The Collected Short Stories of Roald Dahl, Volume 1

by Roald Dahl

  I was stung. "There are no limits to my endurance," I said.

  "Rubbish," Henri said. "I refuse to take chances. That is why I have engaged the fittest and strongest young man I could find."

  "You mean you've already done this?"

  "Certainly I have," Henri said. "I am excited and impatient. I want to get on. The boy will be here any minute."

  "Who is he?"

  "A professional boxer."

  "Good God."

  "His name is Pierre Lacaille. I am paying him one thousand francs for the job."

  "How did you find him?"

  "I know a lot more people than you think, Oswald. I am not a hermit."

  "Does the man know what he's in for?"

  "I have told him that he is to participate in a scientific experiment that has to do with the psychology of sex. The less he knows the better."

  "And the woman? Who will you use there?"

  "Simone, of course," Henri said. "She is a scientist in her own right. She will be able to observe the reactions of the male even more closely than me."

  "That she will," I said. "Does she realize what might happen to her?"

  "Very much so. And I had one hell of a job persuading her to do t. I had to point out that she would be participating in a demonstration that will go down in history. It will be talked about for hundreds of years."

  "Nonsense," I said.

  "My dear sir, through the centuries there are certain great epic moments of scientific discovery that are never forgotten. Like the time when Dr Horace Wells of Hartford, Connecticut, had a tooth pulled out in 1844."

  "What was so historic about that?"

  "Dr Wells was a dentist who had been playing about with nitrous oxide gas. One day, he got a terrible toothache. He knew the tooth would have to come out, and he called in another dentist to do the job. But first he persuaded his colleague to put a mask over his face and turn on the nitrous oxide. He became unconscious and the tooth was extracted and he woke up again as fit as a flea. Now that, Oswald, was the first operation ever performed in the world under general anaesthesia. It started something big. We shall do the same."

  At this point, the doorbell rang. Henri grabbed a pair of noseplugs and carried them with him to the door. And there stood Pierre, the boxer. But Henri would not allow him to enter until the plugs were rammed firmly up his nostrils. I believe the fellow came thinking he was going to act in a blue film, but the business with the plugs must have quickly disillusioned him. Pierre Lacaille was a bantamweight, small, muscular, and wiry. He had a flat face and a bent nose. He was about twenty-two and not very bright.

  Henri introduced me, then ushered us straight into the adjoining laboratory where Simone was working. She was standing by the lab bench in a white overall, writing something in a notebook.

  She looked up at us through thick glasses as we came in. The glasses had a white plastic frame.

  "Simone," Henri said, "this is Pierre Lacaille." Simone looked at the boxer but said nothing. Henri didn't bother to introduce me.

  Simone was a slim thirtyish woman with a pleasant scrubbed face. Her hair was brushed back and plaited into a bun. This, together with the white spectacles, the white overall, and the white skin of her face, gave her a quaint antiseptic air. She looked as though she had been sterilised for thirty minutes in an autoclave and should be handled with rubber gloves. She gazed at the boxer with large brown eyes.

  "Let's get going," Henri said. "Are you ready?"

  "I don't know what's going to happen," the boxer said. "But I'm ready." He did a little dance on his toes.

  Henri was also ready. He had obviously worked the whole thing out before I arrived. "Simone will sit in that chair," he said, pointing to a plain wooden chair set in the middle of the laboratory. "And you, Pierre, will stand on the six-metre mark with your noseplugs still in."

  There were chalk lines on the floor indicating various distances from the chair, from half a metre up to six metres.

  "I shall begin by spraying a small quantity of liquid on to the lady's neck," Henri went on addressing the boxer. "You will then remove your noseplugs and start walking slowly toward her." To me he said, "I wish first of all to discover the effective range, the exact distance he is from the subject when the molecules hit."

  "Does he start with his clothes on?" I asked.

  "Exactly as he is now."

  "And is the lady expected to cooperate or to resist?"

  "Neither. She must be a purely passive instrument in his hands."

  Simone was still looking at the boxer. I saw her slide the end of her tongue slowly over her lips.

  "This perfume," I said to Henri, "does it have any effect upon a woman?"

