The Chapman Report, page 44
“Well, well, gentlemen,” he interrupted too loudly, nervously washing dry hands, “I see you’ve met and had your private question and answer session off camera.” Firmly, he took Dr. Chapman’s rigid arm. “Better take your place, Dr. Chapman. Only five minutes more. We want to do a warm-up. And I want you to glance at the new intro—we’re explaining the panel substitution, since the network earlier advertised Dr. Jonas’ name on several station breaks—yes—and then, I thought, well, a sentimental word about Cass Miller would be in order.”
Borden Bush had Dr. Chapman’s attention at last, and he began to lead the larger man toward the stage.
“Good luck,” Dr. Jonas called after them, not without irony.
Dr. Chapman looked back over his shoulder. “You go to hell,” he said.
* * *
It was shortly after three o’clock when Paul Radford hurried into The Briars’ Women’s Association building and made his way up the stairs, two at a time.
Striding down the empty, stretching corridor, the totem beat of his heels reverberating against the barren plaster walls, Paul carried his outrage high and visible, so that those who wore cracked armor could see it plainly and take to their battlements.
Since early morning, since page one and page seven, the necessity for the tournament of truth had been growing upon him. Actually, he surmised, the necessity for it had been born the evening before, by the swimming pool, with the brief exchange over a dead man’s letter. Yet, the exact form the challenge now took had been shaped over the breakfast tray.
He remembered the shock of the opening announcement on Borden Bush’s “The Hot Seat.” He had been seated beside Horace and a drowsy Naomi, and he remembered the bewilderment he had felt, he and Horace both, at the moderator’s suave statement that Dr. Victor Jonas, psychologist, had withdrawn from the show and that a last-minute substitution had been made.
After the sugary half-hour program, a brief portion like a mutual-admiration society in conclave, the remainder a winning monologue by Dr. Chapman, Paul had jumped to his feet and, the applause of the television studio audience still loud in his ears, he had gone into Naomi’s kitchen to telephone Dr. Jonas. His call had been answered by Peggy Jonas, who also confessed mystification at her husband’s nonappearance. “I can’t understand it,” she had said. “He was up half the night preparing questions to ask Dr. Chapman.” Paul had left Naomi’s telephone number with Peggy Jonas, and then, pacing, turning over the possibilities in his mind, he had waited and waited, until finally Victor Jonas had called him back. Then it was that Paul had heard the details of the cancellation. Then it was that the outrage had developed into a formidable weapon.
Too agitated and impatient to eat lunch, Paul had sought to track down Dr. Chapman by telephone, ringing the motel and the Association building, and then each again and again.
At last, after two-thirty, Benita Selby had replied from the phone in the conference room of the Association building. Yes, she had said, Dr. Chapman and she had just returned from the broadcast and the luncheon given afterward by the network and motion-picture producers. Yes, she had promised, they would be cleaning up last-minute work in the building for at least another hour.
Now, arriving at the conference room door, a hundred thoughts wheeling through his brain, Paul halted, inhaled, and raised his hand to knock. Then, instead, he reached down for the knob, turned it, and strode inside.
Dr. Chapman was not alone. He was in the act of dictating to Benita Selby, who sat across from him, her pencil gliding steadily across the shorthand pad on her crossed knee.
“… was truly a martyr to science and scientific advancement,” Dr. Chapman was dictating. “For fourteen months, he gave unsparingly—”
Dr. Chapman acknowledged Paul’s arrival with a nod. “Just completing the press release. Be done in a moment, Paul.”
Woodenly, Paul crossed to a metal folding chair nearby and sat on its edge.
Dr. Chapman pointed at Benita’s pad. “The last, again.”
Benita lifted the pad and read, “Saddened by the untimely death of his devoted associate, Dr. Chapman today issued the following statement to the nation: ‘Cass Miller was truly a martyr to science and scientific advancement—”
“Benita, make that, ‘to science and the pressures of scientific advancement.’ Go on.”
