Part 5 (2/2)
”Well, we're convinced that Doctor Chalmers did in fact say what he's alleged to have said, last month,” Dacre began.
”Jim, I think we ought to get that established, for the record,”
another of the trustees put in. ”Doctor Chalmers, is it true that you spoke, in the past tense, about the death of Khalid ib'n Hussein in one of your cla.s.ses on the sixteenth of last month?”
Chalmers rose. ”Yes, it is. And the next day, I was called into this room by Doctor Whitburn, who demanded my resignation from the faculty of this college because of it. Now, what I'd like to know is, why did Doctor Whitburn, in this same room, deny, yesterday, that I'd said anything of the sort, and accuse my students of concocting the story after the event as a hoax.”
”One of them being my son,” Dacre added. ”I'd like to hear an answer to that, myself.”
”So would I,” Stanly Weill chimed in. ”You know, my client has a good case against Doctor Whitburn for libel.”
Chalmers looked around the room. Of the thirteen men around him, only Whitburn was an enemy. Some of the others were on his side, for one reason or another, but none of them were friends. Weill was his lawyer, obeying an obligation to a client which, at bottom, was an obligation to his own conscience. Handley was afraid of the possibility that a precedent might be established which would impair his own tenure-contract. Fitch, and the two men from the Inst.i.tute of Psionics and Parapsychology were interested in him as a source of study-material. Dacre resented a slur upon his son; he and the others were interested in Blanley College as an inst.i.tution, almost an abstraction. And the major in mufti was probably worrying about the consequences to military security of having a prophet at large. Then a hand gripped his shoulder, and a voice whispered in his ear:
”That's good, Ed; don't let them scare you!”
Old Max Pottgeiter, at least, was a friend.
”Doctor Whitburn, I'm asking you, and I expect an answer, why did you make such statements to the press, when you knew perfectly well that they were false?” Dacre demanded sharply.
”I knew nothing of the kind!” Whitburn bl.u.s.tered, showing, under the bl.u.s.ter, fear. ”Yes, I demanded this man's resignation on the morning of October Seventeenth, the day after this incident occurred. It had come to my attention on several occasions that he was making wild and unreasonable a.s.sertions in cla.s.s, and subjecting himself, and with himself the whole faculty of this college, to student ridicule. Why, there was actually an editorial about it written by the student editor of the campus paper, the _Black and Green_. I managed to prevent its publication....” He went on at some length about that. ”If I might be permitted access to the drawers of my own desk,” he added with elephantine sarcasm, ”I could show you the editorial in question.”
”You needn't bother; I have a carbon copy,” Dacre told him. ”We've all read it. If you did, at the time you suppressed it, you should have known what Doctor Chalmers said in cla.s.s.”
”I knew he'd talked a lot of poppyc.o.c.k about a man who was still living having been shot to death,” Whitburn retorted. ”And if something of the sort actually happened, what of it? Somebody's always taking a shot at one or another of these foreign dictators, and they can't miss all the time.”
”You claim this was pure coincidence?” Fitch demanded. ”A ten-point coincidence: Event of a.s.sa.s.sination, year of the event, place, circ.u.mstances, name of a.s.sa.s.sin, nationality of a.s.sa.s.sin, manner of killing, exact type of weapon used, guards killed and wounded along with Khalid, and fate of the a.s.sa.s.sin. If that's a simple and plausible coincidence, so's dealing ten royal flushes in succession in a poker game. Tom, you figured that out; what did you say the odds against it were?”
”Was all that actually stated by Doctor Chalmers a month ago?” one of the trustees asked, incredulously.
”It absolutely was. Look here, Mr. Dacre, gentlemen.” Fitch came forward, unzipping his briefcase and pulling out papers. ”Here are the signed statements of each of Doctor Chalmers' twenty-three Modern History Four students, all made and dated before the a.s.sa.s.sination.
You can refer to them as you please; they're in alphabetical order.
And here.” He unfolded a sheet of graph paper a yard long and almost as wide. ”Here's a tabulated summary of the boys' statements. All agreed on the first point, the fact of the a.s.sa.s.sination. All agreed that the time was sometime this year. Twenty out of twenty-three agreed on Basra as the place. Why, seven of them even remembered the name of the a.s.sa.s.sin. That in itself is remarkable; Doctor Chalmers has an extremely intelligent and attentive cla.s.s.”
”They're attentive because they know he's always likely to do something crazy and make a circus out of himself,” Whitburn interjected.
”And this isn't the only instance of Doctor Chalmers' precognitive ability,” Fitch continued. ”There have been a number of other cases....”
Chalmers jumped to his feet; Stanly Weill rose beside him, shoved the cased sound-recorder into his hands, and pushed him back into his seat.
”Gentlemen,” the lawyer began, quietly but firmly and clearly. ”This is all getting pretty badly out of hand. After all, this isn't an investigation of the actuality of precognition as a psychic phenomenon. What I'd like to hear, and what I haven't heard yet, is Doctor Whitburn's explanation of his contradictory statements that he knew about my client's alleged remarks on the evening after they were supposed to have been made and that, at the same time, the whole thing was a hoax concocted by his students.”
”Are you implying that I'm a liar?” Whitburn bristled.
”I'm pointing out that you made a pair of contradictory statements, and I'm asking how you could do that knowingly and honestly,” Weill retorted.
”What I meant,” Whitburn began, with exaggerated slowness, as though speaking to an idiot, ”was that yesterday, when those infernal reporters were badgering me, I really thought that some of Professor Chalmers' students had gotten together and given the _Valley Times_ an exaggerated story about his insane maunderings a month ago. I hadn't imagined that a member of the faculty had been so lacking in loyalty to the college....”
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