  "None whatsoever," he said. "That is why I am sending Simone out now to prepare the spray." The girl went into the main laboratory, closing the door behind her.

  "So you spray something on the girl and I walk toward her," the boxer said. "What happens then?"

  "We shall have to wait and see," Henri said. "You are not worried, are you?"

  "Me, worried?" the boxer said. "About a woman?"

  "Good boy," Henri said. Henri was becoming very excited. He went hopping from one end of the room to the other, checking and rechecking the position of the chair on its chalk mark and moving all breakables such as glass beakers and bottles and test-tubes off the bench on to a high shelf. "This isn't the ideal place," he said, "but we must make the best of it." He tied a surgeon's mask over the lower part of his face, then handed one to me.

  "Don't you trust the noseplugs?"

  "It's just an extra precaution," he said. "Put it on."

  The girl returned carrying a tiny stainless-steel spray-gun. She gave the gun to Henri. Henri took a stop watch from his pocket. "Get ready, please," he said. "You Pierre, stand over there on the six-metre mark." Pierre did so. The girl seated herself in the chair. It was a chair without arms. She sat very prim and upright in her spotless white overall with her hands folded on her lap, her knees together. Henri stationed himself behind the girl. I stood to one side. "Are we ready?" Henri cried.

  "Wait," said the girl. It was the first word she had spoken. She stood up, removed her spectacles, placed them on a high shelf, then returned to her seat. She smoothed the white overall along her thighs, then clasped her hands together and laid them again on her lap.

  "Are we ready now?" Henri said.

  "Let her have it," I said. "Shoot."

  Henri aimed the little spray-gun at an area of bare skin just below Simone's ear. He pulled the trigger. The gun made a soft hiss and a fine misty spray came out of its nozzle.

  "Pull your noseplugs out!" Henri called to the boxer as he skipped quickly away from the girl and took up a position next to me. The boxer caught hold of the strings dangling from his nostrils and pulled. The vaselined plugs slid out smoothly.

  "Come on, come on!" Henri shouted. "Start moving! Drop the plugs on the floor and come forward slowly!" The boxer took a pace forward. "Not so fast!" Henri cried. "Slowly does it! That's better! Keep going! Keep going! Don't stop!" He was crazy with excitement, and I must admit I was getting a bit worked up myself. I glanced at the girl. She was crouching in the chair, just a few yards away from the boxer, tense, motionless, watching his every move, and I found myself thinking about a white female rat I had once seen in a cage with a huge python. The python was going to swallow the rat and the rat knew it, and the rat was crouching very low and still, hypnotized, transfixed, utterly fascinated by the slow advancing movements of the snake.

  The boxer edged forward.

  As he passed the five-metre mark, the girl unclasped her hands. She laid them palms downwards on her thighs. Then she changed her mind and placed them more or less underneath her buttocks, gripping the seat of the chair on either side, bracing herself, as it were, against the coming onslaught.

  The boxer had just passed the two-metre mark when the smell hit him. He stopped dead. His eyes glazed and he swayed on his legs as though he had
been tapped on the head with a mallet. I thought he was going to keel over but he didn't. He stood there swaying gently from side to side like a drunk. Suddenly he started making noises through his nostrils, queer little snorts and grunts that reminded me of a pig sniffing around its trough. Then without any warning at all he sprang at the girl. He ripped off her white overall, her dress, and her underclothes. After that, all hell broke loose.

  There is little point in describing exactly what went on during the next few minutes. You can guess most of it anyway. I do have to admit, though, that Henri had probably been right in choosing an exceptionally fit and healthy young man. I hate to say it, but I doubt my middle-aged body could have stood up to the incredibly violent gymnastics the boxer seemed driven to perform. I am not a voyeur. I hate that sort of thing. But in this case, I stood there absolutely transfixed. The sheer animal ferocity of the man was frightening. He was like a wild beast. And right in the middle of it all, Henri did an interesting thing. He produced a revolver and rushed up to the boxer and shouted, "Get away from that girl! Leave her alone or I'll shoot you!" The boxer ignored him, so Henri fired a shot just over the top of his head and yelled, "I mean it, Pierre! I shall kill you if you don't stop!" The boxer didn't even look up.

