Three to Be Read

by Philip Wylie

  “We realize,” Mr. Drufton put in urgently, “that you have grounds for a damage suit, although we have stopped the series. Such suits, of course, are expensive.”

  Professor Burke now stared at the publisher. “I was ‘dead’—so you weren’t worried! Not even relatives to fight for my reputation! And MacFalkland here—dreaming up that half-baked psychological explanation of how I came to be a smuggler! I should say I have a suit! However, I won’t sue. Rest your minds about that.”

  “Won’t sue?” the publisher repeated, unbelievingly.

  “No. All I ask is that Mac here attend my lectures for the next few months. As my subordinate, he has a lot to learn.”

  “I must say,” the publisher murmured, “that’s generous!”

  MacFalkland seemed to choke.

  Professor Burke walked over to him and slapped his back. Slapped it mightily.

  “Buck up, old boy! All you need is to get out in the world more!”

  “There was another matter—”

  The professor turned to the publisher. “Yes?”

  “No doubt you are getting offers for your life story. I mean—the real story… ?”

  “Bedelia says so. I haven’t looked into it yet.”

  The publisher seemed cheered. “I see. Well, in view of the fact that my supplement has such immense circulation, and was the medium which made so many misstatements about you—”

  “Misstatements!”

  Mr. Drufton glanced at MacFalkland in a pained way. “Whatever you wish to call them, Professor. I deeply regret it. And I am eager to buy your story. Appearing in my supplement, it would undo the harm that’s been done. I will pay twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  The professor’s voice was high. “Twenty-five thousand dollars!”

  “Don’t accept,” Bedelia called, marching unabashedly into the room. “You already have an offer for thirty.”

  “Thirty-five!” Drufton said instantly.

  She smirked at him. “We’ll let you know. Now, gentlemen, it’s far past dinnertime—and the professor has an engagement at eight thirty.”

  The professor sat at the dining-room table. “Thirty-five thousand dollars… !” he muttered wildly.

  Bedelia served soup. “Figure out the income tax, before you get too elated.”

  “What engagement have I at eight thirty?” he asked, after tasting the soup.

  “I told Marigold you’d be over to see her.”

  He drove the shadowy blocks swiftly.

  “She’s in the garden,” Marigold’s mother said.

  “Isn’t it kind of chilly?”

  “The barbecue fire is burning. And the house is full of people who want to meet you. So she went out there, when she heard your car.”

  The fire made some light and a considerable warmth. She was standing beside it.

  “Hello.”

  The professor did not stop to reflect that he was following instinct rather than reason. He gathered up the girl and proceeded along the lines suggested by Connie Maxson.

  “I trust,” he finally said, “you won’t mind being a professor’s wife.”

  Her curls shook—horizontally. “Nope.”

  “Because if you did mind, you’d just have to bear it, somehow.”

  “Martin.”

  “Yes?”

  “Will you promise not to hunt criminals again?”

  He considered. “It seems unlikely I ever will. But promise? No. I won’t promise.”

  Martin Burke had found himself. Intuitively, he knew it. He always would know—now. It satisfied her and she put the satisfaction in simple words. “I guess you’re boss—”

  “You’re darn right I’m boss!”

  Their silhouettes became a unit which threw a complex shadow on the grass.

  Impatiently, the judge strode to the hedge and leaned through the opening. They had stepped off the lawn and his pineapple was menaced again. He started to protest, grinned instead, and turned back to the house. His guests could wait. And the hell with the pineapple.

  Professor Burke’s first class of the new year was held, at the request of President Tolver, in Memorial Hall and attended by the faculty, by reporters, and by certain guests, among whom was a tall man with level grey eyes and his beautiful niece—a couple pointed out by hundreds. There were no absences among the regular students. All other undergraduates who could crowd into the hall were present. Bedelia sat on the platform.

  “The topic of my last lecture,” Professor Burke began, “was crime, vice and civic corruption. I am going to repeat that lecture because, since giving it, I have obtained new material on the subject.”

  The distinguished guests laughed. The undergraduates whistled and stomped.

  Only Miss Orme—the student with ensnooded hair that resembled a beaver’s tail and the firm life purpose of becoming a social worker—disliked the new course. It was too realistic, she felt: too harrowing—and not intellectual enough. Professor Burke had deteriorated, in her opinion. One day she entered his office to tell him so. She found him with Miss Macey in his arms.

  “Come on in,” he grinned at the shocked student. “Another branch of socio-psychology. Courtship. Fascinating study!”

  Miss Orme fled, and in the next semester, changed over to economics.

  THE END