THEY BRACED THEMSELVES against the lurching of the train as it scraped around a curve, and then, as it seemed to shake itself straight again and pick up speed beneath them, the iron wheels clacking rhythmically on the rails, they relaxed once more.
They had been proofing the results of the week of sampling in East St. Louis, and now they were nearing the end of a five-minute recess, smoking in silence, making sporadic, inconsequential comments, waiting to resume.
Paul Radford sucked noisily at his straight-stemmed pipe, then realized the tobacco was burned out, and began to empty the white ash into the wall tray. "Do you really think Los Angeles will wrap it up?" he asked.
Across the way, Dr. George G. Chapman looked up from the sheaf of papers in his hand. "I don't know for sure, Paul. Probably. We had a wire from that woman—Mrs. Waterton—president of the . . . the . . ." He tried to remember. There had been so many.
"The Briars' Women's Association," said Dr. Horace Van Duesen.
Dr. Chapman nodded. "Yes, that's it; she promised a hundred percent turnout."
"It never works out that way," said Cass Miller sourly.
Dr. Chapman frowned. "It might. But let's say we get seventy percent response—I think we've been averaging close to that—well, that would be sufficient. We can cancel the optional engagement in San Francisco. We can just call it quits on the interviews and settle down to the paper work." He forced a smile. "I guess you boys would like that?"
There was no response. Paul Radford slowly rubbed the warm bowl of his pipe. Horace Van Duesen removed his horn-rimmed spectacles, held them up to the light, put them on again. Cass Miller chewed steadily at his gum, staring down at the worn carpeting.
Dr. Chapman sighed. "All right," he said, running a hand across his flat, slick gray hair, "all right, let's get back to the proofing."
For a moment longer, his eyes held on the three younger men cramped in the gray and green train bedroom that smelled of the now familiar smell of paint and metal. He could see the boredom and inattention on their faces, but he determinedly ignored this and, once more, bent his eyes closely to the typed manuscript in his hand. It was difficult focusing on the figures in the dim yellow overhead train light.
"Now, then, we've incorporated the East St. Louis sampling. That means—according to what I have here—we've interviewed 3,107 women to date." He glanced at Paul, as he usually did. "Correct?"
"Correct," repeated Paul, consulting the yellow pages in his hand. To Paul's right, Cass and Horace also looked fixedly at the papers in their laps and tiredly nodded their agreement.
"All right," said Dr. Chapman. "Now, let's check this carefully. It'll save us a good deal of drudgery when we get home." He shifted slightly in his chair, brought the manuscript closer to his face, and began to read aloud in a low, uncritical monotone. "Question. Do you feel any sexual desire at the sight of the male genitalia? Answer. Fourteen percent feel strong desire, thirty-nine percent feel a slight desire, six percent say it depends on the entire physique of the man, forty-one percent feel nothing at all." Dr. Chapman lifted his head, pleased. "Significant," he said. "Especially when you recollect our figures on male response to female nudity in the bachelor survey. Paul, make a note on that. I want to draw the analogy when I write the final report."
Paul nodded, and dutifully jotted a sentence in the margin of his paper, even though twice before in the last month he had been requested to record the very same notation. Doing so, he wondered if Dr. Chapman was as tired as he, and Horace, and Cass. It was unlike him to be forgetful and repetitious. Perhaps the fourteen months of almost uninterrupted traveling, interviewing, recording, proofing, were taking their toll.
Dr. Chapman was reading silently ahead. "Interesting," he mused, "how close these East St. Louis figures are to the national average."
"I think it's obvious women are the same everywhere," said Cass.
Horace turned to Cass. "How do you account for those lopsided percentages in Connecticut and Pennsylvania?"
"It wasn't a regional divergence," said Cass. "Those women chased more because their husbands were commuting—and they had too much money and nothing else to do. It was social and economic."
"All right, boys," said Dr. Chapman quickly, "let's not start analyzing—"
"I saw the advance sheet on The Briars," continued Cass. "With that income level, I'll lay two to one that we are approaching the land of the round heels."
Horace held up his hands in mock surrender. "Okay, okay, Mother Shipton."
"I don't like that kind of talk," Dr. Chapman said firmly to Cass. "We're scientists, not schoolboys."
Cass bit his lip and was silent.
Dr. Chapman regarded him quietly a moment, and then relented slightly. "We're all overtired. I know that. Exhaustion creates impatience, and impatience makes objectivity go out the window. We've got to watch it. We're not to permit ourselves snap judgments and unproved generalities. We're in pursuit of facts—facts and nothing more—and I want you to remember that for the next two weeks."
Paul wondered how Cass was taking this. He glanced at him. Cass's mouth was curled in a set smile that wasn't a smile. "Sorry, teacher," he said at last.
Dr. Chapman snorted and returned to the digits before him. "Where were we?"
Paul hastily answered. "Question. Do you feel any sexual desire at the sight of the male genitalia? Answer. Et cetera, et cetera."
"Do our figures jibe on that one?" asked Dr. Chapman. "Perfect with me," said Paul. He looked at the other two. Both Horace and Cass nodded.
"Let's go on," said Dr. Chapman. His stubby finger found his place on the page before him. He read aloud. "Question. Does observation of the unclothed male in that photograph of a nudist camp arouse you? Answer. Ten percent are strongly aroused, twenty-seven percent only somewhat, and sixty-three percent not at all." He lifted his head toward Paul. "Correct?"
"Correct," said Paul.
Horace straightened, pulling his shoulders back to work loose his stiff muscles. "You know," he said to Dr. Chapman, "that category keeps giving me more trouble than any other one. So often the answers are not clear cut."
"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Chapman.
"Well, I can give you a dozen illustrations. Da you want me to go into one?"
"If it's pertinent," said Dr. Chapman.
"When we were in Chicago last month, I asked one sample if the art photographs or paintings of nude males I showed her aroused her. Well, this woman—she must have been about thirty-five—she said that nude art never affected her one way or the other, except one statue in the Art Institute—an ancient nude Greek. Whenever she looked at it, she said, she had to go home and have her husband."
"I should think that would indicate sufficient reaction to stimuli," said Dr. Chapman. "How did you record the answer?"
"Well, I wanted to be certain that some personal association didn't make this statue an exceptional thing. I kept crosschecking, as we went along, with other questions. At last, I found out that when she was—sixteen, I think—she used to keep a magazine cut-out in a drawer, under her clothes, some male Olympic swimmer in abbreviated trunks. Whenever she took it out and looked at it, she would follow with masturbation. But besides that and the statue, no other photograph or art work ever aroused her. It makes it difficult to obtain a decisive—"
"I would have classified her in the 'strongly aroused' group.”
“Yes, I did. But it's often difficult—"
"Naturally," said Dr. Chapman. "We're dealing as much with grays as blacks and whites. Human emotions don't seem to measure out mathematically—but they can, with experience and intelligence applied by the interviewer." He tugged at his right ear lobe thoughtfully. "We're not infallible. The critic and layman want us to be, but we're not. Some error has to creep in as long as women will distort because of defensive exaggeration, involuntary emotional blocks, or prudish deceit. However, Horace, I believe our system of repeated double-check questions, especially the psychological ones—those, as well as consideration of the subject's entire attitude and response, are safeguards enough. In grave doubt, you still have recourse to the Double Poll. After all, in the Double Poll, we have the benefit of the forty years Dr. Julian Gleed devoted to analyzing married couples separately and setting up for us a statistical basis for discrepancy or percentage of probable error. His papers are a gold mine. Too often, we neglect them. Anyway, by now, Horace, I'm sure you know when an interview is utterly hopeless and must be discarded."
"Certainly," said Horace quickly.
"Then, that's enough. Occasional indecision about recording a reply will not affect the whole."
