Here and Hereafter Part 36

"'I wish,' I said, 'that you were a poor man wanting money with which to carry on your experiments. If I offered to finance you perhaps you would let me witness some of them. I love nothing better than to see something new.'

"'I do not want any money,' he answered laughing. 'My workshop is near here, and I will show it to you if you care to take the risk of coming.'

"'I will come,' I replied, 'with pleasure.'

"And we both walked out together. He took me up a side-street, and then up a precipitous staircase to the first floor of a dingy-looking house.

He had three large rooms there, opening into one another. He made me wait in the first, which was somewhat poorly furnished as a library, and he went through into the others. After about ten minutes he came back and fetched me through the second room, where a lot of things were cooking over tiny little spirit lamps, and into the third. The third was furnished as the first, but it was much more luxurious. He opened a corner cupboard and took down an ordinary gla.s.s stopper bottle, unlabelled and containing a colourless liquid.

"'That is it,' he said smiling; 'that is what makes all things new.'

"Of course by this time I knew he was cracked, but I asked him how.

"'After frequent inhalations of this scent,' he said, 'one loses all sense of limitations or conditions. One believes that one can walk straight through a brick wall, or fly in the air, or live in the year one, or in the year two million, or in any intervening year. One is sure that he can do anything which it occurs to him that he would like to do.

One has a feeling of complete omnipotence, and that means a feeling of complete happiness. No one conscious of a limitation can be completely happy. At present the effects are very transient, but I may be able to improve upon that.'

"'One moment,' I said. 'This scent does not really remove limitations and conditions.'

"'Subjectively, yes, objectively, no; but that matters little. Nothing can be unreal to us at the time that we fully believe it to be real. It is because the effects are illusive that I now refrain from experimenting with myself unless there is someone in the room with me.

It is a hard struggle to keep off it. Frankly, I was very glad when you suggested that you should come here. Now, watch me.'

"He removed the stopper, and for perhaps two minutes continued to inhale the perfume. Then he put the stopper back again in the bottle and set it down on the table by his side. He did not change in appearance in the least. Half-jokingly I asked him if he could now write stories like Mr Rudyard Kipling.

"'Better,' he said, 'infinitely better. They are nothing. I will show you one very short thing.'

"He took paper, pen and ink, and covered one sheet with feverish haste.

Then he handed it to me with an air of triumph. It was absolute nonsense from beginning to end, and absolutely incoherent. There were phrases in it which we had used in our conversation, phrases which he might have seen in advertis.e.m.e.nts on h.o.a.rdings, two or three lines of a song which is very popular just now, the whole strung together anyhow. I looked over it.

"'Capital,' I said; 'and can you fly?'

"'Of course.' He got up and opened the window. I let him climb up on the ledge, where a nervous man would certainly have fallen. I saved him only just in time, and he was angry with me. As I told him unfortunately I was not able to fly and wished for his company, he sat down and talked rubbish about the things which he said he could do for about five minutes. Then he stretched himself and yawned.

"'It has pa.s.sed off now,' he said. I had a long argument with him, but it was of no use. He would not give up the bottle and he would not promise to leave it alone in the future, and he would not tell me what he called it. To irritate him I said that the whole thing was a fraud from beginning to end; the bottle contained water, and nothing else. I picked it up, took a long sniff at it, and went out.

"In the street a moment later I called a cabman and told him to drive to Downing Street. I wanted to show Lord Salisbury the means of destroying any nation. I had the power of destroying any nation, and I wished to use it for the benefit of England. Long before the cab reached Downing Street I also stretched my arms and yawned, and knew that the effect had gone off. I drove back to my chambers.

"To-day I read of the suicide. He had tried to fly and he did it because I suggested it to him when he was in that state the other day. It was my fault, really."

He picked up his second gla.s.s of brandy and began sipping it. He talked it over for a long time, but he would not contradict himself or be shaken in any way.

It is at any rate perfectly true that at the sale of the suicide's property he made some large purchases. I found that out afterwards from the auctioneer.

He is living abroad now.