Part 2

He watched her hurry off, brisk and erect for all her near-seventy years, wondering if the sudden friendliness meant that there had been an unexpected improvement in his chances of getting the vacant chairmanship of the sociology department. Then he turned into Morton Hall.

When he had climbed to his office, the phone was ringing. It was Thompson, the public-relations man.

"A rather delicate matter, Professor Saylor." Delicate matters were Thompson's forte. "This morning one of the trustees phoned me. It seems he had just heard something--I haven't the slightest idea from where--concerning you and Mrs. Saylor. That over Christmas vacation you had attended a party given by some prominent but ... er ... very rowdy theatrical people. I was wondering if--"

"--I would issue a denial? Sorry, but it wouldn't be honest."

"Oh ... I see. Well, that's all there is to it, then." Thompson answered bravely after a moment. "I thought you'd like to know, though. The trustee was very hot under the collar. Talked my ear off about how these theatrical people were conspicuous for drunkenness and divorce."

"He was right. Nice folks. I'll introduce you to them some time."

"Oh ... yes," replied Thompson apprehensively. "Good-by."

The buzzer sounded, terminating the eight-o'clock classes. Norman swiveled his chair away from the desk and leaned back, amusedly irritated at this latest manifestation of the Hempnell "hush-hush" policy. Not that he had made any particular attempt to conceal the Berryman party, which had been a trifle more tempestuous than he had expected. Still, he had said nothing to anyone on campus. No use in being a fool. Now, after three months it all came out anyway.

From where he sat, the roof ridge of Estrey Hall neatly bisected his office window along the diagonal. There was a medium-sized cement dragon frozen in the act of clambering down it. For the tenth time that morning he reminded himself that what had happened last night had really happened. It was not so easy. And yet, when you got down to it, Tansy's lapse into medievalism was not so very much stranger than Hempnell's Gothic architecture, with its sprinkling of gargoyles and other fabulous monsters designed to scare off evil spirits.

* * * * *

Saylor's nine-o'clock class in "Primitive Societies" quieted down leisurely as he strode in a few seconds ahead of the buzzer. He set a student to explaining the sib as a factor in tribal organization, then put in the next five minutes organizing his thoughts and noting late arrivals and absentees. When the explanation, supplemented with blackboard diagrams of marriage groups, had become so complicated that Bronstein, the prize student, was twitching with eagerness to take a hand, he called for comments and criticisms, and succeeded in getting a first-class argument going.

Finally the cocksure fraternity president in the second row said, "But all those ideas of social organization were based on ignorance, tradition, and superstition. Unlike modern society."

That was Norman's cue. He lit in joyously, pulverized the defender of modern society with a point-by-point comparison of fraternities and primitive "young men's houses" down to the actual details of initiation ceremonies, which he dissected with scientific relish, and then launched into a broad analysis of present-day customs as they would appear to a hypothetical ethnologist from Mars. In passing, he drew a facetious analogy between sororities and primitive seclusion of girls at puberty.

The minutes raced pleasantly by as he demonstrated instances of cultural lag in everything from table manners to systems of notation and measurement. Even the lone sleeper in the last row surprised himself by listening.

"Certainly we've made important innovations, chief among them the scientific method," he said at one point, "but the primitive groundwork is still there, dominating the pattern of our lives. We're modified anthropoid apes inhabiting night clubs and battleships. What else could you expect us to be?"

Marriage and courtship got special attention. With Bronstein grinning delightedly, he drew detailed modern parallels to marriage by purchase, marriage by capture, and symbolic marriage to a deity. He showed that trial marriage is no mere modern conception but a well-established ancient custom, successfully practiced by the Polynesians and others.

At this point he became aware of a beet-red, angry face toward the back of the room--that of Gracine Pollard, daughter of Randolph Pollard, president of Hempnell College. She glared at him outragedly, pointedly ignoring the interest taken by the neighboring students in her blushes.

Automatically it occurred to him, "Now I suppose the little neurotic will go yammering to mamma that Professor Saylor is advocating free love." He shrugged the idea aside and continued the discussion without modification. The buzzer cut it short.

