The Non-Statistical Man (7 page)

Tremayne advanced and took the papers from Bas-comb’s hand. “You can let us worry about that,” he said unpleasantly; “any time I need help from the figures department I’ll let you know.”

He should have known it was worse than useless, Bas-comb told himself. He looked at Tremayne and turned away; then he stopped and faced the department head again. “It wouldn’t look at all good,” he said, “if you got another half dozen claims within a month of granting the policies. Your short-termers are beginning to stick out on the charts.”

“What do you mean by that?” Tremayne demanded. But his belligerence had subsided now.

“I’m advising you to turn down those applications,” Bascomb said. He walked away to his own department.

It wasn’t a logical thing to do, he thought, as he reached his own desk once again. It could cause a lot of trouble either way it fell—whether the prediction turned out right or wrong. And Dave Tremayne was just the kind to milk it for all the trouble it was worth.

He was rather hopeful of hearing something from Johnson regarding the reporter’s impressions and plans concerning the campaign agannst Magruder. But he heard nothing at all that day, nor the next. A sense of loneliness assailed him. He wanted somebody to talk to about this thing, but there was nobody at all to give him companionship under this burden. Sarah continued moody and cool and convinced of the approach of disaster.

Hap Johnson called on the succeeding day, and he had news. “This bird is more clever than you’ve given him credit for!” he said. “It’s no wonder the previous chemical analyses showed a harmless filler supporting a few vitamins in his pills.”

“What do you mean?” said Bascomb.

“I had five different outfits run tests on these pills before I found the answer. They all gave the same story you already had. Then I asked Joe Archer, who runs toxic checks for the police department, to look at them. He got it in a minute, just by looking at the other guys’ results.

“They were right. The pills are about as potent as dried carrots—individually; but put them together in the combi
nations and succession Magruder prescribes and you’ve got something!”

“What?” asked Bascomb.

“Joe couldn’t give me the answer to that, but he said it was obvious these chemicals would combine in the body, and with the body chemicals, to form some items only slightly less potent than dynamite.”

“We really ought t0 have a case against Magruder then,” said Bascomb. Peculiarly, he thought, there was no sense of elation or triumph at all, now that defeat of his enemy was in sight.

“That’s the devil of it,” said Hap; “I’m not so sure we have. That’s where Magruder has been so clever. The things he has actually been prescribing are inconsequential. I’m not so sure we could pin him down on the basis of the fact that his pills recombine inside the human system to form new and more potent drugs. He could argue he’d never prescribed or administered
those
; and, technically, he’d be right.”

“But it would ruin him even if the courts had to agree with that argument; and that’s all I’m interested in,” Bascomb replied. “Can’t your friend, Archer, give us enough basis for a complaint to the District Attorney.”

“He said it ought to be made known, at any rate. It would help if we could get some witnesses who could swear they’d been injured by the pills. Why don’t you talk to Joe yourself, and see if you can round up any such witnesses? You know who’s been taking in these lectures; in the meantime I’ll put a gentle word in the paper to start the ball rolling.”

Charles Bascomb agreed and hung up. From what he’d seen, however, he doubted that it would be possible to get any of Magruder’s followers to complain against him. They were a devout bunch—all those he’d seen, anyway.

A doubting weariness came over him again as he sat there staring at the black shape of the telephone. How in Heaven’s name had this all begun? How had he become so involved in a senseless, unbelievable tangle like this?

Why was he the only one, out of the hundreds who’d contacted Magruder, who understood the threat of Magruder’s work? It was as if the Professor had singled him out, as his greatest potential enemy, to show him exactly what he could do. And Bascomb remembered that Magruder had said this was just what he had done—in order
to recruit Bascomb’s aid. But surely Magruder hadn’t actually believed he’d accept the validity and desirability of the Professor’s work!

That was the dilemma presented by the whole thing. To recognize it as a threat, Magruder’s claim had to be accepted as valid. A hundred times a day, Bascomb had to ask himself again if he accepted this. And because of what he had seen, his answer was still a forced, unwilling yes.

