Chapter IV: Part TWO (3)

“Here’s to many more pleasant evenings,” said Clinton. “You’re a brave man, Bellamy,” he exclaimed, putting the glass to his lips. “For what you have seen might well appal the devil!”

“I’m not afraid because I trust you,” replied Bellamy.

“By Eblis, this is a strong one,” said Clinton, peering into his glass.

“Same as usual,” said Bellamy, laughing. “Tell me something. A man I knew who’d been many years in the East told me about some race out there who cut out paper patterns and paint them and send them to their enemies. Have you ever heard of anything of the sort?”

Clinton dropped his glass on the table sharply. He did not answer for a moment, but shifted uneasily in his chair.

“Who was this friend of yours?” he asked, in a voice already slightly thick.

“A chap called Bond,” said Bellamy.

“Yes, I’ve heard of that charming practice. In fact, I can cut them myself.”

“Really, how’s it done? I should be fascinated to see it.”

Clinton’s eyes blinked and his head nodded.

“I’ll show you one,” he said, “but it’s dangerous and you must be very careful. Go to the bottom drawer of that bureau and bring me the piece of straw paper you’ll find there. And there are some scissors on the writing table and two crayons in the tray.” Bellamy brought them to him.

“Now,” said Clinton, “this thing, as I say, is dangerous. If I wasn’t drunk I wouldn’t do it. And why am I drunk?” He leaned back in his chair and put his hand over his eyes. And then he sat up and, taking the scissors, began running them with extreme dexterity round the paper. And then he made some marks with the coloured pencils.

The final result of these actions was not unfamiliar in appearance to Bellamy.

“There you are,” said Clinton. “That, my dear Bellamy, is potentially the most deadly little piece of paper in the world. Would you please take it to the fireplace and burn it to ashes?”

Bellamy burnt a piece of paper to ashes.

Clinton’s head had dropped into his hands.

“Another drink?” asked Bellamy.

“My God, no,” said Clinton, yawning and reeling in his chair. And then his head went down again. Bellamy went up to him and shook him. His right hand hovered a second over Clinton’s coat pocket.

“Wake up,” he said, “I want to know what would make that piece of paper actually deadly?”

Clinton looked up blearily at him and then rallied slightly.

“You’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Bellamy. “Tell me.”

“Just repeating six words,” said Clinton, “but I shall not repeat them.” Suddenly his eyes became intent and fixed on a corner of the room.

“What’s that?” he asked sharply. “There! there! there! in the corner.” Bellamy felt again the presence of a power. The air of the room seemed rent and sparking.

“That, Clinton,” he said, “is the spirit of Philip Franton, whom you murdered.” And then he sprang at Clinton, who was staggering from his chair. He seized him and pressed a little piece of paper fiercely to his forehead.

“Now, Clinton,” he cried, “say those words!”

And then Clinton rose to his feet, and his face was working hideously. His eyes seemed bursting from his head, their pupils stretched and curved, foam streamed from his lips. He flung his hands above his head and cried in a voice of agony:

“He cometh and he passeth by!”

And then he crashed to the floor.

* * * * *

As Bellamy moved towards the door the lights went dim, in from the window poured a burning wind, and then from the wall in the corner a shadow began to grow. When he saw it, swift icy ripples poured through him. It grew and grew, and began to lean down towards the figure on the floor. As Bellamy took a last look back it was just touching it. He shuddered, opened the door, closed it quickly, and ran down the stairs and out into the night.

PROFESSOR POWNALL’S OVERSIGHT

PROFESSOR POWNALL’S OVERSIGHT

A note by J. C. Cary, M.D.:

About sixteen years ago I received one morning by post a parcel, which, when I opened, I found to contain a letter and a packet. The latter was inscribed, “To be opened and published fifteen years from this date.” The letter read as follows:

“Dear Sir,

“Forgive me for troubling you, but I have decided to entrust the
enclosed narrative to your keeping. As I state, I wish it to be
opened by you, and that you should arrange for it to be published.
I enclose five ten-pound notes, which sum is to be used, partly to
remunerate you, and partly to cover the cost of publication, if such
expenditure should be found necessary. About the time you receive
this, I shall disappear. The contents of the enclosed packet, though
to some extent revealing the cause of my disappearance, give no index
as to its method.--E.P.”

The receipt of this eccentric document occasioned me considerable surprise. I attended Professor Pownall (I have altered all names, for obvious reasons) in my professional capacity four or five times for minor ailments. He struck me as a man of extreme intellectual brilliance, but his personality was repulsive to me. He had a virulent and brutal wit which he made no scruple of exercising at my and everyone else’s expense. He apparently possessed not one single friend in the world, and I can only conclude that I came nearer to fulfilling this rôle than anyone else.

I kept this packet by me for safe keeping for the fifteen years, and then I opened it, about a year ago. The contents ran as follows:

The date of my birth is of complete unimportance, for my life began
when I first met Hubert Morisson at the age of twelve and a half at
Flamborough College. It will end to-morrow at 6.45 p.m.

