The Project Gutenberg eBook ofConjure wifeThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Conjure wifeAuthor: Fritz LeiberIllustrator: Frank KramerRelease date: March 14, 2023 [eBook #70288]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Street & Smith Publications, Inc, 1943Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONJURE WIFE ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Conjure wifeAuthor: Fritz LeiberIllustrator: Frank KramerRelease date: March 14, 2023 [eBook #70288]Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: Street & Smith Publications, Inc, 1943Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Title: Conjure wife
Author: Fritz LeiberIllustrator: Frank Kramer
Author: Fritz Leiber
Illustrator: Frank Kramer
Release date: March 14, 2023 [eBook #70288]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Street & Smith Publications, Inc, 1943
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CONJURE WIFE ***
CONJURE WIFEBy Fritz Leiber, Jr.Illustrated by Kramer[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromUnknown Worlds April 1943.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Illustrated by Kramer
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced fromUnknown Worlds April 1943.Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
I.
"I keep wondering if she knows about Us," said the woman with black button eyes. She played the queen of spades.
The queen of hearts trumped the queen of spades. "You can put your mind at rest," said the silver-haired woman sweetly, gathering in the trick. "She doesn't. Tansy Saylor plays a lone hand. Like most women, she thinks she's the Only One. Co-operation such as ours is rare."
"But I'm afraid of her. Oh, I know she hasn't upset the Balance, and uses only Protective Procedures. But she isn't our kind. Neither is her husband. They don't belong."
The silver-haired woman nodded primly, peering through her thick glasses at the dummy with the empty chair behind it. "I agree. The Saylors are a disgrace to the Hempnell faculty. Modern. No sense of the traditional decencies."
"Yes, and she wants to make him president of Hempnell. She wants him to dictate to our husbands. She wants to condescend to us."
"This talk gets nowhere," broke in the stout, red-haired woman gruffly. "The point is that her Protective Procedures are effective—many things would have happened to the Saylors during the last ten years if they weren't. And she hasn't made the mistake of upsetting the Balance. So what can we three do about it?"
"Oh, the Balance!" said the woman with black button eyes, throwing down her last two cards. "Sometimes I think we ought to upset it ourselves." She evaded the shocked glance of the silver-haired woman. "We've our Sounds, and our Pictures, and our Numbers, and our Cards. We could finish the Saylors in a whiff. There's such a neat trick with cards I've just learned. Here, let me show you—" She slipped a dozen shiny paste-board oblongs out of her purse. They had the conventional backs, but their faces bore representations of a cryptic sort.
"Stop that!" The silver-haired woman stretched out fluttering hands.
"Put them away!" ordered the stout woman harshly. She glanced at the door. "Quickly!"
But the eyes of the little man who ambled in were not inquisitive. With white beard and amiable smile, he looked almost benign, in an absent-minded sort of way.
"I don't suppose you played much bridge while I was gone," he observed with mild joviality.
The silver-haired woman's laughter trilled sweetly. "It's his little joke. He always pretends that all women are fearful gossips. Well, at least I made the contract, dear. Four hearts."
His eyes twinkled. "Very commendable." He settled himself in the empty chair. "Still I imagine the three of you managed to find time for some very dark and devious plotting—" He chuckled innocently.
Norman Saylor, professor of ethnology at Hempnell College, was not the sort of man to go snooping around in his wife's dressing room. That was partly the reason why he did it. He was sure nothing could touch the security of the relationship between him and Tansy.
The house was very quiet. Spring sunshine and balmy air were sluicing gently through the bedroom windows. It wasn't five minutes since he had put in the final staccato burst of typing on his "Negro Recruit" brochure for the War Office. It looked as if for once they would have a lazy evening to themselves.
Totem, the cat, rose from her sun-warmed spot on the neatly piled silk quilt and indulged in a titanic, disruptive-looking yawn, neatly folded her white paws under her black waistcoat, and stared solemnly at Norman. Norman copied her yawn, and felt a partial unkinking of the twelve-work-hours-a-day tension that had traced lines on his chunky face and smudged shadows under his clear, yellow-brown eyes. Such moments as this did not come often these days, but when they did come, they sure felt good.
The door of Tansy's dressing room stood invitingly open. It was a tiny room, just a big closet, with no windows. But it was more than a rack of dresses and a creamy dressing table. It was Tansy. On the neat side, but not fussy. A slight pleasant disorder. Very sane—he wondered why that particular word came to his mind, but it hit the spot. A faint perfume conjured up amiable memories.