She, poked at her pad, then resumed reading from it. “‘For fourteen months, he gave unsparingly …” She allowed the last to hang in the air.
Dr. Chapman pursed his lips, regarded the light fixture above, and smoothly took up the continuity. “… of his mind and body, toiling, not eight-hour days, but ten-and twelve-hour days and nights, so eager was he to see my pioneer work in sexual behavior brought to a successful conclusion. But Cass Miller’s martyrdom will not have been in vain. The forthcoming volume to which he contributed so large a part, A Sex History of the American Married Female, scheduled for publication next spring, will be dedicated to the memory of Cass Miller. And because of his share in it, I feel sure, all humankind will be the healthier and happier. Services for Mr. Miller are being conducted today in the College Chapel at Reardon, Wisconsin, where colleagues and friends will mourn him. His remains were shipped this morning from Los Angeles to Roswell, New Mexico, where his only surviving relative, his beloved mother, Mrs. R. M. Johnson, resides.”
Dr. Chapman looked to Paul for approval, but Paul dropped his gaze to the floor. Paul had been remembering how Cass had admired Rainer Maria Rilke and spoken several times of the poet’s soul-sickness. Paul thought of something that Rilke had once written in a letter. He was aware of Dr. Chapman’s eyes still upon him, and he could recollect two lines of Rilke’s letter: “All the great men have let their lives get overgrown, like an old path…. Their life is stunted like an organ they no longer use.”
“That does it, Benita,” Dr. Chapman was saying. “That winds us up. Make six copies and send them Red Arrow to the wire services and papers on the list. Better get right on it They’ve been nagging all day.”
Benita, gripping pad and pencil like a penitent possessed of holy relics, dashed out of the sacred grotto to spread His word.
Dr. Chapman pulled his chair in Paul’s direction, the legs rasping on the floor. “Grim business,” he said. “Glad to have it done.” He shook his head. “Poor devil.” He allowed a decent moment of reverence to pass, as a transition to the world of the living. He sighed. “Well, now,” he said, laying his palms together. “Well, Paul—you saw the show, I hope?”
“I saw it.”
“What’d you think?”
“The usual.”
“Now, what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing more or less. You gave them a lot of platitudes, titillated them with a few flashy sex references, and said nothing particularly new or useful.”
Dr. Chapman’s eyes narrowed, but he remained calm since he had been expecting Paul to demand an explanation about the letter. He decided that there was yet no reason to be offended. “It’s a family program. It goes to all ages, all homes. What would you expect me to do?”
“Are you asking me?”
“Yes.”
“For one thing, I’d expect a man of your stature not to insist that the network set you up with a panel of sycophant dummies. Those three asses. You could have lifted any one of them up, bent him over, and he would have squeaked `Bravo, bravo,’ like a rubber doll mouthing `Mama.’ You needed an eligible challenger, not a tanktown setup. Why did you kick Dr. Jonas off the show?”
Dr. Chapman bristled. This was unexpected. “Who said I did?”
“Dr. Jonas said it. To me. And I believe him.”
“Jonas? You’ve been talking to that charlatan?”
“You’re the one who sent me to him first, with your little bribe. Certainly, I called him. When I heard the announcement on the air, I couldn’t believe my ears. They made it sound like he’d chickened out. I had to be sure. So I called him. And I made him tell me, too.”
“You know how we feel about him.”
“Not we, Doctor. You, alone.”
Dr. Chapman narrowed his eyes again. His high-pitched voice settled a key lower. “I don’t have to defend my actions to you, Paul. That man’s a paid destroyer. Worse, he’s mad for power. He wants my mantle. If he were a bona fide scientist—interested in truth—that would be different. I’d have welcomed him. But to have my potential assassin foisted upon me without my knowledge, on my show—do you think I’m mad?”
“I think you like success more than science. I think you’re afraid of losing the limelight. And, in the matter of Jonas or anyone else who honestly disagrees with you, I think you’re fast becoming paranoiac.”