I doubt if ever in the history of the human intellect there has been
so continuous, so close, so exhausting a rivalry as that between
Morisson and myself. I will chronicle its bare outline. We joined the
same form at Flamborough--two forms higher, I may say, than that in
which even the most promising new boys are usually placed. We were
promoted every term till we reached the Upper Sixth at the age of 16.
Morisson was always top, I was always second, a few hundred marks
behind him. We both got scholarships at Oxford, Morisson just beating
me for Balliol. Before I left Flamborough, the Head Master sent for
me and told me that he considered I had the best brain of any boy who
had passed through his hands. I thought of asking him, if that were
so, why I had been so consistently second to Morisson all through
my school career; but even then I thought I knew the answer to that
question.

He beat me, by a few marks, for all the great University prizes for
which we entered. I remember one of the examiners, impressed by my
papers, asking me to lunch with him. “Pownall,” he said, “Morisson
and you are the most brilliant undergraduates who have been at Oxford
in my time. I am not quite sure why, but I am convinced of two
things; firstly, that he will always finish above you, and secondly,
that you have the better brain.”

By the time we left Oxford, both with the highest degrees, I had
had remorselessly impressed upon me the fact that my superiority
of intelligence had been and always would be neutralised by some
constituent in Morisson’s mind which defied and dominated that
superiority--save in one respect: we both took avidly to chess, and
very soon there was no one in the University in our class, but I
became, and remained, his master.

Chess has been the one great love of my life. Mankind I detest and
despise. Far from growing wiser, men seem to me, decade by decade, to
grow more inane as the means for revealing their ineptitude become
more numerous, more varied and more complex. Women do not exist for
me--they are merely variants from a bad model: but for chess, that
superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel the
ardour of a lover, the humility of a disciple. Chess, that greatest
of all games, greater than any game! It is, in my opinion, one of the
few supreme products of the human intellect, if, as I often doubt, it
is of human origin.

Morisson’s success, I realise, was partly due to his social gifts; he
possessed that shameless flair for making people do what he wanted,
which is summed up in the word “charm,” a gift from the gods, no
doubt, but one of which I have never had the least wish to be the
recipient.

Did I like Morisson? More to the point, perhaps, did I hate him?
Neither, I believe. I simply grew profoundly and terribly used to
him. His success fascinated me. I had sometimes short and violent
paroxysms of jealousy, but these I fought, and on the whole conquered.

He became a Moral Philosophy Don at Oxford: I obtained a similar but
inevitably inferior appointment in a Midland University. We used to
meet during vacations and play chess at the City of London Club.
We both improved rapidly, but still I kept ahead of him. After ten
years of drudgery, I inherited a considerable sum, more than enough
to satisfy all my wants. If one avoids all contact with women one
can live marvellously cheaply: I am continuously astounded at men’s
inability to grasp this great and simple truth.

I have had few moments of elation in my life, but when I got into the
train for London on leaving that cesspool in Warwickshire, I had a
fierce feeling of release. No more should I have to ram useless and
rudimentary speculation into the heads of oafs, who hated me as much
as I despised them.

Directly I arrived in London I experienced one of those irresistible
impulses which I could never control, and I went down to Oxford.
Morisson was married by then, so I refused to stay in his house, but
I spent hours every day with him. The louts into whom he attempted
to force elementary ethics seemed rather less dingy but even more
mentally costive than my Midland half-wits, and, so far as that went,
I envied him not at all. I had meant to stay one week; I was in
Oxford for six, for I rapidly came to the conclusion that I ranked
first and Morisson second among the chess players of Great Britain.
I can say that because I have no vanity: vanity cannot breathe and
live in rarified intellectual altitudes. In chess the master surveys
his skill impersonally, he criticises it impartially. He is great; he
knows it; he can prove it; that is all.

I persuaded Morisson to enter for the British Championship six months
later, and I returned to my rooms in Bloomsbury to perfect my game.
Day after day I spent in the most intensive study, and succeeded in
curing my one weakness. I just mention this point briefly for the
benefit of chess players. I had a certain lethargy when forced to
analyse intricate end-game positions. This, as I say, I overcame. A
few games at the City Club convinced me that I was, at last, worthy
to be called Master. Except for these occasional visits I spent
those six months entirely alone: it was the happiest period of my
life. I had complete freedom from human contacts, excellent health
and unlimited time to move thirty-two pieces of the finest ivory over
a charming checkered board.

I took a house at Bournemouth for the fortnight of the Championship,
and I asked Morisson to stay with me. I felt I had to have him near
me. He arrived the night before play began. When he came into my
study I had one of those agonising paroxysms of jealousy to which I
have alluded. I conquered it, but the reaction, as ever, took the
form of a loathsome feeling of inferiority, almost servility.

Morisson was six foot two in height; I am five foot one. He had, as I
impartially recognise, a face of great dignity and beauty, a mind at
once of the greatest profundity and the most exquisite flippancy. My
face is a perfect index to my character; it is angular, sallow, and
its expression is one of seething distaste. As I say, I know my mind
to be the greater of the two, but I express myself with an inevitable
and blasting brutality, which disgusts and repels all who sample it.
Nevertheless, it is that brutality which attracted Morisson, at times
it fascinated him. I believe he realised, as I do, how implacably
our destinies were interwoven.

