, by being made one of the circle, and may have attributed his choice to his new role as an authority on books. At last he was being taken seriously. Also his recent concussion may have predisposed him to some research into the mysteries of mind, for as he explained, he could not remember one blessed thing that happened between putting Sir Vidas at a fence which he cleared with a yard to spare, and finding himself in bed with clouts on his head. He was insistent on the need of confidence in the experiment. “What I mean to say is, we’ve got to help the old boy out. If we don’t believe the thing will come off, then it won’t—if you see what I mean.”

  He dropped his voice as Evelyn Flambard and his terriers came noisily into the room.

  As I was going upstairs to dress, I found Goodeve’s hand on my shoulder.

  “I hear you’re on in this piece,” he whispered jovially, as if the whole thing was a good joke.

  “And you?” I whispered back.

  “Oh, I’m on. I rather like these psychical adventures. I’m a hopeless subject, you know, and calculated to break up any séance. I haven’t got enough soul—too solidly tied to earth. But I never mind offering myself as a victim.”

  He laughed and passed into his bedroom, leaving me wondering how the professor had so signally failed with the man who was his special choice. He had obtained Goodeve’s consent, so there was no need of pressure from me, but clearly he had not made any sort of convert of him.

  At dinner we all tried to behave as if nothing special was afoot, and I think we succeeded. George Lamington had never had so good an audience for his dreary tales. He was full of racing reminiscences, the point of which was the preternatural cunning with which he had outwitted sundry rivals who had tried to beguile him. I never knew anyone whose talk was so choked with adipose tissue, but he generally managed to wallow towards some kind of point, which he and Evelyn found dramatic . . . During most of the meal I talked to his wife. She could be intelligent enough when she chose, and had a vigorous interest in foreign affairs, for she was an Ambassador’s daughter. When I first knew her she had affected a foreign accent, and professed to be more at home in Paris and Vienna than in London. Now she was English of the English, and her former tastes appeared only in intermittent attempts to get George appointed to a Dominion governorship, where he would most certainly have been a failure. For the present, however, the drums and trumpets did not sound for her. The recent addition to the Lamington fortunes had plunged her deep in the upholstery of life. She was full of plans for doing up their place in Suffolk, and, as I am as ignorant as a coal-heaver about bric-à-brac, I could only listen respectfully. She had the mannerism of the very rich, whose grievance is not against the price of things, but the inadequacy of the supply.

  The professor’s health appeared to have improved, or it may have been satisfaction with his initial success, for he was almost loquacious. He seemed to have acute hearing, for he would catch fragments of conversation far down the table, and send his great voice booming towards the speaker in some innocent interrogation. As I have said, his English was excellent, but his knowledge of English life seemed to be on the level of a South Sea islander. He was very inquisitive, and asked questions about racing and horses which gave Evelyn a chance to display his humour. Among the younger people he was a great success. Pamela Brune, who sat next to him, lost in his company her slight air of petulance and discontent, and became once again the delightful child I had known. I was obliged to admit that the Flambard party had improved since yesterday, for certain of its members seemed to have shaken off their listlessness.

  While youth was dancing or skylarking on the terrace, and the rest were set solidly to bridge, we met in the upper chamber in the Essex wing, which had been given me as a sitting room. At first, while we waited for the professor, we were a little self-conscious. Tavanger and Mayot, especially, looked rather like embarrassed elders at a children’s party. But I noticed that no one—not even Reggie Daker—tried to be funny about the business.

  The professor’s coming turned us into a most practical assembly. Without a word of further explanation he gave us our marching orders. He appeared to assume that we were all ready to surrender ourselves to his directions.

  The paper chosen was The Times. For the next three days we were to keep our minds glued to that newssheet, and he was very explicit about the way in which we were to do it.

  First of all, we were to have it as much as possible before our eyes, so that its physical form became as familiar to each of us as our razors and cigarette cases. We started, of course, with a considerable degree of knowledge, for we were all accustomed to look at it every morning. I remember wondering why the professor had fixed so short a time as three days for this intensive contemplation, till he went on to give his further orders.

  This ocular familiarity was only the beginning. Each of us must concentrate on one particular part to which his special interest was pledged—Tavanger on the first city page, for example, Mayot on the leader page, myself on the Law Reports—any part we pleased. Of such pages we had to acquire the most intimate knowledge, so that by shutting our eyes we could reconstruct the make-up in every detail. The physical make-up, that is to say; there was no necessity for any memorizing of contents.

