That backed him up. He took his hands off the top of my desk and straightened up, making a conscious effort to control himself. "I don't think there's any need for that," he said. "We're both professionals. I have no desire to get you into trouble and, quite frankly, I can't spare the time from my work that bringing charges against you would entail."
"Just what would that work be?" I asked casually.
"Surely you can appreciate the fact that I don't care to discuss my private affairs with you."
"Sorry, I was just making conversation. I couldn't help but be curious as to what kind of research requires a human watchdog like the one that came after me."
Smathers made a nervous gesture with his hand. "Quite frankly, Dr. Kee and I are involved in research into some of the more bizarre human mental aberrations. On occasion, we have potentially dangerous people on that floor. Tse Tsu thought you might have been one of them. He overreacted in simply doing his job."
"What are those water tanks for?"
Gates clanged shut behind Smathers' eyes. "You've been spying!"
"Not at all. I just happened to be looking around for you and noticed the tanks. Naturally, I was curious."
"You will not come up there again, Dr. Frederickson."
"Interesting man, this colleague of yours. Did you know that Dr. Kee used to be an officer in the Peoples' Liberation Army in North Korea? I understand he was a brainwashing specialist."
Smathers flushed. "That's slanderous. Who told you this?"
"It's just a rumor. Haven't you heard it?"
"I wouldn't pay any attention to such a story."
"Why not? The war's over."
Smathers was either tired of talking or didn't like the turn the conversation had taken. He gave me a long, hard stare. "Please don't interfere in my affairs anymore, Dr. Frederickson."
I wanted to talk some more, but Smathers had already turned and was walking out of my office. He slammed the door behind him. I picked up the phone and dialed Barnum's office. After running a gauntlet of secretaries, I finally got to hear the Big Man himself.
"This is Frederickson," I said. I considered telling him about the incident-and the laboratories-in Marten Hall, then decided against it. "I have a nagging feeling that you left out parts of the story."
"I can't imagine what you're talking about." Barnum's voice was arch, restrained. I'd hurt his dignity.
"What did Smathers win his Nobel Prize for?"
"He did pioneering work in sensory deprivation. He's the top authority in his field."
"Sensory deprivation; that's artificially taking away all a man's senses-sight, sound, smell, touch, taste?"
"That's correct."
"To what end?"
"No end. That's what the experimentation was all about: to determine the effects. NASA was interested in it for a while because of its possible relation to interplanetary space travel, but they gave it up when it became apparent that it was too dangerous for the volunteers involved."
I remembered Smathers' comment about dangerous people in his laboratories. I'd assumed he'd been making excuses for his Chinese gorilla. Now I wondered; but I wasn't ready to accuse him of anything, at least not yet.
"Where did he come from?"
"Platte Institute. Near Boston."
"I know where it is. How did he come here? Platte takes good care of its prize winners. It's hard for me to believe they wouldn't have matched any offer you made."
I took the long silence at the other end of the line as an answer of sorts, a justification for the nagging itch at the back of my mind.
"There's some question about it, isn't there?" I pressed.
"There's no question that Dr. Smathers is a Nobel Prize winner," Barnum said. He sounded irritated. "They're not exactly a dime a dozen, you know."
"So you don't ask questions when one wants to leave one place and come to another?"
"No," Barnum said after a long pause. "But he came with the highest recommendations."
"I'm sure he did. Now, what you want to know is how you came to get a Nobel Prize winner at what amounts to bargain basement prices."
Again, a long pause, then: "Have you found out anything?"
"I'll get back to you."
Barnum was, after all, my client, and I wasn't quite sure why I'd held back on him. Perhaps it was because Smathers was a colleague, and scientists-especially brilliant ones-take enough nonsense from administrators as it is. I had been nosing around some very expensive equipment in an area that had clearly been off-limits to me. I wanted to do some more digging before I started telling tales.
I went to the Liberal Arts building and looked around for Fred Haley. I wanted some more information on the other, nonscholarly side of Dr. Kee. It would have to wait; Haley was away for the weekend.
The walk wasn't entirely wasted, as I managed to latch onto Jim Larkin, a former student of mine who was now a graduate fellow in experimental psychology. He accepted my offer of a cup of coffee and we went downstairs to the Student Union. I gradually steered the conversation around to Dr. Vincent Smathers.
"Strange man," Jim said. Coming from him, it was hard to tell whether this was a complaint or a compliment. Probably it was neither. Jim was a young man with an almost fanatic devotion to the notion of live and let live. "All the graduate fellows were assured before he came here that we'd have access to him, that he wouldn't be just a high-priced name for the university to print in its alumni newsletter. However. ."
"I take it that it didn't work out that way?"
"Smathers showed up at exactly one of our graduate seminars, and that was it."
"Interesting. What do you suppose he does with his time?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," Jim said. A braless co-ed, who shouldn't have been, had entered the cafeteria and was bobbing along the tables. I made a stab at getting Jim's attention back.
"What happens to a man when he undergoes sensory deprivation?"
Jim turned back to me. "That's Dr. Smathers' field."
"I know."
"Well, simply put, he goes out of his mind. To be more precise, his mind goes out of him. You take away all a man's sensory landmarks and he becomes like a baby, with no past, present, or future, at least while he's undergoing the deprivation. He becomes very suggestible."
"You mean he's brainwashed?"
Jim made a face. "That's an old-fashioned term."
"Uh-huh. Is it like brainwashing?"
"I suppose so."
"How do you go about this sensory deprivation?"
"The first thing you need is a controlled medium in which to support the man's body."
"Like water?"
"Yeah, water's good. What are you getting at, Dr. Frederickson?"
"Just curious," I said with a straight face. "What do you think of Smathers' Chinese helpers?"
Jim shrugged noncommittally. "I'll tell you this," he said after some thought, "I think there's some strange business going on in that department."
"What kind of strange business?"
"You heard about that guy who was shot on campus? The old Bowery bum?"
I said I had.
"I saw him in Marten Hall one day. He was walking with one of Dr. Smathers' assistants, one of those Chinese guys."
Garth, as usual, was chin-deep in paperwork. My brother, all six-feet-plus of him, was sitting behind a desk which might have fit me, merrily clacking away at a typewriter, vintage nineteenth century. His face was grim; his face was always grim when he was doing paperwork. He didn't bother looking up.
"Look what the ants dragged in. What's happening, Mongo?"
"I just wanted to drop in and say hello to my brother."
"You're here to pump information," Garth said evenly. He hit the wrong key and swore.
"There was an old man killed on the university campus a few weeks back. Shot."