GENTLEMEN: PLEASE NOTE
BY RANDALL GARRETT
Illustrated by Freas
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astounding Science Fiction October 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
18 June 1957
Trinity College
Cambridge
Sir James Trowbridge
No. 14 Berkeley Mews
London
My dear James,
I'm sorry to have lost touch with you over the past few years; wehaven't seen each other since the French War, back in 1948. Nine years!It doesn't seem it.
I'll tell you right off I want a favour of you. (No, I do notwant to borrow another five shillings! I haven't had my pocket pickedagain, thank you.) This has to do with a little historical research I'mdoing here. I stumbled across something rather queer, and I'm hopingyou can help me with it.
I am enclosing copies of some old letters received by Isaac Newtonnearly three hundred years ago. As you will notice, they are addressedto "Mr. Isaac Newton, A.B."; it rings oddly on the ear to hear thegreat man addressed as anything but "your Grace," but of coursehe was only a young man at the time. He hadn't written his famousPrincipia yet—and wouldn't for twenty years.
Reading these letters is somewhat like listening to a conversation whenonly one of the speakers is audible, but they seem to indicate anotherside to the man, one which has not heretofore been brought to light.
Dr. Henry Blake, the mathematician, has looked them over, and he feelsthat it is possible that Newton stumbled on something that modernthought has only recently come up with—the gravitational and lighttheories of the Swiss mathematician, Albert Einstein.
I know it's fantastic to think that a man of even Newton's acknowledgedgenius could have conceived of such things three centuries beforetheir proper place in history, but Blake says it's possible. And ifit is, Blake himself will probably do to Newton's correspondents thesame thing that was done to Oliver Cromwell at the beginning of theRestoration—disinter the bodies and have them publicly hanged or somesuch thing.
Actually, Blake has managed to infect me with his excitement; he haspointed out phrases in several of the letters which tally very wellwith Einstein's theory. But, alas, the information we have is woefullyincomplete.
What we need, you see, are Newton's letters—the ones he sent whichprovoked these answers. We have searched through everything hereat Cambridge, and we haven't found even a trace; evidently theNewton manuscripts were simply discarded on the basis that they wereworthless, anyway. Besides, records of that sort were poorly kept atthat time.
But we thought perhaps the War Office did a somewhat better job ofrecord-keeping.
Now, I realise full well that, due to the present trouble with theAustro-Hungarian Empire, the War Office can't take a chance and allowjust anyone to prowl through their files.
It wouldn't do to allow one of the Emperor's spies to have a lookat them. However, I wondered if it wouldn't be possible for you touse your connexions and influence at the War Office to look forNewton's letters to one of the correspondents, General Sir EdwardBallister-ffoulkes. You can find the approximate dates by checking thedatelines on the copies I am sending you.
The manuscripts are arranged in chronological order, just as they werereceived by Newton himself. Of them all, only the last one