Arriving next morning at the hall in which the Championship was to
be held, I learned two things which affected me profoundly. The
first, that by the accident of the pairing I should not meet Morisson
until the last round, secondly, that the winner of the Championship
would be selected to play in the forthcoming Masters’ Tournament at
Budapesth.

I will pass quickly over the story of this Championship. It fully
justified my conviction. When I sat down opposite Morisson in the
last round we were precisely level, both of us having defeated all
our opponents, though I had shown the greater mastery and certainty.
I began this game with the greatest confidence. I outplayed him from
the start, and by the fifteenth move I felt convinced I had a won
game. I was just about to make my sixteenth move when Morisson looked
across at me with that curious smile on his face, half superior,
half admiring, which he had given me so often before, when after a
terrific struggle he had proved his superiority in every other test
but chess. The smile that I was to see again. At once I hesitated.
I felt again that sense of almost cringing subservience. No doubt
I was tired, the strain of that fortnight had told, but it was, as
it always had been, something deeper, something more virulent,
than anything fatigue could produce. My brain simply refused to
concentrate. The long and subtle combination which I had analysed
so certainly seemed suddenly full of flaws. My time was passing
dangerously quickly. I made one last effort to force my brain to
work, and then desperately moved a piece. How clearly I remember
the look of amazement on Morisson’s face. For a moment he scented
a trap, and then, seeing none, for there was none, he moved and I
was myself again. I saw I must lose a piece and the game. After
losing a Knight, I fought with a concentrated brilliance I had never
attained before, with the result that I kept the game alive till the
adjournment and indeed recovered some ground, but I knew when I left
the hall with Morisson that on the next morning only a miracle could
save me, and that once again, in the test of all tests in which I
longed to beat him, he would, as ever at great crises, be revealed as
my master. As I trotted back to my house beside him the words “only
a miracle” throbbed in my brain insinuatingly. Was there no other
possibility? Of a sudden I came to the definite, unalterable decision
that I would kill Morisson that night, and my brain began, like the
perfectly trained machine it is, to plan the means by which I could
kill him certainly and safely. The speed of this decision may sound
incredible, but here I must be allowed a short digression. It has
long been a theory of mine that there are two distinct if remotely
connected processes operating in the human mind. I term these
the “surface” and the “sub-surface” processes. I am not entirely
satisfied with these terms, and I have thought of substituting for
them the terms “conscious” and “subconscious.” However, that is a
somewhat academic distinction. I believe that my sub-surface mind had
considered this destruction of Morisson many times before, and that
these paroxysms of jealousy, the outcome as they were of consistent
and unjust frustration, were the minatory symptoms that the content
of my sub-surface would one day become the impulse of my surface
mind, forcing me to plan and execute the death of Morisson.

When we arrived at the house I went first to my bedroom to fetch a
most potent, swift-working, and tasteless narcotic which a German
doctor had once prescribed for me in Munich when I was suffering
from insomnia. I then went to the dining-room, mixed two whiskies
and soda, put a heavy dose of the drug into Morisson’s tumbler, and
went back to the study. I had hoped that he would drink it quickly:
instead, he put it by his side and began a long monologue on luck.
Possibly my fatal move had suggested it. He said that he had always
regarded himself as an extremely lucky man, in his work, his friends,
his wife. He supposed that his rigidly rational mind demanded for its
relief some such inconsistency, some such sop. “About four months
ago,” he said, “I had an equally irrational experience, a sharp
premonition of death, which lingered with me. I told my wife--you
will never agree, Pownall, but there is something to be said for
matrimony: if I were dying I should like Marie to be with me, gross
sentimentality, of course--I told my wife, who is of a distinctly
psychic, superstitious if you like, turn of mind, and she persuaded
me to go to a clairvoyant of whom she had a high opinion. I went
sceptically, partly to please her, partly for the amusement of
sampling one of this tribe. She was a curious, dingy female, slightly
disconcerting. She stared at me remotely and then remarked, ‘It was
always destined that he should do it.’ I plied her with questions,
but she would say nothing more. I think you will agree, Pownall,
that this was a typically nebulous two-guineas’ worth.” And then he
drained his glass.

Shortly afterwards he began to yawn repeatedly, and went to bed. He
staggered slightly on entering his room. “Good-night, Pownall,” he
said, as he closed the door, “let’s hope somehow or other we may both
be at Budapesth.”

Half an hour later I went into his room. He had just managed to
undress before the drug had overwhelmed him. I shut the window,
turned on the gas, and went out. I spent the next hour playing over
that fatal game. I quickly discovered the right line I had missed,
then with a wet towel over my face, I re-entered his room. He was
dead. I turned off the gas, opened all the windows, waited till the
gas had cleared, and then went to bed, to sleep as soundly as ever in
my life, though I had a curiously vivid dream. I may say I dream but
seldom, and I never before realised how sharp and convincing these
silly images could be, for I saw Morisson running through the dark
and deserted streets of Oxford till he reached his house, and then he
hammered with his fists on the door, and as he did so he gave a great
cry, “Marie! Marie!” and then he fell rolling down the steps, and I
awoke. This dream recurred for some time after, and always left a
somewhat unpleasant impression on my mind.

