The Dark Frontier

Physicist, of Imperial College, University of London

T
he events in this book comprise, I am told, an account of my life during the period April 17th to May 26th of last year.

This I am unable either to confirm or to deny. I have been shown a photograph, taken by a press photographer and forwarded by the British Consul in Ixania,
^*
in which a person resembling myself can be seen alighting from a large car at the steps of the Chamber of Deputies in Zovgorod.
^*
Unfortunately, a portion of the face is obscured by the body of a soldier who had moved forward across the lens of the camera. In any case, my features are cast in a mould too commonplace for me to accept the photograph as proof of my presence in that picturesque city. The fact that there are machine-guns and barbed
wire visible in the background of the picture seems to me to render it even more unlikely. I am nervous of firearms and detest the noise they make.

More considerable evidence of the probability of this amazing story is contained in the narrative of Mr. William L. Casey, of the New York
Tribune
, who was in Zovgorod during the period in question. Mr. Casey’s account of the affair has, I feel, a ring of truth about it; but I would warn the reader, as I warned myself, that journalists are inclined to let imagination run to self-deception. Mr. Casey will, I am sure, forgive my scepticism. If what he writes is true then he has suffered worse things at my hands. Besides, he can always turn on me and say: “Well, what
did
you do during those five weeks?” I shall not be able to tell him. He will refer me to the waiter, George Rispoli, to the Hotel Royal in Paris and to the rest of the evidence so carefully woven into a logical pattern by my other biographer, and I shall admit once again in words that, in my own heart, I have never doubted: that this story is true.

Here, however, are the few indisputable facts.

Forty years of age and a bachelor, I am, by profession, a physicist and, during the four months preceding April 17th, my services had been retained by a British government defence research department to make a feasability study of a set of proposals for a new weapon system employing an ultra-high explosive. The matter was highly secret and my task of the utmost urgency. I worked day and night for many weeks. The strain soon began to affect my health. On April 10th I called in to see my medical adviser, Dr. Rowe.

His report was not encouraging. I received what practically amounted to an ultimatum. I must either take an immediate and long holiday or else the consequences—a breakdown.

I compromised by finishing my work and setting out a day or two later alone in my car for Truro in Cornwall, with the idea of spending a week or two there and then, perhaps,
crossing the Channel to Brittany. I left London at 6:30
A.M
. on April 17th. I had no adieux to make. A note to my mother who lives in Kensington, a postcard to my sister in Norwich and an instruction to my housekeeper about forwarding letters had completed my domestic arrangements. I had fifty pounds in cash and a small suitcase. By 1:30
P.M
. that day I was in Launceston, and stopped there for luncheon at the Royal Crown Hotel.

At this point my memory becomes disjointed. I remember entering the hotel; I do not remember leaving it. I remember raising a glass of sherry to my lips; but I have no recollection of the meal that followed it. Of the sinister Mr. Groom, I know nothing. I remember vaguely feeling unwell and going into the hotel lounge to rest. There, I know, I looked at a book on the jacket of which was an illustration of a man holding a pistol. I think I was waiting for the rain to stop. I must have grown impatient for I recollect next that I switched off the windscreen wiper as I started to climb the road across the moor. I clearly remember running along it for about five miles; then I think I felt sleepy. The next memory that remains in my consciousness is finding myself in the Bâle-Paris express between Mulheim and Belfort, with the
chef-de-train
forcing cognac between my teeth. That was on the 26th of May, over five weeks later. Of what passed during the interim, I have no personal knowledge. My possessions on the 26th of May consisted of the clothes I stood up in, my wallet and my passport. My mind is hazy on the point, but I feel sure that a woman’s photograph (which I did not recognise) was in my wallet when I examined it on the train. I subsequently failed to find either the photograph or my passport.
^*

Much has happened since that 26th of May. For some
months afterwards I was seriously ill. It was towards the end of my convalescence at Brighton that they first brought me this story to read. It affected me in a remarkable way. To read one’s own biography must always be a peculiar experience. Yet, in my case, self-appreciation was supplanted by a curious feeling of sympathy for this strange debonair Henry Barstow with his enthusiasms, his vanity, his sentimentality, his melodramatic daring. The trees outside my bedroom window were leafless, the nights were long and my mind dwelt in the twilight land of convalescence. At that time he and his incredible story permeated my thoughts. I used to spend the nights thinking of him and of his Countess. But with the return of health these dreams have faded. Perhaps he still wanders, lonely like a ghost, along the back streets of my mind. Who knows? For me he has become a shadow, featureless—like a man behind a light.

HENRY BARSTOW
January
,
193–
.

B
y half-past twelve, Professor Barstow was feeling tired. He had already driven one hundred and eighty miles that day. It was with a sigh of relief that, some three-quarters of an hour later, he turned his car into the courtyard of the Royal Crown Hotel at Launceston.

He alighted, stretched himself and, with methodical care, locked the doors. Then he checked each one.

Professor Barstow did everything methodically, whether it was applying the laws of electrodynamics to a case of electronic aberration or combing his Blue Persian cat. His very appearance spelt order. His lean, sallow face, his firm lips pursed judicially and his neat dark grey suit expressed with quiet eloquence the precision of his habits. His lectures before the Royal Society were noted and respected for their dispassionate reviews of fact and their cautious admissions of theory. “Barstow,” an eminent biologist once declared, “would be a genius if he wasn’t so afraid of his own thoughts.” Which remark, following
closely, as it did, upon the publication of Barstow’s critical study of the Lorentz transformations, was, to say the least of it, surprising. The truth of the matter is, perhaps, that he distrusted his imagination because it told him things he did not wish to believe.