  Then came something more difficult. Each of us had to perform a number of exercises in concentration and anticip
ation. We knew the kind of things which were happening, and within limits the kind of topic which would be the staple of the next day’s issue. Well, we had to try to forecast some of the contents of the next day’s issue, which we had not seen. And not merely in a general sense. We had to empty our minds of everything but the one topic, and endeavour to make as full as possible a picture of part of the exact contents of The Times next morning—to see it not as a concept but as a percept—the very words and lines and headings.

  For example. Suppose that I took the law reports pages. There were some cases the decisions on which were being given by the House of Lords today, and would be published tomorrow. I could guess the members of the tribunal who would deliver judgement, and could make a fair shot at what that judgement would be. Well, I was to try so to forecast these coming pages that I could picture the column of type, and, knowing the judges’ idiosyncrasies, see before my eyes the very sentences in which their wisdom would be enshrined . . . Tavanger, let us say, took the first city page. Tomorrow he knew there would be a report of a company meeting in which he was interested. He must try to get a picture of the paragraph in which the city editor commented on the meeting . . . If Mayot chose the leader page, he must try to guess correctly what would be the subject of the first or second leader, and, from his knowledge of The Times policy and the style of its leader-writers, envisage some of the very sentences, and possibly the headings.

  It seemed to me an incredibly difficult game, and I did not believe that, for myself, I would get any results at all. I have never been much good at guessing. But I could see the general layout. Everything would depend upon the adequacy of the knowledge we started with. To make an ocular picture which would have any exactitude, I must be familiar with the lord chancellor’s mannerisms, Tavanger with the mentality and the style of the city editor, and Mayot with the policy of the paper and the verbal felicities of its leader-writers . . . Some of us found the prescription difficult, and Reggie Daker groaned audibly.

  But there was more to follow. We were also to try to fling our minds farther forward—not for a day, but for a year. Each morning at seven—I do not know why he fixed that hour—we were to engage in a more difficult kind of concentration—by using such special knowledge as we possessed to help us to forecast the kind of development in the world which June of next year would show. And always we had to aim at seeing our forecasts not in vague concepts, but in concrete black and white in the appropriate corner of The Times.

  I am bound to say that, when I heard this, I felt that we had been let in for a most futile quest. We had our days mapped out in a minute programme—certain hours for each kind of concentration. We would meet the professor in my sitting room at stated times . . . I think that he felt the atmosphere sceptical, for on this last point his manner lost its briskness and he became very solemn.

  “It is difficult,” he said, “but you must have faith. And I myself will help you. Time—all time—is with us now, but we are confined to narrow fields of presentation. With my help you will enlarge these fields. If you will give me honestly all your powers, I can supplement them.”

  Lastly he spoke of the necessary régime. Too much exercise was forbidden, for it was desirable that our health should be rather an absence of ailments than a positive, aggressive well-being. There were to be no cold baths. We might smoke, but alcohol was strictly forbidden—not much of a hardship, for we were an abstemious lot. As to diet, we had to behave like convalescents—no meat, not even fish—nothing which, in the professor’s words, “possessed automobility.” We were allowed weak tea, but not coffee. Milk, cheese, fruit, eggs and cereals were to be our staples.

  It all reminded me rather eerily of the ritual food which used to be given to human beings set apart for sacrifice to the gods.

  “Our gracious hostess has so arranged it that the others will not be curious,” said the professor, and Sally nodded a mystified head.

  I went to bed feeling that I should probably get a liver attack from lack of exercise, if I did not starve from lack of food. Next morning I found a Times on the tray which brought my morning tea. Sally must have sent ten miles to a main-line station to get it.

  Chapter 5

  It is difficult to write the consecutive story of the next three days. I kept a diary, but on consulting it, I find only a bare record of my hours of meditation on that confounded newspaper, and of our conferences with the professor. I began in a mood which was less one of scepticism than of despair. I simply did not believe that I could get one step forward in this preposterous business. But I was determined to play the game to the best of my capacity, for Moe’s talk last night had brought me fairly under his spell.