The events of the next day were not pleasant. They composed a testing
ordeal which remains very vividly in my mind. I had to act, and act
very carefully, to deceive my maid, who came screaming into my
room in the morning, to fool the half-witted local constable, the
self-important local doctor, and carry through the farce generally
in a convincing mode. I successfully suggested that as Morisson
had suffered from heart weakness for some years, his own Oxford
doctor should be sent for. Of course I had to wire to his wife.
She arrived in the afternoon--and altogether I did not spend an
uneventful day. However, all went well. The verdict at the inquest
was “natural causes,” and a day or two afterwards I was notified that
I was British Chess Champion and had been selected for Budapesth. I
received some medal or other, which I threw into the sea.

Four months intervened before the tournament at Budapesth; I spent
them entirely alone, perfecting my game. At the end of that period
I can say with absolute certainty that I was the greatest player
in the world; my swift unimpeded growth of power is, I believe,
unprecedented in the history of chess. There was, I remember, during
this time, a curious little incident. One evening after a long,
profound analysis of a position, I felt stale and tired, and went out
for a walk. When I got back I noticed a piece had been moved, and
that the move constituted the one perfect answer to the combination I
had been working out. I asked my landlady if anybody had been to my
room: she said not, and I let the subject drop.

The Masters’ Tournament at Budapesth was perhaps the greatest ever
held. All the most famous players in the world were gathered there,
yet I, a practically unknown person, faced the terrific task of
engaging them, one by one, day after day, with supreme confidence.
I felt they could have no surprises for me, but that I should have
many for them. Were I writing for chess players only, I would explain
technically the grounds for this confidence. As it is, I will merely
state that I had worked out the most subtle and daring variants from
existing practice. I was a century ahead of my time.

In my first round I was paired with the great Russian Master,
Osvensky. When I met him he looked at me as if he wondered what I
was doing there. He repeated my name as though it came as a complete
surprise to him. I gave him a look which I have employed before when
I have suspected insolence, and he altered his manner. We sat down.
Having the white pieces, I employed that most subtle of all openings,
the Queen’s bishop’s pawn gambit. He chose an orthodox defence, and
for ten moves the game took a normal course. Then at my eleventh
move I offered the sacrifice of a knight, the first of the tremendous
surprises I sprang upon my opponents in this tournament. I can see
him now, the quick searching glance he gave me, and his great and
growing agitation. Every chess player reveals great strain by much
the same symptoms, by nervous movements, hurried glances at the
clock, uneasy shufflings of the body, and so forth: my opponent in
this way completely betrayed his astonishment and dismay. Time ran
on, sweat burst out on his forehead. Elated as I was, the spectacle
became repulsive, so I looked round the room. And then, as my eyes
reached the door, they met those of Morisson sauntering in. He gave
me the slightest look of recognition, then strolled along to our
table and took his stand behind my opponent’s chair. At first I
had no doubt that it was an hallucination due to the great strain
to which I had subjected myself during the preceding months: I was
therefore surprised when I noticed the Russian glance uneasily behind
him. Morisson put his hand over my opponent’s shoulder, guided
his hand to a piece, and placed it down with that slight screwing
movement so characteristic of him. It was the one move which I had
dreaded, though I had felt it could never be discovered in play over
the board, and then Morisson gave me that curious searching smile to
which I have alluded. I braced myself, rallied all my will-power, and
for the next four hours played what I believe to be the finest game
in the record of Masters’ play. Osvensky’s agitation was terrible,
he was white to the lips, on the point of collapse, but the Thing at
his back--but Morisson--guided his hand move after move, hour after
hour, to the one perfect square. I resigned on move 64, and Osvensky
immediately fainted. Somewhat ironically he was awarded the first
Brilliancy Prize for the finest game played in the tournament. As
soon as it was over Morisson turned away, walked slowly down the room
and out of the door.

That night after dinner I went to my room and faced the situation.
I eventually persuaded myself, firstly, that Morisson’s appearance
had certainly been an hallucination, secondly, that my opponent’s
performance had been due to telepathy. Most people, I suppose, would
regard this as pure superstition, but to me it seemed a tenable
theory that my mind, in its extreme concentration, had communicated
its content to the mind of Osvensky. I determined that for the future
I would break this contact, whenever possible, by getting up and
walking around the room.

Consequently on the next day I faced my second opponent, Seltz,
the champion of Germany, with comparative equanimity. This time I
defended a Ruy Lopez with the black pieces. I made the second of my
stupendous surprises on the seventh move, and once again had the
satisfaction of seeing consternation and intense astonishment leap
to the German’s face. I got up and walked round the room watching
the other games. After a time I looked round and saw the back of my
opponent’s head buried in his hands, which were passing feverishly
through his hair, but I also saw Morisson come in and take his stand
behind him.

I need not dwell on the next twelve days. It was always the same
story. I lost every game, yet each time giving what I know to be
absolute proof that I was the greatest player in the world. My
opponents did not enjoy themselves. Their play was acclaimed as the
perfection of perfection, but more than one told me that he had no
recollection after the early stages of making a single move, and
that he suffered from a sensation of great depression and malaise. I
could see they regarded me with some awe and suspicion, and shunned
my company. It was also remarkable that, though the room was crowded
with spectators, they never lingered long at my table, but moved
quickly and uneasily away.

