Five Smooth Stones

by Ann Fairbairn

  When Eve Knudsen finished her story to her husband, he was silent for a few moments, then rose and went into the hall. He reappeared in the doorway, struggling into his raincoat.

  "Karl, where in the world—"

  "Oscar Benford's—"

  "At this hour?" She followed him back into the hallway. "He never goes to bed."

  "Sits up all night working on theorems or whatever you mathematicians do work on in the silent hours?"

  "No." He kissed her absent-mindedly and picked up his hat. "Mystery stories."

  In Benford's living room a short time later, Knudsen spread his square, strong hands to a welcome blaze, walked to the table beside the chair Benford had been sitting in, and picked up a book. "I wish I could learn the secret of being diverted by these—"

  "It's a big help," said Benford. "Although it's gone back on me at the moment. I was on page one twenty-nine last night. I was on one thirty-one when you came in, and weakening."

  Knudsen gave a short bark of laughter. "Ja. I can well imagine. You know why I am here?"

  "Of course, Actually, I think I was waiting for you."

  "This is a bad thing. A vicious thing."

  "Yes."

  "You seem damned calm about it, Benford."

  "Would it help if I raved?"

  "No. But you seem to treat it as though it was routine—"

  "Isn't it, Doctor? Sit down, man—"

  "Oscar—" It was the first time Knudsen had ever called his immediate subordinate by his first name. Benford's face still showed the slight smile, a smile Knudsen could not interpret; it was not an unpleasant smile, it was—Knudsen searched for a word, found it: disturbing. He forgot what he had started to say originally, and said the thing that had been in the back of his mind since leaving his house. "Quimby."

  Benford's smile was replaced by a thoughtful frown. "If you want to do that, there is nothing to prevent it."

  "I do not 'want to.' I merely present it as the only answer I can find."

  "Karl." Without effort Benford swung from "Doctor" to "Karl." The time for title was long past. "We all know about that famous skunk at the picnic. That would be you if you go over the heads of all involved—the board, the president—to the power behind the throne. Remember, it's a power that's resented in some quarters."

  "I know. And the quarter in which it is the most resented is the quarter from which this foul wind has sprung. This is a frame-up, pure and simple. I would swear to it."

  "So would I. It was the surest weapon under the circumstances. Champlin is too well liked to make a more specific accusation stick."

  "But there has to be an accuser! One cannot, even Goodhue cannot, act on suspicion alone. Certainly he is not going to say that David Champlin made advances to him!"

  Benford laughed, the same surprisingly deep laugh David had heard the day before. "I'm glad you said that, Karl. I needed the laugh. Now—to be serious. Did you know that David Champlin knocked out a fellow student not long ago? Cold-cocked him, on a lonely spot in the road between here and Cincinnati, in the small hours of the morning? The victim of the knockout is not of the breed that takes kindly to liberties taken by Negroes. And I assume being knocked out would come under the heading of taking liberties."

  "Probably. Probably. But David isn't the kind who goes about taking that particular kind of liberty with anyone! White or colored!"

  "Wait. I had better add that, from something I've overheard, the aforesaid victim is not equally averse to taking liberties with Negroes. Certain kinds of liberties."

  At last Knudsen sat, heavily and with a great gust of outgoing breath, in Benford's big chair.

  "I had planned on telling you as soon as I had more to go on," said Benford. "I'm glad now I didn't wait."

  "Was it Clevenger?"

  "Yes. You're quick—"

  "No. Just a hunch. He's a pet of Goodhue's. Would you tell Andrus?"

  "Yes. If we—you and I—agree that I should."

  "Can you dine with us tomorrow? With Andrus."

  "Certainly. Do you still favor seeing Quimby?"

  "Yes." Knudsen had forgotten his drink, finished it now.

