Part 2

"I don't want to see you run out of town, Mr. Forsythe," said Truggles. "I came here in the hope of offering you friendship and help. The people of Marston Hill are disturbed--I might say, aroused--at your insistence on polygamous practices. I hope to persuade you to abandon such unsocial behavior, so I may have some background for reasoning with them in your behalf."

Truggles expected the usual retort--that the people of the town had minded their own business (i.e., been blind to what was going on) until Truggles came to town. Instead, Forsythe said:

"I have conformed to human social standards. My formal religious affiliation is Mohammedan."

Truggles quivered with shock.

"Mohammedan!" he exclaimed, possibly more outraged by that than by his original suspicion of polygamy.

"The Koran allows us four wives, Mr. Truggles. The rest must be concubines."

"You admit it! You admit that your so-called research is only a blind for a den of iniquity!"

Forsythe rose, and stepped from behind his desk. Suddenly alarmed, Truggles cringed. Forsythe was a very big man. Truggles' fingers strayed toward the shoulder holster. But Forsythe smiled.

"The research is genuine," he said. "Come with me, Mr. Truggles. I'd like for you to meet several of my wives. You may ask them questions if you wish."

He took the nervous Truggles firmly by the arm, lifted him almost bodily from his chair and escorted him into the anteroom. The pretty secretary looked up from her desk.

"Mr. Truggles, this is Trella, my youngest wife," said Forsythe. "Fortunately, she has had secretarial training, so she fits well in this office."

The young woman smiled at Truggles, without embarrassment. He was not so fortunate. He dropped his eyes, the deep blue eyes that had so often been the nemesis of evil-doers.

"You said I might question the--the young lady?" he murmured.

Forsythe laughed.

"I'll leave so you may feel more free," he said, and went back into his office.

Truggles looked upon Trella Forsythe with more self-assurance. She was a pert, brown-eyed blonde, in her early twenties. Remembering Phyllis Allison, Truggles could not but admire Forsythe's appreciation of beauty.

"How long have you been married to Mr. Forsythe, Mrs.--uh, Miss Trella?" he asked.

"Only about six months," she answered. "I hope I'll prove satisfactory."

"Satisfactory?"

"I don't want to have to leave Blan after two years," she said. "I love him."

"My dear child, how can you love a man who has a dozen other wives? How can you lower yourself to be part of such a scheme?"

"Why is it that some men never understand women?" she countered, a little angrily. "A woman may be jealous of her man's other loves, but if he's a real man the thing that matters is that he loves _her_. I get along fine with Blan's other wives. We have something in common--we all love him."

Truggles resisted a strong temptation to attempt to convert her to sanity on the spot. His powers of convincing women were potent ones, as experience had proved. But, in this case, the root of the evil was Forsythe himself and there was no point in wasting any time on the wives.

Truggles had expected Forsythe to conduct him on a tour of what he already had labeled, in his mind, "the harem." But Forsythe remained closeted in his office, and it was Trella who escorted Truggles through a portion of the building.

They met three other women, busy at various tasks, all of them young and attractive. Truggles questioned them briefly. He found substantially the same reaction he had received from Trella.

When they had mounted the wide stairs again, on their way back to the office, Truggles was introduced to another wife, Lois. The door of a room stood ajar as they came to it, and he happened to see her sitting inside, weeping.

He thought Trella appeared reluctant when he stopped and pushed open the door, but she did not protest.

"Why are you weeping, my child?" asked Truggles, after he had talked with her for a moment.

"I must leave," she explained. "I've been married to Blan two years tomorrow, and I haven't given him a child."

"That's the most inhuman thing I ever heard of!" he exclaimed. "Do you mean to say he gives you this little time of happiness, and then if you don't produce progeny for him he casts you off like an old shoe?"

"It's Dr. Allison's advice to him," said Lois. "Dr. Allison thinks it would be bad for him to have too many wives around at one time, and he considers two years long enough to prove certainly whether a woman can be fertile with Blan. I'm not the first. I won't be the last. But it's hard to have to go away and never see him again."