When I got back to London I was in a state of extreme nervous
exhaustion, but there was something I had to know for certain, so
I went to the City Chess Club and started a game with a member.
Morisson came in after a short time--so I excused myself and went
home. I had learnt what I had sought to learn. I should never play
chess again.

The idea of suicide then became urgent. This happened three months
ago. I have spent that period partly in writing this narrative,
chiefly in annotating my games at Budapesth. I found that every
one of my opponents played an absolutely flawless game, that their
combinations had been of a profundity and complexity unique in the
history of chess. Their play had been literally superhuman. I found
I had myself given the greatest _human_ performance ever known. I
think I can claim a certain reputation for will-power when I say the
shortest game lasted fifty-four moves, even with Morisson there, and
that I was only guilty of most minute errors due to the frightful and
protracted strain. I leave these games to posterity, having no doubt
of its verdict. To the last I had fought Morisson to a finish.

I feel no remorse. My destruction of Morisson was an act of common
sense and justice. All his life he had had the rewards which were
rightly mine; as he said at a somewhat ironical moment, he had
always been a lucky man. If I had known him to be my intellectual
superior I would have accepted him as such, and become reconciled,
but to be the greater and always to be branded as the inferior
eventually becomes intolerable, and justice demands retribution.
Budapesth proved that I had made an “oversight,” as we say in
chess, but I could not have foreseen that, and, as it is, I shall
leave behind me these games as a memorial of me. Had I not killed
Morisson I should never have played them, for he inspired me while he
overthrew me.

I have planned my disappearance with great care. I think I saw
Morisson in my bedroom again last night, and, as I am terribly tired
of him, it will be to-morrow. I have no wish to be ogled by asinine
jurymen nor drooled over by fatuous coroners and parsons, so my body
will never be found. I have just destroyed my chessmen and my board,
for no one else shall ever touch them. Tears came into my eyes as I
did so. I never remember this happening before. Morisson has just
come in----

A further note by J. C. Cary, M.D.:

Here the narrative breaks off abruptly. While I felt a certain moral obligation to arrange for the publication, if possible, of this document, it all sounded excessively improbable. I am no chess player myself, but I had had as a patient a famous Polish Master who became a good friend of mine before he returned to Warsaw. I decided to send him the narrative and the games so that he might give me his opinion of the first, and his criticism of the latter. About three months later I had my first letter from him, which ran as follows:

“My Friend,

“I have a curious tale to tell you. When I had read through that
document which you sent me I made some enquiries. Let me tell you
the result of them. Let me tell you no one of the name of your
Professor ever competed in a British Chess Championship, there was
no tournament held at Pesth that year which he states, and no one
of that name has ever played in a tournament in that city. When
I learnt these facts, my friend, I regarded your Professor as a
practical joker or a lunatic, and was just about to send back to you
all these papers, when, quite to satisfy my mind, I thought I would
just discover what manner of chess player this joker or madman had
been. I soberly declare to you that those few pages revealed to
me, as a Chess Master, one of the few supreme triumphs of the human
mind. It is incredible to me that such games were ever played over
the board. You are no player, I know, and therefore, you must take
my word for it that, if your Professor ever played them, he was one
of the world’s greatest geniuses, the Master of Masters, and that,
if he lost them his opponents, perhaps I might say his Opponent, was
not of this world. As he says, he lost every game, but his struggles
against this Thing were superb, incredible. I salute his shade. His
notes upon these games say all that is to be said. They are supreme,
they are final. It is a terrifying speculation, my friend, this
drama, this murder, this agony, this suicide, did they ever happen?
As one reads his pages and studies this quiet, this--how shall we
say?--this so deadly tale, its truth seems to flash from it. Or is it
some dream of genius? It terrifies me, as I say, this uncertainty,
for what other flaming and dreadful visions have come to the minds
of men and have been buried with them! I am, as you know, besides
a Chess Master, a mathematician and philosopher; my mind lives an
abstract life, and it is therefore a haunted mind, it is subject to
possession, it is sometimes not master in its house. Enough of this,
such thinking leads too far, unless it leads back again quickly on
its own tracks, back to everyday things--I express myself not too
well, I know--otherwise, it leads to that dim borderland in which the
minds of men like myself had better never trespass. We see the dim
yet beckoning peaks of that far country, far yet near--we had better
turn back!

“I have studied these games, until I have absorbed their mighty
teaching. I feel a sense of supremacy, an insolence, I feel as your
Professor did, that I am the greatest player in the world. I am due
to play in the great Masters’ Tournament at Lodz. We shall see. I
will write you again when it is over.
“Serge.”

Three months later I received another letter from him.

“J. C. Cary, M.D.

