Free The Polyglots by William Gerhardie Page B

scrap of evidence on the subject he would scribble it down on a buff slip and then send it in to me (whom he had now entrusted to keep the file), with the words: ‘Please attach this slip, by a pin, to confidential file, entitled “The Lost Report of Sir Hugo Culpit”.’ And in a humorous vein I had written on the slip in imitation of Sir Hugo’s manner:
    Please state
what
pin:
    1. (
a
) An ordinary pin; (
b
) a safety-pin; (
c
) a drawing-pin; (
d
) a hair-pin; (
e
) a linch-pin.
    2. What make and size
    and sent the slip back to Sir Hugo.
    I thought that Sir Hugo would rejoice over this slip, it being so very much in accordance with his own methods of procedure. Not so indeed. Sir Hugo hated people like himself, because they acted as a sort of caricature of himself: served to remind him of a fact of which in his more open moments with himself he was dimly conscious—that he was to a large degree absurd.
    But when I was called before Sir Hugo and reprimanded for my levity, I felt it to be my best course to maintain a sort of honest, stupid face as if in testimony of my innocence; and Sir Hugo may have believed me.
    And yesterday—two months later!—the prodigal report had returned to the office. To the unspeakable horror of Sir Hugo it was found in an empty oat sack at the distant wharf of Egerscheldt, and Sir Hugo now broke his head as to how it could have possibly got there. He was determined to trace back its journey to the office, even if that should cost him his health.
    He had convened a special conference comprising all the heads of departments and told us of the mysterious circumstances. ‘We must begin,’ he said, ‘right at the beginning. There is, in fact, many a worse point to begin at. I am not entirely pessimistic. We’ve got the sack. That is all right. Beyond the sack we know nothing. Now here is the sack.’ He stretched out the sack. ‘I suggest, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘that you work backwards. The first thing to do is to trace the manufacturers of the sack.’ The task was entrusted to me.
    Is it to be wondered at that I fell ill?

14
    IT WAS WINTER, CLEAN, WHITE, CRISP, IMPENETRABLE. All around me—the bay and the hillocks—was covered as with a tablecloth. I lay in bed, ill, and dreamed into the future, back into the past. Long, peaceful thoughts. In those still twilight hours when you lie on your back you float as if outside and beside life, draw from the deep well of inhibited emotion that dreamy substance which underlies our daily life, remove layer after layer of ‘atmosphere’, veil after veil of mood, cloud after cloud of misty oblivion, till your soul shines forth like a star on a frosty night. What is that soul of yours, and is it
you
? My
I
, as I now came to see, has always been changing, was never the same, never myself, but always looked forward—to what? Perhaps we change our souls even as the serpents are said to change their skins. There are feelings awaiting me I know nothing of yet. When I shall know them, they will have added to my ever-changing soul—towards the ultimate totality of God.
    Alone, in the deep silence of the night, we steal up to the door. We pause. We press the handle. The door is locked. We die: the door is open, and we enter. The room is empty, but at the other end we see a door. We press the handle. It is locked.
    And so for ever …
    Sir Hugo sent a note to Major Beastly, which ran:
    Please say:
    1. Have you, or have you not, as yet, taken steps to cause a doctor to be sent to see your friend?
    2. If so, (
a
) what step; (
b
) what date; (
c
) what time; (
d
) what doctor?
    But Major Beastly, as he was about to bestir himself on my behalf, had an attack of dysentery, and the matter was indefinitely postponed. And only my sleepy apathetic batman Pickup washere to look after me as I lay, lost in a cloud of timeless thought, in the last grips of influenza. We are like icebergs in the ocean: one-eighth part consciousness and the rest submerged beneath