"But look here," he said at last, patting my shoulder, "if You really promise to let bygones be bygones, You can count on me to put in a good word for You with Stacey."
When I asked what exactly he meant, he winked. "She had no business marrying that dirty-minded draft-dodger in the first place! But Stacey listens to her Grandpa Reg, and if I was to tell her the G.T. loves her… Not that You haven't told her so already, eh?" He nudged me with his elbow.
"A Grand Tutor loves the whole student body," I told him coldly, adding that if he felt so beholden to me as to pimp for his married granddaughter, he was flunkèd indeed, and had better heed my counsel about herding goats. Not to lose my temper further at his pandering to the image of Harold Bray, I turned my back on his expostulations and left the office. At that very moment, as if to remind me of urgenter business, the crowd outside set up a shout. But another came from behind me, like an answer to the first: a woman's cry: "You're not my Giles!"
It was Mother, crazy-eyed and pointing from behind the ex-Chancellor. In vain the young receptionist tried to coax her back into the farther room; in vain Reginald Hector said, "Whoa down, Gin" — his own eyes still flashing wrath at me. She pushed past him with her claws out and would have attacked me if they'd not caught her arms.
"You're not my Billy!" she cried. I froze before the hatred in her face. More shouts came from outside, disorganized and fearsome. She struggled now not at me but towards the office window, shrieking, "They're killing him!"
"What's she talking about?" her father demanded. The receptionist, herself verging on hysteria, replied that it was that George-fellow, the so-called Goat-Boy, that the crowd had discovered somewhere and dragged to the front gate. "She says it's her son, sir! And I think — they're lynching him…"
I ran for the porch, flunking myself for not having put off all disguise long since. The doorguard snapped to attention, ignoring the horror at the gate. There on hands and knees in the torchlight some poor wretch was indeed not long for this campus: blows and kicks rained upon him; the host of his attackers snarled like Border Collies at a wolf; those not near enough to strike with briefcase, umbrella, or slide-rule shouted imprecations and threw weighty textbooks. Already a noose was being rigged from a lamp-post, and Telerama crews were exhorting the crowd not to block their cameras. The victim's tunic, though rent now and bloodied, I recognized as Bray's; but his hair was gold and curled, not black and straight — and the face he raised, when the mob hailed the sight of me, was my own!
"Stop!" I commanded. "Stop in the name of the GILES!" They did actually pause for a moment, weapons poised, and Reginald Hector (a more seasoned hand than I at giving orders) bellowed at them from the doorway to fall back before he horsewhipped the lot of them. "You heard your Grand Tutor: let the bastard go!"
"Billikins!" my mother screamed behind me, and had I not caught hold of her, would have run to the gore-smeared likeness of her son. "You're not the GILES!" she shrieked at me, and strove ferocious at my eyes. "Billy is!"
Did I see Bray smile through his mad disguise? A half-second I had to wonder what, if not an EATen mind, could have led him to so fatal a mask, and where anyhow he'd got it. In that same half-second, as the mob faltered, another woman squealed forth round a shrubberied corner of the mansion. I let go my mother in horror at sight of Anastasia herself, scarcely less abused than Bray: her sandals were gone; her hair was wild, her cheek bloody, her white uniform ripped down the front and everywhere grimed!
"What in thunder!" Reg Hector shouted. My mother, instead of assaulting me, ran weeping to embrace whom she thought her son. Like the crowd, I stood dumbfounded; Reginald Hector, half-mad with alarm, caught his granddaughter in his arms and shouted questions at her: What had happened? Who had attacked her? But she shook away and ran to me. Forgetting my mask I held out my arms — ah, Founder, she was worse mauled than on the night Croaker beached her! — but she halted just before me and screamed at me to "keep my promise." Men with microphones came running.
"You swore!" she cried. "You swore you'd pass Him if I slept with you!" Beside herself, she snatched a microphone and pointed to the man she thought was I, his wounds being kissed by my mother. "That man is a passèd Grand Tutor!" she shouted into it. "Don't dare kill your own Grand Tutor!" To me again then she cried, "I kept my promise! You keep yours!"
I was dizzy with shock. Reginald Hector ran in small circles with his hands upon his ears. The Telerama people signaled one another furiously, and spotlights fingered all about us. To perfect the confusion a squad of Stoker's motorcycle-guards now roared around the corner of the house whence Anastasia had appeared; they drew up near the gate, sirens a-growl, cursing the crowd from their way. Stoker himself led them, black-jacketed, booted, and grinning as of old, soot on chin and teeth a-flash. In his sidecar — manacled, disheveled, bruised, and glum — Peter Greene, with Stoker's pistol at his head! Anastasia ran from him, to hug my knees. Everyone milled about; the lynching was temporarily forgot.
"Please don't let them hurt George!" My Ladyship begged me. "We'll try again tonight, if you want to. The whole night!"
A dreadful thought occurred to me as she spoke, so that only later did I realize what she'd said.
"Did Greene attack you?" Even as I asked I groaned with the certainty that he had, brought to it by disillusionment at my hands.
She pounded my kneecaps with her fists. "It doesn't matter! Please do what you promised, Mr. Bray! I'll find some way to have a baby with you; I swear it!"
My eyes blinded — with tears of chagrin that would not, however, fall — and I pushed through to where my mother knelt kissing the semblance of myself. Restive now, the crowd were arguing with Stoker's men and unabashedly restringing the noose. I tried to say "Wait!" but the cry lodged in my throat. Bray smiled through his bloody mask expectantly; upon his chest my mother wept. I pointed at him and managed at last to say: "That man's an impostor!"
"You're telling us, sir?" his captors laughed, and made to fetch him noosewards. I blocked their way.
"Look!" I seized his hair and my own-which was to say, my own and his — and yanked both masks away, wondering what face Bray would show beneath. It was his own — that is, a semblance of the one I doffed — and people cried astonishment. My mother looked wailing from one to the other of us and clutched her head.
"I'm George the Goat-Boy!" I declared bitterly to the crowd. "My diploma's false; I've failed everything — "
I could say no more for grief; anyhow they were upon me — seized me by the hair, and, seeing it was real, commenced to kick and pummel. Mother screamed, and was fetched from me. My diploma (the erstwhile Assignment-list) they stuffed into my mouth and bade me eat — as willingly I would have, in self-despite, had it not been retchy sheepskin. When they hoist me to a sidecar-top and readied the noose, I could see Bray moving porchwards on the shoulders of the faithful. From the mansion-steps Reginald Hector held out his arms to welcome the true Grand Tutor — nay, more, tore off his own shirt to staunch Bray's wounds, nor would accept the new one his aides fetched forth, until the spotlights swung from him to My perjured, ruined, ruinous Ladyship. Anastasia tugged at Bray's ankle, tore at her already open blouse as if to show him his reward, and screamed to him what she'd screamed to me, I did not doubt; he made a circle of his thumb and forefinger but could not calm her, nor moved at all to stay the lynch.