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1929 · PDF PAGE 29

The Stratagem and Other Stories

… follows: “The doc- tor (when you last saw him) did not know consciously that he had cancer; but subconsciously Nature gave warning. You read this subconsciously, and it sprang into your consciousness when you read on the nurse's face that he was ill.” This, farfetched as it may seem, at least avoids the shallow theories about “telepathy.” From this time my powers constantly increased. I could read my husband's thoughts from imperceptible movements of his face as easily as a trained deaf-mute can sometimes read the speech of a distant man from …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 30

The Stratagem and Other Stories

V That my only means of discovering Arthur's thought was by muscle-reading became more than doubtful dur- ing the third year of our marriage. We practised “telepa- thy” unashamed. We excluded the “muscle-reader” and the “superauditor” and the “human thermopile” by elaborate precautions; yet still I was able to read every thought of his mind. On our holiday in North Wales at Easter one year we separated for a week, at the end of that week he to be on the leeward, I on the windward side of Tryfan, at an appointed hour, he there to open and read t…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 38

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…, “Are you a woman?” “No,” said I, “I am my husband's colleague.” “I think it is suggestion. You have hypnotized him?” “Never: but I can read his thoughts.” “Yes, I remember now; I read a very remarkable paper in Mind two years ago.” “That was child's play. But let me go on with my work.” He gave some final instructions to the nurse, and went out. The suffering of Arthur was at this time unspeak- able. Chewed as he was into mere pulp that passed over the tongue of “Dis,” each bleeding fragment kept its own identity and his. The papillae of the …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 24

The Stratagem and Other Stories

THE TESTAMENT OF MAGDALEN BLAIR PART I I IN my third term at Newnham I was already Profes- sor Blair's favourite pupil. Later, he wasted a great deal of time praising my slight figure and my piquant face, with its big round grey eyes and their long black lashes; but the first attraction was my singular gift. Few men, and, I believe, no other women, could approach me in one of the most priceless qualifications for scientific study, the faculty of apprehending minute differences. My memory was poor, extraordinarily so; I had the ut- most trouble …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 40

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…ce caught sight of a coughing bog of bloody slime. “Let me pray.” A frenzied appeal to the Creator followed. Sincere as it was, it would read like irreverence in print. And then there came the cold-drawn horror of stark blasphemy against this God—who would not answer. Followed the bleak black agony of the conviction— the absolute certitude—“There is no God!” combined with a wave of frenzied wrath against the people who had so glibly assured him that there was, an almost ma- niac hope that they would suffer more than he, if it were possible. (Po…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 53

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…is most unusual in several respects. (1) I have never known her inaccurate in any state- ment of veritable fact. (2) She can undoubtedly read thoughts in an aston- ishing manner. In particular, she is actually useful to me by her ability to foretell attacks of acute insanity in my patients. Some hours before they occur she can predict them to a minute. On an early occasion my disbelief in her power led to the dangerous wounding of one of my attendants. (3) She combines a fixed determination of suicide (in the extraordinary manner described by h…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 27

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…p and down the terrace. I was quite suddenly impelled to turn my head to assure myself of his presence. This may seem nothing to you who read, unless you have true imagination. But think of yourself talking to a friend in full light, and suddenly leaning forward to touch him. “Arthur!” I cried, “Arthur!” The distress in my tone brought him running to my

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1929 · PDF PAGE 52

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…h menaces mankind. Every- thing is in order in these note-books; and I am free to die, for I can endure no more, and above all things I dread the onset of illness, and the possibility of natural or accidental death. NOTE I am glad to have the opportunity of publishing, in a journal so widely read by the profession, the MS. of the

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1929 · PDF PAGE 35

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…necessary to put the facts before mankind in a simple way so that they may seize the opportunity of the proper kind of suicide. I beg my readers most earnestly not to doubt my statements: the notes of our experiments, left in my will to the greatest thinker now living, Professor von Buhle, will make clear the truth of my relation, and the great and terrible necessity of immediate, drastic, action. PART II I THE stunning physical fact of my husband's illness was the immense prostration. So strong a body, as too often the convulsions gave proof; …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 31

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…at I write with such serious atti- tude of mind. I sometimes think that I have never had any thoughts of my own; that I have always been read- ing the thoughts of another, or perhaps of Nature. I seem only to have been a woman in those first few months of marriage. VII The six months following held for me nothing out of the ordinary, save that six or seven times I had dreams, vivid and terrible. Arthur had no share in these; yet I knew, I cannot say how, that they were his dreams and not mine; or rather that they were in his subconscious waking…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 43

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…stant and level as the fall of a star. There was not even a feel- ing of pace; infinitely fast as it must be, judging from the peculiar dread which it inspired, it was yet infinitely slow, having regard to the infinitude of the abyss. I took measures not to be disturbed by the duties that men—oh how foolishly!—pay to the dead: and I took refuge in a cigarette. It was now for the first time, strangely enough, that I began to consider the possibility of helping him. I analysed the position. It must be his thought, or I could not read it. I had no…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 19

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…graph. Na- kedness is lust: so ran his simple gospel of aesthetics. Shame quickened him, too, to measures of expiation or precaution. He read family prayers twice a day in- stead of once, and he took the chair at the Annual Meet- ing of a Society for Sending Out Trousers to Converted Hindoos. As everybody in the Midlands knows, “Hindoos” are Naked Savages.

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1929 · PDF PAGE 3

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…y,” cried the other. “What if I told you my story? There is no one here but ourselves.” He glared menacingly at Bevan, seemed to seek to read his soul. “Are you a man to be trusted?” he barked, and broke off short. At another time Bevan would most certainly have declined to become the confidant of a stranger; but here the solitude, the heat, not a little boredom induced by the previous manner of his companion, and even a cer- tain mistrust of how he might take a refusal, combined to elicit a favourable reply. Stately as an oak, Bevan answered, …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 36

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…pieces!” The horror of this thought was my conviction—then and now—that it represented perfect sanity and coher- ence of thought. For I dreaded utterly to think what such words might imply. At the door of the sick-room I was met by the male nurse, who asked me not to enter. Uncontrollably, I asked, “Is he dead?” and though Arthur lay absolutely senseless on the bed I read the answering thought “Dead!” silently pronounced in such tones of mockery, horror, cynicism and despair as I never thought to hear. There was a something or somebody who suff…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 33

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…again.” He tried. Again I was cut off from his thought, al- though his face was twitching so that one might have said that any one might read his mind. “I have been looking in the wrong place,” said he suddenly, but very quietly and without moving. “The thing I want lies at the base of the spine.” This time I saw. In a blue heaven was coiled an infi- nite snake of gold and green, with four eyes of fire, black fire and red, that darted rays in every direction; held within its coils was a great multitude of laughing children. And even as I looked…

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