  Benford said, "You can see why I have never been to him. Even a man of Quimby's idealism could be forgiven for thinking that it would be special pleading. I've had to content myself with waiting until I saw an opportunity to move in, defending certain students before the board, and warning them when I saw storms ahead. I did manage on one occasion to completely exonerate a Quimby on a charge of cheating. Damn it, Karl!" For the first time Knudsen saw anger, red and violent, flare in Benford's eyes. "A man can fight a lynch mob. Or outright persecution. How in hell can he fight complacence? The damnable, intangible fog of liberal complacency that surrounds those who are so sure of their liberality they cannot see the festering sores within their own establishment! Liberal! Negroes do not love the word. It implies generosity, a giving of something that should be possessed by right."

  "I do not know," said Knudsen slowly. "I do not know—about anything. Yet we dare to call ourselves learned. We dare—" He stood and walked to the table, poured himself a drink from the decanter. "Another drink, Oscar, for the walk home."

  "Another drink, sure. But I'll drive you home."

  "No. I shall walk. And think. And decide."

  "Your job could be at stake if you go to Quimby, tenure or no—"

  "I know that, and I will not say that I like knowing it." Then Knudsen laughed, and this time there was real mirth in the sound. "You have met my brother. Half again my weight, nearly a foot taller. David Champlin is the apple of his eye. But that is not why I would do it—although it would give any man pause. Can you see Professor Bjarne Knudsen if David Champlin is expelled on trumped-up charges and malicious innuendos?"

  Benford laid a bony black hand on Knudsen's shoulder. "When you go to Quimby, I'll go with you. I think Andrus will also. We can all of us always make a living as tutors."

  Dr. Sutherland stood back from the examining table on which Hunter lay clad only in his shorts, and turned to the basin to wash his hands. "Put your clothes on, Hunter, and come into the office."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'd like to see a bit more weight on you. A pound here and there—"

  In the office the small, rotund man who fitted his son's description of "egg-shaped" so well that some people who saw him only sitting down wondered about his lower extremities looked across at Hunter and smiled.

  "You're a humbug, Hunter."

  "No, sir—I—"

  "You are not here to have me tell you that you could gain a few pounds, but that it is not of major importance whether you do or not."

  "My mother says a yearly examination—"

  "Fiddlesticks. What's bothering you?"

  Hunter hesitated only a moment, to marshal his story, then told it succinctly and clearly; he had been well chosen as a member of the debating team. Dr. Sutherland interrupted twice with a brief question; otherwise he listened without speaking. Hunter finished, spread his hands wide, and said, "That's the story, Doctor Sutherland. Why I'm here."

  Sutherland frowned, looking like a troubled Humpty-Dumpty. "Have you talked with Clifton?"

  For a moment Hunter was lost. Who was Clifton? Some one of the brass at Pengard he hadn't heard about? Then he choked and said, "You mean Sudsy?"

  "An abominable nickname—"

  "No, I haven't. Grandmother tells me he's in a sanitarium in upper New York. I wouldn't have called him for any reason without asking you."

  "I'm glad. It's hard enough keeping him there as it is. He'd really—what is it? flip—if he heard this. He's doing very well, by the way. Should be on his feet by summer, back in college by fall."

  "Pengard?"

  "No. California, possibly. Then premed and medical at Harvard."

  A buzzer sounded on the doctor's desk, and Hunter pushed back his chair, but Sutherland checked him, cold anger in his blue, usually mild eyes. "Thank you, Hunter. I shall do somethin
g. What, I don't know. But let me think."

  Tom Evans had never experienced more than minor difficulties in communicating with his father. He had never bothered to analyze this situation, but if asked would probably have said it was because his father had never knocked himself out trying to communicate, never made a big thing of the father-son relationship, as he knew the parents of most of his contemporaries had done. He had often thought that Bull Evans was an opinionated old tyrant, but he did not deny to himself, though he might to others, a carry-over of hero worship from his childhood. Bull Evans, for his part, would have laid their mutual understanding to the fact that he had no mystical fear of youth as such; he remembered his own with great clarity, and was far more concerned with his two children's attitude toward life than with their actions.

  Tom tactfully delayed mentioning his problem until Sunday morning, after the confusion of the anniversary celebration had subsided. Then he said, at breakfast, "You got a little time this morning, Pop?"

  "Sure. Want to play some cribbage?"

  "And get licked? No. I want your advice."

