"You're really Him?" he demanded once more. "That other fellow — I don't know; I was almost afraid…"
Speaking from my heart, not from my mask, I assured him once more that he was looking at the same Grand Tutor he'd committed to the Belly, and asked him why he'd done it. Surely one didn't murder to avoid a scandal? He shook his head and replied, glum with doubt and shame, that though "the scandal-thing" was no light matter when the reputation of leaders was at stake (since "men won't die for a fellow they don't respect"), two other considerations had led him — and me — to the fatal tapelift. The first was the strange device of my PAT-card, which he took to mean that I would pass or fail not everything, but everybody: in other words, that I'd be the Commencement or Flunkage of all studentdom, as the late Kanzler of Siegfrieder College, his adversary in C.R. II, had vowed to be. Considering Eblis Eierkopf's role in the Cum Laude Project and past affiliation with Bonifacism, he'd adjudged it an unbearable risk that his own daughter might have given birth to another Kollegiumführer. Moreover, even supposing that she had not, he could not abide the thought of his grandson's growing up as he had grown, and Ira, and to some extent Virginia also; better die ignorant than be an orphan in the University: nameless, by nameless parents got, and furtively brought to light!
"Never had a proper daddy myself, and never was one to Virginia," he admitted; "her mother dead a-bearing and mine a tramp… I did what I could to keep the same from happening to Virginia. And I don't know that I blame her, mind — but there she was: raped by a flunking Moishian, a flunking Bonifacist, or a flunking machine, one or the other, and half out of her head from it…"
"It was WESCAC," I put in, "not Max or Dr. Eierkopf. And it wasn't what you'd call a rape. You did put me in the lift, then, and push the Belly-button?"
"I did that," he acknowledged firmly. "Founder forgive me if I shouldn't have." To a professor-general in time of riot, he declared, responsibility for the death of others was no novelty. The blood of hundreds of thousands could be said to be on his hands, he supposed, if one chose to look at it that way; flunk him if I would, he'd done his duty as he saw it, was beholden to none, would take his medicine with head held high. I assured him I had no mind to flunk him, not on that account at least; his deed was wrong, but I quite understood what led him to it and did not think his motives dishonorable, only wrong-headed, like his opinions.
He began to color.
"What I mean," I said, "everybody speaks of your generosity and your brother's selfishness, and I see their point, but it is his wealth behind the Unwed Co-ed's Hospital and the P.P.F. - or was, anyhow. And behind you too, all your life…"
"Now, look here, young fellow! I beg Your doggone pardon — "
But, good officer that he was, he must have felt that Grand Tutors somehow outranked professor-generals, for when I raised my hand he fell silent. I was not condemning him or calling him a hypocrite, I explained, and would as leave save the matter for another conversation — but valid as was Enos Enoch's dictum that students Commence or fail individually, never by classes, and admirable as was the virtue of self-reliance, I could not see that Reginald Hector exemplified either very well. How could he regard himself as beholden to none, when his brother had made possible his whole career, his famous philanthropy, even his marriage? Very possibly he had been a good professor-general and chancellor; very possibly his liberality was authentic — but those talents and virtues were empty abstractions without Ira Hector's wherewithal and influence. "You Certified me Yourself!" he said angrily.
I smiled. "But that was before you'd Certified me, so it isn't quite valid." If he really wished to show his self-reliance, I suggested — now that he was out of a job anyway — why did he not chuck all sinecures and go to the goats, as Max had done? I was speaking half in jest (and half seriously, for G. Herrold's death, Max's arrest, and my departure left the goats much in need of herding), but the ex-Chancellor clearly believed I was baiting him, and looking ready to strike me. His Tutoring, I decided, must wait, since the crowd outside would not. I reassured him that I had no intent to denounce him publicly or otherwise reveal either his old attempt on my life or his various dependencies on Ira Hector. The one I forgave, the other was his affair. Neither did I want anything from him, except possibly the answer to a final question…
"Ask it," he grumbled. "I won't stand for blackmail, but I'm obliged to You for letting sleeping dogs lie. What I mean, I'm not beholden, You understand, but when a fellow needs a hand, why, I'll give him the shirt off my back."
I thought of the hungry undergraduates upon whom he'd bestowed cufflinks and desk-barometers, but contented myself with inquiring whether Anastasia was my sister.
"Aha," he said, as if spying some ulterior motive in the question, and his expression turned fatuous again. "I'd heard you two were sweet on each other! Well, don't You worry, lad — Sir — - I don't believe Stoker's filthy talk about her and that George fellow. He says Pete Greene's lost his head over her too — fellow served under me in C.R. Two, heck of a fine Joe. But I'd never believe that flunking Stoker!"
Disturbing as was the suggestion that Anastasia was known to be "sweet on" Harold Bray, I merely demanded to know whether he meant then that she was not Virginia Hector's daughter. He sighed and rolled another cigarette, shaking his head.
"She only had the one, poor Ginny: just Yourself. Me and Ira stood by in the delivery-room, hoping You'd be stillborn. I figured You'd be some kind of monster, if Ginny hadn't been lying about the GILES-thing…"
Unaccountably my heart thrilled to the news that "My Ladyship" and I (so I began from that moment forth to regard her) were no kin. But I repeated Ira Hector's assertion that he'd helped deliver her himself.
"I wouldn't put it past him," Reginald chuckled. "That's Ira all over." But the truth, he declared, was that Ira regularly "helped out" at the Unwed Co-ed's Hospital simply to be helpful, and thus had taken part in a great many deliveries — it was, after all, his building. Anastasia's parentage, however, would never be known: "The hospital records are confidential anyhow, and when we decided Ira should adopt a girl we had her papers destroyed. Ginny's doctor was the only one who might have known, and he passed away twenty-some years ago." In other words, Anastasia was an orphan, born to some luckless co-ed, left for adoption at the New Tammany Lying-in. When my disappearance from the tape-lift, and G. Herrold's garbled talk of finding a baby in the Belly, had led Reginald Hector to fear that his plan had misfired, he'd judged the scandal of illicit pregnancy less dangerous than that of infanticide, actual or attempted. The fortunate coincidence of Dr. Mayo's death at about that same time had made it possible to enter on the records that Virginia Hector had borne a daughter, Anastasia — whom Ira raised when Virginia refused to. Scandal there'd been, when the news gradually became known, but on the whole it had not much damaged the public image of Reginald Hector; people pitied him and censured Virginia (a double injustice of which he seemed yet oblivious), whose subsequent deterioration they were pleased to regard as her due; Max was got rid of, the Cum Laude Project quietly scrapped, and Eblis Eierkopf demoted to less sensitive researches. Anastasia had proved a delightful grandchild, and but for an occasional nagging fear that the GILES had not really perished (if the baby had been the GILES), Reginald Hector had put the unpleasant episode out of mind — until yesterday, when it had suddenly come back to haunt him.