Paul observed that whenever any one of them questioned the method, as they had more frequently done in recent months than earlier, Dr. Chapman would make his reassuring little speech. Curiously, it was always effective. There was about Dr. Chapman an air, a quality, a Messianic authority that made what they were doing seem right and important. Paul supposed that Mohammed must have projected this in defending the Koran, and Joseph Smith in presenting the Book of Mormon. For all their trials and problems, Paul knew that his own faith in their mission, in Dr. Chapman's method, stood unshaken. He knew that Horace felt that way, too; Cass, alone, was possibly the only potential apostate. Possibly. One could never be sure of the true feelings that pulsated in Cass's complex nervous system.
Dr. Chapman had resumed the proofing. Paul focused his attention on the paper in his hand. Dr. Chapman's head was low over the manuscript as he droned the questions, answers, percentages. Does observation of those three still photographs of romantic scenes from recent movies and legitimate plays excite you or fire your imagination? Yes, strongly, six percent. Only somewhat, twenty-four percent. Not at all, seventy percent. Does examination of the male physical-culture magazine you have just been leafing through make you wish your husband was another type of man? Yes, definitely, fifteen percent. In some ways, thirty-two percent. Not at all, fifty-three percent. For those of you who replied that you wished your husband was in some ways a different type, please define in what ways you would like him different? Taller, more athletic, forty-seven percent. More intelligent and understanding, twenty-four percent. Gentler, fifteen percent. More authoritative or masculine, thirteen percent. Does the sex scene you have just read from the unexpurgated Lady Chatterly's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, the scene among "the dense fir-trees," erotically stimulate you in any way? Yes, strongly, thirty percent. Only somewhat, twenty-one percent. Not at all, forty-nine percent.
Although his hand continued to move his pencil down the page, Paul's mind was inattentive, and it wandered. He stared at the top of Dr. Chapman's head. Casually he wondered, as he had numerous times before, about Dr. Chapman's personal sex life. Usually, he tried not to wonder. It was an act of lese-majeste. The-Queen-has-no-legs, he told himself, was the only proper note. But the nagging curiosity persisted. Paul knew, of course, that somewhere among the thousands of discarded questionnaires in the rented storage safes of the Father Marquette National Bank in the town of Reardon, there was one that revealed Dr. Chapman's sex history. Who had questioned Dr. Chapman? Who, indeed. Who created God? Who analyzed Freud? In the beginning, there was the creator. God created God; Freud analyzed Freud; and Dr. Chapman had questioned himself.
The project had its testament and books of revelation, and even its Genesis. By now, Paul could recite it by heart. Six years ago, six years and two months to be exact, Dr. George G. Chapman had been a fifty-one-year-old professor of Primate Biology at Reardon College in southern Wisconsin. Except for a paper on the mating habits of the lemur and the marmoset, he was a scholastic nonentity. His income was a comfortable $11,440 a year. He roomed, off campus, with a younger sister who was in awe of him, with her husband, who engaged him in chess when not wearied by dentistry and golf, and with three young nephews, who regarded him as joint father.
Once, in dim memory, there had been a Mrs. Chapman. George G. Chapman had been a senior at Northwestern University when he had met her at a fraternity dance and married her. She had been the well-educated daughter of a prosperous publisher of technical books in Chicago. After the wedding, the couple had spent their brief honeymoon in Key West and Havana. (The only photograph that Paul had ever seen of her, the one reproduced so often in magazines, had been taken in Havana. The enlarged snapshot was encased behind glass in a brown leather frame on Dr. Chapman's office desk. It revealed a tall girl in a shapeless, knee-length dress of the period. Her broad brow, high-boned cheeks, thin nose, and wide mouth gave the impression of one good-natured and amused. The camera had caught her squinting into the lens, because the hot and glaring Cuban sun was in her face. Across her long legs, in a faded spidery scrawl, she had written: "To the brains in the family. Love, Lucy." The glass covering the picture, the last time Paul had seen it, was dusty.)
After four years of marriage—Dr. Chapman had obtained his first teaching assignment in Oregon, and then moved to North Carolina at higher salary—his wife had incredibly suffered a paralytic stroke. She lay in a semi-coma for six weeks, and then, one cool spring dawn, she died. Less than a year later, when Reardon College had offered him the chair of Primate Biology, Dr. Chapman moved back to the lovely Wisconsin lake country, scene of his childhood and school years. Several years after, through the bait of financial assistance, he induced his new brother-in-law to establish a dental practice in the town of Reardon, a mile from the school, and then he helped his brother-in-law and sister buy a house which he made his home.
Until his nephews came, Dr. Chapman was lost to the world of books and considered somewhat antisocial and dull by faculty wives. There was a brief flurry of interest in him after his paper on the lemur and the marmoset, but when he remained vague and lumpy at parties, this interest subsided. But soon his growing nephews, whom he looked upon as his own children, gave him a link to reality and the community of the living. More frequently, he began to speak up on the trials of fatherhood and schooling, and became conversant with Dr. Spock, and even made gentle little jokes about finding future brides for the boys among the daughters of the faculty families. Gradually, a few families accepted him into their circle of friends and found him comfortable and undemanding. Finally, there occurred the event—often likened by the press to the day Franklin flew the kite and Newton saw the apple fall—when Dr. Chapman was catapulted from faculty old shoe to national celebrity with the status of foremost politician, baseball player, matinee idol, racketeer. And it was the eldest of his nephews, Jonathan, who was the catalytic agent in Dr. Chapman's transformation.
Jonathan was in his thirteenth year, and about to enter high school, when one afternoon he overheard several men-about the-neighborhood (he was barely their junior) discuss the act of love and procreation in a language that baffled him. He had heard similar talk before, but, being an unaggressive and childish child, he had ignored it. His interests were sports and hobby cards. But now, suddenly having discovered that the presence of the opposite sex was equally as pleasurable as soft ball, he was curious for a clearer understanding of the strange chemistry between male and female that seemed to evoke expressions of excitement among his contemporaries. Rarely shy with his mother, Jonathan came out with it and asked her to enlighten him. She sent him to his father. His father, busy trying to diagnose the best approach to an impacted wisdom tooth, and feeling that an authority on the biology of primates might manage the crucial explanation better, sent him to Dr. Chapman.
Not one to equivocate—for he looked upon sexual intercourse as a phenomenon no more remarkable than any other motor activity—Dr. Chapman promptly undertook to explain the act of copulation in dry scientific terms. Fifteen minutes later, when he was done, Jonathan knew considerably more about monkeys and apes, but over human love there still remained the veil. He stammered his confusion to his uncle. Surprised, Dr. Chapman stared at his nephew, and, at last, he saw him as a boy. To Dr. Chapman's credit, he sensed at once that he was incapable of communicating on this subject more simply. He realized that this was a matter that might best be handled by men who worked with words. Dr. Chapman advised Jonathan (dryly, it is to be hoped) to practice abstinence for a few days, to check his curiosity, and to withhold further inquiry, while an effort was made to locate several good books on the subject.
Impatiently, Jonathan waited. Impatiently, Dr. Chapman searched. Lucid books giving exposition on sexual union were few and far between. There were several how-to-do books, but they were dated and poorly done. There were academic studies and surveys, such as those by Davis, Hamilton, Dickinson, and Kinsey, but they were either limited, special, and incomprehensible to the younger layman, unless popularly interpreted, or so broad and general in coverage as to be useless for any specific purpose. There were literary novels, but they were romantic, ill-informed, and too often erotic. And nowhere was there a single popular volume, designed for ordinary adolescents, that contained sound and thorough research into the actual sex life of under-aged human beings rather than mere speculation.