These women he had seen today, these wives of Forsythe: they aroused no bitter feelings in Truggles. He felt clean and strong talking to them. They were like the many women to whom he had held out sympathy and understanding over the years, who had been stubborn and wilful at first, only to melt at last and see the truth. If only he could get them from Forsythe's influence, he thought he could save these women.

Truggles turned to Trella.

"Do you see what's in store for you, young woman?" he demanded. "Do you still think it's worth ruining your life to live here in sin with this man?"

"I may be different," she answered calmly. "And if I'm not, tell me, Mr. Truggles: does a mouse have the right to question the motives of a man?"

* * * * *

Truggles went back into Forsythe's office. The tetraploid man had swung his chair away from his desk and was staring moodily out the big window. He inclined his head at Truggles' entrance, but did not speak.

"Forsythe, this has been the most amazing, the most revolting, revelation I have ever experienced," opened Truggles. His indignation fueled his courage now, and his voice held the commanding resonance of a pipe organ. "You claim to be superhuman. I say you are inhuman, to force these poor young women to live in servitude, sharing you with each other, and then to discard them with brutal unconcern when you find they cannot fulfill your insane dream of foisting others of your kind on the earth!"

"They love me and I have a great affection for all of them," said Forsythe, not turning. "I provide for them when they leave me. Because the great experience of love cannot last a lifetime, should it be denied altogether?"

The ancient bitterness swept over Truggles in a consuming wave. Yes, yes, cried his soul, far better never to have loved, never to have known the meaning of love, than to have it snatched from the grasp in full flower! Forsythe was a monster. How could he know? Did the superman have telepathic powers? Or was it again chance, this dropping of a remark that burned deep into his writhing memories?

Forsythe's face was turned from him. One shot and this incredible thing, this liver-hued monstrosity that sat before him would be removed from the face of the earth. Truggles put his hand inside his coat. The butt of the pistol was cool under his fingers.

No. A murderer in prison has no influence. He cannot battle evil, recruiting to his shining leadership an army of righteous people. Truggles dropped his hand to his lap and said calmly:

"You speak as though they could love no one else. Is polygamy, then, to be a characteristic of the long-heralded superman?"

"Polygamy and monogamy, as such, have no moral values, for man or superman," replied Forsythe, speaking to the window. "Polygamy was a part of man's social scheme for centuries. Monogamy has been replacing it as a more desirable scheme; but to attribute moral values to it is propaganda. I challenge you to find an edict against polygamy in the basic writings of any religion--Christianity, Judaism, any of them. Remember Solomon? Monogamy has the advantage of closer companionship between man and woman, and for that reason I would prefer it."

A great thrill shot through Truggles' breast at these words. Was it possible that Forsythe had weakened? Was it possible that he could lead this strange man back to the path of truth?

"Why not give it up, Forsythe?" he asked in a low, compelling voice. "Why not eschew your dream of a new race and leave such things to higher powers? Send these poor women back to their homes and turn back to your one true, legal wife, Phyllis, and your son."

Forsythe swung to face him. The green eyes were deep and haunted.

"Don't you think that's what I would prefer, above all else?" he asked in a low voice. "Perhaps you didn't know it, but I married Phyllis before I knew I was--different; other than my appearance, I mean. The genuine love of a man for a woman does not die. Do you think even a superman--it's your term, Truggles, not mine--enjoys loneliness? The worship of other women, my affection for them as human beings, can't fill the gap left by the loss of someone who shared complete understanding with me."

He laughed shortly.

"Besides," he added, "you're trying to talk me into committing an immoral act, Truggles. You forget that Phyllis is Dr. Allison's wife now, and Donald is Dr. Allison's son."

Truggles brushed that aside.

"That's no excuse for what you're doing," he said.

"One of the major duties of any individual, of whatever species, is to reproduce his kind, if he can," answered Forsythe soberly. "In the human community, safe as a race through its very numbers, that has been lost sight of and overlaid with social responsibilities. I'm different. I can't ignore it.