  I did as I had been told. I emptied my mind of every purpose except the one. I read the arguments in the case—it was an appeal by an insurance company—and then sat down to forecast what the report of the judgement would be, as given by The Times next day. Of the substance of the judgement I had not much doubt, and I was pretty certain that it would be delivered by the lord chancellor, with the rest of the court concurring. I knew Boland’s style, having listened often enough to his pronouncements, and it would have been easy enough to forecast the kind of thing he would say, using some of his pet phrases. But my job was to forecast what The Times reporters would make him say—a very different matter. I collected a set of old copies of the paper and tried to get into their spirit. Then I made a number of jottings, but I found myself slipping into the manner of the official Law Reports, which was not what I wanted. I remember looking at my notes with disfavour, and reflecting that this guessing game was nothing but a deduction from existing knowledge. If I had made a close study of The Times reports, I should probably get a good deal right, but since I had only a superficial knowledge I would get little. Moe’s grandiose theories about time had nothing to do with it. It was not a question of casting the mind forward into a new field of presentation, but simply of a good memory from which one made the right deductions.

  After my first attempt I went for a walk, and tried to fix my mind on something different. I had been making a new rock garden at Borrowby, and I examined minutely Sally’s collection of Tibetan alpines. On my return the butler handed me a note. The professor had decided to have conferences with each of us separately, and my hour was three in the afternoon.

  Before that hour I had two other bouts of contemplation. I wrestled honourably with the incurably evasive, and filled several sheets of foolscap with notes. Then I revised them, striking out phrases which were natural enough to Boland, but unsuitable for a newspaper summary. The business seemed more ridiculous than ever. I was simply chewing the cud of memories—very vague, inexact memories.

  The professor received me in Sally’s boudoir. Now, the odd thing was that in his presence I had no self-consciousness. If anyone had told me that I should have been unburdening my mind in a ridiculous game to a queer foreigner, with the freedom of a novice in the confessional, I should have declared it impossible. But there it was. He sat before me with his gaunt face and bottomless pits of eyes, very grave and gentle, and without being asked I told him what I had been doing.

  “That is a beginning,” he said, “only a beginning. But your mind is too active as yet to perceive. You are still in the bonds of ratiocination. Your past knowledge is only the jumping-off stage from which your mind must leap. Suffer yourself to be more quiescent, my friend. Do not torture your memory. It is a deep well from which the reason can only draw little buckets of water.”

  I told him that I had been making notes, and he approved. “But do not shape them as you would shape a logical argument. Let them be raw material out of which a picture builds itself. Your business is perception, not conception, and perception comes in flashes.” And then he quoted what Napoleon had once said, how after long pondering he had his vision of a battle plan in a blinding flash of white light.

  He said a great deal more which I do not remember very clearl
y. But one thing I have firm in my recollection—the compelling personality of the man. There must have been some strange hypnotic force about him, for as he spoke I experienced suddenly a new confidence and an odd excitement. He seemed to wake unexpected powers in me, and I felt my mind to be less a machine clamped to a solid concrete base, than an aeroplane which might rise and soar into space. Another queer thing—I felt slightly giddy as I left him. Unquestionably he was going to make good his promise and supplement our efforts, for an influence radiated from him, more masterful than any I have ever known in a fellow mortal. It was only after we had parted that the reaction came, and I felt a faint sense of antagonism, almost of fear.

  In my last effort before dinner I struggled to follow his advice. I tried to picture next day’s Times. The judgement, from its importance, would occupy a column at least; I saw that column and its heading, and it seemed to me to be split up into three paragraphs. I saw some of the phrases out of my notes, and one or two new ones. There was one especially, quite in Boland’s manner, which seemed to be repeated more than once—something like this: “It is a legal commonplace that a contract of insurance is one uberrimae fidei, which is vitiated by any nondisclosure, however innocent, of material facts.” I scribbled this down, and found, when I re-read it, that I had written uberrimi, and deplored my declining scholarship.

  At dinner our group were as glum as owls. I did not know how the professor had handled the others, but I assumed that his methods had been the same as with me, and certainly he had produced an effect. We all seemed to have something on our minds, and came in for a good deal of chaff, the more as we refrained from so many dishes. Reggie Daker escaped, for he was a convalescent, but Evelyn had a good deal to say about Goodeve’s abstinence.