He studied the photographs on either side of the mirror. One of Tansy and himself in modified Indian costume, from three summers back when he had been studying the Yumas. They both looked rather solemn. Another, slightly faded, of an uproarious Negro baptizing in midriver. That was from when he had held the Hazelton Fellowship and been gathering material for his "Social Patterns of the Southern Negro" and his later "Feminine Element in Superstition." Tansy had done more work than two secretaries that busy year when he was hammering out a reputation.
There was an ample array of cosmetics—Tansy had been the first of the Hempnell faculty wives to use lipstick and lacquer her nails; there had been covert criticism and talk of "setting the students a bad example," but she had stuck it out. Flanked by cold-cream jars was a photograph of himself, with a little pile of small change, dimes and quarters, in front of it.
Idly he slid out a drawer, scanned the pile of stocking rolls, pushed it in, pulled at another, which jammed, so he had to give it a sharp tug. A large cardboard box toward the back caught his eyes. He edged up the cover and took out one of the tiny glass-stoppered bottles. What sort of cosmetic would this be? Too dark for face powder. More like a geologist's soil specimen. An ingredient for a mud pack?
The dry, dark-brown granules shifted smoothly, like sand in an hourglass, as he rotated the glass cylinder. The label appeared, in Tansy's clear script. "Julia Trock, Roseland." A cosmetician? Was Roseland a part of the name, or a place? And why should the idea that it might be a place seem distasteful? His hand knocked aside the cardboard cover as he reached for a second bottle, identical with the first, except that the contents had a somewhat reddish tinge, and the label read, "Philip Lassiter, Hill." A third, contents same color as the first: "J. P. Thorndyke, Roseland." Then a handful, quickly snatched up, of three: "Emelyn Scatterday, Roseland." "Mortimer Pope, Hill." "The Rev. Bufort Ames, Roseland."
The silence in the house grew thunderous; even the sunlight seemed to sizzle and fry, as his mind rose to a sudden pitch of concentration on the puzzle. "Roseland and Hill, Roseland and Hill, Roseland and Hill," like a nursery rhyme somehow turned nasty, making the glass cylinders repugnant to his fingers. "Roseland Hill—"
Abruptly the answer came.
The two local cemeteries.
Graveyard dirt.
Soil specimens all right. Graveyard dirt from particular graves. A chief ingredient of Negro conjure magic.
With a soft thud Totem landed on the table and began to sniff inquisitively at the bottles, but sprang away as Norman plunged his hand into the drawer. He felt smaller boxes behind the big one, yanked suddenly at the whole drawer, so it fell to the floor. In one of the boxes were bent, rusty, worn bits of iron—horseshoe nails. In the other were calling-card envelopes, filled with snippings of hair, each labeled like the bottles, but some of these names he knew. And in one—fingernail clippings.
In the third drawer he drew blank. But the fourth yielded a varied harvest. Packets of small dried leaves and powdered vegetable matter—so that was what came from Tansy's herb garden along with kitchen seasonings? Vervain, vinmoin, devil's snuff. Bits of lodestone, iron filings clinging to them. Goose quills which spilled quicksilver when he shook them. Small squares of flannel, the sort that Negro conjure doctors employed for their "tricken-bags" or "hands." A box of old silver coins and silver filings—strong protective magic; giving significance to the coins, all silver, in front of his photograph.
But Tansy was so sane—so healthily contemptuous of palmistry, astrology, numerology and all the other superstitious fads. A hard-headed New Englander. So well versed, from her work with him, in the psychological background of superstition and primitive magic. And yet—
He found himself thumbing through a dog-eared copy of his own "Parallelisms in Superstition and Neurosis." It looked like the one he had lost around the house—was it eight years ago? Beside a formula for conjuration was a marginal notation in Tansy's script: "Doesn't work. Substitute copper filings for brass. Try in dark of moon instead of full."
"Norman—"
Tansy was standing in the doorway, her hand stopped in the moment of drawing off the little half hat of deep-rose felt that matched her trim dress.
Never before had he had such a feeling that a human face was only an arbitrary arrangement of curved surfaces and colors. The tapering chin—an ellipsoid. The full lips—a complex arrangement of cycloids and other curves. The eyes—white spheres inscribed with gray-green circles centered with black. Without familiarity or significance. And yet, in the same instant he felt that it was desperately important that he spy out a significance. For a faint distortion of those angles and curves—a distortion so subtle as to be almost indiscernible—might signify ... yes, why not say it?... insanity.
The ghost of a smile curved Tansy's lips, and familiarity flooded back into her face.
"So you've found out," she sighed. And although it seemed incredible, he thought she sighed with relief.
For a moment he stood there confused, like a district attorney caught arranging evidence. Then he began his cross-examination.
