The Prize

by Irving Wallace

  ‘Does Dr. Öhman know of this?’

  ‘He has given his wholehearted approval,’ said the Baron, ‘and would be much relieved if you would share his responsibility.’

  ‘I will share it, of course,’ said Garrett. ‘I will be on hand.’

  ‘Capital!’ exclaimed the Baron. ‘Surgery was originally scheduled for seven tomorrow morning. It will now be delayed until nine in the morning, so that Dr. Öhman may have time to go over his charts and plan with you.’

  Garrett saw, at once, the advantage of his participation, his collaboration, so dramatic, to save a relative of the King through the discovery that he had made. Before the entire world, he would be able to demonstrate why he had won the Nobel Prize and why he deserved it alone. It was this last that troubled him now. The Baron had said that the King wished Öhman to avail himself of the services of both himself and Farelli. That would not do, and he must be firm and make it a condition of his co-operation.

  Baron Johan Stiernfeldt had risen, and that was when Garrett spoke his mind.

  ‘There’s just one thing,’ he heard himself saying. He came off the velvet stool and joined the aristocrat. ‘Few laymen are acquainted with the tension that accompanies this difficult surgery. Speed and precision are the saving virtues. I have found, in my long experience in heart transplantations, that two make for good surgery, but three is a crowd.’

  ‘I am afraid I do not understand, Dr. Garrett. What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I assume you mean to confine the assistance given Dr. Öhman to myself alone. Since Dr. Öhman and I have exchanged notes on our work, and know each other, we will be able to perform at maximum efficiency together. A team of two-Dr. Öhman and I-will guarantee successful outcome. A third surgeon might make the undertaking extremely difficult.’

  Baron Johan Stiernfeldt’s visage was stern. ‘Do you mean that you do not wish Dr. Carlo Farelli to attend the surgery?’

  Garrett felt a wave of relief. It was understood. His victory was within his grasp. ‘Exactly, that is exactly what I mean.’

  ‘I am afraid that is impossible, Dr. Garrett.’

  The reply was unexpected. ‘Why is it impossible?’ he wanted to know petulantly.

  ‘Because at eight-thirty this morning, the King had Dr. Carlo Farelli in his private quarters for breakfast, and together, at some length, they discussed the details of the impending surgery. The King has already accepted Dr. Farelli’s gracious offer to be of assistance.’

  Garrett stood aghast. ‘The King himself saw Farelli?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Baron Johan Stiernfeldt, ‘and quite relieved was His Majesty. You see, as I have explained, the King was reluctant to make any imposition upon your time and Dr. Farelli’s time. Then, at last, he was convinced that the requests should be made. But before he could do so, Dr. Farelli relieved His Majesty of any embarrassment by voluntarily coming forward and offering his services to the King. You can imagine His Majesty’s delight and appreciation. And-I suppose I can tell you this-it was Dr. Farelli’s assurance at breakfast, that you would be as honoured as he was himself to co-operate, that induced the King to have me meet with you forthwith… Is anything the matter, Dr. Garrett? Are you having a dizzy spell?’

  In Carl Adolf Krantz’s apartment overlooking the Mälaren, fifteen minutes had passed since Daranyi’s arrival, and now the Hungarian looked up once more from his memoranda and waited while his host finished his writing behind the obstructing fern.

  ‘So much for Dr. Garrett and so much for Dr. Farelli,’ said Daranyi. ‘Next, I have the names of your chemistry laureates, Dr. Claude Marceau and Dr. Denise Marceau, of Paris. What I have learned of them, while not of considerable quantity, has quality, at least the quality I trust you will consider useful.’

  ‘Permit me to be the judge,’ said Krantz grouchily.

  ‘Very well.’ He held up his sheaf of papers. ‘This is lurid enough to make one blush. The Marceaus seem to have led spotless lives, entirely dedicated to their investigations and experiments, until recently. Dr. Claude Marceau committed adultery in Paris, and his wife seems to have retaliated by having an illicit affair here in Stockholm.’

  ‘Decadent frogs,’ muttered Krantz from behind the greenery.

