The Gap in the Curtain by John Buchan Read Free Book Online

morning. I remember wondering why the professor had fixed so short a time as three days for this intensive contemplation, till he went on to give his further orders.
    This ocular familiarity was only the beginning. Each of us must concentrate on one particular part to which his special interest was pledged—Tavanger on the first city page, for example, Mayot on the leader page, myself on the Law Reports—any part we pleased. Of such pages we had to acquire the most intimate knowledge, so that by shutting our eyes we could reconstruct the make-up in every detail. The physical make-up, that is to say; there was no necessity for any memorizing of contents.
    Then came something more difficult. Each of us had to perform a number of exercises in concentration and anticipation. We knew the kind of things which were happening, and within limits the kind of topic which would be the staple of the next day’s issue. Well, we had to try to forecast some of the contents of the next day’s issue, which we had not seen. And not merely in a general sense. We had to empty our minds of everything but the one topic, and endeavour to make as full as possible a picture of part of the exact contents of
The Times
next morning—to see it not as a concept but as a percept—the very words and lines and headings.
    For example. Suppose that I took the law reports pages. There were some cases the decisions on which were being given by the House of Lords today, and would be published tomorrow. I could guess the members of the tribunal who would deliver judgement, and could make a fair shot at what that judgement would be. Well, I was to try so to forecast these coming pages that I could picture the column of type, and, knowing the judges’ idiosyncrasies, see before my eyes the very sentences in which their wisdom would be enshrined . . . Tavanger, let us say, took the first city page. Tomorrow he knew there would be a report of a company meeting in which he was interested. He must try to get a picture of the paragraph in which the city editor commented on the meeting . . . If Mayot chose the leader page, he must try to guess correctly what would be the subject of the first or second leader, and, from his knowledge of
The Times
policy and the style of its leader-writers, envisage some of the very sentences, and possibly the headings.
    It seemed to me an incredibly difficult game, and I did not believe that, for myself, I would get any results at all. I have never been much good at guessing. But I could see the general layout. Everything would depend upon the adequacy of the knowledge we started with. To make an ocular picture which would have any exactitude, I must be familiar with the lord chancellor’s mannerisms, Tavanger with the mentality and the style of the city editor, and Mayot with the policy of the paper and the verbal felicities of its leader-writers . . . Some of us found the prescription difficult, and Reggie Daker groaned audibly.
    But there was more to follow. We were also to try to fling our minds farther forward—not for a day, but for a year. Each morning at seven—I do not know why he fixed that hour—we were to engage in a more difficult kind of concentration—by using such special knowledge as we possessed to help us to forecast the kind of development in the world which June of next year would show. And always we had to aim at seeing our forecasts not in vague concepts, but in concrete black and white in the appropriate corner of
The Times
.
    I am bound to say that, when I heard this, I felt that we had been let in for a most futile quest. We had our days mapped out in a minute programme—certain hours for each kind of concentration. We would meet the professor in my sitting room at stated times . . . I think that he felt the atmosphere sceptical, for on this last point his manner lost its briskness and he became very solemn.
    â€œIt is difficult,” he said, “but you must