"It all started so foolishly," she was saying soon. "Just before you came to Hempnell. I felt it was tremendously important that you get the appointment and just to relieve my nerves—no other reason—I did silly things. Put mild curses on the two other applicants, to confuse their thoughts during the interviews. I got the curses from your notes. I surrounded you with a web of protective magic, charmed the sociology faculty to make them regard you favorably.
"Well, you got the job, and I forgot all about my stupid private joke.
"Then, when your first book was at the publishers—you remember, Norm, in 1930—I tried again. We were so sure it would be rejected. I was planning to tell you all about my idiotic conjures as soon as it came back, so at least we'd have a laugh. But it was accepted. And I didn't tell you.
"Then in 1931, when you had pneumonia. I didn't want to, because it was too serious this time, but you got worse and I couldn't help myself. And you got well.
"That was the real beginning. Not that I was certain—I've never been certain—but I didn't dare take chances. Careers hang on such little strings, and Hempnell can be so vindictive. You know.
"But I wasn't superstitious. No, I wasn't! At least, I didn't have what you'd call the superstitious feeling. In a twisted logical way, I was trying to be empirical. I judged everything by results, step by step.
"And of course, when I say empirical, I don't mean experimental. I didn't dare to omit any charms as a test, because I was too afraid of something going wrong. You can't be experimental about someone you love, any more than a sane sociologist would induce fascism in his own country just to study the consequences."
He listened, his mind working like a telephone exchange during an emergency, catching a thousand hidden connections in trivial memories of his life and Tansy's. Whenever she paused, he had a question to hammer at her.
"Those mirror decorations on your dresses, and belts, and handbags—why?"
She nodded, tiredly. "Yes, that's it. To ward off evil spirits, by reflecting them. I got the idea from Tibetan devil masks. Yes, and the reason I always use hooks and eyes is—you've guessed—to catch evil spirits that try to get at me."
The room was dark by the time Tansy had finished the catalogue of her activities at Hempnell, and said, "So you see, I've never been sure. I've wanted to stop, but there's been too much at stake. It always worked—or did as soon as I made the proper corrections in the charms. I've wanted to tell you, but I've never dared. Now that you know, I'm glad."
The voice was very tired now.
Then, in the darkness he began his argument. It was the old, old argument of science against primitive ignorance, but he brought it home to her with careful persuasiveness. The argument which starts out with a demonstration that superstition is only mistaken empiricism, and ends with psychoanalysis.
"Didn't it really begin much earlier than Hempnell, Tansy?" he asked at one point. "I mean, the seeds of it?"
"No. Oh, I don't know. Perhaps. I've childhood memories of dark moments. Suspicions. Queer things people could do. Hints from I don't know where. But nothing certain. I just can't remember. I don't know."
Only once did the tired voice grow vehement.
"But I tell you I never tried to kill, or even to injure in a physical way! Never! Only to confuse or hinder people when they were working against you. It's terribly important that you understand this, Norman. Nine tenths of my magic was purely protective. To ward off evil."
He felt pettishly exasperated at this answer. What difference did it make whether or not she had tried to kill? It was all equally nonsense. And why should she harp on her efforts to protect him, as if he were some sort of incompetent? For a moment it occurred to him that, from one point of view, hehadbeen very lucky in his career. He abruptly put aside this stray thought, along with his fit of impatience.
At another time she used a similar argument. "I never tried for anything really big. Like your inheriting a million dollars. Or becoming president of Hempnell overnight, even if I'd thought you wanted to. There's a law of reaction or retribution in all conjuring—I mean, I used to think there was. Like the kick of a gun. I was afraid."
After that there were no more interruptions—only the white smudge of Tansy's face in the darkness.
When he had finished his voice was tired, too.
There was a pause. Then she said, "I'll do what you want me to. I'll burn all my stuff. I'll never touch it again."
He snapped on the light, and it seemed to him that science and healthy skepticism had been created anew from the primeval dark. The hands of his watch stood at ten thirty. Then he saw that Tansy had begun to cry.
"Darling," she managed to say, "don't you see this is what I've wanted? Only I'd gotten in so deep I never dared. On your account. You had to find out and make me stop. That was the only way."
What followed was oddly anticlimactic—the ransacking of the house for all of Tansy's hidden charms. First the contents of the dressing table. He found then that he could be generous in his victory because his trust in Tansy was re-established—he did not demand to look into her locked little leather-bound diary, when she told him it contained no relevant material.
Then the rest of the house, Tansy darting from room to room, deftly recovering flannel-wrapped "hands" from the upholstery of chairs, the under sides of table tops, the interior of vases, until he marveled that he had lived in the house for more than ten years without chancing on any.
