We returned to Cambridge in October, and Arthur threw himself
vigorously into the new year’s work. Then I fell ill, and the hope
we had indulged was disappointed. Worse, the course of the illness
revealed a condition which demanded the most complete series of
operations which a woman can endure. Not only the past hope, but all
future hope, was annihilated.
It was during my convalescence that the most remarkable incident of my
life took place.
I was in great pain one afternoon, and wished to see the doctor. The
nurse went to the study to telephone for him.
“Nurse!” I said, as she returned, “don’t lie to me. He’s not gone to
Royston; he’s got cancer, and is too upset to come.”
“Whatever next?” said the nurse.
“It’s right he can’t come, and I was going to tell you he had gone to
Royston; but I never heard nothing about no cancer.”
This was true; she had not been told. But the next morning we heard
that my “intuition” was correct.
As soon as I was well enough, we began our experiments again. My powers
had returned, and in triple force.
Arthur explained my “intuition” as follows: “The doctor (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, far-fetched 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 the movements of his lips.
Gradually as we worked, day by day, I found my grasp of detail ever
fuller. It is not only that I could read emotions; I could tell whether
he was thinking 3465822 or 3456822. In the year following my illness,
we made 436 experiments of this kind, each extending over several
hours; in all 9363, with only 122 failures, and these all, without
exception, partial.
The year following, our experiments were extended to a reading of his
dreams. In this I proved equally successful. My practice was to leave
the room before he woke, write down the dream that he had dreamt, and
await him at the breakfast table, where he would compare his record
with mine.
Invariably they were identical, with this exception, that my record was
always much fuller than his. He would nearly always, however, purport
to remember the details supplied by me; but this detail has (I think)
no real scientific value.
But what does it all matter, when I think of the horror impending?
V
That my only means of discovering Arthur’s thought was by
muscle-reading became more than doubtful during the third year of
our marriage. We practised “telepathy” unashamed. We excluded the
“muscle-reader” and the “super-auditor” 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 the appointed hour, he there to open and
read to himself a sealed packet given him by “some stranger met at
Pen-y-Pass during the week.” The experiment was entirely successful;
I reproduced every word of the document. If the “telepathy” is to be
vitiated, it is on the theory that I had previously met the “stranger”
and read from him what he would write in such circumstances! Surely
direct communication of mind with mind is an easier theory!
Had I known in what all this was to culminate, I suppose I should have
gone mad. Thrice fortunate that I can warn humanity of what awaits each
one. The greatest benefactor of his race will be he who discovers an
explosive indefinitely swifter and more devastating than dynamite. If I
could only trust myself to prepare Chloride of Nitrogen in sufficient
quantity ...