The Non-Statistical Man by Raymond F. Jones Read Free Book Online Page B

actually undermine the foundations of the nation’s insurance business.
    He could.
    And how much more beyond that, Bascomb didn’t know; there would be tffne enough to find out when Magruder was safely stopped.
    He considered going to the police with his story, but almost at once the futility of this was obvious. What desk sergeant, detective, or even police chief would listen to such a tale without being tempted to throw him behind bars for drunkenness?
    Magruder had rightly said the only test of his theories and work was the pragmatic one. And until a person had seen actual results, he would be convinced the whole thing was the product of an active insanity.
    There had to be a more indirect method.
    At once, Bascomb thought of his friend, Hap Johnson, feature writer of the Courier; Hap would understand a thing like this. He would take the obvious view, at first, that Bascomb was drunk; but his innate curiosity wouldn’t let him stop there. Hap was a solid citizen and a respected newspaperman; but he had just enough yen to be the kind of news hero pictured in the movies to be hooked by something like this. Yes, Hap was the man to see, Bascomb decided as he got up from the park bench.
    He found his man slapping a typewriter in a small cubicle located just off the Courier city room. The room was full of smoke, the typewriter was very old, and Hap’s hat clung to the back of his head at a sharp angle. These were the affectations he allowed himself in deference to the movie idols he realized that no workaday reporter could ever hope to emulate. Otherwise, he was an excellent newsman.
    He looked up as Bascomb walked in. “Charley! Don’t do a thing like that! The roof braces of this firetrap can’t take such a shock. Don’t tell me now—you’ve lost your job; your wife has left you; you owe the company ten thousand dollars you’ve embezzled—”
    Bascomb sat down, pushing Hap back into the chair from which he’d risen. “It’s worse,” he said. “I want you to do me a favor—and give me some advice.”
    “The advice is easy,” said Hap; “I don’t know about the other part.”
    Sketchily, then—without going into Magruder’s complex social theories—Bascomb described the professor as a half-baked quack who could really do some of the things he claimed.
    “Call it hypnosis, suggestion, or whatever you want to.” he said, “Magruder exerts some kind of controlling influence over the people who takes his courses. Personally, I think it works through the pills he gives out. Whatever it is, the man is dangerous; he’s radical, subversive, and he is somehow able to lead his followers to accomplish what he wants them to do.
    “Right now, he seems to be attacking the insurance companies with an eye to bankrupting them. You’ll say I’m crazy, but I’m genuinely afraid of what he might be able to do if he was able to expand and make a concentrated attack. You can imagine what the results would be if he actually succeeded—financial chaos. He seems to think he can do the same kind of trick with the advertising business and other institutions. He’s got to be stopped.”
    Hap Johnson pushed his hat a notch further back on his head and regarded Bascomb thoughtfully. “You’re not a drinking man,” he said, “and I’ve never detected signs of insanity before. So it’s possible there’s something in what you say. “But—” he leaned closer in a gesture of secret confidence—“isn’t it reasonable to suppose you might have been mistaken about the people you interviewed? Overwork, worry about the guy who’s gigging for your job—”
    “I’m sure, Hap,” said Bascomb. “I’ve gone over it a hundred times; I’ve plugged every hole.”
    Hap drew back. “It’s not the kind of thing you could go to the police with—yet they ought to know about it. Here’s what we can do: you say Magruder is no M. D., so we ought to be able to get him investigated for prescribing those pills of