"It's rather like a treasure hunt, isn't it?" she observed with a rueful smile.
There were others outside—under front and back doorsteps, in the garage, and in the car. With every handful thrown on the roaring fire he had built in the living room, his sense of relief grew. Finally, she opened the seams of the pillows on his bed and carefully fished out two little matted shapes made of feathers bound with fine thread, so they blended with the fluffy contents of the pillow.
"See, one's a heart, the other an anchor. That's for security," she told him. "New Orleans magic. You haven't taken a step for years without being in the range of one of my protective charms."
The feather figures puffed into flame and were gone in an instant.
"There, that's the last one of them," she said. "All gone."
"You're sure?" For a moment his voice grew hard again. "Absolutely certain you haven't overlooked any?"
"Absolutely certain. There's not one left in the house. I've gone over it in my mind a dozen times. I'm tired now, really tired. I want to go straight to bed." Suddenly she began to laugh. "Oh, but first I'll have to stitch up those pillows, or there'll be feathers all over the place."
He put his arms around her. "Everything O.K. now?"
"Yes, darling. Only one thing I want to ask you—that we don't talk about this for a few days at least. I'm really terribly ashamed. But I'm glad it's happened, remember that."
After Tansy was gone, Norman threw a fresh log on the fire, and sank back in the easy-chair, watching the restless, rhythmic play of the flames. Gradually his thoughts began to unkink. He found himself wondering—not without admiration—at Tansy's relatively cool behavior. He would never have dared to try reasoned argument on any other woman in a similar situation. But that was like Tansy. Always fair. Always willing to listen to logic. Empirical. Except that she had gotten off on a crazy sidetrack.
He reached down to stroke Totem, who did not look away from the hypnotic flames.
"Time we got to bed, old man. Must be about twelve. No—quarter-past one."
As he slipped back the watch, the fingers of his other hand went automatically to the charm at the end of the chain—more a locket than a charm—a gift from Tansy.
He gazed ruminatingly at the flattened golden heart, weighed it in his palm. It seemed perhaps a trifle heavier than its metal shell would account for. He snapped up the cover with his thumbnail. There was no regular way of getting at the space behind Tansy's photograph, so, after a moment's hesitation, he carefully edged it out with a pencil point.
Behind the photograph was a tiny packet, wrapped in the finest flannel.
Just like a woman, was his first thought—to seem to give in completely, but to hold out on something.
Perhaps she had forgotten.
Angrily he tossed the packet into the fireplace. The photograph fluttered along with it, lighted on the bed of embers, and flared before he could snatch it out. He had a glimpse of Tansy's face curling and blackening.
The packet took longer. A yellow glow crept across its surface, as the nap singed. Then a wavering four-inch flame shot up.
Simultaneously a chill went through him, though he still felt the heat from the embers. The room seemed to darken. There was a faint, mighty roaring in his ears, as of motors far underground. He had the sense of standing suddenly naked and unarmed before something menacingly alien.
Totem had turned around and was peering intently at the shadows in the far corner. With an expectorant hiss she sprang sideways and darted from the room.
He realized he was trembling. Nervous reaction, he told himself. Might have known it was overdue.
The flame died, and once again there was only the bed of embers.
Explosively, the phone began to jangle.
"Professor Saylor? I just want to tell you that you're not going to get away with what you're trying to do to me. I'm not going to be flunked out of Hempnell without a protest."
The voice spluttered with rage. It was some moment before he recognized the student and cut in.
"Now listen, Jennings, if you thought you were being treated unfairly, why didn't you present your grievances three months ago, when you got your grades?"
"Why? Because I let you pull the wool over my eyes. I didn't realize until this minute that you were behind it all."
"Be reasonable. You flunked two courses besides mine last semester."
"Yes, because you dropped dirty hints. Poisoned everyone's mind against me."
"And you mean to tell me you only realized it now?"
"Yes, I do. It just came to me in a flash as I was thinking here. I saw your whole slimy plot. Oh, you were clever all right, but let me tell you, Saylor—"
The voice ranted on. Twice his "But what possible motive could I—" went disregarded. With a distasteful grimace he hung up.
He felt suddenly very tired. There was an unpleasant coincidence tangled up in the events of the past few minutes, if you bothered to figure it out, but a scientist ought to have a healthy disregard for coincidences.
He put the screen in front of the fire and went to bed.
II.
The red-haired woman knew immediately what had awakened her. She made no further movement, but lay there, propped on one elbow. From the opposite bed came placid snores.