  Henri was hopping and dancing about the room and shouting, "It's fantastic! It's magnificent! Unbelievable! It works! It works! We've done it, my dear Oswald! We've done it!"

  The action stopped as quickly as it had begun. The boxer suddenly let go of the girl, stood up, blinked a few times, and then said, "Where the hell am I? "What happened?"

  Simone, who seemed to have come through it all with no bones broken jumped up, grabbed her clothes, and ran into the next room. "Thank you, mademoiselle," said Henri as she flew past him.

  The interesting thing was that the bemused boxer hadn't the faintest idea what he had been doing. He stood there naked and covered with sweat, gazing around the room and trying to figure out how in the world he came to be in that condition.

  "What did I do?" he asked. "Where's the girl?"

  "You were terrific!" Henri shouted, throwing him a towel. "Don't worry about a thing! The thousand francs is all yours!"

  Just then the door flew open and Simone, still naked, ran back into the lab. "Spray me again!" she cried. "Oh, Monsieur Henri, spray me just one more time!" Her face was alight, her eyes shining brilliantly.

  "The experiment is over," Henri said. "Go away and dress yourself" He took her firmly by the shoulders and pushed her back into the other room. Then he locked the door.

  Half an hour later, Henri and I sat celebrating our success in a small cafŽ down the street. We were drinking coffee and brandy. "How long did it go on?" I asked.

  "Six minutes and thirty-two seconds," Henri said.

  I sipped my brandy and watched the people strolling by on the sidewalk. "What's the next move?"

  "First, I must write up my notes," Henri said. "Then we shall talk about the future."

  "Does anyone else know the formula?"

  "Nobody."

  "What about Simone?"

  "She doesn't know it."

  "Have you written it down?"

  "Not so anyone else could understand it. I shall do that tomorrow."

  "Do it first thing," I said. "I'll want a copy. What shall we call the stuff? We need a name."

  "What do you suggest?"

  "Bitch," I said. "Let's call it Bitch." Henri smiled and nodded his head slowly. I ordered more brandy. "It would be great stuff for stopping a riot," I said. "Much better than tear-gas. Imagine the scene if you sprayed it on an angry mob."

  "Nice," Henri said. "Very nice."

  "Another thing we could do, we could sell it to very fat, very rich women at fantastic prices."

  "We could do that," Henri answered.

  "Do you think it would cure loss of virility in men?" I asked him.

  "Of course," Henri said. "Impotence would go out the window."

  "What about octogenarians?"

  "Them, too," he said, "though it would kill them at the same time."

  "And marriages on the rocks?"

  "My dear fellow," Henri said. "The possibilities are legion."

  At that precise moment, the seed of an idea came sneaking slowly into my mind. As you know, I have a passion for politics. And my strongest passion, although I am English, is for the politics of the United States of America. I have always thought it is over there, in that mighty and mixed-up nation, that the destinies of mankind must surely lie. And right now, there was a President in office whom I could not stand. He was an evil man who pursued evil policies. Worse than that, he was a humourless and unattractive creature. So why didn't I, Oswald Cornelius, remove him from office?

  The idea appealed to me.

  "How much Bitch have you got in the lab at the moment?" I asked.

  "Exactly ten cubic centimetres," Henri said.

  "And how much is one dose?"

  "We used one cc for our test."

  "That's all I want," I said. "One cc. I'll take it home with me today. And a set of noseplugs."

  "No," Henri said. "Let's not play around with it at this stage. It's too dangerous."

  "It is my property," I said. "Half of it is mine. Don't forget our agreement."

  In the end, he had to give in. But he hated doing it. We went back to the lab, inserted our noseplugs, and Henri measured out precisely one cc of Bitch into a small scent-bottle. He sealed the stopper with wax and gave me the bottle. "I implore you to be discreet," he said. "This is probably the most important scientific discovery of the century, and it must not be treated as a joke."

  From Henri's place, I drove directly to the workshop of an old friend, Marcel Brossollet. Marcel was an inventor and manufacturer of tiny precise scientific gadgets. He did a lot of work for surgeons, devising new types of heart-valves and pacemakers and those little oneway valves that reduce intracranial pressure in hydrocephalics.