But he was left feeling irritated with himself, and only half listened to the enthusiastic comments and questions of Bronstein and a couple of others.

Back at the office he found a note from Harold Gunnison, the dean of men, asking for an interview. Having the next hour free, he set out across the quadrangle for the Administration Building, Bronstein still tagging along to expound some interesting theory of his own.

But Norman was wondering why he had let himself go. Admittedly, some of his remarks had been a trifle raw. He had long ago adjusted his classroom behavior to Hempnell standards, without losing intellectual integrity, and this ill-advised though trivial deviation bothered him.

* * * * *

Mrs. Carr swept by him without a word, her face slightly averted, cutting him cold. A moment later he realized the explanation. In his abstraction, he had lighted a cigarette. Moreover, Bronstein, obviously delighted at faculty infraction of a firmly established Hempnell taboo, had followed suit.

He frowned but continued to smoke. Evidently the events of the previous night had disturbed his mind more than he had realized. He ground out the butt on the steps of the Administration Building.

In the doorway to the outer office he collided with the stylishly stout form of Mrs. Gunnison.

"Lucky I had a good hold on my camera," she grumbled, as he stooped to recover her bulging handbag. "I'd hate to try to replace a lens these days." Then brushing back an untidy wisp of reddish hair from her forehead, "You look worried. How's Tansy?"

He answered briefly, sliding past her. Now there was a woman who really ought to be a witch. Sloppy, expensive clothes; bossy, snobbish, and gruff; good-humored in a beefy fashion, but capable of riding roughshod over anyone else's desires. The only person in whose presence her husband's authority seemed a trifle ridiculous.

Harold Gunnison cut short a telephone call, and motioned him to come in and shut the door.

"Norm," Gunnison began, scowling, "this is a pretty delicate matter."

Norman became attentive. When Harold Gunnison said something was a delicate matter, unlike Thompson, he really meant it. They played golf and squash together, and got on pretty well.

He braced himself to hear an account of eccentric, indiscreet, or even criminal behavior on the part of Tansy. That suddenly seemed the obvious explanation.

"You have a girl from the Student Employment Agency working for you? A Margaret van Nice?"

Norman nodded. "A rather quiet kid. Does mimeographing."

"Well, a little while ago, she threw an hysterical fit in Mrs. Carr's office. Claimed that you had seduced her. Mrs. Carr immediately dumped the whole business in my lap."

"Well?" said Norman.

Gunnison frowned and cocked an eye at him. "Things like this sometimes really happen," he muttered.

"Sure," Norman replied. "But not this time."

"Of course. I had to ask."

"Sure. There _was_ opportunity though. We worked late several nights over at Morton, editing stuff."

Gunnison reached for a folder. "On a chance, I got out her neurotic index. She ranks way up near the top. A regular bundle of complexes. We'll just have to handle it smoothly."

"I'll want to hear her accuse me," said Norman. "Soon as possible."

"Of course. I've arranged for a meeting at Mrs. Carr's office. Four o'clock this afternoon. Meantime she's seeing the college physician. That should sober her up."

"Four o'clock," repeated Norman, standing up. "You'll be there?"

"Certainly. I'm sorry about this whole business, Norm. Frankly, I think Mrs. Carr botched it. Got panicky. She's a pretty old lady."

In the outer office he stopped to glance at a small display case of items concerned with Gunnison's work in physical chemistry. The present display was of Prince Rupert drops and other high-tension oddities. It occurred to him that Hempnell was something like a Prince Rupert drop. Hit the main body with a hammer and you only jarred your hand. But flick with a fingernail the delicate filament in which the drop ended, and it would explode in your face.

Fanciful.

He glanced at the other objects, among them a tiny mirror, which, the legend explained, would fly to powder at the slightest scratch or sudden change in temperature.

Yet it wasn't so fanciful, when you got to thinking about it. Any highly organized, complex, somewhat artificial institution, such as a college, tends to develop dangerous weaknesses. And the same would be true of a person or a career. Flick the delicate spot in the mind of a neurotic girl, and she would explode with wild accusations. Or take a saner person, like himself. Suppose someone should be studying him secretly, looking for the vulnerable filament, finger casually poised to flick--

But that was really getting fanciful.