"How was the misconception ever begotten that a superman--again, it's your term, not mine--would merely mate with the daughters of men and, lo! a new race? The superman is a new species. Species do not interbreed fertilely very often, even when closely related.

"Dr. Allison found I was tetraploid, while Phyllis and I were still married. He and I have been searching for a tetraploid woman, without success. Meanwhile, I try and still hope for fertile matings with a normal diploid woman, for the tetraploid has been fertile with the diploid sometimes in plants.

"No, Donald can't be my son, whatever Phyllis says. There's more involved than the time of his birth--two years after our divorce. Dr. Allison has tested him, and Donald has the normal 48 chromosomes."

"Can't you accept the verdict of nature, Forsythe?" demanded Truggles. "If you were born a eunuch, you could never reproduce."

"While there's hope, I have the responsibility," said Forsythe slowly. "If the stream of life is to progress, something greater than man must arise from him. I know, Truggles--I _know_--I am that superior thing. And I think back in history to the geniuses, the superior men, who died without progeny and I wonder how many of them were tetraploid, as I am, but could not pass on their new abilities to the world."

Truggles shook his head angrily and arose.

"You can't succeed by flouting the social conventions man has built up," he said stiffly. "I'm afraid you'll find that out to your sorrow, Forsythe."

His mind caressed the gun inside his coat pocket. Such a direct solution appealed to him. But he resisted it. There was a better, safer way. He turned his back on Forsythe and left.

As he walked past the Allison home, and covered half a block toward town, seething inwardly at Forsythe's stubbornness; a woman arose from a sidewalk bench to accost him. It was Lois, Forsythe's dark-haired wife to whom he had talked while she wept half an hour earlier.

"Why, Mrs. For--Miss Lois!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here? Did you escape?"

"Escape?" she repeated. Her eyes were shadowed from weeping. "Blan doesn't keep us prisoners. We come and go as we please. It's just that most of us prefer not to go out into town."

"I can understand that," he said drily. "Can I help you, Miss Lois?"

"Perhaps I can help myself, by helping you. Mr. Truggles, aren't you trying to stop Blan from keeping more than one wife?"

"I am, indeed. I expect to seek an indictment against him on bigamy charges."

"You won't succeed. He'll just sue you for false arrest, and ruin you. You don't think Blan would overlook something like that, do you? None of the girls would admit they lived with him as his wives. I wouldn't either, if it would hurt Blan."

Truggles was taken aback. After a moment, he asked: "What did you have in mind?"

"Nothing. But I thought if I could help you persuade him--as the wife who's been with him longest, I'd be the one to stay, wouldn't I?"

Thinking of an unknown number of others who might have been sent away previously, Truggles was inclined to doubt it. But he would not let such an opinion interfere with this opportunity.

"Probably," he said. "Will you help me if I promise to take no legal action against Forsythe?"

"What do you want me to do?" she asked.

"You say you're free to come and go as you please?"

"Yes."

"I just want you to tell the truth about what he's doing, as I've learned it, at a few meetings of good, sympathetic citizens during the next few weeks."

"I'll do it if you're sure it won't hurt Blan in any way," she said.

"I'm positive it won't," Truggles lied.

* * * * *

The Social Standards Protective League was a small organization, composed largely of elderly women and a few men. Masefield Truggles had never meant for it to serve as anything more than a nucleus. Before he lit the flame, he spent a week building up his tinder pile.

He announced, by word of mouth and through the columns of _The Clarion_, Marston Hill's small daily newspaper, that the Social Standards Protective League would hold a series of special meetings every afternoon for a week. The public would be welcome, he said, and there would be startling revelations of vice conditions in Marston Hill. Truggles rented the city's ancient, rickety auditorium for the meetings, and invited Mayor Ben Sands to speak at the first one.

Lois Forsythe sat on the platform that first afternoon, but Truggles did not call on her. Sands made a routine talk, the kind any mayor of a small town might, on the conscientiousness of Marston Hill's three-man police force, the lack of crime in the town, the recreational facilities and educational methods being utilized to see that the young people did not stray on the wrong path. He received polite applause.