  "The hell you do—" There were people who said that on several occasions Bull Evans had frowned and his eyebrows had become tangled, and he had been forced to continue frowning until they were untangled.

  Tom grinned at the frown now. "After breakfast." Members of the Evans household didn't disturb its master during his favorite meal.

  Later they sat facing each other across the table in the breakfast nook of the big old-fashioned kitchen. The nook had been built in years before when union meetings had overflowed into the dining room. Bull was leaning on heavy, hairy forearms, the massive shoulders that had given him his name hunched forward. He was frowning again, his eyes on the astonished face of his son. "Sometimes you have to go at it thai way, Tom," he said.

  "But Pop! I've been telling the other guys we shouldn't go to the brass. We ought to handle it ourselves. I thought you'd agree—"

  "When the plant catches fire you don't go looking for the shop steward. And you don't run back and forth to the cooler with paper cups of water to put it out."

  "You think this is all that bad?"

  "I think it's a rottenness that goes way deeper than you kids can get at. Half the battle, son, is to know your weaknesses. And the other guy's."

  "I was thinking you could give me some pointers on how to get the fellows—and the girls—sort of together; you know, a sort of student-protest thing, once we get answers to those letters."

  "If you couldn't do that without my advice you'd be someone else's son."

  "Well, we've got ALEC and all—"

  "And rub this thing into the boy by making a big public stink out of it? You've got something going that's more than just a snide attack on one student. What were you planning on? Picketing the dean with signs, 'Champlin isn't a fag! Goodhue is a fag!' You going to write on fences with chalk 'Goodhue loves Clevenger'? With no proof one way or the other?"

  "How you going to get proof? Jeez, Pop, it's hard as hell to prove a negative like that, or a positive either."

  "Tom, we never struck a plant in our lives we didn't know what we were striking for. Even the wildcatters had grievances that would make a saint throw rocks. You've got a creeping fire there. Not something clear-cut like starvation wages and a seventy-hour week with no overtime. Would all the students back you?"

  "Well, probably not all. Did all the workers back you guys?"

  "Damned near."

  Tom sighed heavily. This was rougher going than he had anticipated. He'd thought the old man would come up with a battle plan. "But, Pop, this isn't a union beef—"

  Suddenly the kitchen was filled with Bull Evans's bellow, and his wife, washing dishes in the old-fashioned pantry, jumped, then smiled. She hadn't heard that particular sound since—when? It had to have been when Vlad Petrosky was killed in a mill accident because of lack of safety equipment. "Sic 'em, Bull!" she said under her breath. She was small and slight, with softly curling brown-gray hair and freckles. At fifty-seven she looked forty, and her son was a male replica of her.

  The bellow died away as she translated it: "That's just my point, you dumbhead!"

  "Now, look, Pop, damn it—" her son's voice was rising now.

  In a minute both voices subsided to a rumble, and she smiled again. She would learn what it was all about later; that night when she and Bull were comfortably propped up in bed, planning to read, ending up as they had for twenty-five years, talking. Meanwhile, Bull had the situation in hand.

  "We didn't rely on violence—direct action—all the time, Tom," said Bull. "They had spies, but we had our methods too. There were other moves, behind the scenes." He laughed. "I remember one old fellow I knew way back when. He was an I.W.W. organizer even before my time. One jump ahead of the law all his life. He spent most of his time on the West Coast, with the Wobblies in the fruit. He used to tell about going around hanging signs on the trees for the workers: 'DON'T hammer nails in the fruit trees. It ruins the crops.' That old boy taught me a lot."

  "I don't see how it applies. I honestly don't."

  "It doesn't, except in a very general way, as an example of indirect action."

  "Yeah, but—"

  "Pick your weapons, Tom. You don't use the same kind of ammo to destroy a fighter bomber you do for an aircraft carrier." Bull Evans reached across the table and laid a huge fist along the side of his son's head, pushed it roughly, affectionately. "As long as you're fighting, kid; that's what it's all about. As long as you're fighting—"

  Tom grinned in spite of his misgivings. "O.K., Pop—"

  "Now, first thing we have to do is get proof. Or a reasonable facsimile of it—"

  Tom leaned back in his chair and sighed with relief. He realized he had been subconsciously waiting for that "we."