Presently, although there was no further sound, her eyes were drawn to the blacker smudge of the phone. She lifted it quietly and whispered, "Expected you, dear. I was sure you'd feel it, too."
The other voice came over the wire in bursts—jerky. "Howcouldn'tI feel it? Like a great gust of wind. Complete collapse of Protective Screen in her quarter. Balance gone. Oh, I told you this would happen. She's up to something. I'll go crazy until I know what."
"No need to lose your head," whispered the red-haired woman gruffly, eying the opposite bed. "She's upset the Balance, all right. But in a very peculiar way. Any upset I ever heard of came from Excessive Aggression, Unjustified Death-attempts, or sudden Career-smashing. But Tansy's done the reverse—let down her guard."
"Yes, just to hoodwink us! She's discovered a new weapon. Something bad. Why else should she take such a chance? She's planning to smash us. We've got to beat her to it!"
"Now, now, dear, no tantrums!" A third voice was coming over the wires, a sweetly reproving voice, just the sort to go with silver hair. "We mustn't do anything we'd be sorry for. We must be sure of our ground."
"Do you mean we're just to wait?" The jerky voice had grown stridently indignant. "When we know she must have a new weapon? While she gets ready to smash us?"
"I didn't say we were to wait forever." There was a chilling tingle of tartness in the sweet old voice. "I recognize the danger. I recognize also that she has upset the Balance and must take the consequences. When we are sure of our ground, we will act. A prospect which, I may say, delights me."
"And do nothing until then?"
"Yes, dear! Except to watch her—and him."
The red-haired woman smiled grimly, listening to the other two. Such chatterers! The other bed creaked as the sleeper changed position.
"In any case," she whispered, cutting in, "there should be consequences whether we act or not. With the Protective Screen down, things should begin to happen to her—and especially to him. Things which have been accumulating for a long, long, time—"
"Andhowis Tansy?" asked Mrs. Carr, with such sweet solicitude that for a moment Norman wondered if the silver-haired dean of women had even more of an inside wire on the private lives of the faculty than was generally surmised. But only for a moment. After all, sweet solicitude was the dean of women's stock-in-trade.
"We missed her at our last faculty wives' meeting," Mrs. Carr continued. "She's such a gay soul. And wedoneed gaiety these days." Cold morning sunlight glinted on her thick glasses and glowed frostily in her apple-red cheeks. She put her hand on his arm. "HempnellappreciatesTansy, Professor Saylor."
Norman's "And why not?" changed to "I think that shows good judgment" as he said it. He derived sardonic amusement from recalling how five years ago Mrs. Carr was a charter member of The-Saylors-are-a-demoralizing-influence Club.
Mrs. Carr's silvery laughter trilled in the chilly air. "I must get on to my student conferences," she said.
He watched her hurry off, brisk and erect for all her near-seventy years, wondering if the sudden friendliness meant that there had been an unexpected improvement in his chances of getting the vacant chairmanship of the sociology department. Then he turned into Morton Hall.
When he had climbed to his office, the phone was ringing. It was Thompson, the public-relations man.
"A rather delicate matter, Professor Saylor." Delicate matters were Thompson's forte. "This morning one of the trustees phoned me. It seems he had just heard something—I haven't the slightest idea from where—concerning you and Mrs. Saylor. That over Christmas vacation you had attended a party given by some prominent but ... er ... very rowdy theatrical people. I was wondering if—"
"—I would issue a denial? Sorry, but it wouldn't be honest."
"Oh ... I see. Well, that's all there is to it, then." Thompson answered bravely after a moment. "I thought you'd like to know, though. The trustee was very hot under the collar. Talked my ear off about how these theatrical people were conspicuous for drunkenness and divorce."
"He was right. Nice folks. I'll introduce you to them some time."
"Oh ... yes," replied Thompson apprehensively. "Good-by."
The buzzer sounded, terminating the eight-o'clock classes. Norman swiveled his chair away from the desk and leaned back, amusedly irritated at this latest manifestation of the Hempnell "hush-hush" policy. Not that he had made any particular attempt to conceal the Berryman party, which had been a trifle more tempestuous than he had expected. Still, he had said nothing to anyone on campus. No use in being a fool. Now, after three months it all came out anyway.
From where he sat, the roof ridge of Estrey Hall neatly bisected his office window along the diagonal. There was a medium-sized cement dragon frozen in the act of clambering down it. For the tenth time that morning he reminded himself that what had happened last night had really happened. It was not so easy. And yet, when you got down to it, Tansy's lapse into medievalism was not so very much stranger than Hempnell's Gothic architecture, with its sprinkling of gargoyles and other fabulous monsters designed to scare off evil spirits.
