The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl Volume 1 Read online

  I was stung. "There are no limits to my endurance," I said.

  "Rubbish," Henri said. "I refuse to take chances. That is why I have engaged the fittest and strongest young man I could find."

  "You mean you've already done this?"

  "Certainly I have," Henri said. "I am excited and impatient. I want to get on. The boy will be here any minute."

  "Who is he?"

  "A professional boxer."

  "Good God."

  "His name is Pierre Lacaille. I am paying him one thousand francs for the job."

  "How did you find him?"

  "I know a lot more people than you think, Oswald. I am not a hermit."

  "Does the man know what he's in for?"

  "I have told him that he is to participate in a scientific experiment that has to do with the psychology of sex. The less he knows the better."

  "And the woman? Who will you use there?"

  "Simone, of course," Henri said. "She is a scientist in her own right. She will be able to observe the reactions of the male even more closely than me."

  "That she will," I said. "Does she realize what might happen to her?"

  "Very much so. And I had one hell of a job persuading her to do t. I had to point out that she would be participating in a demonstration that will go down in history. It will be talked about for hundreds of years."

  "Nonsense," I said.

  "My dear sir, through the centuries there are certain great epic moments of scientific discovery that are never forgotten. Like the time when Dr Horace Wells of Hartford, Connecticut, had a tooth pulled out in 1844."

  "What was so historic about that?"

  "Dr Wells was a dentist who had been playing about with nitrous oxide gas. One day, he got a terrible toothache. He knew the tooth would have to come out, and he called in another dentist to do the job. But first he persuaded his colleague to put a mask over his face and turn on the nitrous oxide. He became unconscious and the tooth was extracted and he woke up again as fit as a flea. Now that, Oswald, was the first operation ever performed in the world under general anaesthesia. It started something big. We shall do the same."

  At this point, the doorbell rang. Henri grabbed a pair of noseplugs and carried them with him to the door. And there stood Pierre, the boxer. But Henri would not allow him to enter until the plugs were rammed firmly up his nostrils. I believe the fellow came thinking he was going to act in a blue film, but the business with the plugs must have quickly disillusioned him. Pierre Lacaille was a bantamweight, small, muscular, and wiry. He had a flat face and a bent nose. He was about twenty-two and not very bright.

  Henri introduced me, then ushered us straight into the adjoining laboratory where Simone was working. She was standing by the lab bench in a white overall, writing something in a notebook.

  She looked up at us through thick glasses as we came in. The glasses had a white plastic frame.

  "Simone," Henri said, "this is Pierre Lacaille." Simone looked at the boxer but said nothing. Henri didn't bother to introduce me.

  Simone was a slim thirtyish woman with a pleasant scrubbed face. Her hair was brushed back and plaited into a bun. This, together with the white spectacles, the white overall, and the white skin of her face, gave her a quaint antiseptic air. She looked as though she had been sterilised for thirty minutes in an autoclave and should be handled with rubber gloves. She gazed at the boxer with large brown eyes.

  "Let's get going," Henri said. "Are you ready?"

  "I don't know what's going to happen," the boxer said. "But I'm ready." He did a little dance on his toes.

  Henri was also ready. He had obviously worked the whole thing out before I arrived. "Simone will sit in that chair," he said, pointing to a plain wooden chair set in the middle of the laboratory. "And you, Pierre, will stand on the six-metre mark with your noseplugs still in."

  There were chalk lines on the floor indicating various distances from the chair, from half a metre up to six metres.

  "I shall begin by spraying a small quantity of liquid on to the lady's neck," Henri went on addressing the boxer. "You will then remove your noseplugs and start walking slowly toward her." To me he said, "I wish first of all to discover the effective range, the exact distance he is from the subject when the molecules hit."

  "Does he start with his clothes on?" I asked.

  "Exactly as he is now."

  "And is the lady expected to cooperate or to resist?"

  "Neither. She must be a purely passive instrument in his hands."

  Simone was still looking at the boxer. I saw her slide the end of her tongue slowly over her lips.

  "This perfume," I said to Henri, "does it have any effect upon a woman?"

  "None whatsoever," he said. "That is why I am sending Simone out now to prepare the spray." The girl went into the main laboratory, closing the door behind her.

  "So you spray something on the girl and I walk toward her," the boxer said. "What happens then?"

  "We shall have to wait and see," Henri said. "You are not worried, are you?"

  "Me, worried?" the boxer said. "About a woman?"

  "Good boy," Henri said. Henri was becoming very excited. He went hopping from one end of the room to the other, checking and rechecking the position of the chair on its chalk mark and moving all breakables such as glass beakers and bottles and test-tubes off the bench on to a high shelf. "This isn't the ideal place," he said, "but we must make the best of it." He tied a surgeon's mask over the lower part of his face, then handed one to me.

  "Don't you trust the noseplugs?"

  "It's just an extra precaution," he said. "Put it on."

  The girl returned carrying a tiny stainless-steel spray-gun. She gave the gun to Henri. Henri took a stop watch from his pocket. "Get ready, please," he said. "You Pierre, stand over there on the six-metre mark." Pierre did so. The girl seated herself in the chair. It was a chair without arms. She sat very prim and upright in her spotless white overall with her hands folded on her lap, her knees together. Henri stationed himself behind the girl. I stood to one side. "Are we ready?" Henri cried.

  "Wait," said the girl. It was the first word she had spoken. She stood up, removed her spectacles, placed them on a high shelf, then returned to her seat. She smoothed the white overall along her thighs, then clasped her hands together and laid them again on her lap.

  "Are we ready now?" Henri said.

  "Let her have it," I said. "Shoot."

  Henri aimed the little spray-gun at an area of bare skin just below Simone's ear. He pulled the trigger. The gun made a soft hiss and a fine misty spray came out of its nozzle.

  "Pull your noseplugs out!" Henri called to the boxer as he skipped quickly away from the girl and took up a position next to me. The boxer caught hold of the strings dangling from his nostrils and pulled. The vaselined plugs slid out smoothly.

  "Come on, come on!" Henri shouted. "Start moving! Drop the plugs on the floor and come forward slowly!" The boxer took a pace forward. "Not so fast!" Henri cried. "Slowly does it! That's better! Keep going! Keep going! Don't stop!" He was crazy with excitement, and I must admit I was getting a bit worked up myself. I glanced at the girl. She was crouching in the chair, just a few yards away from the boxer, tense, motionless, watching his every move, and I found myself thinking about a white female rat I had once seen in a cage with a huge python. The python was going to swallow the rat and the rat knew it, and the rat was crouching very low and still, hypnotized, transfixed, utterly fascinated by the slow advancing movements of the snake.

  The boxer edged forward.

  As he passed the five-metre mark, the girl unclasped her hands. She laid them palms downwards on her thighs. Then she changed her mind and placed them more or less underneath her buttocks, gripping the seat of the chair on either side, bracing herself, as it were, against the coming onslaught.

  The boxer had just passed the two-metre mark when the smell hit him. He stopped dead. His eyes glazed and he swayed on his legs as though he had