  "I want you to make me," I said to Marcel, "a capsule that will hold exactly one cc of liquid. To this little capsule, there must be attached a timing device that will split the capsule and release the liquid at a predetermined moment. The entire thing must not be. more than half an inch long and half an inch thick. The smaller the better. Can you manage that?"

  "Very easily," Marcel said. "A thin plastic capsule, a tiny section of razor-blade to split the capsule, a spring to flip the razor-blade, and the usual pre-set alarm system on a very small ladies' watch. Should the capsule be fillable?"

  "Yes. Make t so I myself can fill it and seal it up. Can I have it in a week?"

  "Why not?" Marcel said. "It is very simple."

  The next morning brought dismal news. That lecherous little slut Simone had apparently sprayed herself with the entire remaining stock of Bitch over nine cubic centimetres of it, the moment she arrived at the lab! She had then sneaked up behind Henri, who was just settling himself at his desk to write up his notes.

  I don't have to tell you what happened next. And worst of all, the silly girl had forgotten that Henri had a serious heart condition. Damn it, he wasn't even allowed to climb a flight of stairs. So when the molecules hit him the poor fellow didn't stand a chance. He was dead within a minute, killed in action as they say, and that was that.

  The infernal woman might at least have waited until he had written down the formula. As it was, Henri left not a single note. I searched the lab after they had taken away his body, but I found nothing. So now more than ever, I was determined to make good use of the only remaining cubic centimetre of Bitch in the world.

  A week later, I collected from Marcel Brossollet a beautiful little gadget. The timing device consisted of the smallest watch I had ever seen, and this, together with the capsule and all the other parts, had been secured to a tiny aluminium plate three eighths of an inch square. Marcel showed me how to fill and seal the capsule and set the timer. I thanked him and paid the bill.

  As soon as possible, I travelled to New York. In Manhatt
an, I put up at the Plaza Hotel. I arrived there at about three in the afternoon. I took a bath, had a shave, and asked room service to send me up a bottle of Glenlivet and some ice. Feeling clean and comfortable in my dressinggown, I poured myself a good strong drink of the delicious malt whisky, then settled down in a deep chair with the morning's New York Times. My suite overlooked Central Park, and through the open window I could hear the hum of traffic and the blaring of cabdrivers' horns on Central Park South. Suddenly, one of the smaller headlines on the front page of the paper caught my eye. It said, PRESIDENT ON TV TONIGHT. I read on.

  The President is expected to make an important foreign policy statement when he speaks tonight at the dinner to be given in his honour by the Daughters of the American Revolution in the ballroom of the Waldorf Astoria.

  My God, what a piece of luck!

  I had been prepared to wait in New York for many weeks before I got a chance like this. The President of the United States does not often appear with a bunch of women on television. And that was exactly how I had to have him. He was an extraordinarily slippery customer. He had fallen into many a sewer and had always come out smelling of shit. Yet he managed every time to convince the nation that the smell was coming from someone else, not him. So the way I figured it was this. A man who rapes a woman in full sight of twenty million viewers across the country would have a pretty hard time denying he ever did it.

  I read on.

  The President will speak for approximately twenty minutes, commencing at nine p. m. and all major TV networks will carry the speech. He will be introduced by Mrs Elvira Ponsonby, the incumbent President of the Daughters of the American Revolution. When interviewed in her suite at the Waldorf Towers, Nits Ponsonby said.

  It was perfect! Mrs Ponsonby would be seated on the President's right. At ten past nine precisely, with the President well into his speech and half the population of the United States watching, a little capsule nestling secretly in the region of Mrs Ponsonby's bosom would be punctured and half a centimetre of Bitch would come oozing out on to her gilt lamŽ ball-gown. The President's head would come up, and he would sniff and sniff again, his eyes would bulge, his nostrils would flare, and he would start snorting like a stallion. Then suddenly he would turn and grab hold of Mrs Ponsonby. She would be flung across the dining-table and the President would leap on top of her, with the pie a la mode and strawberry shortcake flying in all directions.