  "Listen, Tom. Even in the worst days, before my time, when they were shooting labor men down like mad dogs, they let the bosses know what they wanted. Gave 'em a chance to prove they were sons of bitches. They were—and they did. Could be all those guys at Pengard aren't. That's what I'm getting at. Don't go flying off in all directions like a bunch of apes swinging through the trees, making a suffering martyr out of one boy, until you're sure you haven't got a chance otherwise. The very way this character Goodhue is going at it proves he knows he's got opposition. Find out where your strength is. You don't think the brass in that place would be real overjoyed, do you, if they knew the dean of men was—" Bull fell abruptly silent, then said thoughtfully: "Keep your shirt on till after Christmas, son. Keep in touch with me. I think—I think, by God, that maybe I've got something—"

  ***

  Stu Prentiss rolled over on the couch where he had been taking an insomniac's late-afternoon nap, and picked up the receiver of the ringing telephone. "Prentiss speaking."

  "The hell you say. How you been, gumshoe?"

  "Chris'sake! Bull Evans!"

  "Yup. You busy these days?"

  "Just waiting for you to call, old man. Been waiting more'n a year. What's the matter—no dirty work for Stu all this time?"

  "We're all going to hell in a handbasket of sweetness and light—"

  "Not with you around—"

  "Look, Stu, I'm at O'Hare. If you aren't busy thought I'd drive by and chew the fat with you for a while. Got something on my mind. It's sort of out of your line, but you never know—"

  Bull Evans had told his wife a hundred times that Stu Prentiss was the only man he'd ever known who'd been a convert from the other side, and right in the middle of the bloodiest steel strike. No one had trusted him for a long time, least of all Bull. Prentiss had been jailed four times and hospitalized twice before he was grudgingly accepted; then Bull had yanked him out of the front ranks and put him to work doing what he'd been doing for the company—investigating, although Bull kept a wary eye on him for several years. When the thick smoke of labor battles dwindled to a wisp here and there in a clear sky, Prentiss had developed a business of his own that pros
pered so well he was now semi-retired.

  Prentiss was tall, his face pallid, yet with a bony, rugged strength. Snow-white hair was the only indication of age. He carried an ugly scar that ran from the center of his forehead to the corner of one eyebrow. It had been Bull Evans's hand that had held the flap of flesh in place over the frontal bones on the way to the hospital after a riot. It had been years ago; now each man considered the other both friend and moral creditor.

  After he hung up the receiver, Prentiss yawned, stretched in a series of catlike movements, and went into the kitchenette to start coffee. It was always good to see Bull, to talk over old times, and to do whatever he could for him. Maybe there was something cooking in the mills he hadn't heard about. He sniffed battle, and liked the smell.

  ***

  Three hours later Prentiss said: "Look, Bull, call your wife and tell her you're having dinner with me. I think I can help you out. This isn't as far out of my line as you think."

  "How come?"

  "Two or three months ago I spent several weeks in a town in Indiana. Never mind which one now. There was a mess like this involving more than just one guy. The chief of police was an old friend. He asked me to give 'em a hand because I wasn't known in the town. We nailed the president of the Chamber of Commerce, a bank manager, a minister, and two scoutmasters. Poor devils."

  "Save the sympathy." . "All right, Bull. Put that damned checkbook away. I'll bill you for out-of-pocket expense. That'll be it. If I was as lucky as you are, you old goat, I'd maybe have a kid there myself—"

  CHAPTER 34

  Merriwether Goodhue came into his study every Monday afternoon after lunch to light the fire before interviewing students. On the Monday following Hunter's trip to Boston and Tom's to Chicago, the matches were in his hand and he was headed for the fireplace when the buzzer sounded, signaling a call on their outside line. He answered the telephone with a clipped, "Goodhue here," then admitted to the operator that it was, indeed, "Dean Goodhue speaking." So unnecessary, he thought, when he had already identified himself so properly. At the sound of the unknown voice that came on the line next, he sank into his desk chair, sighing.