For Dr. Chapman, what had begun as a routine pseudo-fatherly task now became an obsessive scientific challenge. Lemur and marmoset were forgotten. The human mammal was the game. Several years later, when he spoke and the world listened, Dr. Chapman would explain his emotions during those trying days: "Like Columbus, I found I was on an uncharted sea. Almost every avenue of human endeavor had been lighted, but human sexual relations remained a terrifying unknown area, darkened by ignorance. Some brilliant scholars had explored the field, of course. Darwin, Freud, Dickinson, Havelock Ellis, had done heroic pioneer work. There were also other sex historians and investigators. But I felt that real factual data, understandable and valuable to the masses, did not exist, and what did exist was often spoiled by the moral and social prejudices of the authors. After I had done my first tentative probings into the love life of adolescents, I foresaw that a further series of great works devoted to specific categories of sexual behavior must be done—so that the inexperienced young and their uninformed elders might apply sexual knowledge to their own lives. And so, first with my own meager savings, then with contributions from friends, then with sums earned by commercial poll-taking in other fields, and, at last, with the full support of Reardon, I began my investigations. When I proved that scientific information was being uncovered, I finally received the backing of national private funds."
Presumably, nephew Jonathan was left to find his own way —and to await publication of Sexual Patterns in Adolescents and A Sex Study of the American Bachelor several years thence.
It was in the early days of his investigations, before he had received public approval, that Dr. Chapman ran into the greatest resistance. To determine a basis for interviewing and sampling, to test the value of his questions, he needed guinea pigs. Most members of the faculty, and their wives, were shocked and disapproving. At last, Dr. Chapman was forced to resort to bribes: purchasing subjects (and erratic memories of their teen-age years), from among students and idlers in the town, at so much a head, with the same calculation that blood is bought in a hospital for transfusion. Several times, local members of the clergy called upon him and tried to warn him, as tactfully as possible, that his investigation into adolescence was sinful, useless, corrupting. In desperation, Dr. Chapman pressed his nearest and dearest into the cause—interviewing his sister, his brother-in-law, several other relatives lured to the house of infamy on their vacations. And, finally, he interviewed himself, including in his personal confessional not merely experiences up to adolescence but his entire sexual history. His first collated findings in book form, obtained with the help of one assistant interviewer, earned him cash and some ungrammatical fan mail, but no national renown. Only when he confined his results to the professional journals after his next investigation were his colleagues and the great public beyond piqued, titillated, and impressed, and soon he was an institution and a force.
Yet, Paul wondered, what were Dr. Chapman's answers when he had interviewed himself?
The train lurched around a curve. Paul fell against Horace, dropping his pencil. Hastily, guiltily, he retrieved it.
"Did you get the last figures?" Dr. Chapman was asking. "I think you'd better repeat them," said Paul.
Dr. Chapman nodded. "This was a supplementary question for married women who stated that they had participated in extramarital relations."
"Yes," said Paul.
Dr. Chapman read aloud. "Question. We would like to know the number of men, other than your husband, with whom you have had sexual intercourse since your marriage? Answer. Fifty-eight percent, one male partner. Twenty-two percent, two to ten male partners. Fourteen percent, eleven to twenty-five male partners. Six percent, twenty-six to fifty male partners." Without looking up, he asked, "Correct?"
"Correct," said Paul.
"And I thought East St. Louis was a hick town," said Cass. Dr. Chapman cast him a pained glance.
Cass shrugged. "Forgive me. I'm punchy."
"I can see that," said Dr. Chapman. "We should be finished in ten or fifteen minutes."
He resumed reading in a persistent monotone. Sometimes his words were lost to the relentless clackety-clacking of the train wheels. Paul listened to the lulling duet of voice and steel, and he wished that Dr. Chapman would let them travel by air. But, since only the four of them knew the intricate symbol language of the questionnaire, Dr. Chapman felt flight too dangerous to the project. Yet he would not allow them to travel separately, to insure the project's survival, because he found these sleeper jumps useful for proofing. The proofing, Paul felt, was the most tedious part of the project. After each community sampling, in the interests of accuracy, Dr. Chapman and the team separately tabulated the questionnaires and drew up percentages for the particular community, so that regional variations could be measured against the national whole. Between cities, week after week, they compared their total percentages on all questions and answers.
Still, out of this meticulous and grinding paper work would grow a report that would be a sensation. Dr. Chapman's first survey had been intended for the broad lay public. Aside from squibs in Time and Newsweek, a paragraph in Winchell and an editorial in Scholastic, it was received as a passing oddity and invested with no more scientific authority than a syndicated reply to a lonely heart's letter. Dismayed though he was by this cool reception, Dr. Chapman was heartened by a lesson bitterly learned. If you had something important to tell the general public, you did not go to them; you contrived to let them come to you.
Briefly, it appeared that he would have no opportunity to apply this lesson. The wind was out of Dr. Chapman's sails, and he stood becalmed. Although his stimulated and challenged mind now teemed with new projects—especially one involving a survey of adult bachelors in America—he lacked sufficient financing to proceed: His first work, it was true, had won him a minor grant from the Department of Social Sciences at Reardon, as well as free office space in an unused college Quonset hut (a relic of GI students and World War II known among undergraduates as "the TB ward") and the prestige of using the school's name on his letterheads. But, without a larger grant from some private or government source, this was not enough. And the private funds and federal agencies remained aloof.
Then, overnight, financial help had come from an unexpected quarter. An important Madison Avenue advertising executive (the father of two delinquent offspring in private schools) had read Dr. Chapman's survey of adolescents, and had admired both his findings and his interviewing techniques. Presently, with the assistance of this advertising executive's agency, and soon others, Dr. Chapman was in the survey business full-time. The money earned in grub street from three commercial surveys—one for a tobacco firm to learn why people chose the brands of cigarettes they smoked, another for a political party to learn what attributes voters preferred in the personality of a candidate for Congress, the third for a cosmetic company to learn male reactions to the color and scent of women's make-up and toiletry—adequately provided the initial backing for Dr. Chapman's second serious investigation.
By this time, Dr. Chapman had organized himself and his aides into a non-profit group called Survey Studies Center. The group possessed then, and forever after, two faces: the scientific face, beloved and publicized, and the commercial face, despised and not publicized, the latter making the former possible. Both Reardon College and Dr. Chapman continued to lend their names to the commercial section of Survey Studies Center, justifying this crass participation as other universities justified big football, but publicly their hearts belonged to the scientific section.
While the commercial section of Survey Studies Center was left to the management of a club-footed scholar with protruding thyroid eyes, Marke Hildebrand, formerly employed by Gallup and Roper, Dr. Chapman concentrated his own considerable energies on the second sex survey. Now, at last, he was able to profit from the lesson of his first failure. This second survey, on the sexual behavior of adult bachelors in the United States, was carefully slanted for a limited audience of researchers, investigators, teachers—scientists all. It was written wholly in technical language. But percentages dramatized in colored pie graphs, as Dr. Chapman shrewdly perceived, were nontechnical, and overnight the figures were adopted by newspapers and magazines, rewritten and popularized and capsulized, and spewed out to the astonished and excited public.
Dr. Chapman became a household name, a bedroom name, a springboard for jokes and leers and learned commentaries. "The Chapman Report," as the lay press referred to A Sex Study of the American Bachelor, became an integral part of the American scene. Within four weeks, the imposing book headed the bestseller lists of the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, and Publishers' Weekly. In a short time, it had sold nearly a half a million copies. Except for a liberal fund set aside for personal expenses related to his work, Dr. Chapman retained not a single dollar of the thousands pouring in from book sales and lectures. All income was plowed back into his third serious project, A Sex History of the American Married Female, which, unlike the other two, was conducted in the bright glare of publicity, feverishly anticipated by millions of men and women alike.