  ‘I do not have the details, and so I will spare you that,’ said Daranyi, ‘but I do have in my possession certain facts. To begin with, Dr. Marceau’s little amour…’ With a free sense of staging, Daranyi released his facts one by one, each like a gaudy helium balloon floating skyward. He covered Dr. Claude Marceau’s indiscretions with the compliant Mademoiselle Gisèle Jordan from their start in Paris to their forthcoming rendezvous this afternoon at the Hotel Malmen in Stockholm.

  ‘I do not know for certain if Dr. Denise Marceau is aware of this rendezvous,’ admitted Daranyi, ‘but from the nature of her own behaviour, I would suspect that she knows what is going on. In any case, she-and my source is unimpeachable-has committed two infidelities with one of your countrymen, Dr. Oscar Lindblom, a young chemist in the employ of Ragnar Hammarlund. One infidelity, was performed in Hammarlund’s private scientific laboratory three days ago, and the second was performed last night, on the occasion of Dr. Claude Marceau’s absence from the city, when his wife received young Lindblom in her suite at the Grand.’

  ‘Disgusting,’ snarled Krantz, his pen busy.

  ‘If you worry about a scandal,’ said Daranyi, ‘this may be it. I keep thinking Dr. Denise Marceau means for her husband to know of her own violation of the marital bed, and I keep wondering what Dr. Claude Marceau will do when he does find out…’

  At 1.02 in the afternoon, Claude Marceau had learned that his loyal spouse of ten years had become an adulteress.

  At 1.08 Claude Marceau had extracted from her the name of her vile seducer.

  At 1.29 Claude Marceau, linked in step with Hammarlund’s butler, Motta, was striding over the forest path behind Åskslottet to the isolated laboratory, the den of sin in the Animal Park, where he would find the infamous, lustful, treacherous Swede, Oscar Lindblom, and give him the thrashing of his life.

  Claude Marceau, protector of home and hearth, was boiling mad. Nor was his rage misdirected. Denise, ever timid and fearful of violence, had tried to protect her lover by protesting his innocence and presenting herself as a femme fatale. The gesture might have been laughable had it not been so transparent and pathetic. Claude had known his wife too long and too well to be fooled. Denise was essentially provincial, bourgeois, naïve, unworldly. There had been no doubt in Claude’s mind where the blame must be put: the Swedish snake had taken vicious and caddish advantage of her distress, her weakness, and through his practised wiles had hounded her into an infidelity.

  Striding beside Motta, Claude reviewed the accident that had revealed all. He had returned from Uppsala after midnight, and immediately fallen into an exhausted sleep. He had awakened too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, to find Denise lounging in the sitting-room, taking coffee and leafing through an imported Paris Match, and what had caught his eye was the flimsy pink négligé that he had not seen before and that ill became her, a married woman. She had been unaccountably vivacious, as she had been since the Hammarlund evening, and again he guessed that she had determined to show him her best side in order to woo him back.

  Now, remembering: the door buzzer had sounded, and he had gone to see who it might be. The caller had proved to be a hotel servant, some relic fugitive escaped from Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine, who held before him a bottle of something or other, gift-wrapped in red.

  ‘I am one of the room-service help,’ the servant had announced. ‘I have the champagne Madàme requested for her husband.’

  Claude had tried to think if it was his birthday. It was not. ‘I am Madàme’s husband. I will take it.’

  The servant had pulled the champagne away from the stranger’s outstretched hand. Madàme had been explicit, the night before, about this. ‘No-it is not for you. I have seen her husband.’

  C
laude had then realized that this was a mistake. ‘I am sorry, but you have the wrong room.’

  ‘This is the right room,’ insisted the witless servant. ‘I spoke to Madàme here last night.’

  Claude had become impatient with this tomfoolery. ‘What makes you think I am not her husband?’

  ‘I saw him in there last night.’ He peered past Claude just as Denise rose from the sofa, and he recognized her. ‘Madàme, here is the gift you ordered for your-’

  Something had begun to penetrate Claude’s head, and he wheeled about in time to see his wife desperately waving off the room-service relic.

  ‘I-I-yes, it is the wrong room.’ The servant had begun to retreat when Claude was galvanized into action. He had gone after the man in the corridor and roughly collared him.

  ‘You saw a man in the room with my wife last night?’