“My Friend,

“I am writing under the impulse of a strong excitement, I am unhappy,
I am--but let me tell you. I went to Lodz with a song in my brain,
for I felt I should achieve the aim of my life. I should be the
Master of Masters. Why then am I in this distress? I will tell you.
I was matched in the first round with the great Cuban, Primavera. I
had the white pieces. I opened as your Professor had opened in that
phantom tourney. All went well. I played my tenth move. Primavera
settled himself to analyse. I looked around the room. I saw, at
first with little interest, a stranger, tall, debonair, enter the
big swing door, and come towards my table. And then I remembered
your Professor’s tale, and I trembled. The stranger came up behind
my opponent’s chair and gave me _just that look_. A moment later
Primavera made his move, and I put out my hand and offered that
sacrifice, but, my friend, the hand that made that move _was not
my own_. Trembling and infinitely distressed, I saw the stranger
put his arm over Primavera’s shoulder, take his hand, guide it to a
piece, and thereby make that one complete answer to my move. I saw my
opponent go white, turn and glance behind him, and then he said, ‘I
feel unwell. I resign.’ ‘Monsieur,’ said I, ‘I do not like this game
either. Let us consider it a draw.’ And as I put out my hand to shake
his, it was my own hand again, and the stranger was not there.

“My friend, I rushed from the room back to my hotel, and I hurled
those games of supreme genius into the fire. For a time the paper
seemed as if it would not burn, and as if the lights went dim: two
shadows that were watching from the wall near the door grew vast
and filled the room. Then suddenly great flames shot up and roared
the chimney high, they blazed it seemed for hours, then as suddenly
died, and the fire, I saw, was out. And then I discovered that I had
forgotten every move in every one of those games, the recollection of
them had passed from me utterly. I felt a sense of infinite relief, I
was free again. Pray God, I never play them in my dreams!
“Serge.”

THE THIRD COACH

THE THIRD COACH

The only objection I have to the Royal Porwick Golf Club is that the sixth green is only separated by a narrow lane from the Royal Porwick Lunatic Asylum--or rather from its exercise enclosure--the saddest playground I have ever seen. So-called mad people fill me with dread, and yet a certain shamefaced fascination. “There, but for the grace of God, goes Martin Trout”; though why that grace stopped short of these poor lost souls is a curious mystery understood only by reverend gentlemen.

So whenever I was approaching the sixth green--a hole I played by some muscular aberration consistently well--I felt a flickering unease, hoping to Heaven the inmates were locked in their cells; yet if they were out at their pathetic exercises I could not keep my eyes off them.

There was one considerable compensation, however, in this proximity, for it was through it that I made the acquaintance of Lanton, one of the Asylum doctors. I not only took a strong personal liking for him, but he interested me deeply. He is a distinguished alienist, and passionately absorbed in the study of insanity, and yet at the same time he detests his job.

Many a time he has had to cancel a round with me, and nearly always for the same reason, that he has been assaulted by a patient. “Didn’t get the hyoscin hydrobromide (or whatever it was) in quite quick enough,” he will say, as he surveys me quizzingly yet wearily through a pair of rainbow eyes, “and the Asylum chairs are infernally hard. It took four of our strongest warders to keep him from creating a vacancy on the staff.” As time went on the strain began to tell, and he has lost his resiliency, but he has always remained a charming, and I felt heroic, person. He has promised to chuck it if he gets a definite danger signal, for he has the wrong temperament to resist the withering experiences of his day’s work much longer.

Those patients who are allowed out take their daily walk along a deserted bye-road which runs parallel to the third hole, and one day when I was playing with Lanton, that shuffling, damned parade was passing by just as I hit a quick, short hook into the hedge bordering the road. As I walked towards it my eye was caught by an individual walking alone and writing busily in a note-book. He was dressed in a round clerical hat, a “dog-collar,” a clerical frock-coat, a pair of riding breeches, and brown boots. As I approached he looked up at me with an extremely penetrating, cunning, and yet preoccupied expression on his face--and then he went on with his writing.

When we had finished the round I described him to Lanton, and asked who he was.

“The Reverend Wellington Scot,” he replied. “And a very curious case. If you would like to know more, come down to my study this evening. That’s all about him now.”

When I arrived at the Asylum, Lanton was just about to set out on his evening round.

He went to a drawer and got out a note-book. “Read this while I’m away. I’ll be back in about an hour. There are the drinks and Gold-flakes.”

When he had gone I picked up the note-book, and saw that it was filled with a very delicate script. I began to read.

* * * * *

I remember that the reason for my being in the Pantham district that day was that I was paying a visit to a widowed lady of means whom I wished to interest in a Benefit Scheme. (A Benefit Scheme is a scheme which benefits me.) I was “Mr. Robert Porter” on this occasion. Ten pounds richer than when I left it, I was approaching Pantham Station along a small road which topped the railway embankment. I noticed casually a train approaching--it was too early to be mine--when suddenly I saw sparks flashing up from it. It rocked violently, left the rails, and crashed into a bridge. I saw that the third coach was smashed to matchwood and bodies were hurled from it on to the side of the embankment. I started to run--not for assistance, as you might naturally but erroneously imagine, but to get the story through to the _Evening News_--which might well result in my returning £20 to the good.

Suddenly I stopped in my tracks, for I subconsciously realised there had been something very peculiar about that accident. What was it? And then I knew. _I had not heard a sound._ I ran back to the top of the embankment, and there was merely a placid row of metals shining in the sun.

