‘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.’
At a quarter to seven that evening, I drove Dr Marshall in my car to Acacia Road. I parked the car, and the two of us walked over to the Royal Palace Hall.
‘There’s something wrong,’ I said. ‘Where is everybody?’
There was no crowd outside the hall and the doors were closed. The poster advertising the show was still in place, but I now saw that someone had written across it in large printed letters, using black paint, the words TONIGHT’S PERFORMANCE CANCELLED. There was an old gatekeeper standing by the locked doors.
‘What happened?’ I asked him.
‘Someone died,’ he said.
‘Who?’ I asked, knowing already who it was.
‘The man who sees without his eyes,’ the gatekeeper answered.
‘How did he die?’ I cried. ‘When? Where?’
‘They say he died in his bed,’ the gatekeeper said. ‘He went to sleep and never woke up. These things happen.’
We walked slowly back to the car. I felt an overwhelming sense of grief and anger. I should never have allowed this precious man to go home last night. I should have kept him. I should have given him my bed and taken care of him. I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight. Imhrat Khan was a maker of miracles. He had communicated with mysterious and dangerous forces that are beyond the reach of ordinary people. He had also broken all the rules. He had performed miracles in public. He had taken money for doing so. And, worst of all, he had told some of those secrets to an outsider – me. Now he was dead.
‘So that’s that,’ Dr Marshall said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s all over. Nobody will ever know how he did it.’
This is a true and accurate report of everything that took place concerning my two meetings with Imhrat Khan.