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1929 · PDF PAGE 7

The Stratagem and Other Stories

… “my grandmother was pure Eng- lish, a Higginbotham, one of the Warwickshire Hig- ginbothams” (what has that to do with his stupid- ity? thought Bevan) “and the majority of my compan- ions were men not only devoid of intelligence, but of education. The one pinnacled exception was the great Dodu—ha! you start?” Bevan had not done anything of the sort; he had continued to exhibit the most stolid in- difference to the story. “Yes, you are not mistaken; it was indeed the world- famous philosopher, the discoverer of Dodium, rarest of known elements,…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 45

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…l. This ocean seemed to be limitless. It fell headlong into it, and the splash awak- ened it to a new consciousness of things. This sea, though infinitely cold, was boiling like tu- bercles. Itself a more or less homogeneous slime, the stench of which is beyond all human conception (human language is singularly deficient in words that describe smell and taste; we always refer our sensations to things generally known)2 it constantly budded into greenish boils with angry red craters, whose jagged edges were of a livid white; and from these issued…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 38

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…u 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 tongue we…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 13

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…fourth of September; their leader divided by the letters of the Vic- tim of the Eighth of Thermidor.’ ‘Crillon was unfortunate that day, though braver than ever.’ “Such were the indications from which I sought to piece together our plan of escape! “Perhaps rather by intuition than by reason, I gath- ered from some two hundred of such clues that the guards Bertrand, Rolland, and Monet, had been bribed, and also promised advancement, and (above all) re- moval from the hated Island, should they connive at our escape. It seemed that the Government …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 17

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…ng somebody know where he was— and at home they supposed him to be visiting a business acquaintance in Shropshire. I'll have a mementum, thought he, if I die for it. I’ll—I don’t care. I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb— I'll go the whole hog. I know there's shops about here. So, turning, in his excitement and determination, he saw when you invoke the devil he is usually half-way to you—a shop window full of photographs of the pictures and sculptures of the Louvre. He looked up and down the street—the sight of a top hat might have save…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 16

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…irst step downward! The air of Paris in- toxicated him; the Grands Boulevards ate into his moral fibre like a dragon chewing butter; and though he had not actually ‘been in’ anywhere, he felt the atmosphere of the music-halls as Ulysses heard the Sirens. He was fortunately tied to the mast of his ignorance of French and his fear of asking anybody such a very peculiar question, or he would certainly have discovered and vis- ited the Moulin Rouge. As it was, Joan of Arc was very much more than was good for him. He stared, fascinated as by a basil…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 5

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…e not guillo- tined?” “I was not, sir,” retorted the other passionately. “At that time capital punishment was never inflicted in France, though not officially abrogated. I may say,” he added, with the pride of a legislator, “that my action lent considerable strength to the agitation which led to its reintroduction. “No, sir, I was not guillotined. I was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in Devil’s Island.” He shud- dered. “Can you imagine that accursed Isle? Can your fancy paint one tithe of its horror? Can nightmare itself shadow that infern…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 47

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…an- dle, or else takes monstrous forms. Here was the overwhelming truth; in death man lives again, and lives for ever. Yet we might have thought of it; the phantasmagoria of life which throng the mind of a drowning man might have suggested something of the sort to any man with a sympathetic and active imagination. Worse even than the thoughts themselves was the apprehension of the thoughts ere they arose. Carbun- cles, boils, ulcers, cancers, there is no equivalent for these pustules of the bowels of hell, into whose seething convolutions Arthu…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 20

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…g on Sunday. But if these expedients salved his conscience, they did nothing to quell Gertrude's incipient tendency to in- dependence of thought and action. There had been a very unpleasant scene when he threw into the fire a book from Mudie’s (I thought one could have trusted Mudie’s!) called ‘The Stolen Bacillus,’ which he under- stood to be of a grossly immoral tendency. (Nasty filth about free love or something, isn't it?) Theodore Bugg was not a sensitive man; excess of intuitive sympathy had not made his life a hell; but he felt that his …

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1929 · PDF PAGE 1

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…untry that tolerates it, to the civilisation that permits that such things should be. The same thing happened to me here last year, sir, though luckily on that occasion I had but half-an-hour to wait. But I wrote to The Times a strong half-column letter on the subject, and I’m damned if they didn’t re- fuse to print it. Of course, our independent press, etc.; I might have known. I tell you, sir, this country is run by a ring, a dirty ring, a gang of Jews, Scotchmen, Irish, Welsh—where’s the good old jolly True Blue English- man? In the cart, si…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 36

The Stratagem and Other Stories

…ning of Servetus would have turned pitiful had he heard it, so perfectly did it express quintessence of damnation. Now then my husband's thought seemed to have changed places with the other. It was below, within, withdrawn. said to myself, “He is dead!” Then came Ar- thur's thought, “I had better pretend to be mad. It will save her, perhaps; and it will be a change. I shall pre- tend I have killed her with an axe. Damn it! I hope she is not listening.” I was now thoroughly awake, and told the driver to get home quickly. “I hope she is killed in…

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1929 · PDF PAGE 33

The Stratagem and Other Stories

… (temporarily) disap- peared almost entirely under the treatment of a very skilful doctor at that Spa, a Dr. Barbezieux, a most kind and thoughtful man. “I am going to try,” said Arthur, “to penetrate my- self. Am I an animal, and is the world without a pur- pose? Or am I a soul in a body? Or am I, one and indi- visible in some incredible sense, a spark of the infinite light of God? I am going to think inwards: I shall possi- bly go into some form of trance, unintelligible to myself. You may be able to interpret it.” The experiment had lasted a…

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