Yes, the investigation was drudgery, Paul told himself; nevertheless, it was fun. The fun of it was being in the limelight and committed to a project that everyone considered important. Also—and this could not be discounted—it was fun being privy to secrets that the entire population panted to know about. This was the real stimulation, and not the sex. Perhaps his university colleagues would never understand this aspect of it. Wherever Dr. Chapman was entertained, there were always some assistant or associate professors (who should have known better) who hinted that the stimulation came from prying into the love lives of women. But Paul knew that this was not true. He, Horace, and Cass were like three obstetricians, peering into hundreds of vaginal channels every week, unmoved, detached, occupied and preoccupied. The thousands of words of love poured into their ears had lost all meaning, and the love act had become as neuter as anatomical drawings in a biology book. Despite this, in East St. Louis, after hours, Paul had several times caught himself studying the calves of passing women—and, at last, on the final night, he had found a small, dark Italian girl, with an enormous bosom, in an expensive bar, and joined her, and an hour later, lay beside her in a hotel room that was not his own, enjoying the feast of her body, but enjoying little else.
Sitting here now, on the hard seat of the swaying train, half aware of Dr. Chapman's droning voice, Horace's thick cigarette smoke, Cass's antagonistic crossing and uncrossing of his legs, he allowed his mind to drift backward to his own commitment to the project. It seemed this moment, approaching Los Angeles, nearing The Briars and two hundred more women and the survey's end, that he had been a part of it forever. Yet, it had been only three years.
He had been thirty-two years old at the time, and had been less than a year at Reardon College. He taught "English Literature—Borrow to Beardsley," and it was his third academic job. Before that, he had edited and written for a literary quarterly in Iowa, and as the result of an outstanding series of essays on English women authors of the nineteenth century, he had been invited (higher salary and transportation) to lecture at a private girls' school in Switzerland, and later he had moved on as lecturer at a teachers' college in Illinois.
During his several years in Berne, Paul had traveled considerably, and once, on a visit to the Vatican, he had become interested in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. From this grew a book, The Censorable Fringe, a scholarly yet lively study of authors under censorship. The subjects ranged from Tyndale and Rabelais to Cleland and Joyce. The book was published by an eastern university press, while Paul was still fulfilling his contractual obligation at the teachers' college in Illinois. It brought him some minor academic renown, and several impressive teaching offers, one from Reardon College. Although Paul had always regarded authorship as his true vocation, and the lecturing activity as something that paid the freight, he was not financially in a position to resist the Reardon bid. Too, he had another book, and needed a patron, and so, after a brief bout of indecision, he accepted the post in southern Wisconsin.
At Reardon, Paul quickly achieved popularity—first with his students, who enjoyed his irreverent comments on literary immortals, and second with the faculty wives, who were attracted to his appearance and status of bachelor. Paul was six foot tall, and a bookish slouch seemed to emphasize his height. His shock of dark hair was prematurely touched with gray—someone had remarked that it made him look as if he had a past—and his elongated, deep-lined face was otherwise too regular and attractive to be called Lincolnesque. He kept a spacious three-room apartment in town, puttered at notes on a book treating Sir Richard Burton as author, played tennis every Sunday, saw the Braves in Milwaukee once a month, and occasionally took Lake Forest girls dancing in Chicago.
He had not been on the campus a month when he heard about Dr. George G. Chapman and the strange doings in the Quonset hut behind the Science Building. For most of the first half year that Paul was at Reardon, Dr. Chapman and his original team were on the road, quietly pursuing their male interviews. From time to time, they would return to the five dank, partitioned rooms in the Quonset hut, rooms cluttered with fireproof file cabinets and enormous safes and a photographic-electronic monstrosity, conceived and designed by Dr. Chapman to reproduce and tally questionnaires, known as the STC machine. Several times, Paul caught glimpses of Dr. Chapman in his Oxford gray suit hastening across the green lawn. He was always pointed toward the Science Building, looking neither to right nor left, always hurrying, and always carrying an overstuffed briefcase. Paul had the impression of a big man—although later, he would realize that Dr. Chapman was of medium height but gave the feeling of size. His gray hair was neatly flattened by some expensive pomade, and severely parted; his face was broad and reddish, but not flabby; his chest and stomach were an enormous barrel that hung slightly over his low belt; his legs were spindly. He seemed precariously top heavy, like a quart bottle perched on toothpicks.
It was through Dr. Horace Van Duesen that Paul finally met Dr. Chapman. Horace was a young Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology who had been disinterested in what he had so long trained for, and had hoped to become a statistician. When the second project had sufficient endowment, but was not yet fully underway, Dr. Chapman hired spare-time associates. Horace Van Duesen was the first on his staff. Horace was thin and bony; when he rose to his feet you were sure you heard him rattle. His blinking myopic eyes were limpid, his nose beaky, his chin receding and apologetic. When Paul saw his face, he thought of Aldous Huxley on Shelley: "Not human, not a man. A mixture between a fairy and a white slug ... No blood, no real bones and bowels. Only pulp and a white juice." It seemed that Horace was aware of his liquid countenance and tried to reinforce it with the formal, starched collars, severe navy ties, and dark suits. He was more than he appeared, however. He was rigid in his essential decency, and puritanical at the core, and devoted to the belief that the only reality, comprehension, communication, lay in numbers.
Paul was drawn to him at once, because he was good, and he was level. Too, with this man, Paul decided, there could be no misunderstandings. They were brought together in a natural way. They were both lonely—or, rather, because both were unattached, hostesses assumed that they were lonely. Soon enough, Paul learned that Horace had been married for a brief period, and that his wife had left him or he had sent her away, and that now she was in the process of divorcing him in California. There had been some kind of scandal. Paul could never get it clear, nor did he wish to, and Horace never spoke of the bruise. Several times, Paul had heard professors' wives, or their grown daughters, refer to the recent Mrs. Van Duesen with antagonism and distaste. Since this always came from women, and the antagonism was unanimous, Paul felt safe in assuming that the recent Mrs. Van Duesen had been good looking and attractive to men.
As their friendship developed—poker, ball games, movies, occasional double dates, long walks and talks about their work —Paul learned of Dr. Chapman's project, and Horace learned of Paul's published book and book in the works. One summer evening, Horace asked to read The Censorable Fringe. A week later, having read and enjoyed it, he reported that he had loaned it to Dr. Chapman. Two days after that, in a state of excitement, Horace caught Paul between classes, before the gymnasium, and told him that Dr. Chapman wanted to see him.
And so, at last, Paul met Dr. Chapman. Horace drove Paul to the Swedish restaurant in town where, in a leather booth across the large room, Dr. Chapman was waiting. They ate and talked. They drove back to the school, and went inside the Quonset hut, and Dr. Chapman showed what he and Horace and the others were doing, and he talked. Later, deciding that a breath of air would do them good, Dr. Chapman led them on a long stroll about the darkened campus, Paul striding quickly to keep up beside him, and Horace a step behind.
It was a dizzying and stimulating night, in every way, and for Paul, it was wonderful. He found Dr. Chapman quick-witted, though humorless about his work, a man as well read as himself, and a hypnotic talker. Several times during the evening, drawing himself away from the flow of words, Paul considered Dr. Chapman and saw Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday. Not only in high-pitched, droning eloquence, but in single-mindedness, was Dr. Chapman fanatic about his calling and his mission. He spoke of the men and women who were his subjects with the same bloodless detachment that one might use when speaking of halibuts, and he spoke of sex with the same offhandedness that one might use to speak of a piece of furniture or wearing apparel.
When they crossed the campus, Paul became aware—and this awareness was confirmed in later travels—that Dr. Chapman had no sensibility or consciousness of externals. He had no interests in sights and landscapes, and he had no sensory re-actions. He was not even interested in people as individual human beings, except for what they might contribute to his precious digits and codings. It was during that evening, for the first time, that Paul had casually wondered about Dr. Chapman's personal sex life. Later, Horace had informed him of the once Mrs. Chapman and repeated a rumor of some handsome, middle-aged woman in Milwaukee (only a rumor, mind you, though he did go to Milwaukee several times a month, always alone), but if true, the affair was merely an anatomical convenience.