Saylor's nine-o'clock class in "Primitive Societies" quieted down leisurely as he strode in a few seconds ahead of the buzzer. He set a student to explaining the sib as a factor in tribal organization, then put in the next five minutes organizing his thoughts and noting late arrivals and absentees. When the explanation, supplemented with blackboard diagrams of marriage groups, had become so complicated that Bronstein, the prize student, was twitching with eagerness to take a hand, he called for comments and criticisms, and succeeded in getting a first-class argument going.
Finally the cocksure fraternity president in the second row said, "But all those ideas of social organization were based on ignorance, tradition, and superstition. Unlike modern society."
That was Norman's cue. He lit in joyously, pulverized the defender of modern society with a point-by-point comparison of fraternities and primitive "young men's houses" down to the actual details of initiation ceremonies, which he dissected with scientific relish, and then launched into a broad analysis of present-day customs as they would appear to a hypothetical ethnologist from Mars. In passing, he drew a facetious analogy between sororities and primitive seclusion of girls at puberty.
The minutes raced pleasantly by as he demonstrated instances of cultural lag in everything from table manners to systems of notation and measurement. Even the lone sleeper in the last row surprised himself by listening.
"Certainly we've made important innovations, chief among them the scientific method," he said at one point, "but the primitive groundwork is still there, dominating the pattern of our lives. We're modified anthropoid apes inhabiting night clubs and battleships. What else could you expect us to be?"
Marriage and courtship got special attention. With Bronstein grinning delightedly, he drew detailed modern parallels to marriage by purchase, marriage by capture, and symbolic marriage to a deity. He showed that trial marriage is no mere modern conception but a well-established ancient custom, successfully practiced by the Polynesians and others.
At this point he became aware of a beet-red, angry face toward the back of the room—that of Gracine Pollard, daughter of Randolph Pollard, president of Hempnell College. She glared at him outragedly, pointedly ignoring the interest taken by the neighboring students in her blushes.
Automatically it occurred to him, "Now I suppose the little neurotic will go yammering to mamma that Professor Saylor is advocating free love." He shrugged the idea aside and continued the discussion without modification. The buzzer cut it short.
But he was left feeling irritated with himself, and only half listened to the enthusiastic comments and questions of Bronstein and a couple of others.
Back at the office he found a note from Harold Gunnison, the dean of men, asking for an interview. Having the next hour free, he set out across the quadrangle for the Administration Building, Bronstein still tagging along to expound some interesting theory of his own.
But Norman was wondering why he had let himself go. Admittedly, some of his remarks had been a trifle raw. He had long ago adjusted his classroom behavior to Hempnell standards, without losing intellectual integrity, and this ill-advised though trivial deviation bothered him.
Mrs. Carr swept by him without a word, her face slightly averted, cutting him cold. A moment later he realized the explanation. In his abstraction, he had lighted a cigarette. Moreover, Bronstein, obviously delighted at faculty infraction of a firmly established Hempnell taboo, had followed suit.
He frowned but continued to smoke. Evidently the events of the previous night had disturbed his mind more than he had realized. He ground out the butt on the steps of the Administration Building.
In the doorway to the outer office he collided with the stylishly stout form of Mrs. Gunnison.
"Lucky I had a good hold on my camera," she grumbled, as he stooped to recover her bulging handbag. "I'd hate to try to replace a lens these days." Then brushing back an untidy wisp of reddish hair from her forehead, "You look worried. How's Tansy?"
He answered briefly, sliding past her. Now there was a woman who really ought to be a witch. Sloppy, expensive clothes; bossy, snobbish, and gruff; good-humored in a beefy fashion, but capable of riding roughshod over anyone else's desires. The only person in whose presence her husband's authority seemed a trifle ridiculous.
Harold Gunnison cut short a telephone call, and motioned him to come in and shut the door.
"Norm," Gunnison began, scowling, "this is a pretty delicate matter."
Norman became attentive. When Harold Gunnison said something was a delicate matter, unlike Thompson, he really meant it. They played golf and squash together, and got on pretty well.
He braced himself to hear an account of eccentric, indiscreet, or even criminal behavior on the part of Tansy. That suddenly seemed the obvious explanation.
"You have a girl from the Student Employment Agency working for you? A Margaret van Nice?"
Norman nodded. "A rather quiet kid. Does mimeographing."
"Well, a little while ago, she threw an hysterical fit in Mrs. Carr's office. Claimed that you had seduced her. Mrs. Carr immediately dumped the whole business in my lap."
"Well?" said Norman.
