“Yes?”
“It was quite arbitrary. We might have chosen ten years, or a hundred, but we just picked on fifty. And we got astonishingly close, too, Mother, quite remarkably close. Only a four day calendar error in fifty years. It’s staggered us. The thing we’ve got to do now is to find out that source of error, but if you’d asked any of us to bet”
“Yes, dear, I’m sure it was quite wonderful. But what happened?”
Oh, sorry. Well, as I said, it was an accident. We only had the thing switched on for three or four seconds and he must have walked slap into the field of coincidence right then. An outside a millions-to-one chance. I wish it had not happened, but we couldn’t possibly know…”
She turned her head on the pillow.
“No. You couldn’t know,” she agreed. “And then?”
“Nothing, really. We didn’t know until jenny answered your bell to find you in a faint, and this chap, Arthur, all gone to pieces, and sent for me.
“One of the girls helped to get you to bed. Doctor Sole arrived, and took a look at you. Then he pumped some kind of tranquilliser into this Arthur. The poor fellow needed it, too one hell of a thing to happen when all you were expecting was a game of tennis with your best girl.
“When he’d quietened down a bit he told us who he was, and where he’d come from. Well, there was a thing for you! Accidental living proof at the first shot.
“But all he wanted, poor devil, was to get back just as soon as he could. He was very distressed quite a painful business. Doctor Sole wanted to put him right under to stop him cracking altogether. It looked that way, too and it didn’t look as if he’d be any better when he came round again, either.
“We didn’t know if we could send him back. Transference “forward,” to put it crudely, can be regarded as an infinite acceleration of a natural progression, but the idea of transference “back” is full of the most disconcerting implications once you start thinking about it. There was quite a bit of argument, but Doctor Sole clinched it. If there was a fair chance, he said, the chap had a right to try, and we had an obligation to try to undo what we’d done to him. Apart from that, if we did not try we should certainly have to explain to someone how we come to have a raving loony on our hands, and fifty years off course, so to speak.
“We tried to make it clear to this Arthur that we couldn’t be sure that it would work in reverse and that, anyway, there was this four day calendar error, so at best it wouldn’t be exact. I don’t think he really grasped that. The poor fellow was in a wretched state; all he wanted was just a chance any kind of chance to get out of here. He was simply one track.
“So we decided to take the risk after all, if it turned out not to be possible he’d well, he’d know nothing about it or nothing would happen at all…
“The generator was still on the same setting. We put one fellow on to that, took this Arthur back to the path by your room, and got him lined up there.
“Now walk forward,” we told him. “Just as you were walking when it happened.” And we gave the switch on signal. What with the doctor’s dope and one thing and another he was pretty groggy, but he did his best to pull himself together. He went forward at a kind of stagger. Literal-minded fellow; he was half-crying, but in a queer sort of voice he was trying to sing: “Everybody’s doin” it, do 7))
“And then he disappeared just vanished completely.” He paused, and added regretfully: “All the evidence we have now is not very convincing one tennis-racket, practically new, but vintage, and one straw hat, ditto.”
Mrs Dolderson lay without speaking. He said: “We did our best, Mother. We could only try.”
“Of course you did, dear. And you succeeded. It wasn’t your fault that you couldn’t undo what you’d done… No, I was just wondering what would have happened if it had been a few minutes earlier or later, and you had switched your machine on. But I don’t suppose that could have happened… You wouldn’t have been here at all if it had…”
He regarded her a little uneasily.
“What do you mean, Mother?”
“Never mind, dear. It was, as you said, an accident. At least, I suppose it was though so many important things seem to be accidents that one does sometimes wonder if they aren’t really written somewhere..
Harold looked at her, trying to make something of that, then decided to ask: “But what makes you think that we did succeed in getting him back, Mother?”
“Oh, I know you did, dear. For one thing I can very clearly remember the day I read in the paper that Lieutenant Arthur Waring Batley had been awarded a D. S. O. sometime in November nineteen-fifteen. I think it was.
“And, for another, I have just had a letter from your sister.”
“From Cynthia? How on earth does she come into it?”
“She wants to come and see us. She is thinking of getting married again, and she’d like to bring the young man, well, not such a very young man, I suppose down here to show him.”
“That’s all right, but I don’t see”
“She thinks you might find him interesting. Re’s a physicist.”
“But”
Mrs Dolderson took no notice of the interruption. She went on: “Cynthia tells me his name is Batleyand he’s the son of a Colonel Arthur Waring Batley, D.S.0., of Nairobi, Kenya.”
“You mean, he’s the son of?”
“So it would seem, dear. Strange, isn’t it?” She reflected a moment, and added: “I must say that if these things are written, they do sometimes seem to be written in a very queerly distorted way, don’t you think.
Random Quest
The sound of a car coming to a stop on the gravel caused Dr Harshom to look at his watch. He closed the book in which he had been writing, put it away in one of his desk drawers, and waited. Presently Stephens opened the door to announce: “Mr Trafford, sir.”
The doctor got up from his chair, and regarded the young man who entered, with some care. Mr Cohn Trafford turned out to be presentable, just in his thirties, with brown hair curling slightly, clean shaven, a suit of good tweed well cut, and shoes to accord. He looked pleasant enough though not distinguished. It would not be difficult to meet thirty or forty very similar young men in a day. But when he looked more closely, as the doctor now did, there were signs of fatigue to be seen, indications of anxiety in the expression and around the eyes, a strained doggedness in the set of the mouth.
They shook hands.
“You’ll have had a long drive,” said the doctor. “I expect you’d like a drink. Dinner won’t be for half an hour yet.” The younger man accepted, and sat down. Presently, he said: “It was kind of you to invite me here, Dr Harshom.”
“Not really altruistic,” the doctor told him. “It is more satisfactory to talk than to correspond by letter. Moreover, I am an inquisitive man recently retired from a very humdrum country practice, Mr Trafford, and on the rare occasions that I do catch the scent of a mystery my curiosity urges me to follow it up.” He, too, sat down.
“Mystery?” repeated the young man.
“Mystery,” said the doctor.
The young man took a sip of his whisky.
“My enquiry was such as one might receive from, well, from any solicitor’, he said.
“But you are not a solicitor, Mr Trafford.”
“No,” Cohn Trafford admitted, “I am not.”
“But you do have a very pressing reason for your enquiry. So there is the mystery. What pressing, or indeed leisurely, reason could you have for enquiries about a person of whose existence you yourself appear to be uncertain and of whom Somerset House has no record?”