And if so incredible a work was valid, could it not function for good instead of harm? This also gnawed unceasingly in Bascomb’s mind. But Magruder’s own words had answered this. He was out to change the face of society in a destructive manner.

It wasn’t just that he was selfishly thinking of the insurance business, Bascomb reminded himself; Magruder seemed bent on attacking the whole bright world of statistical science, and all the institutions founded upon it.

And this Bascomb could not countenance; his own private world had no other foundation. In statistics a man could know what to expect of the world. Destroy this, put existence on an individual incident basis, and what was left? A nebulous faith in unconfirmed beliefs about how things
ought
to turn out—

Then he thought again of Sarah and felt lost.

His world had already been shaken too vigorously.

He didn’t go to Joe Archer; there seemed to be no point in it yet. He continued with the pills and the exercises, and went to another lecture. There, he looked for possible witnesses against Magruder, and knew that the quest was futile, even before it started. These people
never
turned on their messiahs; even if one failed them, there was always the next season, and the next—

That was the day the first of Hap’s articles appeared in the paper. He indicated he was going to do a series analyzing the weird cults and health panaceas and mental improvement fads that proved sucker traps for the sick, neurotic part of the populace which was in need of genuine help.

It began mildly enough, as Johnson had promised; but Bascomb was more than ordinarily amazed at the man’s genius, because he could see where Hap was going. He began, not by antagonizing those who were following such phoney panaceas, but by sympathizing thoroughly with their search for assistance—which was so difficult to find in a brutal civilization that cared only in token measures for the sick or improvident individual.

He promised to follow up with stories of the frauds who preyed upon such people. It was a terrific build-up for the time when he was ready to let go at Magruder. Reading it, Bascomb felt the matter had already passed from his hands. Magruder was, at the mercy of Hap Johnson—and the newspaper-reading public.

Bascomb felt later that he should have been prepared for the event that occurred the following day. (He was eventually to do a great deal of Monday morning quarterbacking over this period of his life.) But when he went to the office, he was still prepossessed of the thought that power to act in the Magruder matter had passed from him.

He was called almost as soon as he arrived to the office of Famham Sprock, Second Vice-president of New England. Sprock was a small, mealy old man who had been by-passed sometime ago for the top post in the Company. He had been relegated to office administration, even though it was known that all who felt his judgement would suffer for his failure.

Sprock looked at Bascomb through seemingly-dull eyes as the statistician entered the room.

“You sent for me?” Bascomb said, trying to make it as little like a question as possible.

“I’ve had a most unbelievable complaint about you,” said Sprock. “It seems too incredible to even act upon it, to believe that one of our Family would act in such a manner. Yet I am forced to believe that the accusation is well founded.

“I am told that you have assumed to step over the line of your authority in this office, and presume to dictate to your fellow officers in the conduct of their affairs. You have demanded that Mr. Tremayne refuse to act favorably on certain applications, so it is said. Is this true, Mr. Bascomb?”

“Yes.” Bascomb nodded his head. And suddenly he felt himself shaking all over; this weazened old fool could actually destroy him if Sprock took it into his silly head. He could deny Charles Bascomb the world of facts and figures and clean, cold statistical reality. Why hadn’t he minded his own business?

“Why, Mr. Bascomb?” said Sprock.

Bascomb took a deep breath and wearily recited the occurrence of the anomalies from beginning to end, leaving out all reference to Magruder, of course.

“All you have said is a matter of serious concern, and one we should well pay attention to,” said Sprock. “But it has nothing to do with your presumption in the matter of advising Mr. Tremayne.”

“I have said that the policy applications I referred to are of the same class as those previously mentioned; they will also be followed by quick claims.”

Sprock rose and came around the side of his desk. “Mr. Bascomb, that is a thing you could not possibly know!”

Suddenly an old, latent fury seemed to spring alive inside Bascomb’s mind. What was this shriveled idiot trying to tell
him?
He knew—he
knew
beyond all question of doubt that what he said was true. It didn’t matter that Magruder had predicted it. Magruder had nothing to do with this positive, insistent knowledge that burned in his mind.