All through that night, Paul knew what was coming, and waited, fearful that it would not come (a fear rooted in the uncertainty of his academic standing, since he was not even an instructor with a Master's degree but merely a lecturer, which sometimes made him feel he did not belong to the club), but at last it did come, and he was finally not surprised.
"It's a pity, at this point, but I'm afraid I'll have to let Dominick go," Dr. Chapman had said.
They had reached the gabled Theta Xi house, and Dr. Chapman stood at the edge of the curb, making much of lighting a new cigar.
"A good man," he continued, exhaling smoke. "But he's married a Catholic girl, and she and her whole family are pounding him for his disgraceful vocation. He wants to get back to his first work—he was in physiological chemistry when I found him—but he feels a certain loyalty to me. He was with us this past year, on the interviews throughout the country. But now he's impatient and upset, and that's no good when you're collating." Suddenly, he peered through the smoke at Paul. "You're not Catholic, are you?"
"My mother adhered to the teachings of John Calvin, my father to Bob Ingersoll," said Paul. "I have a sister in New York who is devoted to Mary Baker Eddy. I'm—well, I suppose I'm most faithful to Voltaire."
Dr. Chapman stared at the pavement a moment. "Let's walk back," he said.
They walked more slowly now, and Dr. Chapman resumed again. "There's an opening," he said. "We're preparing the presentation. It is the final stage, but it's the one we'll be judged by. I'm loaded down with assisting specialists in physiology, psychiatry, sociology, endocrinology, anthropology. At this point I need someone who knows something about literature—and a little of everything else—to help with the presentation." He glanced at Paul. "Like the man who wrote your book." It was his only concession to levity the entire evening.
And so, within a week, on a part-time basis, Paul became a member of the team. During the year that followed, the latest survey was prepared for the press. The more closely Paul worked with Dr. Chapman, the more he admired him and saw in him the traits that he always wished his father had possessed. For, in Paul's eyes, Dr. Chapman wore, like three precious stones in an idol's head, the qualities of Direction, Dedication, Confidence.
Paul's admiration for Dr. Chapman carried over into the project itself, so that sometimes it seemed that all the world beyond the college hut was a primitive and ignorant place, waiting only for the Message to give its dark age a renaissance. Dr. Chapman toiled mornings, afternoons, and from eight to midnight every evening, as well. Always, Paul was beside him. The notes on Sir Richard Burton gathered dust, the Milwaukee Braves were one rooter shy, and the Lake Forest girls sighed and cast about for more likely prospects.
When the project was done, and the book put to press, Paul felt oddly bereft. Something needed and encompassing had left his life. And, when the book was printed and released, there was the dreadful apprehension. Would it be accepted, or was all this belief and devotion a delusion? Accepted it was—as few books in all history had been accepted—by specialist and layman alike. In the hysterical excitement that followed, Paul forgot his vocation, his career, his private dreams. He wanted only to go on being a part of this new adventure.
Dr. Chapman's third survey, A Sex History of the American Married Female, was already in preparation when the enormous success of the second venture ensured the undertaking of the third. Paul was offered a permanent job as member of the interviewing team. His salary increase was twenty-five percent. But even without it he would have grabbed the opportunity. He resigned as lecturer on "English Literature—Borrow to Beardsley" and became a full-time investigator of female sexuality.
After the groundwork had been laid—the studying and orientation, the planning of objectives, the sifting of questions, the corresponding with friendly college groups, church organizations, community clubs, PTAs—the itinerary of the tour was set. As to personnel, Dr. Chapman had streamlined his team. On his first survey, there had been two of them, himself and an aide; on his second survey, to cover more ground, there had been seven interviewers deploying as two task forces. But now, for the third survey, Dr. Chapman decided to reduce his commandos again, for the sake of thoroughness, mobility, economy. This time, there were four of them, and a secretary. Dr. Chapman, Horace, Paul, and a portly young psychologist named Dr. Theodore Haines comprised the team. Benita Selby, a pale, withdrawn, flaxen-haired girl of twenty-nine, and frantically efficient, was the secretary. Benita was expected to fly into each city two days before the team arrived, set up the machinery, and stay on for the paper work. The fourteen-month tour was to begin in Minnesota, move to Vermont, then zig-zag up and down the land, and across to California. One month before departure, Dr. Theodore Haines resigned. He had been offered a government job in Washington—as a result of his connection with Dr. Chapman—and it was important to him to stand independently on his own two feet. Dr. Chapman cajoled, to no avail. Haines departed—and Cass Miller took his place.
Dr. Chapman had rushed to Chicago to interview candidates, and Cass had appealed to him at once. Cass was a zoologist, in a small but highly rated Ohio college. He taught four classes, and he was working for his Ph.D. His background, so similar to Dr. Chapman's own, and his fierce intensity, which, in his haste, Dr. Chapman mistook for dedication, were appealing. After surviving twenty-four hours of Dr. Chapman's penetrating questions and a superficial check into his background, Cass became the fourth member of the team.
A week later, having settled his affairs in Ohio, Cass was at Reardon, undergoing day and night briefing. Horace thought him agreeable, but Paul was less certain. Cass was short, but solid and athletic. He was dark and handsome in a brooding sort of way, like an embodiment of Hamlet. His hair was black and wavy, his eyes narrow, his lips full. His cleanliness shone, and his clothes were impeccable. He walked with the bantam-cock strut of many small men, and there was about him the feeling of one high-strung, coiled tight. He exercised in a frenzied way, and was strong and tireless at his work. Often, he was uncommunicative, which at first deceived Paul into believing that he possessed hidden wisdom. He was given to cynicism, crudities (in the manner he spoke, for he was actually erudite), moderate drinking, and long silent walks. You have to know him well, Paul often thought, really to dislike him.
During the rigorous fourteen months past, Paul had come to know him well. Weighing all personality factors, Paul decided (to himself) that what repelled him most about Cass was his attitude toward women and sex. Since all of them were devoted day after day to studying the private sexual behavior of women, any deviation from the purely scientific attitude was glaring. Dr. Chapman was simply above ordinary off-hour sex talk and drive, and was not to be judged. Horace was apathetic, as if he had expended his last emotional investment in the wife who had divorced him. Paul imagined that Horace had a low sex quotient, and that, generally, he was a recluse in his private world of fantasy. Paul himself, based on Dr. Chapman's findings in the bachelor survey, had been about normal in his desires and activity before joining the team. Recently, however, he had sublimated his physical needs in work. He now found that he could perform efficiently for several weeks without a woman. The surfeit of sex chatter each day, the long hours of note making, the constant travel, were enervating, and alcohol and sleep became satisfactory substitutes for physical love. But then, always, finally, there was a woman's voice, legs, bust, and suddenly his emotions were engaged.
Since the members of the team labored under the closest national scrutiny, challenged constantly by moral voices of the Mrs. Grundys, their conduct had to be above reproach. Dr. Chapman hammered this home to them time and again. Paul played it safe. He found his occasional woman in the anonymity of a crowded bar or, as frequently, through a colleague in a cooperating university, a bachelor like himself who knew someone who had a friend. There was no love in this, but there was release and relaxation. Real love (whatever that was) Paul had never known, nor would he allow himself to dwell upon it. In this way, he supposed, he was like Cass, and yet he was not like Cass at all. For, he was sure, Cass hated women. Dr. Chapman, usually astute and perceptive about those near to him, was too occupied elsewhere to have discovered this fact yet. But Paul was sure. Cass's neuroses had not been so evident earlier in the investigation, when more often his intensity was leavened with humor. But lately, in the last few months certainly, especially when Dr. Chapman was not about, Cass had more and more displayed an angry, almost savage way of discussing women. It was as if they had not evolved beyond the animals he had once dissected in zoology.