When he had finished, Truggles arose and said:

"Sometimes after talks of this kind, we throw our meetings open to questions from the audience. Instead, I would like to ask Mayor Sands one question. Does he recall that I complained to him not long ago about the activities of Blan Forsythe, and what the tenor of the conversation was?"

"Why, yes," answered Sands, surprised. "You accused Blan of practicing polygamy. I told you that you'd been listening to too much gossip, and that Blan was doing biological research. I don't believe these good people would be interested in the nature of the research."

"I do," answered Truggles, "and it will be the subject of tomorrow's meeting. I have investigated these experiments, and they are well worth hearing about. Thank you, Mr. Mayor."

Truggles was a past master at building tension. The next day, he apologized for changing the program and gave a lecture on polygamy in human society. Backgrounded with considerable research at the Marston Hill public library, he described polygamy in Biblical times, in savage communities, in China and the Mohammedan world and among the early Mormons in the United States. He told of the social objections to polygamy and the progress made in eliminating it as a way of life.

The following day, he described Forsythe's research with tetraploid plants--not too accurately, but that didn't matter with this audience--and skillfully translated chromosome doubling into human terms until his final revelation that Forsythe was a tetraploid man left them gasping. And, the fourth day, he told, with some embroidery, of Forsythe's polygamy.

During each of these talks, Lois sat on the stage. Polygamy was a known, routine affair to her. Truggles was able to word his talks so that, to Lois, his revelations appeared calm and unbiased; but at the same time they were insinuating and inflammatory to his audiences, to whom polygamy was something strange and monstrous.

During none of the first four talks did he call on Lois. But at the end of the fourth, he announced:

"I have described to you what Forsythe told me himself. Perhaps you have been wondering who this attractive young lady is. She is none other than one of Forsythe's multiple wives, and tomorrow evening you shall hear a description of a polygamous household from her own lips."

The first meeting had contained only the members of the small group which Truggles himself had organized, and two or three visitors attracted by the mayor's presence. But such words as "polygamy," "harem," "strange research," "monstrous plants and people" got around, as Truggles intended they should. The audience grew by leaps and bounds. By the night of the final meeting, the old auditorium was filled to overflowing; they were standing in the aisles.

Calmly, and yet not without some hint of the tragedy she herself felt, Lois described the day-to-day life of Forsythe's household; the friendship among the wives, their jealousies, their hopes and regrets. She did not realize that her words, like those of Truggles the day before, were building anger in the breasts of her hearers at something they had not experienced and could not understand.

When she had finished, Truggles took the stage, and now the calmness, the factualness, was gone from him.

"You have heard what this poor woman told you!" he cried. "You have heard how this man, this Forsythe, took advantage of her. Remember, her sisters are as unfortunate as she. Shall this lecher, this monster, go unpunished?"

Before he could say more, Lois was on her feet.

"Mr. Truggles, wait!" she exclaimed. "You told me you were going to try to get Blan to give up polygamy. I wouldn't have come here and helped you if I'd known you were going to try to arouse his friends against him!"

"My poor child, it's too late," answered Truggles loudly. "I tried to persuade the man to give up his life of sin, and his heart was as stone. He must feel the lash of just retribution!"

She stared at him, her eyes widening in slow realization. Then she burst into tears and ran from the stage. She fled down the aisle and out of the auditorium.

"Do you see?" cried Truggles to his audience. His blue eyes flashed and his voice rang like a trumpet. "Even now she cannot break his devilish hold on her! Think! Are your daughters safe from him? Are your wives, even? Do you know that the wife of his best friend, Dr. Allison, admits that her child is the child of this man, this monster?"

For five minutes, he shouted, he wept, he shook his fists, he raised his hands to heaven. Then, striding to the edge of the platform, he demanded in a low, compelling tone:

"Who will take up the sword of righteousness and go with me to drive this creature from our midst?"

For a moment, there was dead silence. Then a young man stood up in the middle of the auditorium.

"By God, I will!" he shouted.