* * * * *

Coming out of their eleven-o'clock classes, Hervey Sawtelle buttonholed him.

Hervey Sawtelle resembled an unfriendly caricature of a college professor. Sometimes he carried two brief cases, and he was usually on his way to a committee meeting. Routine worries chased themselves up and down his nervous face.

But at the moment he was in the grip of one of his petty excitements.

"Say, Norman, the most interesting thing! I was down in the stacks this morning, and I happened to pull out an old doctor's thesis--1930--by someone I never heard of--with the title 'Superstition and Neurosis.'" He produced a bound, typewritten manuscript that looked as if it had aged without ever being opened. "Almost the same as your 'Parallelisms in Superstition and Neurosis.' An odd coincidence, eh? I'm going to look it over tonight."

They were hurrying together toward the dining hall down a walk flooded with jabbering, laughing students. Norman studied Sawtelle's face covertly. Surely the fool must remember that his "Parallelisms" had been published in 1931, giving an ugly suggestion of plagiarism. But Sawtelle's nervous, toothy grin was without guile.

He had the impulse to pull Sawtelle aside and tell him that there was something odder than a coincidence involved, and that it did not reflect in any way on his own integrity of scholarship. But this seemed hardly the place.

Yet there was no denying the incident bothered him a trifle. Why, it was years since he had even thought of that stupid business of Cunningham's thesis. It had lain buried and forgotten in the past--a hidden vulnerability, waiting for the flick of the fingernail.

Asinine fancifulness! It could all be very well explained, to Sawtelle or anyone else, at a more suitable time.

Sawtelle's mind was back to routine worries. "You know, we should be having our conference on the social-science program for next year. On the other hand, I suppose we should wait until--" He paused embarrassedly.

"Until it's decided whether you or I get the chairmanship of the department?" Norman finished for him. "I don't see why. We'll be working together in any case."

"Yes, of course. I didn't mean to suggest that--"

They were joined by some other faculty members on the steps of the dining hall. The deafening clatter of trays from the student section was subdued to a faint din as they entered the faculty sanctum.

Conversation revolved among the old familiar topics, with an undercurrent of speculation as to what reorganizations and curtailments of staff the new war year might bring to Hempnell. There was some reference to the political ambitions of President Pollard--it was rumored that he might be persuaded to run for governor or senator; discreet silences here and there around the table substituted for adverse criticisms on this possibility. Sawtelle's Adam's apple twitched convulsively at a chance reference to the vacant chairmanship in sociology.

Norman managed to get a fairly interesting conversation going. He was glad that he would be busy with classes and conferences until four o'clock. He knew he could work half again as hard as someone like Sawtelle, but if he were compelled to do one quarter of the worrying that man did--

* * * * *

Yet the four-o'clock meeting proved to be an anticlimax. He had no sooner put his hand on the door leading to Mrs. Carr's office, when--as if that had provided the necessary stimulus--a shrill, tearful voice burst out with: "It's all a lie! I made it up."

Gunnison was sitting near the window, face a trifle averted, arms folded, looking like a slightly bored, slightly embarrassed but very stolid elephant. In a chair in the center of the room was huddled a delicate, fair-haired, but rather homely girl, tears dribbling down her cheeks and hysterical sobs racking her shoulders. Mrs. Carr was trying to calm her in a fluttery way.

"I don't know why I did it," the girl bleated pitifully. "I was in love with him, and he wouldn't even look at me. I was going to kill myself last night, and then I thought I would do this instead, to hurt him, or--"

"Now, Margaret, you must control yourself," Mrs. Carr admonished, her hands hovering over the girl's shoulders.

"Just a minute," Norman cut in, "did you say last night?"

"There, there, dear. I think you better leave, Professor Saylor." Mrs. Carr's eyes, magnified by thick glasses, looked fishlike. Her attitude was hostile. "There's obviously no need of asking questions."