Whereupon I sat down on the grass and thought things over. Like most superior men I am somewhat superstitious. I was, therefore, convinced that there was some reason why I, alone of all mankind, should have been vouchsafed this vision. The only supernatural personage for whom I have any respect is the Devil, for I believe he looks after his own, which is more than can be said for any of the more reputable deities. I regarded this singular apparition as a hint from him, and carefully recalled the hour of its occurrence in my note-book. I enquired casually at the station, and found there was no train passing Pantham at that time. The vision then probably referred to the future--to some new train not yet in Bradshaw. There were many conceivable ways by which I might benefit by a railway accident. The Editor of _Truth_, for example, might be in that third coach, or various other personages whose demise would not be regretted by me. Pursuing this train of thought I journeyed back to London.

Now I have described myself as a superior man. I had better explain that. A superior man is one who rises superior to his environment. All great moralists from Mr. Pecksniff to the Bishop of London would agree with me there.

Again, a superior man is one who, by grasping some simple principle concerning humanity and acting ingeniously upon that knowledge, makes a satisfactory livelihood. “Ninety-five per cent. of human beings are mugs,” for example, which is the one I have acted upon. The Bishop and Mr. Pecksniff might shake their heads over this, but I am convinced it is true.

My father followed a peculiar profession. He conveyed second-rate racehorses from one part of the globe to another. Sometimes he’d be conducting a brace of duds to Jamaica or over to Ireland or France. He received frequent bites and hacks from his charges, but he expected them and, I believe, was invariably kind to these glorified “screws.” Consequently he was away a great deal, but, as this traffic was sporadic, had much spare time, most of which he spent in conveying pints of stout from a pot to his belly.

My mother was a good-tempered slut, and the only quarrels she ever had with the Pater concerned their respective shares of that filthy fluid. Apart from her good temper and her thirst, there is nothing to record concerning her.

My father, a squat, bow-legged little gnome, had that complete, unquestioning belief in the mingled credulity and rascality of his fellow-men which those who are connected professionally with the Sport of Kings invariably share. “Racing,” he was wont to declare, “consists of mugs, bloody mugs, crooks, bloody crooks and ’orses.”

“And which are you?” asked my mother.

“I ain’t neither. I just helps the crooks to skin the mugs by movin’ about the ’orses. I’ve seen too much of it. I’ve seen blokes who was pretty artful at the doings in the ornery way become just too bloody silly whenever they ’ear the bookie’s chorus.”

He was so convinced of the peculiar opportunities afforded to bookmakers for plumbing the depths of human simplicity that he suggested having me apprenticed to their profession, but my mother threw a pot at his head for suggesting it. “I didn’t bear my boy to be a bookie,” was her inflexible decision. All the same, these repeated references to mugs and crooks had the effect of convincing my childish mind that the world was entirely peopled by these two classes. As an example of the lasting effect of those lessons learnt in infancy, I remain of that opinion to this day.

Most of the money for my education went to quenching my parents’ thirst, but I was taught to read and write, and acquired the rest myself. In my errand boy days the only literature I could afford was a newspaper, but this was sufficient to enable me to test the truth of my father’s generalisation. For the most part it seemed to me triumphantly to support it.

Let me give a few examples. The head of the firm for which I worked was one of the greatest commercial figures in England, and the papers frequently contained articles from his (secretary’s) pen dilating on the blessings of thrift, hard work and early marriage to “Miss Right”--yes, he actually used that expression. Yet everyone from the Managing Director to myself knew that he gambled wildly, ill-treated his wife, and kept a succession of decorative harpies labelled “dancing girls.”

Then one of our assistants helped herself to the till and was given three months. She was anæmic, scrawny, middle-aged, yet the papers described her as a “pretty girl.” I marked that down; obviously for some obscure reason the populace preferred their minor female criminals to be “pretty,” and the papers fostered this harmless inanity. I found eventually that this rule applies to all women under fifty who earn mentions in the Press.

Again. We resided in a semi-slum near the Marylebone Road, and one of our neighbours brought to a close an argument with another of our neighbours with a chopper. The papers described this as a “West-End Chopper Attack,” yet anything less “West-End,” as I understood the expression, than Milk Row was hard to imagine. I marked that, too. Obviously the populace found something more stimulating in a West-End Chopper Attack than in a Chopper Attack in other areas. This extraordinary psychological mystery took me some time to solve, but I learnt to understand it perfectly. And so as I matured and read and read and read, I realised that there is an absolute and comprehensive difference between life as it appears in the Press and life as it really is. I shall not enlarge upon that, for anyone who compares what he reads in the papers about Sex, Religion, Sport, Business, the Theatre, the many-coloured globe of human activity, with what he experiences himself, knows this to be beyond dispute. When I had proved to my satisfaction that my father was right I thought very hard. Ninety-five per cent. of human beings must _like_ to be mugs and mugged, I decided, must prefer soft tales to hard truths, they must find a solace and a stimulant in being incessantly bamboozled by the other five per cent., newspaper proprietors, bookies, bishops, financiers and politicians. Certainly there must be a percentage of mugs amongst these professional men, but roughly they represent my father’s “crooks,” in other words, exploiters of the mass credulity of the ninety-five per cent. This is not a thesis on human behaviour, so suffice it to say that I eventually definitely decided the inhabitants of Great Britain were ninety-five per cent. mugs and five per cent. crooks, and I used to find great amusement and instruction in following the workings of this truth down the most obscure and unexpected bye-ways of our comic civilisation. I was then eighteen, a very junior clerk. Not to act upon a profound conviction is laziness and cowardice, so I had to make up my mind which I was to be, mug or crook, exploiter or exploited.