“That’s damn reckless talk—from one who knows my work—and disappointing—from one whom I had hoped to make my successor. You’re not drunk, are you? If you are, perhaps it will be easier to forgive you.”
Paul sat erect. “I’ve never been more sober. Liquor could never make me speak like this—to you. Disenchantment might.”
“We’re all overtired, Paul.”
“I’m not. And you don’t seem to be. You still seem to have had enough energy left over from yesterday to fire Victor Jonas, and apparently yesterday you had enough energy to transform Cass Miller from rapist and killer into martyr of science. That’s impressive alchemy. How do you do it?”
Dr. Chapman remained silent a moment, studying his hands on the table. “Yes, I’ve been expecting to hear from you—after you’d read the morning papers.” He looked up, but not at Paul. “If you think you can be reasonable for a while, I’ll discuss it with you. You see, I think in the end it comes down to a matter of proper perspective. You look at a problem up close, too close, and that’s all you see, for you see nothing beyond. But step away from it, far enough away, so that your own being isn’t involved, and you get a fuller view of the situation and can judge it and what’s behind it and around it. Now, take the matter of Cass’s letter—you saw only that someone was being held for questioning or arrested, and the letter might save him, and so, emotionally, you ran off to prove the man was being unjustly held, and to devil with the greater consequences. I, on the other hand, kept my head. Perhaps because I was trained as a scientist. You, unfortunately, were not. You behaved as an author, a layman, a romantic. I don’t blame you for this. But you were a victim of your background. You see, Paul, I believe that in approaching a crisis of the moment, the true scientist has much in common with the Catholic churchman. Both of us know we have been in business a long, long time and will continue to be in business. We look down on the earthlings through the telescope of history, and we see that every year, decade, generation, age, repeats its critical moments constantly, over and over again. If we became permanently embattled in each and every one, we would lose ourselves to foolish detail, forget the ultimate goals—”
“You are now speaking of survival, not justice,” said Paul quietly. “Is that it, Doctor? Let an innocent go hang, he’s too small in that telescope of yours, he’s a speck, so that you and your grand survey are spared?”
“All right. I’ll bring this down to the petty platform on which you insistently wish to engage me. Yes, I’ll concede it, the necessity to transform Cass Miller from murderer and rapist to martyr of science. Because I saw that the thoughtless masses would react even as you are reacting. After reading a confession made by an unsettled mind, they would judge us emotionally, without patience for the pertinent facts. But what are the facts? Technically, Cass did not murder that woman. The coroner says she died of a fall. There is no evidence that she was struck. Technically, she was anything but a woman of sterling character. By her own admission, she was unfaithful to her husband and preparing to walk out on her children.”
“And you feel that justifies rape?”
“Nothing of the sort. I merely state the facts. As to the rape part, suppose the letter you had so generously passed on to the police had been published with accompanying headlines today? How would it have served the poor woman, the memory of her, to her children and relatives alive? How would they ever have been able to know that it had been rape and not—”
“What kind of rotten insinuation is that?” Paul demanded.
“I’ve stated her record of infidelity, Paul. Benita’s checked the questionnaires, and it was Cass who interviewed her. Perhaps she invited Cass—”
“Cass would have crowed about it in his postmortem note. Instead, he wrote in abject shame and guilt.”
“At any rate, we’ll never know. Furthermore, at present, only the deceased woman’s husband and a handful of others know that she was engaged in an extramarital affair and prepared to abandon her family. Had the letter been published, the sordid sensation would have branded her children for life. Had you thought of that?”
“I thought of one thing, Doctor. And your sophistries don’t make me think differently now. I thought of Sam Goldsmith in the gas chamber, and the children as orphans, unless someone acted with honesty on their behalf.”
Dr. Chapman ignored this. “But the even more damaging consequence of the letter was in exposing a member of our team to the public as a maniac who had committed suicide. How the press and readers would have gloated over this. How they would have crucified us. Because of one bad egg, we would have all been rejected forever. Can you imagine, if our enemies had got hold of this—Dr. Jonas—”
“Dr. Jonas knows.”