"I think I should be permitted at least one," said Norman. "Just exactly at what time last night, Miss van Nice, did you get this idea?"

Gunnison registered puzzled but vague curiosity.

The tear-stained face looked up at Norman.

"It was just after one o'clock," she said. "I had been lying awake in the dark for hours, planning to kill myself. And then, in a flash the idea came to me." Suddenly she shook loose from Mrs. Carr and stood up, facing Norman. "Oh, I hate you!" she screamed. "I hate you!"

Gunnison followed him out of the office. He yawned, shook his head, and remarked, "Glad that's over."

"Never a dull moment," Norman responded, absently.

"Oh, by the way," Gunnison said, dragging a stiff white envelope out of his inside pocket, "here's a note for Mrs. Saylor. Hulda asked me to give it to you. I forgot about it before."

"I met her coming out of your office this morning," Norman said, his thoughts still elsewhere.

* * * * *

Somewhat later, back at Morton, Norman tried to come to grips with those thoughts, but found them remarkably slippery. The dragon on the roof ridge of Estrey Hall lured away his attention. Funny about little things like that. You never even noticed them for years, and then they suddenly popped into focus. How many people could give you one single definite fact about the architectural ornaments of buildings in which they worked? Not one in ten, probably. Why, if you'd asked him yesterday about that dragon, he wouldn't for his life have been able to tell you even if there _was_ one or not.

He leaned on the window sill, looking at the lizardlike yet grotesquely anthropoid form, bathed in the yellow sunset glow, which, his wandering mind remembered, was supposed to symbolize the souls of the dead passing into and out of the underworld. Below the dragon, jutting out from under the cornice, was a sculptured head, one of a series of famous scientists and mathematicians decorating the entablature. He made out the name "Galileo," along with a brief inscription of some sort.

When he turned back to answer the phone, it suddenly seemed very dark in the office.

"Saylor? I just want to tell you that I'm going to give you until tomorrow--"

"Listen, Jennings," Norman cut in sharply, "I hung up on you last night because you kept shouting into the phone. This threatening line won't do you any good."

The voice continued where it had broken off, growing dangerously high. "--until tomorrow to withdraw your charges and have me reinstated at Hempnell. If you don't--"

"I told you not to threaten. There were no charges. You just flunked out. If you want to talk it over reasonably, come and see me."

The voice at the other end of the line broke into a screaming obscene torrent of abuse, so loud that he could still hear it very plainly as he was placing the receiver back in the cradle.

Paranoid--that was the way it sounded.

Then he suddenly sat very still.

At twenty past one last night he had burned a charm supposedly designed to ward off evil influence from him. The last of Tansy's "hands."

At about the same time Margaret van Nice had decided to accuse him of seducing her, and Marvin Jennings had decided to make him responsible for an imaginary plot.

Next morning Hervey Sawtelle, poking around in the stacks, had found--

Rubbish!

With an angry snort of laughter at his own credulity, he picked up his hat and headed for home.

III.

Tansy was in a radiant mood, prettier than she had seemed in months, younger-looking than her thirty-six years. Twice he caught her smiling to herself, when he glanced up from his supper.

He gave her the note from Mrs. Gunnison. "Mrs. Carr asked after you, too. Gushed all over me--in a ladylike way, of course. Then, later on--" He caught himself as he started to tell about the cigarette, and Mrs. Carr cutting him, and the interview in her office. No use worrying Tansy with things that might be considered bad luck. No telling what further constructions she might put upon them.

She glanced through the note and handed it back to him.

"It has the authentic Hempnell flavor, don't you think?" she observed.

He read:

DEAR TANSY: Where are you keeping yourself? I haven't seen you on campus more than once or twice this year. If you're busy with something especially interesting, why not tell us about it? Why not come to tea this Saturday, and tell me all about yourself?

HULDA.

P.S. You're supposed to bring four dozen cookies to the Parents' Day Reception the Saturday after.

"Rather confused-sounding," he said, "but I clearly perceive the keen bludgeon of Mrs. Gunnison. She looked particularly sloppy today."