  The servant had been struck speechless, but a severe shaking had rattled the truth out of him, quickly, stumblingly, even to the admission that the tall young man glimpsed with Denise had been in pyjamas.

  Claude had returned to the suite, slamming the door behind him, and advanced on Denise like the procureur général on a quaking defendant. The skirmish had been brief, and the defence had collapsed entirely. Foolishly, Denise had tried to take the whole burden of guilt upon herself, had even tried to transfer some of it to him. If she had not been so widowed and hurt by his affair, if she had not been so needful of love and reassurance, she would not have succumbed so easily to Oscar Lindblom’s blandishments. There, the name was out-Lindblom! The betrayer, the traducer, the Nordic Casanova! For now, to absolve herself, the truer truths poured out-Lindblom’s silken persuasion, his ardent whisperings and practised hands, his strong and urgent body, his overwhelming and irresistible passion-Lindblom!

  ‘There is the laboratory, Dr. Marceau,’ the butler was saying.

  ‘Thank you,’ snapped Claude. ‘That will be all.’

  He left Motta behind, and strode vengefully to the door, gripping the knob with a strong hand that would, in seconds, bash in the face of the rapist. Since Count Axel von Fersen had played his little game with Marie Antoinette, every young Swede had fancied himself a Fersen. Au revoir, Lindblom, you will be the last of the line, Claude promised himself, and he burst into the large laboratory work-room.

  At first, to his stinging disappointment, he thought the place vacant, and then, from behind the far row of beakers, he heard a voice.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Claude rushed around the counter, and then pulled up short.

  Not Lindblom, but Ragnar Hammarlund, ridiculous in a onepiece suit of overalls such as Winston Churchill had once affected, confronted him.

  ‘Dr. Marceau-what a delightful surprise!’

  ‘Where’s this chemist-this Oscar Lindblom of yours?’

  ‘Lindblom? Out. I sent him out on an errand. He should return shortly. May I be of service, Dr. Marceau?’

  ‘No, it is this Lindblom I want,’ said Claude belligerently.

  Hammarlund pretended not to notice his visitor’s vexation. ‘Does he expect you?’

  ‘I think not.’

  ‘He will be honoured by your appearance, as am I. His admiration for you and your wife exceeds worship.’

  Claude was too irritable to enjoy insincerity. ‘You flatter us.’

  ‘Not enough,’ said Hammarlund, bringing a silk handkerchief from his hip pocket and brushing his forehead. ‘Dr. Lindblom is a shy, retiring young man of modest attainments who is well acquainted with your work, and for years you have been his idol.’

  This did not coincide with Claude’s picture of a lecher. ‘I had a different impression of him at your dinner-a brash, over-confident fellow-’

  ‘Surely you must be thinking of someone else,’ interrupted Hammarlund. ‘Why, when your wife came to visit the laboratory the other morning, Dr. Lindblom was incoherent with excitement.’

  ‘My wife came here?’ Claude glanced coldly about the laboratory. So this was the sordid scene of the seduction. This was where it began-and the egotism of the lecher, to celebrate the insult further, in the husband’s own hotel suite last night!

  ‘Yes,’ Hammarlund went on, ‘your wife was intrigued by Dr. Lindblom’s findings in the field of synthetic foods.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Claude bitterly. He looked about again, and a thought came to him: where had the seduction taken place? On the hard floor? Too incredible to conceive. ‘Is this the only room here?’

  ‘No, by no means. We have what we call our “think” room. Come, you can wait there for Dr. Lindblom. It will be more comfortable.’

  They walked into the adjoining office, and Claude stared at the offending sofa, and it all became clear.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Hammarlund. ‘May I order you something from the house?’

  Although he had not yet eaten this day, Claude wanted no hospitality from a host whose employee he would momentarily reduce to minced sausage. ‘No, thank you.’ He sat stiffly on the sofa, and was somehow glad it did not squeak. He extracted an English cigarette from his silver case, and accepted the flame from Hammarlund’s lighter.

  ‘Have you come to see Dr. Lindblom on a matter of professional interest?’ inquired Hammarlund, finding a place at the far end of the sofa.