Gunnison frowned and cocked an eye at him. "Things like this sometimes really happen," he muttered.
"Sure," Norman replied. "But not this time."
"Of course. I had to ask."
"Sure. Therewasopportunity though. We worked late several nights over at Morton, editing stuff."
Gunnison reached for a folder. "On a chance, I got out her neurotic index. She ranks way up near the top. A regular bundle of complexes. We'll just have to handle it smoothly."
"I'll want to hear her accuse me," said Norman. "Soon as possible."
"Of course. I've arranged for a meeting at Mrs. Carr's office. Four o'clock this afternoon. Meantime she's seeing the college physician. That should sober her up."
"Four o'clock," repeated Norman, standing up. "You'll be there?"
"Certainly. I'm sorry about this whole business, Norm. Frankly, I think Mrs. Carr botched it. Got panicky. She's a pretty old lady."
In the outer office he stopped to glance at a small display case of items concerned with Gunnison's work in physical chemistry. The present display was of Prince Rupert drops and other high-tension oddities. It occurred to him that Hempnell was something like a Prince Rupert drop. Hit the main body with a hammer and you only jarred your hand. But flick with a fingernail the delicate filament in which the drop ended, and it would explode in your face.
Fanciful.
He glanced at the other objects, among them a tiny mirror, which, the legend explained, would fly to powder at the slightest scratch or sudden change in temperature.
Yet it wasn't so fanciful, when you got to thinking about it. Any highly organized, complex, somewhat artificial institution, such as a college, tends to develop dangerous weaknesses. And the same would be true of a person or a career. Flick the delicate spot in the mind of a neurotic girl, and she would explode with wild accusations. Or take a saner person, like himself. Suppose someone should be studying him secretly, looking for the vulnerable filament, finger casually poised to flick—
But that was really getting fanciful.
Coming out of their eleven-o'clock classes, Hervey Sawtelle buttonholed him.
Hervey Sawtelle resembled an unfriendly caricature of a college professor. Sometimes he carried two brief cases, and he was usually on his way to a committee meeting. Routine worries chased themselves up and down his nervous face.
But at the moment he was in the grip of one of his petty excitements.
"Say, Norman, the most interesting thing! I was down in the stacks this morning, and I happened to pull out an old doctor's thesis—1930—by someone I never heard of—with the title 'Superstition and Neurosis.'" He produced a bound, typewritten manuscript that looked as if it had aged without ever being opened. "Almost the same as your 'Parallelisms in Superstition and Neurosis.' An odd coincidence, eh? I'm going to look it over tonight."
They were hurrying together toward the dining hall down a walk flooded with jabbering, laughing students. Norman studied Sawtelle's face covertly. Surely the fool must remember that his "Parallelisms" had been published in 1931, giving an ugly suggestion of plagiarism. But Sawtelle's nervous, toothy grin was without guile.
He had the impulse to pull Sawtelle aside and tell him that there was something odder than a coincidence involved, and that it did not reflect in any way on his own integrity of scholarship. But this seemed hardly the place.
Yet there was no denying the incident bothered him a trifle. Why, it was years since he had even thought of that stupid business of Cunningham's thesis. It had lain buried and forgotten in the past—a hidden vulnerability, waiting for the flick of the fingernail.
Asinine fancifulness! It could all be very well explained, to Sawtelle or anyone else, at a more suitable time.
Sawtelle's mind was back to routine worries. "You know, we should be having our conference on the social-science program for next year. On the other hand, I suppose we should wait until—" He paused embarrassedly.
"Until it's decided whether you or I get the chairmanship of the department?" Norman finished for him. "I don't see why. We'll be working together in any case."
"Yes, of course. I didn't mean to suggest that—"
They were joined by some other faculty members on the steps of the dining hall. The deafening clatter of trays from the student section was subdued to a faint din as they entered the faculty sanctum.
Conversation revolved among the old familiar topics, with an undercurrent of speculation as to what reorganizations and curtailments of staff the new war year might bring to Hempnell. There was some reference to the political ambitions of President Pollard—it was rumored that he might be persuaded to run for governor or senator; discreet silences here and there around the table substituted for adverse criticisms on this possibility. Sawtelle's Adam's apple twitched convulsively at a chance reference to the vacant chairmanship in sociology.
Norman managed to get a fairly interesting conversation going. He was glad that he would be busy with classes and conferences until four o'clock. He knew he could work half again as hard as someone like Sawtelle, but if he were compelled to do one quarter of the worrying that man did—
Yet the four-o'clock meeting proved to be an anticlimax. He had no sooner put his hand on the door leading to Mrs. Carr's office, when—as if that had provided the necessary stimulus—a shrill, tearful voice burst out with: "It's all a lie! I made it up."