Tansy laughed. "Still, we have been pretty antisocial these last weeks. I believe I'll ask them over for bridge tomorrow night. It's short notice, but they're usually free Wednesdays. And the Sawtelles."

"Do we have to? That henpecker?"

Tansy laughed. "I don't know how you would ever manage to get along without me--" She stopped short. "I'm afraid you'll have to endure Evelyn. After all, Hervey's the other important man in your department, and it's expected that you see something of each other socially. To make two tables, I'll invite the Carrs."

"Three fearful females," said Norman. "If they represent the average run of professors' wives, I was lucky to get you."

"I sometimes have similar thoughts about professors' wives' husbands," said Tansy.

Then as they smoked over the coffee, she said hesitantly, "Norm, I said I didn't want to talk about last night. But now there's something I want to tell you."

He nodded.

"I didn't tell you last night, Norm, but when we burned those ... things, I was terribly frightened. I felt that we were ripping holes in walls that it had taken me years to build, and that now there was nothing to keep out the--"

He said nothing, sat very still.

"Oh, it's hard to explain, but ever since I began to ... play with those things, I've been conscious of pressures from outside. Things trying to push their way in and get at us. And I've had to press them back, fight back at them with my--It's like that test of strength men sometimes make, trying to force each other's hand to the table. But that wasn't what I was starting to say.

"I went to bed feeling miserable and scared. The pressure from outside kept tightening around me, and I couldn't resist it, because we'd burned those things. And then suddenly, as I lay in the dark, about an hour after I went to bed, I got the most abrupt tremendous feeling of relief. The pressure vanished, as if I'd bobbed up to the surface after almost drowning. And I knew then ... that I'd gotten over my craziness. That's why I'm so happy."

It was hard for Norman not to tell Tansy what he was thinking. Here was one more coincidence, but it knocked the others into a cocked hat. At about the same time as he had burned the last charm, experiencing a sensation of fear, Tansy had felt a great relief. That would teach him to build theories on coincidences!

"For I was crazy in a way, dear," she was saying. "There aren't many people who would have taken it as you did."

He said, "You weren't crazy--which is a relative term, anyway, applicable to anyone. You were just fooled by the cussedness of things."

"Cussedness?"

"Yes. The way nails sometimes insist on bending when you hammer, as if they were trying to. Or the way machinery refuses to work. Matter's funny stuff. In large aggregates, it obeys natural law, but when you get down to the individual atom or electron, it's largely a matter of chance or whim--" This conversation was not taking the direction he wanted it to, and he was thankful when Totem jumped up onto the table, creating a diversion.

It turned out to be the pleasantest evening they had spent together in ages.

But next morning he wished he had not gotten started on that "cussedness of things" notion. It stuck in his mind. He found himself puzzling over the merest trifle--in the precise position of that idiotic cement dragon. Yesterday he remembered thinking that it was exactly in the middle of the descending roof ridge. But now he saw that it was obviously two thirds of the way down, quite near the architrave topping the huge and useless Gothic gateway set between Estrey and Morton. Even a social scientist ought to have better powers of observation than that!

The jangle of the phone coincided with the nine-o'clock buzzer.

"Professor Saylor?" Thompson's voice was apologetic. "I'm sorry to bother you again, but I just got another inquiry from one of the trustees. Concerning an informal address you were supposed to have delivered at about the same time as that ... er ... party. The topic was 'What's Wrong With College Education?'"

"Well, what about it? Are you implying that there's nothing wrong with college education, or that the topic is taboo?"

"Oh, no, no, no. But the trustee seemed to think that you were making a criticism of Hempnell."

"Of small colleges of the same type as Hempnell, yes. Of Hempnell, specifically, no."

"Well, he seemed to fear it might have a detrimental effect on enrollment for next year. Spoke of several friends of his with children of college age as having heard your address and being unfavorably impressed."

"Then they were supersensitive."

"He also seemed to think you had made a slighting reference to President Pollard's ... er ... political activities."

"I'm sorry but I have to get along to a class now."

"Very well," said Thompson. He sounded hurt.

* * * * *