The usual group of old acquaintances was gathered in the lounge bar of the King's Head pub, huddled over pints of traditionally insipid beer and speculating upon the infinite.
'If ...' said crusty old Major Godalming to me, 'if only it were possible! To pierce the veil of futurity, to glimpse the ineffable radiance of days to come, and to make an absolute killing in the National Lottery!'
Carruthers snorted. 'Speaking mathematically, I can inform you that if it were possible to predict next week's winning numbers, half the country would very soon be doing it and the payout per one-pound ticket would slump to approximately 13.7 pence.' Like all the best statistics, this had the compelling air of having been freshly made up on the spot.
Among our circle that evening was the well-known psychic investigator Dagon Smythe, who preserved his silence but now shuddered theatrically. I recognized the symptoms and took rapid action, crying: 'Beastly weather this week, chaps! Would you call it seasonal for the time of year?'
But it was too late. Before the razor-sharp wits around the table could pounce upon this always fruitful topic, Smythe interrupted in his peculiarly penetrating tones. 'Speaking of prediction ... I once dabbled a little in the divinatory arts.'
'And you have a tale to tell,' said old Hyphen-Jones with a trace of resignation.
'Of a terrible and frightening experience,' Smythe continued unstoppably. 'But I anticipate. Let us begin from first principles. Methods of prediction are quite numerous. Palmistry, for example, has its adherents...' I am of the opinion that our friend had learned his anecdotal persistence from the Ancient Mariner. He seized my hand and announced that the Line of Life indicated a small but imminent financial upset, such as might be caused by buying a round of drinks. As I pointed out with some bitterness, the loud and eager assent of the others made this a regrettably self-fulfilling prophecy.
When I returned from the bar with my slopping burden, Smythe had completed a brief demonstration of cartomancy using only a handful of beer-mats, and was well launched into his narration. 'The problem with all the well-known modes of divination is, if I might put it paradoxically, that they are too well-known.'
'Incredible,' grunted old Hyphen-Jones.
'I have formulated what might usefully be known as Smythe's Law: that too many prophets spoil the broth. That is, predictions by cartomancy or crystallomancy suffer aetheric interference from all the thousands of other enthusiasts with their Tarot decks and crystal balls. Those faint shadows cast back through time by future events might be likened to frail and shy creatures of the night, suddenly confronted by the psychic equivalent of a horde of press photographers with flashguns. The sheer pressure of attention dispels any possible message. I will not mention Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle...'
'Thank God,' I muttered. I have always admired Smythe's genius for selecting awesomely bad analogies.
'Sounds like you've just shot down the whole idea of successful divination,' said the acute Carruthers.
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