Gunnison was sitting near the window, face a trifle averted, arms folded, looking like a slightly bored, slightly embarrassed but very stolid elephant. In a chair in the center of the room was huddled a delicate, fair-haired, but rather homely girl, tears dribbling down her cheeks and hysterical sobs racking her shoulders. Mrs. Carr was trying to calm her in a fluttery way.
"I don't know why I did it," the girl bleated pitifully. "I was in love with him, and he wouldn't even look at me. I was going to kill myself last night, and then I thought I would do this instead, to hurt him, or—"
"Now, Margaret, you must control yourself," Mrs. Carr admonished, her hands hovering over the girl's shoulders.
"Just a minute," Norman cut in, "did you say last night?"
"There, there, dear. I think you better leave, Professor Saylor." Mrs. Carr's eyes, magnified by thick glasses, looked fishlike. Her attitude was hostile. "There's obviously no need of asking questions."
"I think I should be permitted at least one," said Norman. "Just exactly at what time last night, Miss van Nice, did you get this idea?"
Gunnison registered puzzled but vague curiosity.
The tear-stained face looked up at Norman.
"It was just after one o'clock," she said. "I had been lying awake in the dark for hours, planning to kill myself. And then, in a flash the idea came to me." Suddenly she shook loose from Mrs. Carr and stood up, facing Norman. "Oh, I hate you!" she screamed. "I hate you!"
Gunnison followed him out of the office. He yawned, shook his head, and remarked, "Glad that's over."
"Never a dull moment," Norman responded, absently.
"Oh, by the way," Gunnison said, dragging a stiff white envelope out of his inside pocket, "here's a note for Mrs. Saylor. Hulda asked me to give it to you. I forgot about it before."
"I met her coming out of your office this morning," Norman said, his thoughts still elsewhere.
Somewhat later, back at Morton, Norman tried to come to grips with those thoughts, but found them remarkably slippery. The dragon on the roof ridge of Estrey Hall lured away his attention. Funny about little things like that. You never even noticed them for years, and then they suddenly popped into focus. How many people could give you one single definite fact about the architectural ornaments of buildings in which they worked? Not one in ten, probably. Why, if you'd asked him yesterday about that dragon, he wouldn't for his life have been able to tell you even if therewasone or not.
He leaned on the window sill, looking at the lizardlike yet grotesquely anthropoid form, bathed in the yellow sunset glow, which, his wandering mind remembered, was supposed to symbolize the souls of the dead passing into and out of the underworld. Below the dragon, jutting out from under the cornice, was a sculptured head, one of a series of famous scientists and mathematicians decorating the entablature. He made out the name "Galileo," along with a brief inscription of some sort.
When he turned back to answer the phone, it suddenly seemed very dark in the office.
"Saylor? I just want to tell you that I'm going to give you until tomorrow—"
"Listen, Jennings," Norman cut in sharply, "I hung up on you last night because you kept shouting into the phone. This threatening line won't do you any good."
The voice continued where it had broken off, growing dangerously high. "—until tomorrow to withdraw your charges and have me reinstated at Hempnell. If you don't—"
"I told you not to threaten. There were no charges. You just flunked out. If you want to talk it over reasonably, come and see me."
The voice at the other end of the line broke into a screaming obscene torrent of abuse, so loud that he could still hear it very plainly as he was placing the receiver back in the cradle.
Paranoid—that was the way it sounded.
Then he suddenly sat very still.
At twenty past one last night he had burned a charm supposedly designed to ward off evil influence from him. The last of Tansy's "hands."
At about the same time Margaret van Nice had decided to accuse him of seducing her, and Marvin Jennings had decided to make him responsible for an imaginary plot.
Next morning Hervey Sawtelle, poking around in the stacks, had found—
Rubbish!
With an angry snort of laughter at his own credulity, he picked up his hat and headed for home.
III.
Tansy was in a radiant mood, prettier than she had seemed in months, younger-looking than her thirty-six years. Twice he caught her smiling to herself, when he glanced up from his supper.
He gave her the note from Mrs. Gunnison. "Mrs. Carr asked after you, too. Gushed all over me—in a ladylike way, of course. Then, later on—" He caught himself as he started to tell about the cigarette, and Mrs. Carr cutting him, and the interview in her office. No use worrying Tansy with things that might be considered bad luck. No telling what further constructions she might put upon them.
She glanced through the note and handed it back to him.
"It has the authentic Hempnell flavor, don't you think?" she observed.
He read: