Experiment in Crime

By Philip Wylie

A RINGING denunciation of crime was responsible for the entrance of Professor Martin Luther Burke into the demimonde. More accurately, the challenge of a lovely young lady precipitated the event. And the weather had something to do with it.

Men's lives are often--and fittingly--compared with the courses of rivers: one life is a noisy torrent, another is a lazy meander, and a third is a mere tributary. Some rivers flow inconspicuously for great distances only to encounter a geological fault that turns them abruptly into crashing falls and bellowing cataracts. So it was with Professor Burke.

For his first six years he had merely grown, an undersized and unnoteworthy lad in a New England village--a mere rill. For seventeen years, he had thereafter studied--a small stream growing with the volume of knowledge. He had been an instructor after that, teaching sociology and psychology. Full professorship was accorded him in his thirtieth year, after a wartime interlude in which his forte had been disregarded by the Army and his knowledge of languages had been exploited. He had censored endless thousands of letters written by homesick G.I.s in other tongues than English. His collected lectures had been published. Now, as a professor of socio-psychology at the University of Miami, his course in life, like the courses he taught, seemed certain to flow serenely--a river without dash, a river that neither floods nor dries up, that scarcely changes even when it freezes.

The trouble was the weather, to start with.

It was an unsuitable day for scholarship. A warm haze hung over the land and sunlight filtered through it, lying on the lush vegetation like melted butter. Birds sang alluringly. A clump of bushes, planted directly under the windows by a thoughtless landscape architect, sent into the lecture room an unsettling perfume. It was bad enough for the young lady students to wear commercial fragrances with names like Tumult and Triple-Dare; that nature should conspire in the fashion was all but intolerable.

Professor Burke paused in his lecture on Crime and Civic Corruption. "Greater Miami," he said, "unfortunately furnishes a cross section of the socio-psychological ailments under discussion." As usual, the mention of their own region instilled new interest among the students. "In this resort area the demand for what is called diversion reaches a nadir. The gambler, the bookmaker, the racketeer and the vice overlord line the pockets of the politician for illegal protection. I refer you here to
Studies in Antisocial
Organisms
by Waite and Treachness, which contains a masterly chapter on South Florida. . . ."

As he dissertated upon Waite and Treachness, his own eye wandered to the window and the green world beyond. MacFalkland was just passing--on a bicycle--golf bag jingling on his back and his hirsute chest showing through the open triangle of a rather loud sports shirt. MacFalkland had no four o'clock class. It was one bit of evidence--a chip in a large mosaic-which made Professor Burke sure that not he, but MacFalkland, was destined to be made Head of the Socio-Psychology Department, when there were funds enough for its establishment. Professor Burke found in a corner of his brain the unwelcome reflection that MacFalkland looked as if he still had several decades of teaching in him. He shook off the mordant idea.

"The criminal," he heard his voice assert, "is an intellectual defective. His crimes are evidence of the fact of his psychological inferiority. You might note down the phrase." They noted it down while he glanced at his own typed manuscript. Vacation would be along soon, and he, too, could wing golf balls into the sunshine for three weeks.

He wished he had MacFalkland's shoulders. "The man guilty of corrupting the body politic is, essentially, lacking in imagination and logic. He saws off the limb which sustains him. Crime is identical with the lack of intelligence."

He glanced at his watch. He had one minute of lecture left--and twelve minutes of class time. He wound up his ringing denunciation--and banished hope, among those who imagined they might be dismissed early, by an old ruse:

"Any questions, ladies and gentlemen?"

A hand went up. The hand of Miss Marigold Macey. In spite of her campus-belle appearance, in spite of the frame of curls which seemed to escape her upswept brown locks by accident, and in spite of the further fact of her good marks, Miss Macey had a way of asking rather sharp questions.

"Yes, Miss Macey?"

She stood up politely. Standing, even in blouse, skirt, and low-heeled shoes, she was still unstudentlike. A little older than the other girls, for one thing. Her education had been interrupted by work having to do with the Red Cross. Several of his male students were as old as she, and even older--for a similar reason: the War.

"I was wondering, Professor Burke, if you were acquainted with any gamblers, racketeers, vice overlords, and so on?" Her voice had a New England accent-although he understood her parents had lived in Florida for more than a decade.

"I fail to see the relevance of the question," he said firmly.

She picked up her notebook and flipped pages. She sounded apologetic. "Last October--in your lecture on the Techniques of the Socio-Psychologist, you said this: 'The true student accepts no theory
per se
and takes no hearsay evidence; he tests every assertion against his own experience in society; he investigates for himself.'" She closed the notebook. "That's what you said. I took it down in shorthand. Naturally, I wondered how much testing and investigating you had done-to lecture about crime."

Professor Burke flushed slightly. His class was amused. "At the time," he said, "I was discussing public health, sanitation, slums, and so on. I hardly feel that such advice may be construed as urging association with criminals."

"I see," the girl said. She did not sit down.

"Was there another question?"

She nodded. "In November," she said, and he bridled a little at her accuracies,

"you advised us to read a book called
Social Non-Norms,
by Ledbetter, Shrieben and Morissey. I read it--all eight hundred pages. And
they
say a criminal is sometimes a person of superior intellectual ability who cannot stand the restrictions imposed upon everybody· for the sake of mediocrities. They say that
brains
may thus lead to crime--

rather than stupidity. . . ."

Professor Burke made a mental note never again to recommend any book which he, himself had found too dull, ponderous and turgid for thorough perusal. He had skipped that part, evidently. But he did not like mutiny in his classes. He cleared his throat. "In my opinion, Ledbetter, Shrieben and Morissey erred in their appraisal of that particular subject. They worked carelessly, from inadequate material and false premises--

"

"Shrieben," Miss Macy interrupted, "spent two years in the Capone organization in Chicago. . . ."

He had forgotten that, too. "A romantic," he said, "rather than a scientist. Shrieben mistook cunning for true intelligence. Every holder of an ordinary degree of Bachelor of Arts is the mental superior of any criminal."

Another hand went up--the hand of Wally Stratton, formerly of the Eighth Air Force and currently of the Football Squad. Obviously, he intended to go to the defense of the physically nubile but mentally thorny Miss Macey.

"Mr. Stratton?"

"Wouldn't it be an interesting idea to get some gangster in here to debate the matter?"

Professor Burke saw his opening. "Any gambler, or gangster, or other such person among your associates would be welcome here, Mr. Stratton." The class laughed.

Mr. Stratton sat down rather sheepishly. Professor Burke made his usual pre-vacation speech--wishing all of them a pleasant trip home, a safe return, and an interlude of Merry Christmas combined with Happy New Year. He repeated that he hoped none of them would use his course as an excuse for turning to crime: the faculty would disapprove, he ventured.

Several of them came forward to return his greetings and wishes. Among them was Miss Macey, who had to wait while Miss Orme extracted from the professor the titles of books to read over the vacation period. He glared at her ensnooded hair--which always reminded him of a beaver's tail--and gave her the toughest list he could think of.

She would eat it up, he thought morosely.

Miss Macey shook his hand and said, "Merry Christmas! Stay out of pool halls and don't pitch pennies!"

He picked up his lecture, remembered he had forgotten his hat, and walked slowly from the long chamber.

Some moments later Mr. Stratton overtook Miss Macey on the palm-lined thoroughfares of Coral Gables.

"Sip, drip?" he asked.

"Sure, boor."

They turned in the direction of a drugstore. "That Burke," he said, "shoe-horned himself out of a hole with a crack at me. Cheap trick. You had him surrounded."

Her brown eyes performed a small minuet. "I was investigating. All fall, I've wondered how much of Martin Burke was theory--and how much was experience."

"Why didn't you ask me? I know the type. Pure brass before a class--and outside, pure mouse. When their mothers look in their mouths to see if, maybe, there's a silver spoon, they find a bookmark. I bet he never got five paces away from an encyclopedia in his life!"

"He's cute," she said demurely.

"Cute!" Mr. Stratton bridled. "That dodo cute?"

"If he's a dodo," she said, stopping to pick a blossom from a city owned hibiscus,

"the best years of your life are shot, too, Wally. He can't be more than thirty-four."

"He was born at least twenty-eight, which is my age. How a dame can see anything in such a oiseau . . . !"

She fixed the flower in her hair. It was reddish brown and salmon. It matched her skirt and did no harm to her skin and her eyes. "He's such a pleasant contrast to the average American male--like you--always leering down rudely from among the chandeliers. A small girl such as me resents the effect of modern nutrition. She feels as if she is dating stepladders all the time."

"Flooey," said Mr. Stratton, who was six-four. "When the moon comes pouring up from the Gulf Stream, do you think about some tame rabbit like Burke? Some one-watt theory-maker? Does he set the petite pulse bouncing?"

"That's what I've wondered all autumn."

"You'd be throwing yourself at a human hamster."

He pushed open the drugstore door. A blast of undergraduate clatter rushed out with the conditioned air. They entered the soda fountain of youth and he pointed to a vacant booth. "Park, lark."

"Delighted, benighted."

"And no more sighing over the professor. As soon as I tap a waitress, I am going to work on you, myself--"

"He gives me maternal feelings," she said, as he began waving his arm, "which mother wouldn't recognize as such. Sometimes I wish I were the local type-Southern, coy, extraverted. I would lead him astray--slightly. . . ."

The object of this mild controversy made his way along Pondosa Boulevard and turned into Philomel Court. He turned again into West Cortez Circle. Some boys, playing baseball in a vacant lot, cracked out a hard hit which caromed off a lemon tree, whistled through a plumb ego hedge, and rolled toward the sidewalk. Professor Burke ran forward automatically, fielded the ball adeptly, held it until the runner had made a well-earned circuit of the coconut bases, and threw it to the shouting pitcher. He walked on, grinning.

A man slightly under medium size, with a tendency to stoop. A man with eyes now blue and now grey--now steely or ironical and again soft, or vague. A man whose dark hair was worn in a wavy pompadour--an expedient arrangement that exposed all of a rather high forehead. A conventional dresser--in polished brogues, heather socks, gabardine slacks, a light-weight tweed coat, a dimly striped shirt and a conservative blue tie, fixed with a plain gold clip. The stem of a pipe showed in one pocket; from the other, his folded lecture protruded.

Nine strangers out of ten would have confidently guessed that he was a college professor. If they had seen him field the home run they would have added that he was a good egg--and at peace with the world.

Professor Burke was a good egg, insofar as scholastic tradition permitted him good-eggishness. He had New England virtues and a New England conscience. His character and life direction were well established, before he entered the First Grade, by the firm-minded Congregationalists who had been his parents. At thirty-three, he was exactly the way he expected to be at fifty, save that he hoped by then to be a Department Head. He had self-assurance, calm, and a near-fanatical courage of an occasional conviction. He was shy.

At the moment, however, he was not at peace.

He turned into the rather jungly lawn of the house where he had dwelt since his arrival in Miami, after the war. He stumbled on its front steps--which was unusual. He put the wrong key in the lock of the door to his upstairs apartment.

"Martin!" his landlady called. "What's wrong? I'm on the side porch having tea.

Scones, too. Come aboard!"

Bedelia Ogilvy was the widow of a retired Naval officer who had quietly passed away in his bed before Pearl Harbor--an event which would certainly have brought him to a more violent demise. Occasionally, Bedelia used such terms as, "Come aboard." She was said to be the homeliest woman in Coral Gables; she was certainly the best cook in that flower-spangled suburb. She had taken Professor Burke very dubiously, and on probation, as a roomer-boarder. After three weeks, she had begun using his first name.