Paul knew that Cass had a compulsive need for many women, for different women, and that he picked them up in almost every city they visited, sometimes with a total disregard of his position. Was it to make himself more than he was—or to make all women less? Paul did not know. But he felt that Cass made love at women, not with them. This was the basic difference between Cass and himself. Cass loved without hope. Paul, even in his most calculated adventure, hoped for more than there was, forever seeking not sex alone but total love, and never finding it.
Dimly, he heard his name, and, momentarily groping out of the recess of daydream and past, he scrambled back to the train bedroom.
Dr. Chapman, he was aware, had been addressing him. ". . takes care of East St. Louis."
Paul nodded solemnly. "Yes, it does." Busily, he straightened the sheaf of papers on his lap.
Dr. Chapman turned to Horace and Cass. "Well, we're going to be up bright and early. We want to be at our best at The Briars."
Horace rose and stretched. "Has there been much publicity about our coming?"
"Oh, I should think so," said Dr. Chapman.
"I hate having my picture in the papers," said Horace. "I'm not the type. I always look like I'm being confirmed."
Dr. Chapman laughed. "The price of fame," he said with satisfaction. "Well, good night."
"Good night," said Horace.
He started for the door. Paul and Cass were on their feet. They both nodded to Dr. Chapman, who was stuffing his papers into his brown calf briefcase, and followed Horace. They were in the narrow corridor, Paul in the rear, when Dr. Chapman spoke up again. "Paul, can I see you for a minute—just for a minute?"
"Of course."
Paul looked after Horace and Cass, who were already moving down the corridor, hands extended like wings, balancing against the beige metal wall and the green shades, making their way toward the lounge car.
It would be their last night like this, before heading home. Paul wanted to celebrate. "Cass," he called, "if you're going to have a nightcap—"
"You're damn right," answered Cass.
"....I'll join you."
He watched them continue down the rolling corridor, and then he turned back into Dr. Chapman's compartment.
"… you'll be quite appalled, but without men like Ackerman, our work would be ten times harder, maybe impossible," said Dr. Chapman.
He sipped his gin and tonic, and Paul, sitting across from him, drank again of his Scotch and water.
They had been conversing like this, not exactly about their work, but around their work, for five or ten minutes. Dr. Chapman had rung for the porter, and ordered the drinks—he, too, apparently, was feeling festive—and they had just got the drinks.
Dr. Chapman had been discussing inconsequential matters—California, The Briars, some friends at UCLA, a possible vacation for all when they returned to Reardon, then California again—and this was odd, since he had so little small talk. Paul divined that this was all preliminary to something, and he drank and waited. Now Dr. Chapman was discussing Emil Ackerman, a wealthy Los Angeles resident, who had helped make arrangements for interviews four years before and had been responsible for the contact with The Briars' Women's Association.
"But just what does he do?" Paul asked.
"I don't know," said Dr. Chapman. "He's representative of a certain profession, unclassified, unnamed, in America, that helps make the country go. He was in manufacturing, probably still is. Enormously rich. Has homes in Bel-Air, Palm Springs, Phoenix. His avocation is politics. Maybe it's his vocation. Maybe that's how he makes his money—putting in a governor or a mayor, fooling around with tax legislation. I know he's tied in with the lobbyists in Sacramento, and he has his hand in a dozen activities. He doesn't get much publicity. He doesn't run for office. He's a sort of Harry Daugherty—or, better, Jesse W. Smith, the Harding man who had the Little Green House on K Street. Ackerman's profession is doing favors."
"Purely altruism?"
"I strongly doubt it. You cast your bread upon enough waters—and you wait—and sometimes you catch a whale. It's a profitable sport. Most office holders are not titans of integrity or intelligence. You've heard the story about President Harding. His father said to him, `If you were a girl, Warren, you'd be in the family way all the time. You can't say No.' Well, there are hundreds like that. They can't say No when Ackerman offers to do a favor, and they can't say No when he wants repayment. Ackerman's in the business of being paid back."
"What can he get back from you?"
Dr. Chapman considered his drink. "Oh, nothing. I'm sure he expects nothing from me." He looked up and smiled. "As Cass might put it, maybe he wants some phone numbers."
"I wouldn't be surprised."
"No, seriously, I think I'm his fun. He just likes the sensation of being close to us. I imagine it gives him a certain standing among his higher-echelon friends. I mean, he can pretend to be a part of this; it's something you can't buy."
"That makes sense," said Paul. He drank slowly, still wondering where all this was leading. "How did you ever tie in with him?"
"Well, you know our operation pretty well by now," said Dr. Chapman. "There's always resistance. From the start we decided to work with social groups, instead of individuals, because individuals are scared or shy. But, bolstered by group opinion, an individual usually conforms. So our problem was to reach these civic and church groups. It wasn't easy. The direct approach proved impossible. Most often, they were suspicious. Who were we? What did we really want? And so forth. So I reasoned that the only way to win their confidence was through academic and political leaders. I leaned heavily on the university connections I had. In each university city, a professor or professor emeritus or member of the board of regents would send me to a politician or the head of a club—and that would usually open the door. Of course, this time, it's easier. You have no idea what it was like on the previous surveys. But now we have public acceptance. I have a reputation. It's smart—even an honor—to be part of our effort. Anyway—"
He paused to sip his gin and tonic, licked his upper lip, then went on. "Anyway, that's how I came across Ackerman. Four years ago, we wanted three group samplings in the Los Angeles area. I knew someone at UCLA, and he knew someone in the mayor's office, and he knew Ackerman. Well, I came on ahead and met Ackerman. He's a big old goat. Used to play football at Stanford, I think. While most of his schooling hasn't rubbed off, I think he takes a pleasure in being common. But he's shrewd and smart, and he knows everyone—and, as I said, everyone owes him something. Well, he got quite a kick out of the whole thing. He made three phone calls, and we had the three groups. I sent him an autographed copy of the book, and he was like a baby. Anyway, when I knew we were coming to Los Angeles again, I wrote him, told him what I wanted. And he arranged it. Don't ask me how."
"I'm looking forward to meeting him," said Paul.
Dr. Chapman's mind seemed suddenly elsewhere. "You'll meet him," he said absently. "He'll be at the lecture, you can be sure." He gazed at Paul a moment. "Actually, there's someone else I want you to meet—someone far more important to us right now."
Here it is at last, Paul told himself. He said nothing. He drank.
"Before I go into that," Dr. Chapman was saying, "I think I had better explain something to you. It's rather important, and I know I can trust your discretion."
Paul nodded.
"Because it involves the two of us." He paused a moment, considering how he should say what he wanted to say. "I'm sure you know, without my telling you, that I have a good deal of respect and affection for you."
"Thank you."
"I don't waste words. So I mean what I say. I've had this thing on my mind for some time. I've been holding it off until our tour was finished. Keeping a team together is important—very important—working together, no favors, no exceptions; it has to be democratic. But there comes a time when you can't depend on three men but must choose only one. Horace has seniority. He's fine, fine. We all like him. He's dependable, a workhorse. But he has no imagination, no social gift, no flair. He's not dynamic. He reflects the face of the crowd. As for Cass, well, I'll be truthful; he won't do, simply won't do. He's misplaced in this kind of work. He hasn't the detachment of a scientist. And he's disturbed. That's been evident to me for some time. Of course, he does his work, does his work well, but I'll have to drop him after this survey is done."
Paul was mildly surprised at Dr. Chapman's perception—not his perception, really, but his all-seeing, omnipotent eye. Well, so much for Horace, and goodbye Cass. One little Indian left.
"Which brings me to you," Dr. Chapman was saying. "I've watched you closely—under every circumstance—and I'm happy to say you've never disappointed. I think you like this work—"
"Very much."
"Yes. And you're good at it. I've decided you're the one I can depend upon. You see, Paul, there's more to my work than being a scientist. I learned that very quickly. The scientist part is the most important part, but it's not enough. The world demands more. To maintain my position, I have to have a second face. It's the social face, the political face, the—how shall I put it?—this way, perhaps: it's not enough to do your work; you have to sell it, also. Do you understand?"
"I think so."
"If I were scientist alone, with no other talent, this project would not exist today—but if it did exist, it would be relegated to the library stacks; it would not survive and flourish."
Paul finished his Scotch and water. There was something about all this that was vaguely upsetting—disappointing would be too strong a word. Yet, it was reasonable. Dr. Chapman was always reasonable.
"I see your point," said Paul.
"I knew you would," said Dr. Chapman. "Few men have the qualifications to head up a project like this. I happen to be one." He paused. "You happen to be another."
Paul was sure that his eyes had widened. He could not think of a thing to say. He met Dr. Chapman's gaze, and waited.
"Now, I must tell you what's been happening. But I repeat, it's strictly between us." He measured his words more care-fully. "I've been approached by the Zoliman Foundation—you know their importance—"
Paul bobbed his head. He knew.
"... they can do things the Rockefeller and Ford people can't do. Well, their board of directors is very impressed with my work, my record. They've been feeling me out about expansion. They would like to underwrite a new academy to be established in the East—like starting a vast laboratory or college—along the lines of the Princeton School for Advanced Studies which would be devoted entirely to the work I have been doing. Only, it would be on a much larger scale."
Paul blinked at the enormity of it. "What an opportunity—" he began.
"Exactly," said Dr. Chapman crisply. "The work would go ahead on a scale hitherto undreamed of. I've gotten as far as discussing actual projects with them. Instead of the limited approach we now have, this academy would prepare dozens of projects, train personnel to handle them, and would send countless teams around the world. For the first time we'd be able to make comparative studies of the sexual behavior of English, French, Italian, and American women. As it is now, we're confining ourselves to the United States, while brilliant sexologists abroad, like Eustace Chesser in England, Marc Lanval in France, Jonsson in Sweden, have been conducting sex surveys quite apart from us. This should all be done by one organization. Of course, there might be problems."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, there could be obstacles abroad. Take that sex study of six hundred and ten French and Belgian women that Dr. Marc Lanval started in 1935. He was constantly hampered by the authorities. Liberal as the French are about their sexual activity, they seem to discourage inquiry into it. Lanval claims he was raided more than once by the Sureté. Nevertheless, he got his results, and so would we." Dr. Chapman reflected on this a moment before continuing. "I remember Lanval asking his French and Belgian women, Was your physical initiation on your wedding night a good or bad experience?' Exactly fifty and one half percent of his women said good experience, and forty-nine and one half percent said bad. Now, wouldn't it be interesting to have the same investigator ask the very same question of American, Spanish, German, and Russian women? That's what I mean by comparative international studies. But, as I told the Zollman people, this would be only a part of our program—"
"Only a part?" echoed Paul.
"Oh, I envision endless other studies, off-shoots of our present work—international investigations into polygamy and polyandry, into the effects of venereal disease on sex life, an examination of illegitimacy in Sweden, a survey confined to mothers and the effects of children on their love lives, other surveys concerned solely with Negroes, Catholics, Jews and similar racial or religious groups, a study on the effects of birth control on sexual pleasure, a world-wide survey of artists who have devoted themselves to writing or painting romantic scenes, and so on and on. There are no boundaries to this and no language to express the good it can do. The Zollman Foundation is thinking in terms of millions of dollars—the academy would become a wonder, a marvel, a landmark of civilization—what Pliny and Aristotle and Plato would have sold themselves into bondage to establish."
"I don't know what to say. There aren't words—"
"I expected you to appreciate it. I'm glad you do. If this academy came into being, I would be its president—its mentor." He stared off for a moment, then brought his eyes back to Paul. "You understand, I would be too busy to do what I am doing now. Our work would involve national, international welfare. It would almost be elevated to governmental level. My position would force me to be one moment in the White House, the next in Stockholm with the Nobel people, the next in Africa with Schweitzer, and so forth. I would need someone to guide the actual survey work, the sampling, the real machinery of the academy. This is the job I am offering you."
Paul felt the hot flush on his cheeks. He wanted to reach out, touch Dr. Chapman, let him know what this expression of approval meant. "I ... I'm overwhelmed, Doctor. It's ... I never dreamed of such a thing."
"You'd be making twice the money you're making now. And you'd have authority and a certain—how shall I say?—standing; yes, standing."
"When would this happen?"
"In a year—no more," said Dr. Chapman. "After we've put the female survey to press. Of course—" he stood up suddenly, stepped to his coat on the hanger, and found a cigar. He bit the end, then located a match. Striking it, lighting up, he sat down—"you realize that the whole—the plan—is not a reality until we have a final vote of consent from the Zollman board of directors."
"But they know your work."
"They know more. I've submitted to them, in writing, not only a complete explanation of my methods and achievements, but a detailed outline of my plans and needs. Still, the grant would be so large, it requires study by each individual board member—and a favorable majority vote when they meet in the fall. As things stand now, I believe the majority are inclined to support the idea of an academy devoted to international sex studies. But much can happen between now and the meeting. Those men, the members of the board, they're human beings. They're intelligent, but they come from every walk of life, with every background and prejudice and susceptibility—I mean susceptibility to unfavorable criticism—they can be swayed for or against. I've seen it too many times."
Paul knew that Dr. Chapman had something specific in mind. He did not know what. "I don't think you have any reason to be worried."
"But I have, Paul, I have. I won't beat around the bush with you. I have. Here, within grasp, is the biggest thing that's ever happened in my life—and yours—fulfillment of a dream beyond dreams—and yet, some small nonsense between now and late autumn, some carping little thing, could ruin the whole plan and turn Zollman against us." He stared at Paul. "Have you ever heard of Dr. Victor Jonas?"
"Of course."
Everyone associated with Dr. Chapman was aware of Dr. Jonas, the iconoclastic, outspoken, free-lance psychologist and marriage counselor. When Dr. Chapman's second book had appeared, Dr. Jonas had reviewed it for several academic journals and had been highly critical. His rhetorical skill and imagery were such that he was often quoted in newspapers and the news magazines.
"He's our Devil's Advocate," said Dr. Chapman. "I don't understand."
"You spend your lifetime trying to promote Sainthood for some obscure, courageous, miracle-working missionary, and then you go to the Vatican to present your case and promote your cause, and there is one appointed who is the Devil's Advocate, who tries to demolish your cause, who tries to show that your subject does not deserve Sainthood. Often the Advocate succeeds, too. Well, Dr. Jonas is our hurdle, our opposition. He's been making a study of our work—"
"Are you sure?"
"Certainly I'm sure. I've told you, Paul, you can't hold my job and be pure scientist alone. You can't be above the battle. I have my sources. Dr. Jonas is doing this study, and I happen to know that it is antagonistic. He will publish it before the Zollman Foundation board meets."
"But why would he do that—I mean, undertake the whole thing?"
"Because he's been hired to do it. I don't have all the facts. It's been rather hush-hush. But there's a small, crotchety splinter group of the Zollman board, the Anthony Comstock wing, who are opposed to putting money in my academy. They have other plans for the endowment. Well, they looked around for a kindred spirit in dissent. Jonas was a natural choice. He's against us—whether out of envy or malice or because he wants headlines, I can't say—but he is, and this Zollman minority is exploiting his attitude. They've given him money, out of their private purses I am sure, to make a thorough analysis of our methods and accomplishments, and tear them to shreds. Once done and published, it could have a devastating effect—not on the public at large, but on the judgment of the Zollman board. It could very well destroy my—our—academy."
Paul was bewildered. "You mean you've known this all along, and you've done nothing?"
Dr. Chapman shrugged. "What can I do? It's not befitting that I.. . I even recognize this man—"
"Reinforce your case before the public. Hire publicists if you must."
"It wouldn't help where I want it to help. No, I've thought it out. There's only one thing to do—see Jonas—he's in Los Angeles—see him and speak to him."
