It seems (according to him) that his name was Baron Hogg; that his place of living is (or rather will be) on Harting Hill, above Petersfield, where he has (or rather will have) a large house. But the really interesting thing in all that he told me was this: that he was born in the year 2183, “which,” he added lucidly enough, “would be your 2187.”
“Why?” said I, bewildered, when he told me this.
“Good Lord!” he answered, quite frankly astonished, “you must know, even in 1909, that the calendar is four years out?”
I answered that a little handful of learned men knew this, but that we had not changed our reckoning for various practical reasons. To which he replied, leaning forward with a learned, interested look:
“Well, I came to learn things, and I lay I’m learning.”
He next went on to tell me that he had laid a bet with another man that he would “hit” 1903, on the 15th of June, and that the other man had laid a bet that he would get nearer. They were to meet at the Savoy Hotel at noon on the 30th, and to compare notes; and whichever had won was to pay the other a set of Records, for it seems they were both Antiquarians.
All this was Greek to me (as I daresay it is to you) until he pulled out of his pocket a thing like a watch, and noted that the dial was set at 1909. Whereupon he began tapping it and cursing in the name of a number of Saints familiar to us all.
It seems that to go backwards in time, according to him, was an art easily achieved towards the middle of the Twenty-second Century, and it was worked by the simplest of instruments. I asked him if he had read “The Time Machine.” He said impatiently, “You have,” and went on to explain the little dial.
“They cost a deal of money, but then,” he added, with beautiful simplicity, “I have told you that I am Baron Hogg.”
Rich people played at it apparently as ours do at ballooning, and with the same uncertainty.