With the necessity for this decision harshly exercising my mind, I went to the White City one evening to observe the reactions of humanity to the spectacle of a succession of thin, rather graceful hounds in pursuit of a metal mechanism, which I discovered about as much resembled a hare as poor Miss Flint resembled a “pretty girl.”

As a spectacle it had its points. That deep, dark pool circumscribed by a green and tan track, the focus for the eyes of ninety-five thousand half-wits and five thousand live-by-wits, the curious surging, harsh hum of the Worst Hundred Thousand, the sudden appearance in the distance of half-a-dozen tiny white two-legged figures with still tinier four-legged figures pacing beside them, wandering round the vast arena till they reached a sort of chicken house into which the two-legged hoisted the dangling four-legged, who, stirred by the sound of a bell and the sight of an individual ascending a peculiarly lousy tower, whimpered and grumbled and thrust eager paws through the bars. All this was admirably calculated to put the mugs into the right mood for the crooks’ purposes. I wandered about amongst the excited, liquor-sprung horde, fighting their way to rows of leather-lunged sharps who, wedged like unsavoury sardines, bellowed out their inane jargon, and exchanged pieces of cardboard with their lamentable faces gummed upon them for the silver and paper of the Triumphs of Evolution--and I made up my mind.

Some exploiter, a politician as far as I remember, once, in a gust of vote-snatching sentimentality, declared he was on the side of the angels; he would have been hard put to find an ally at the White City, and he would certainly not have found one in me.

It would be humiliating and debasing to be a Private in the ranks of muggery, far better to be an Officer and a crook. Only so could I keep my self-respect. I consider that this was the decision of a philosopher and a superior man, and I have never changed my opinion.

How to begin? I carefully studied the pages of _Truth_, an organ I have always found most useful; it is an encyclopædia of muggery. Its editor has kept on my track, but he is at a hopeless disadvantage, for there is a sucker born every minute and a reader of _Truth_ perhaps once a day, odds too great even for a Labouchere. The present editor is a charming personality, and I have to thank his ably conducted periodical for many of my most remunerative conceptions, but I’d have liked him in that third coach all the same.

I decided to make a beginning with a Begging Letter. It hardly sounded like that, for it was manly, suggesting rows of medals, a patient little wife, and many hostages to fortune. It ended with a pathetic suggestion of suicide, and a defiant repudiation of the dole. I sent this to a carefully selected list, and netted £84 13s. 2d., and then I knew that bounding sense of exhilaration which a man gains from finding that he is destined for success in his life’s work.

Shortly after, I noticed one who was clearly a policeman in mufti hanging about, so I changed my address. A week later _Truth_ had a paragraph about me, and was good enough to congratulate me on my epistolary skill, which, it suggested, would eventually bring me to a place where I should have few opportunities of exercising it.

My next conception concerned that shocking instance of human callousness, the Holiday Cat, or rather the cat that doesn’t get a holiday, or a square saucer of milk, when its thoughtless owner is at Southend. In a carefully composed epistle I reminded a large number of maiden ladies of this sickening victimisation, and stated that I should devote any funds provided to the cause of feline felicity. I enclosed with it a portrait of a tortoise-shell animal in an advanced state of emaciation. £122 10s. 3¾d. (and another change of address).

This time _Truth_ sat up and took notice. By a flash of genius it suggested that the honest victim of circumstances, “Wilfred Town,” and the humane Cat Lover, “John Reddy,” were one and the same person, and expressed the opinion that this combined individual was well worthy of mention in its Cautionary List.

From these crude beginnings I advanced to far greater subtlety and versatility, till I was making a steady £2,000 a year--sometimes more. But for one thing I could have retired long ago, and that is the scandalous and narrow-minded and anachronistic bar which prevents women from entering the Church of England Ministry. Clergymen are no good for charitable schemes, but they are invariably attracted by possibilities of getting a new suit of clothes by means of a little investment proposition. Maiden ladies, while they like a flutter at times, are splendidly charitable. The combination of these two--a maiden lady parson! Well, it’s time our legislators were up and doing.

I was convicted once, but knowing more than a little law got off on appeal, and _Truth’s_ exuberation was short-lived. I have had seventy-four aliases and seventy-four changes of address.

Except in their charitable aspect, I had practically no dealings with women for many years, but then it occurred to me that the right type might be useful to me for business purposes. There are many little jobs for which a woman is better than a man--one of them is getting money out of men. I didn’t mean to embark upon blackmail--it earns too long a sentence nowadays--and is extremely hazardous, but it is possible for women to get money from men without going to extreme lengths. I resolved to keep my eyes open. It was about this time that I had that curious experience at Pantham.