"I doubt if he'd listen to reason."
"Not reason." Dr. Chapman smiled. "Cash. He's obviously a man who can be bought."
"How?"
"By bringing him into our project as a consultant, an associate, and promising him an important place in the academy. We can't beat him, so we'll absorb him. He can't criticize what he's a part of."
Paul shook his head. "A man of your stature can't go to him with a bribe."
"Bribe?" Dr. Chapman's large, open face reflected astonishment. "Why, it wouldn't be that at all. We would have real use for this man on our team. I should have stressed that at once. He could keep us from becoming complacent. He could still play Devil's Advocate, but to bolster us and improve us, for our benefit, not to our detriment."
Paul wanted to believe this. He tried to see Dr. Jonas' value if he quit the society of dragons and enlisted as a knight of the round table. He could see that Jonas' values would be considerable. "Yes," Paul said. "But no matter what your motives, it'll still look like a bribe if you go to him—"
"Oh, I wouldn't go to him. You're right, of course, Paul. I couldn't." He shook the long ash off his cigar. "No, I'm not right for it, Paul. But you are. You're just the person to do it. I hope you will." He smiled again. "It's not just me now, you see, it's both of us—we've both got everything at stake."
"Well, well, the heir apparent," said Cass as Paul made his way into the lounge car and joined the other two at their table.
"That was long enough," Cass added, slurring his words. "What did you and the old Roman cook up for the Ides of March?"
"A new survey," said Paul pleasantly. "We're going to interview men who interview women and find out what makes them so goddam sour."
"Big joke," said Cass, noisily downing his drink.
Paul glanced at Horace, who was morosely twisting his glass. "Cass got you down, too?"
Horace lifted his head. "I was just thinking about Los Angeles. I wish we could skip it. I don't like Los Angeles.”
“And miss all that great weather?" said Paul.
"You can have it."
Paul leaned across the table and pressed the buzzer. In a moment, a white-coated colored waiter appeared. Paul ordered refills for the others and a Scotch for himself. Watching the waiter go, he saw that there were three other people in the lounge car. An elderly couple, seated side by side, were absorbed in leafing pages of their bound magazines. At the far end sat a girl, bleached blonde and rather self-conscious as she pretended to read a paperback book and occasionally sip at her drink.
Cass saw Paul looking off, and he half turned and observed the blonde. "She must have just blown in," he said. "Nice tits."
"Cut it out," said Horace. "Do you want her to hear you?"
"That's right. That's just what I want her to do." Cass grinned at Paul. "If they got 'em, they should be proud of 'em. Agreed?"
"Agreed," said Paul.
"And maybe even share the wealth." He half turned again and stared at the blonde. She crossed her legs, tugged her skirt down, and concentrated on her book.
Cass swung back and began to recount a pointless and pornographic anecdote about a blonde he had once kept in Ohio. Presently, the drinks came. Paul paid, and they all devoted themselves to the business of oblivion.
Cass finished first. "Dammit, I'd sure like to tear off a piece."
"It's the movement of the train," said Horace ponderously. "I've often observed that when people are on moving vehicles —trains, boats, airplanes—they are sexually stimulated."
"Shove it," said Cass.
"You're drunk," said Paul. "Why don't you hit the sack?"
"Not alone, I don't." He pushed his chair back. "I'm going to do some missionary work, spread the gospel of Dr. Chapman, make our little slut there a statistic—"
"Shut up," said Paul angrily.
Cass glared at him, then suddenly smiled wickedly. "Did I take His name in vain? Sorry, Apostle."
He rose and unsteadily made his way to the rear of the lounge. He picked a magazine off a chair, and then he sat down next to the girl. Stiffly, she continued to read. Slowly, Cass turned the pages of the magazine.
Paul drained his glass. "Ready for bed?" he asked Horace. "I suppose so."
But Horace had made no move to leave. He sat staring gloomily at his drink.
Observing the downcast look on Horace's face, Paul waited, puzzled. "Anything wrong?"
Horace did not reply at once. He remained immobile, except for his hands, one absently kneading the other. At last, he pushed his spectacles higher on the bridge of his nose and squinted through them at Paul.
"Yes, I guess I am worried," he said in his professorial way that sounded oddly unemotional. "I know it's foolish of me."
Paul was at a loss. "Is it anything you want to talk about?"
"Well ..." He hesitated on the edge of some frontier of privacy, and then, averting his eyes, he left privacy behind. "You know I was married once," he said. It was a flat declaration.
Paul played no games. "So I've heard." Although he had known Horace for three years, and known him well, and exchanged many minor confidences with him, he had never heard his friend discuss his marriage. Occasionally, Paul remembered, others had mentioned the former Mrs. Van Duesen, always in passing and obliquely, and Paul understood no more than that she had left her mark on the campus and departed its ivy walks filled with dishonors.
"My ex-wife lives in Los Angeles," Horace was saying. And then he added: "I hate her. I don't ever want to see her again."
"Who says you have to see her? Los Angeles is a big city. What the devil, Horace, you were there four years ago on the bachelor survey. She must've been there then. Yet you seem to have survived it."
"That was different," said Horace. "Four years ago she lived in Burbank. Now she lives in The Briars."
Paul frowned. He tried to think of something reassuring to say. "Are you positive she's still there?"
"She was a year ago."
"Well, I'd be damned if I'd let that bug me. The odds are all on your side. The Briars must be swarming with women. We'll only be seeing a handful."
Horace shook his head with resignation, as one awaiting the blindfold. "I don't like it, that's all. I don't like being anywhere near her. I don't trust myself thinking of what I might do if I saw her." He paused, and glanced furtively at Paul. "If you knew what had happened, you'd understand." But he compressed his lips and did not reveal what had happened.
Paul felt as useless as a good Samaritan on a foggy night. "I think you can trust yourself," he said. "Apparently you didn't do anything rash when you had the—when you broke up."
"At that time I couldn't," said Horace mysteriously. "But I've had over four years to think about what she did."
Again Paul speculated on the kind of scandal that could possibly embitter a man so unfamiliar with deep emotion as was Horace. He hoped his friend would say more, but he saw that Horace had beaten his way back across his frontier of privacy.
"Well, try to put it out of your head," Paul said lamely. But he wanted to do better than this. "If you happen to run into her, you'll manage the situation. Hello. Goodbye. But I'll bet you a week's salary you don't get within a country mile of her."
Horace had hardly listened. He wagged his head miserably. "I begged Dr. Chapman to take the San Francisco date instead of Los Angeles, but once he sets his mind ..."
Paul saw that nothing more could be done for his friend. Like so many males who lived alone, old maidishly, Horace had too much spare time to masticate small things and past things. His apprehension had grown out of proportion to probability, but no one would convince him of it.
Paul pushed his chair back and stood up. "Come on, old man. Try to sleep it off. We're lucky if we get six or seven hours, as it is. By this time tomorrow, you'll be too damn busy to worry about anything."
Horace nodded without conviction, pushed himself to his feet, and came around the table.
Waiting for Horace to precede him, Paul glanced off at Cass and the blonde. Apparently, they were already on a friendly footing. Cass had said something, and she was laughing, and she leaned nearer to him, and he patted her arm. Now he was reaching behind her to touch the buzzer, and she was saying something to him.
The movement of the train, Paul thought. Or maybe this project. A Sex History of the American Married Female. Was she a married female? Did she have a sex history? Question. Do you feel any sexual desire at the sight of the male genitalia? Well, do you? Answer. Fourteen percent feel strong desire.
Paul turned away. Horace had already gone. At once Paul remembered how someone had described Horace's ex-wife. The someone had been a pinched and fussy dean. The word he had used was hetaera. What had he really meant? Suddenly, Paul was too tired to explore it further. He started hastily after Horace, bumping against the narrow corridor of the train.
Far ahead, a whistle shrieked. The yellow streamliner hurtled westward into the night.