  Claude wished that the hideous man would remove himself from the premises, but then good reason reminded him these were, indeed, the hideous man’s own premises, and that he would have to be answered. For a moment, Claude considered revealing to Hammarlund the real motive for his visit. But he wanted no forewarning, no bickering, no alarm. He wanted only one swift punch at Lindblom’s leering superior blond face-one would do it-put him down whimpering, and salvage all pride and honour. Underlings simply did not cuckold Nobel laureates, he told himself, and the rebellious ones must be put in their places, even if by violence.

  He tried to recall Hammarlund’s question, and then he did. ‘Yes, you might say I have a professional interest in seeing your Lindblom.’

  ‘Stimulated by your wife’s visit here, I hope?’

  ‘You might put it that way,’ answered Claude wryly.

  ‘Then she informed you of Dr. Lindblom’s remarkable talent?’

  ‘Only too well.’

  This was deteriorating, Claude saw, into one of those sex skits at the Concert Mayol all full of innocent questions and answers that had double meanings, and elicited from French audiences rollicking merriment. Although the immediacy of his anger had abated for lack of outlet, Claude was in no humour for this nonsense. He wanted to change the tenor of conversation. Now Hammarlund gave him the cue.

  ‘Well, before Dr. Lindblom returns to speak of his work in person,’ Hammarlund was saying, ‘perhaps I could brief you on some aspects of it that might be of interest.’

  ‘By all means-do,’ said Claude, trying to display interest, but only eager to pass the time as quickly as possible.

  At once, with the enthusiasm of a monomaniac, Ragnar Hammarlund began to expound on the necessity and value of discovering basic food synthetics. Edibles produced by chemical means would be healthier, would be cheaper, would bring an end to undernourishment, even to starvation, throughout the world. Once chemists could discover the synthesis for fats, proteins, carbohydrates, utopia would be on the earth.

  ‘I am not alone in believing this,’ said Hammarlund. He jumped to his feet, went to the desk, ran a finger across a row of books and found what he was looking for. ‘Here is an American chemist, Jacob Rosin, who wrote a fine book on the subject, The Road to Abundance.’ Hammarlund was turning the pages, until he had what he sought. ‘Listen to him. “Once the industrial synthesis of the carbohydrates, proteins, and fats is achieved, the bondage that chained mankind to the plant will be broken. The result will be the greatest revolution in history since man learned how to make fire. Hundreds of millions of hard-working farmers and farm workers will be replaced by chemical machinery. The surface of our earth will be freed from its dedication t
o food production. A new way of life will emerge.” ’ Hammarlund cast the book aside. ‘You see what is possible?’

  At first, Claude had not listened carefully, but now Hammarlund’s condescension as he assumed a pedagogue’s lecture stance irritated him into a certain attentiveness. He was not, he reminded himself, a callow student. He was the winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry. ‘I know the goal well enough, Mr. Hammarlund. There are always these dreamers’ goals. The problem comes down to the obstacles-the hard obstacles we find in the laboratory-that usually make the end of the road unreachable.’

  Now that he had the laureate engaged, Hammarlund became more forceful. It was almost as if his invisible face had taken on human colorations of emotion. ‘Of course, Dr. Marceau, I am not so impractical as to ignore the obstacles. But what are these in the field of synthetic foods? First, we must overcome the belief of the public-coveted also by too many scientists-that the only healthy foods are nature’s foods. You know that is rot, and so do I. Cauliflower, beans, peas, raw eggs, whole wheat, coffee are all hoaxes, filled with countless poisons that we have survived only because of restraint in our eating habits. Synthetic foods could be manufactured without these poisons. Second, we must sell the world the belief that chemical substitute nutriments can be as pleasurable as doctored meats and vegetables and bakery products, can look as attractive, smell as good, and taste as wonderful as the so-called natural foods. Third, we must prove to mankind that synthetic foods can be made to contain all the necessary values of known foods-carbohydrates, proteins, fats, water, vitamins, minerals.’

  What was annoying to Claude Marceau was that Hammarlund was making it all child’s play. He was an industrialist and a superficial dabbler in the sciences. What did he know of the real problems of synthesis? For the first time in years, Claude began to recollect his early trials in the laboratory with Denise by his side, the days of toil, the weary nights of monotonous persistence, the tumbling into bed fatigued to the marrow, eyes bleary and neck constricted and bones almost arthritic, and in the brain, a chaotic spinning.