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testament. THE 198 REVELATIONS Mr. Grapinet, a Frenchman Mr. X4, another Frenchman, who had driven over with Mr. Grapinet from the Hotel Intercontinental Mr. Lalande, who was introduced as a French specialist in com- puter science and artificial intelligence Mr. X5, a French lawyer Mr. X6, a French lawyer Mr. X7, a French physicist Mr. X8, a French engineer Mr. Cellier, a priest My correspondent sat between Mr. Cellier and engineer X8. Neither one of them knew anything about Theard & Co., and they had no connection to the late Mr. Teesdale. All they knew was that they had been invited to this dinner. At that point Mr. Bates summarized the requirements of the assign- ment entrusted to them by the late A. P. Teesdale and he read the "confession," which represented the major motivation of his will and TEESDALE CONFESSION "It is with a certain reticence that I finally put pen to paper concerning certain of my recollections of the two great conflicts of this century," begins the confession. It goes on to give some personal details about the author. Born in 1899, he enlisted in the British forces in 1916 and soon found himself in the trenches of northern France. One gray November day he was involved in an attack and was caught in the explosion of a shell: "Every- thing dissolved in a prolonged flash." He thought he had been killed until he heard a voice tell him he was not dead, but was not alive either: "You are outside all that." Teesdale goes on to describe a near-death experience characterized by a feeling of white and gold, with a darker central region containing