Keyser was an elderly man-one of Tywood’s generation. His nose was big and rather red, and he smoked a pipe. He had that easygoing and non-predatory look in his eyes that goes with an academic job-either because that kind of job attracts that kind of man or because that kind of job makes that kind of man.
I said: “What kind of work is Professor Tywood doing?”
“Research physics.”
Answers like that bounce off me. Some years ago they used to get me mad. Now I just said: “We know that, professor. It’s the details I’m after.”
And he twinkled at me tolerantly: “Surely the details can’t help much unless you’re a research physicist yourself. Does it matter-under the circumstances?”
“Maybe not. But he’s gone. If anything’s happened to him in the way of’-I gestured, and deliberately clinched-”foul play, his work may have something to do with it-unless he’s rich and the motive is money.”.
Keyser chuckled dryly: “College professors are never rich. The commodity we peddle is but lightly considered, seeing how large the supply is.”
“
I ignored that, too, because I know my looks are against me. Actually, I finished college with a “very good” translated into Latin so that the college president could understand it, and never played in a football game in my life. But I look rather the reverse.
I said: “Then we’re left with his work to consider.”
“You mean spies? International intrigue?”
“Why not? It’s happened before! After all, he’s a nuclear physicist, isn’t he?”
“He is. But so are others. So am I.”
“Ah, but perhaps he knows something you don’t. “
There was a stiffening to the jaw. When caught off-guard, professors can act just like people. He said, stiffly: “As I recall offhand, Tywood has published papers on the effect of liquid viscosity on the wings of the Rayleigh line, on higher-orbit field equations, and on spin-orbit coupling of two nucleons, but his main work is on quadrupole moments. I am quite competent in these matters.”
“Is he working on quadrupole moments now?” I tried not to bat an eye, and I think I succeeded.
“Yes-in a way.” He almost sneered, “He may be getting to the experimental stage finally. He’s spent most of his life, it seems, working out the mathematical consequences of a special theory of his own.”
“Like this,” and I tossed a sheet of foolscap at him.
That sheet was one of those in the safe in Tywood’s office. The chances, of course, were that the bundle meant nothing, if only because it was a professor’s safe. That is, things are sometimes put in at the spur of the moment because the logical drawer was filled with unmarked exam papers. And, of course, nothing is ever taken out. We had found in that safe dusty little vials of yellowish crystals with scarcely legible labels, some mimeographed booklets dating back to World War II and marked “Restricted,” a copy of an old college yearbook, and some correspondence concerning a possible position as Director of Research for American Electric, dated ten years back, and, of course, chemistry in Greek.
The foolscap was there, too. It was rolled up like a college diploma with a rubber band about it and had no label or descriptive title. Some twenty sheets were covered with ink marks, meticulous and small
I had one sheet of that foolscap. I don’t think anyone man in the world had more than one sheet. And I’m sure that no man in the world but one knew that the loss of his particular sheet and of his particular life would be as nearly simultaneous as the government could make it.
So I tossed the sheet at Keyser, as if it were something I’d found blowing about the campus.
He stared at it and then looked at the back side, which was blank. His eyes moved down from the top to the bottom, then jumped back to the top.
“I don’t know what this is about,” he said, and the words seemed sour to his own taste.
I didn’t say anything. Just folded the paper and shoved it back into the inside jacket pocket.
Keyser added petulantly: “It’s a fallacy you laymen have that scientists can look at an equation and say,, Ah, yes-’ and go on to write a book about it. Mathematics has no existence of its own. It is merely an arbitrary code devised to describe physical observations or philosophical concepts. Every man can adapt it to his own particular needs. For instance no one can look at a symbol and be sure of what it means. So far, science has used every letter in the alphabet, large, small and italic, each symbolizing many different things. They have used bold-faced letters, Gothic-type letters, Greek letters, both capital and small, subscripts, superscripts, asterisks, even Hebrew letters. Different scientists use different symbols for the same concept and the same symbol for different concepts. So if you show a disconnected page like this to any man, without information as to the subject being investigated or the particular symbology used, he could absolutely not make sense out of it.”