“Knows?” Dr. Chapman echoed, rising to his feet. “What are you saying?”
“Before I came here, I told him the whole thing.”
“You stupid fool!”
“I think you’re the one who’s behaving foolishly, Dr. Chapman. I know Jonas. You don’t. He reacted in an objective manner. He even said that there could be some justification in suppressing Cass’s letter—because of the ultimate harm it would do, to the family, to your project—if Sam Goldsmith could be saved some other way, if there were no risk to it. He felt that if your project is to be destroyed, it should be destroyed by scientific refutation, intellectually, and not by reason of scandal.”
Dr. Chapman remained standing, flushed. “So now we’re dealing with Jesus.”
“I didn’t agree with Jonas, either. I still won’t let an innocent bystander be sacrificed to your ego.”
“He wouldn’t have been sacrificed,” Dr. Chapman said angrily. “The district attorney did not burn the letter until he had evidence, this noon, that Goldsmith was indeed innocent.”
Paul felt an emotion of relief. “You mean he’s free?”
“Of course. He was in Pomona at some damn business meeting or other and finally located witnesses to prove his alibi. Now you have your innocent bystander. There’s been no sacrificial lamb. It turns out I’m no tyrant after all. What do you say to that?”
He sat down, more or less controlled, his arms folded across his chest.
“I say nothing’s changed,” said Paul quietly. “This man is free. I’m glad. But the fact of you, as I’ve seen you all this day, is the same fact. You are not free, in my eyes. You were prepared to do anything to preserve your work, your future—”
“Not true. No evidence.”
“I’m satisfied with the evidence. Somehow, you did manage to subvert truth before it was made public. You did this before it was known that Goldsmith was innocent. I don’t know what would have happened had he proved no alibi. Would you have finally relented and allowed the letter to be published? I don’t know. I don’t want to know any more. Maybe even you don’t know. But I tell myself, This man whom I have admired for so long, he doesn’t care for people as people. I tell myself, maybe that is the weakness in our work, our approach—that it doesn’t treat people as warm blooded human beings but as numerals in charts, that this approach, a product of your own neurotic personality, is not the whole truth, and I am a victim of it as much as you—and people who will try to live by these inhuman facts—”
There was a persistent knocking on the door. Dr. Chapman, the color high on his cheeks, considered the door without reply. After a moment, the knob turned, and the door squeaked open tentatively.
It was Benita Selby.
“I’m sorry,” she said to Dr. Chapman, “but Emil Ackerman is on the phone—”
“Not now,” said Dr. Chapman brusquely. “Later—I’ll call him later.”
“He only wants to know what time Sidney should meet you at the train.”
Dr. Chapman avoided Paul’s sharp glance. “Six forty-five tonight,” he said to Benita. “I’ll give him the details later.” After Benita had shut the door, the two men sat in silence.
Dr. Chapman studied his fingernails, and Paul packed tobacco into his pipe.
“I was about to inform you of that,” Dr. Chapman said. “We had to have an immediate replacement for Cass,” he added.
Paul put the match to his pipe, then shook it out and dropped it. “Well, at least it answers the question I wasn’t going to bother to ask. I’d wondered how, in a democracy, one suppresses an important document after it’s been delivered to the law. Now I understand. You find a man who owns the district attorney or the chief of police, and you make a deal with this man. So it was Ackerman. I shouldn’t be surprised. You once said he was in the business of being paid back. Now you’ve settled your debt.”
“The practice is not uncommon, Paul, even among savants of highest virtue.”
“I’m sure you’re right about that. I’ve read a little in history. Presidents and monarchs have stooped to low deals. Philosophers, too. And men of science. But one always has hopes that somewhere there is someone—”
“Paul, you’re behaving like an uncompromising child toward an erring parent. This immature inflexibility doesn’t suit you. We’re adults. I’m saving years of labor in the past, our present, our future—everything—by the most harmless horse trade. For a politician’s help, I agree to take on his nephew for a year or two. After all, the boy is a sociology major—”
