The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Six More Read online

  "Would you mind if I tested you on that?" I asked.

  "Not at all," he answered.

  "I don't have a sheet of metal," I said. "But the door will do just as well."

  I stood up and went to the bookshelf. I took down the first book that came to hand. It was Alice in Wonderland. I opened the door and asked my visitor to stand behind it, out of sight. I opened the book at random and propped it on a chair the other side of the door to him. Then I stationed myself in a position where I could see both him and the book.

  "Can you read that book?" I asked him.

  "No," he answered. "Of course not."

  "All right. You may now put your hand around the door, but only the hand."

  He slid his hand around the edge of the door until it was within sight of the book. Then I saw the fingers on the hand parting from one another, spreading wide, beginning to quiver slightly, feeling the air like the antennae of an insect. And the hand turned so that the back of it was facing the book.

  "Try to read the left page from the top," I said.

  There was silence for perhaps ten seconds, then smoothly, without pause, he began to read: " 'Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. 'No, I give it up,' Alice replied. 'What's the answer?' 'I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter. 'Nor I,' said the Hare. Alice sighed wearily. 'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste it asking riddles with no answers. . .' "

  "It's perfect!" I cried. "Now I believe you! You are a miracle!" I was enormously excited.

  "Thank you, doctor," he said gravely. "What you say gives me great pleasure."

  "One question," I said. "It's about the playing-cards. When you held up the reverse side of one of them, did you put your hand around the other side to help you to read it?"

  "You are very perceptive," he said. "No, I did not. In the case of the cards, I was actually able to see through them in some way."

  "How do you explain that?" I asked.

  "I don't explain it," he said. "Except perhaps that a card is such a flimsy thing, it is so thin, and not solid like metal or thick like a door. That is all the explanation I can give. There are many things in this world, doctor, that we cannot explain."

  "Yes," I said. "There certainly are."

  "Would you be kind enough to take me home now," he said. "I feel very tired."

  I drove him home in my car.

  That night I didn't go to bed. I was far too worked up to sleep. I had just witnessed a miracle. This man would have doctors all over the world turning somersaults in the air! He could change the whole course of medicine! From a doctor's point of view, he must be the most valuable man alive! We doctors must get hold of him and keep him safe. We must look after him. We mustn't let him go. We must find out exactly how it is that an image can be sent to the brain without using the eyes. And if we do that, then blind people might be able to see and deaf people might be able to hear. Above all, this incredible man must not be ignored and left to wander around India, living in cheap rooms and playing in second-rate theatres.

  I got so steamed up thinking about this that after a while I grabbed a notebook and a pen and started writing down with great care everything that Imhrat Khan had told me that evening. I used the notes I had made while he was talking. I wrote for five hours without stopping. And at eight o'clock the next morning, when it was time to go to the hospital, I had finished the most important part, the pages you have just read.

  At the hospital that morning, I didn't see Dr Marshall until we met in the Doctors' Rest Room in our tea-break.

  I told him as much as I could in the ten minutes we had to spare. "I'm going back to the theatre tonight," I said. "I must talk to him again. I must persuade him to stay here. We mustn't lose him now."

  "I'll come with you," Dr Marshall said.

  "Right," I said. "We'll watch the show first and then we'll take him out to supper."

  At a quarter to seven that evening, I drove Dr Marshall in my car to Acacia Road. I parked the car, and the two of us walked over to the Royal Palace Hall.

  "There's something wrong," I said. "Where is everybody?"

  There was no crowd outside the hall and the doors were closed. The poster advertising the show was still in place, but I now saw that someone had written across it in large printed letters, using black paint, the words TONIGHT'S PERFORMANCE CANCELLED. There was an old gatekeeper standing by the locked doors.

  "What happened?" I asked him.

  "Someone died," he said.

  "Who?" I asked, knowing already who it was.

  "The man who sees without his eyes," the gatekeeper answered.

  "How did he die?" I cried. "When? Where?"

  "They say he died in his bed," the gatekeeper said. "He went to sleep and never woke up. These things happen."

  We walked slowly back to the car. I felt an overwhelming sense of grief and anger. I should never have allowed this precious man to go home last night. I should have kept him. I should have given him my bed and taken care of him. I shouldn't have let him out of my sight. Imhrat Khan was a maker of miracles. He had communicated with mysterious and dangerous forces that are beyond the reach of ordinary people. He had also broken all the rules. He had performed miracles in public. He had taken money for doing so. And, worst of all, he had told some of those secrets to an outsider -- me. Now he was dead.

  "So that's that," Dr Marshall said.

  "Yes," I said. "It's all over. Nobody will ever know how he did it."

  This is a true and accurate report of everything that took place concerning my two meetings with Imhrat Khan.

  signed John F. Cartwright, M.D.

  Bombay, 4th December, 1934

  "Well, well, well," said Henry Sugar. "Now that is extremely interesting."

  He closed the exercise-book and sat gazing at the rain splashing against the windows of the library.

  "This," Henry Sugar went on, talking aloud to himself, "is a terrific piece of information. It could change my life."

  The piece of information Henry was referring to was that Imhrat Khan had trained himself to read the value of a playing-card from the reverse side. And Henry the gambler, the rather dishonest gambler, had realized at once that if only he could train himself to do the same thing, he could make a fortune.

  For a few moments, Henry allowed his mind to dwell upon the marvellous things he would be able to do if he could read cards from the back. He would win every single time at canasta and bridge and poker. And better still, he would be able to go into any casino in the world and clean up at blackjack and all the other high-powered card games they played!

  In gambling casinos, as Henry knew very well, nearly everything depended in the end upon the turn of a single card, and if you knew beforehand what the value of that card was, then you were home and dry!

  But could he do it? Could he actually train himself to do this thing?

  He didn't see why not. That stuff with the candle-flame didn't appear to be particularly hard work. And according to the book, that was really all there was to it -- just staring into the middle of the flame and trying to concentrate upon the face of the person you loved best.

  It would probably take him several years to bring it off, but then who in the world wouldn't be willing to train for a few years in order to beat the casinos every time he went in?

  "By golly," he said aloud, "I'll do it! I'm going to do it!"

  He sat very still in the armchair in the library, working out a plan of campaign. Above all, he would tell nobody what he was up to. He would steal the little book from the library so that none of his friends might come upon it by chance and learn the secret. He would carry the book with him wherever he went. It would be his bible. He couldn't possibly go out and find a real live yogi to instruct him, so the book would be his yogi instead. It would be his teacher.

  Henry stood up and slipped the slim blue exercise-book under his jacket. He walked out of the library and went straight up