"I reckon I will, too," called an older man near the rear. One by one, then all at once, they were on their feet, shouting and milling around. Truggles leaped from the stage and forced his way through the crowd to the door. They surged out of the auditorium at his heels and poured down the middle of the street toward the home of Blan Forsythe, yelling.

With Truggles in the lead, the excited citizens swept onto the broad lawn in front of the big mansion, spread out over the grass, trampling the flower beds. There were fifty to a hundred of them.

Porch lights went on all over the neighborhood. From the same direction from which the crowd had come, two figures ran across the yards in the dimness and, circling the edge of the crowd, came up to Truggles. He recognized Phyllis Allison and her son, Donald.

"What is this, Mr. Truggles?" she cried, peering into his face. "What are all these people doing?"

"I'm sorry you came here, Mrs. Allison," he answered, shouting to make himself heard over the uproar of the people around them. "These people are determined to right the wrong this man has done you."

Outside lights from the mansion suddenly lit the entire lawn, and the mob that stirred restlessly on it. A momentary silence fell. Their numbers did not seem as great, their ranks not so solid, in the glare of the lights.

"Come on, Forsythe!" shouted Truggles in a great voice. "Come out and face your judges!"

The front door opened and Allison stepped out on the railinged porch. Truggles, at the front of the crowd, was about seventy feet from him.

"What is this?" demanded Allison. "What are you people doing here?"

"We've come for Forsythe," answered Truggles, and a murmur from the crowd backed him up. "Where is he?"

"I'm surprised at you, all of you," said Allison. "You people are my friends and Blan's friends. Why, you--"

He broke off as he caught sight of Phyllis and Donald.

"Phyllis!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here? Take that boy home!"

Obediently, she turned away, but Truggles caught her by the arm.

"Get Forsythe out here!" he cried. "Let him face the woman he wronged!"

At that moment, Forsythe himself came out of the door and stood at Allison's side. A wordless cry ran through the mob at the sight of the tetraploid man's face, topped with its cap of mole-gray fuzz.

"I see you're still taking an active interest in my affairs, Truggles," said Forsythe. He did not raise his voice, but it carried across the lawn.

"Evil is every man's business," answered Truggles boldly. "These good people are enraged that you should flout the laws of society so brazenly."

"Naturally," replied Forsythe, smiling. "And you enraged them. As long as everyone here minded his own business, no harm was done."

"I expected you to take that attitude, Forsythe," shouted Truggles. "Have you no sense of responsibility, no respect for the customs that others have established for their protection?"

"Certainly," said Forsythe, but he added, logically: "Would you be bound by the customs of a colony of mice, if they interfered with your pursuit of greater ends?"

"Listen at him!" cried Truggles, turning to the crowd and spreading his hands. "You see what high regard he has for you, who have befriended him? He scorns you! He calls you mice!"

He turned back to the mansion with clenched fists and took a step forward.

"You monster!" he shouted. "Even mice can be dangerous!"

The crowd behind him surged forward with a roar. Forsythe's voice rang out above it.

"Wait!" he cried. "I appeal to your reason! I have no higher power. I can't strike you dead, or vanish from your sight. All I can do is ask you one question. Will you destroy me because I violate your customs, when I represent the hope of your race to become something greater?"

His words fell on deaf ears. The crowd inched forward, ugly, dangerous.

A figure brushed past Truggles. It was Phyllis Allison, and she tugged the boy Donald with her.

"Stop her!" cried Truggles. "Don't let her get in his clutches!"

Alone, for these words seemed only to confuse those near him, Truggles ran after Phyllis and the boy. But they stopped, halfway to the porch, and Truggles reached them. He placed his hand on Phyllis' arm and pulled at her compellingly.

He was close enough to her to hear her words to the boy.

"Donnie!" she urged anxiously. "You remember the game we played? Use the Power!"

The boy looked apprehensively toward the porch.

"Daddy said don't," he demurred.

Dr. Alex Allison stood, his hands gripping the rail of the porch, looking out over the ugly crowd. There was no mistaking the moment. At any instant, the mob would surge over the porch.

"Blan, I can't let them kill you because I've wronged you," said Allison in a clear, agonized voice. "Donald is your son!"