"The audience loves it. They applaud long and loud. But not one single person believes it to be genuine. Everyone thinks it is just another clever trick. And the fact that I am a conjurer makes them think more than ever that I am faking. Conjurers are men who trick you. They trick you with cleverness. And so no one believes me. Even the doctors who blindfold me in the most expert way refuse to believe that anyone can see without his eyes. They forget there may be other ways of sending the image to the brain."
"What other ways?" I asked him.
"Quite honestly, I don't know exactly how it is I can see without my eyes. But what I do know is this; when my eyes are bandaged, I am not using the eyes at all. The seeing is done by another part of my body."
"Which part?" I asked him.
"Any part at all so long as the skin is bare. For example, if you put a sheet of metal in front of me and put a book behind the metal, I cannot read the book. But if you allow me to put my hand around the sheet of metal so that the hand is seeing the book, then I can read it."
"Would you mind if I tested you on that?" I asked.
"Not at all," he answered.
"I don't have a sheet of metal," I said. "But the door will do just as well."
I stood up and went to the bookshelf. I took down the first book that came to hand. It was Alice in Wonderland. I opened the door and asked my visitor to stand behind it, out of sight. I opened the book at random and propped it on a chair the other side of the door to him. Then I stationed myself in a position where I could see both him and the book.
"Can you read that book?" I asked him.
"No," he answered. "Of course not."
"All right. You may now put your hand around the door, but only the hand."
He slid his hand around the edge of the door until it was within sight of the book. Then I saw the fingers on the hand parting from one another, spreading wide, beginning to quiver slightly, feeling the air like the antennae of an insect. And the hand turned so that the back of it was facing the book.
"Try to read the left page from the top," I said.
There was silence for perhaps ten seconds, then smoothly, without pause, he began to read: " 'Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. 'No, I give it up,' Alice replied. 'What's the answer?' 'I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter. 'Nor I,' said the Hare. Alice sighed wearily. 'I think you might do something better with the time,' she said, 'than waste it asking riddles with no answers. . .' "
"It's perfect!" I cried. "Now I believe you! You are a miracle!" I was enormously excited.
"Thank you, doctor," he said gravely. "What you say gives me great pleasure."
"One question," I said. "It's about the playing-cards. When you held up the reverse side of one of them, did you put your hand around the other side to help you to read it?"
"You are very perceptive," he said. "No, I did not. In the case of the cards, I was actually able to see through them in some way."
"How do you explain that?" I asked.
"I don't explain it," he said. "Except perhaps that a card is such a flimsy thing, it is so thin, and not solid like metal or thick like a door. That is all the explanation I can give. There are many things in this world, doctor, that we cannot explain."
"Yes," I said. "There certainly are."
"Would you be kind enough to take me home now," he said. "I feel very tired."
I drove him home in my car.
That night I didn't go to bed. I was far too worked up to sleep. I had just witnessed a miracle. This man would have doctors all over the world turning somersaults in the air! He could change the whole course of medicine! From a doctor's point of view, he must be the most valuable man alive! We doctors must get hold of him and keep him safe. We must look after him. We mustn't let him go. We must find out exactly how it is that an image can be sent to the brain without using the eyes. And if we do that, then blind people might be able to see and deaf people might be able to hear. Above all, this incredible man must not be ignored and left to wander around India, living in cheap rooms and playing in second-rate theatres.
I got so steamed up thinking about this that after a while I grabbed a notebook and a pen and started writing down with great care everything that Imhrat Khan had told me that evening. I used the notes I had made while he was talking. I wrote for five hours without stopping. And at eight o'clock the next morning, when it was time to go to the hospital, I had finished the most important part, the pages you have just read.
At the hospital that morning, I didn't see Dr Marshall until we met in the Doctors' Rest Room in our tea-break.
I told him as much as I could in the ten minutes we had to spare. "I'm going back to the theatre tonight," I said. "I must talk to him again. I must persuade him to stay here. We mustn't lose him now."
"I'll come with you," Dr Marshall said.
"Right," I said. "We'll watch the show first and then we'll take him out to supper."