He knew, in and of himself, that those policies would turn out as he said. And Sprock telling
him
he couldn’t possibly know—

As suddenly as it had arisen, the rage died, and Bascomb found himself smiling at the little man and sensing a strange pity for him.

“I have discovered something new,” said Bascomb quietly. “It—it is a recent statistical development on which I have been working for some time. It is a formula that enables me to predict when we are due for a run of policies such as this. They occur every once in a while, you know; my formula tells me that this is ready to occur again.”

“I don’t believe it!” snapped Sprock; “such a thing is impossible. Why if it were true, it would—it would change the entire aspect of our business. I warn you, Bascomb— and this is the last and only time I will do so—I want no repetition of this kind of occurrence. I will not tolerate it in my organization. A repetition means a complete and permanent severance of your relations with this Company. Do I make myself clear, Bascomb?”

“Yes,” said Bascomb. He turned to the door as Sprock dismissed him. But he turned, with his hand on the knob. “I would suggest, however,” he said, “that you get a list of those applications from Mr. Tremayne. Within thirty days there will be claims on every one of them!”

Back at his desk, Charles Bascomb felt a tremendous sense of release, quite unlike anything he had ever experienced before—an elation at having stood up to Sprock. He had a momentary feeling of not being afraid of Sprock any more—or of New England—or of any other force that might be able,to shake him from his niche.

It died in a renewed consternation over what he’d said. Why on Earth had he indented the lie he told Sprock, the lie about a mathematical invention that would predict unfavorable runs? Well, there had to be something to cover his previous statement about knowing positively there would be claims on these particular policies.

And then the full force of what he’d said hit him. He’d said he
knew.
And it was true. He wasn’t just taking Magruder’s word for it, he
knew.
As if trapped in a comer by a persistent enemy, he tried to evade this sudden fact, to turn his back upon it and refuse to admit all its appalling implications.

But escape was impossible. He sat there, feeling stunned, then slowly embraced the unwanted knowledge.

This was it.

This was intuition.

It was the way Sarah felt, he supposed—only she felt it on almost any connection. No wonder she thought him a blockhead when he couldn’t understand how she could be so sure of a wholly illogical assumption!

It was the way the policyholders felt, too, the ones he’d interviewed. And they had been right.

It was impossible to take up the thread of his work as he had planned it before receiving Sprock’s call. He got up and went over to the unabridged dictionary open on its stand in the comer by the window. He turned the pages to
intuition.

"Perceived by the mind immediately, or without the intervention of any process of thought,”
he read. In very recent times he would have made an extremely bad pun on that definition.

"Quick perception of truth, without conscious attention or reasoning—truth obtained by internal apprehension, without the aid of perception or the reasoning powers.”

That last one was closest to it, he thought, but even so, it was extremely deceptive—written by a man who hadn’t the faintest concept of intuition. For there could be no obtaining of truth without perception; of that, Bascomb was quite sure. There had to be contact. He didn’t know how he could explain his contact with the matter of the six policies which he knew would shortly have claims on them, but somehow there
was
contact.

He closed the book. The definitions had been written by a statistician, not an intuitionist, he thought wryly; and that was no help at all.

He took his hat and walked out of the office, leaving word with Miss Pilgrim, his secretary, that he’d be back after lunch.

He had no definite goal in mind. He wanted merely to get away, to try to get some self-evaluation of the thing that had happened. He half expected the experience to dim as he got out into the clear spring air and faced the reality of the city with all its movement and noise and color. But there was no change at all.

He stopped at a street comer, waiting for the green light. He drew himself up to full height and sniffed deeply of the air, which was only moderately loaded with carbon monoxide at this time of morning. Why had he let a thing like this shake him so? People had hunches all the time; it was quite an ordinary thing, after all, when you stopped to think about it. He had no reason to feel apologetic, because he’d finally had one for the first time in his life.