I interrupted: “But you said he was working on quadrupole moments. Does that make this sensible?” and I tapped the spot on my chest where the foolscap had been slowly scorching a hole in my jacket for two days.
“I can’t tell. I saw none of the standard relationships that I’d expect to be involved. At least I recognized none. But I obviously can’t commit myself.”
There was a short silence, then he said: “I’ll tell you. Why don’t you check with his students?”
I lifted my eyebrows: “You mean in his classes?”
He seemed annoyed: “No, for Heaven’s sake. His research students! His doctoral candidates! They’ve been working with him. They’ll know the details of that work better than I, or anyone in the faculty, could possibly know it.”
“It’s an idea,” I said, casually. It was, too. I don’t know why, but I wouldn’t have thought of it myself. I guess it’s because it’s only natural to think that any professor knows more than any student.
Keyser latched onto a lapel as I rose to leave. “ And, besides,” he said, “I think you’re on the wrong track. This is in confidence, you understand, and I wouldn’t say it except for the unusual circumstances, but Tywood is not thought of too highly in the profession. Oh, he’s an adequate teacher, I’ll admit, but his research papers have never commanded respect. There has always been a tendency towards vague theorizing, unsupported by experimental evidence. That paper of yours is probably more of it. No one could possibly want to…er, kidnap him because of it.”
“Is that so? I see. Any ideas, yourself, as to why he’s gone, or where he’s gone?”
“Nothing concrete,” he said pursing his lips, “but everyone knows he is a sick man. He had a stroke two years ago that kept him out of classes for a semester. He never did get well. His left side was paralyzed for a while and he still limps. Another stroke would kill him. It could come any time.”
“You think he’s dead, then?”
“It’s not impossible.”
“But where’s the body, then?”
“Well, really-That is your job, I think.“
It was, and I left.
I interviewed each one of Tywood’s four research students in a volume of chaos called a research laboratory. These student research laboratories usually have two hopefuls working therein, said two constituting a floating population, since every year or so they are alternately replaced.
Consequently, the laboratory has its equipment stack in tiers. On the laboratory benches is the equipment immediately being used, and in three or four of the handiest drawers are replacements or supplements which are likely to be used. In the farther drawers, in the shelves reaching up to the ceiling, in odd corners, are fading remnants of the past student generations-oddments never used and never discarded. It is claimed, in fact, that no research student ever knew all the contents of his laboratory.
All four of Tywood’s students were worried. But three were worried mainly by their own status. That is, by the possible effect the absence of Tywood might have on the status of their “problem.” I dismissed those three-who all have their degrees now, I hope-and called back the fourth.
He had the most haggard look of all, and had been least communicative-which I considered a hopeful sign.
He now sat stiffly in the straight-backed chair at the right of the desk, while I leaned back in a creaky old swivel-chair and pushed my hat off my forehead. His name was Edwin Howe and he did get his degree later on; I know that for sure, because he’s a big wheel in the Department of Science now.
I said: “You do the same work the other boys do, I suppose?”
“It’s all nuclear work, in a way.”
“But it’s not all exactly the same?”
He shook his head slowly. “We take different angles. You have to have something clear-cut, you know, or you won’t be able to publish. We’ve got to get our degrees.”
He said it exactly the way you or I might say, “We’ve got to make a living.” At that, maybe it’s the same thing for them.
I said: “All right. What’s your angle?”
He said: “I do the math. I mean, with Professor Tywood.”
“What kind of math?”
And he smiled a little, getting the same sort of atmosphere about him that I had noticed in Professor Keyser’s case that morning. A sort of, “Do-you-really-think-I-can-explain-all-my-profound-thoughts-to-stupid-little-you?” sort of atmosphere.