beyond statistical doubt. Normal human beings would never participate in such an experiment, which would demand resources of money, subjects, and space beyond the reach of an impoverished Ruth Gordon.
His mental skitterings slowed. She couldn’t set up such an experiment, and she knew however feasible and personally desirable, practical human immortality was more dangerous than a nuclear holocaust.
Fingering the note he held before him, he wondered why she had called him Luke Havergal.
Of course! She wanted him to follow her. Luke Havergal was the character in Robinson’s poem who had been summoned to his grave by the ghost of the girl he had betrayed. In the symbolic language of the poem, the dead girl had beckoned her lover “to the western gate.”
A vision of the young Ruth Gordon floated into his mind’s eye. Her grace, her loveliness, her many-faceted mind opened vistas of high romance to his imagination, possibilities of a human love no legend could approach. But such thoughts, he realized, originated in his genitourinary tract.
He owed Ester something, and with his wife so eager to handle his in-fighting for him, he could not leave his cloister and go back to a youth he had barely escaped from alive. Ruth knew this.
Besides, she had taken all of his solution, and it would take him three weeks to process another batch. She had not told him what absorbent she had used, and she had not told him where she had gone.
Oppressed by a sense of loss aggravated by guilt feelings, he tossed the note into the wastebasket. He had loved her and lost her, but he would not go back and there was nothing she could do to make him go.
Friday morning, Detective Lieutenant Joseph Cabroni arrived at his office and checked his mail. There were the usual follow-ups from incoming all-points bulletins for fugitives who might be heading for San Francisco. And he read the first paragraph of a letter from a Mexican girl pleading the innocence of her jailed boyfriend. He tossed the letter into the wastebasket. She had spelled his name “Cabrone.”
A plain postcard typewritten from Palo Alto held his attention.
Lieutenant Cabroni, it may interest you to know that Doctor Ruth Diane Gordon, professor emeritus of gerontology, Stanford University, failed to attend the Sunday meeting of the Three-B club and the Tuesday meeting of the San Jose Rose Growers Association.
Obviously written by an educated person, it was no crank note, and the implication was clear; Ruth Gordon was missing. He remembered her as the old woman under the grape arbor with Ward looking at pornographic pictures during the cocktail party before he got the brush-off from Ester. If Ruth Gordon would stay missing a little longer, Ward might be held as a material witness and Cabroni would have a clear shot at Ester. Since she had gotten so damned loyal and faithful, she might be willing to contribute a little something to her husband’s release.
Cabroni’s ordinary procedure would have been to call the Palo Alto police and have them check out the report. Instead, he called a newspaper editor he knew and asked the editor to check all information in the morgue on Doctor Ruth Gordon and Doctor Alexander Ward.
In a few minutes, the newsman called back. “Joe, we got a volume on Ruth Gordon, an egghead with business brains. She bought into nursing homes right after Medicare and made a killing on her specialty, old age. Besides seventeen homes for the aged up and down the coast, she’s got a beauty ranch near Malibu, a topless bar in Inglewood, three boarding houses in Haight-Ashbury, two drive-in theaters…”
“Send her file over,” Cabroni interrupted. “What about Ward?”
“Nothing, but there’s a reference to his doctoral thesis in an article on the random error theory of aging Ruth Gordon wrote for our science editor.”
“What’s his thesis?”
“ The Conductive Effect of Electromagnetic Attraction in the Hydrocarbon Bonding of Unstable Protein
His mental skitterings slowed. She couldn’t set up such an experiment, and she knew however feasible and personally desirable, practical human immortality was more dangerous than a nuclear holocaust.
Fingering the note he held before him, he wondered why she had called him Luke Havergal.
Of course! She wanted him to follow her. Luke Havergal was the character in Robinson’s poem who had been summoned to his grave by the ghost of the girl he had betrayed. In the symbolic language of the poem, the dead girl had beckoned her lover “to the western gate.”
A vision of the young Ruth Gordon floated into his mind’s eye. Her grace, her loveliness, her many-faceted mind opened vistas of high romance to his imagination, possibilities of a human love no legend could approach. But such thoughts, he realized, originated in his genitourinary tract.
He owed Ester something, and with his wife so eager to handle his in-fighting for him, he could not leave his cloister and go back to a youth he had barely escaped from alive. Ruth knew this.
Besides, she had taken all of his solution, and it would take him three weeks to process another batch. She had not told him what absorbent she had used, and she had not told him where she had gone.
Oppressed by a sense of loss aggravated by guilt feelings, he tossed the note into the wastebasket. He had loved her and lost her, but he would not go back and there was nothing she could do to make him go.
Friday morning, Detective Lieutenant Joseph Cabroni arrived at his office and checked his mail. There were the usual follow-ups from incoming all-points bulletins for fugitives who might be heading for San Francisco. And he read the first paragraph of a letter from a Mexican girl pleading the innocence of her jailed boyfriend. He tossed the letter into the wastebasket. She had spelled his name “Cabrone.”
A plain postcard typewritten from Palo Alto held his attention.
Lieutenant Cabroni, it may interest you to know that Doctor Ruth Diane Gordon, professor emeritus of gerontology, Stanford University, failed to attend the Sunday meeting of the Three-B club and the Tuesday meeting of the San Jose Rose Growers Association.
Obviously written by an educated person, it was no crank note, and the implication was clear; Ruth Gordon was missing. He remembered her as the old woman under the grape arbor with Ward looking at pornographic pictures during the cocktail party before he got the brush-off from Ester. If Ruth Gordon would stay missing a little longer, Ward might be held as a material witness and Cabroni would have a clear shot at Ester. Since she had gotten so damned loyal and faithful, she might be willing to contribute a little something to her husband’s release.
Cabroni’s ordinary procedure would have been to call the Palo Alto police and have them check out the report. Instead, he called a newspaper editor he knew and asked the editor to check all information in the morgue on Doctor Ruth Gordon and Doctor Alexander Ward.
In a few minutes, the newsman called back. “Joe, we got a volume on Ruth Gordon, an egghead with business brains. She bought into nursing homes right after Medicare and made a killing on her specialty, old age. Besides seventeen homes for the aged up and down the coast, she’s got a beauty ranch near Malibu, a topless bar in Inglewood, three boarding houses in Haight-Ashbury, two drive-in theaters…”
“Send her file over,” Cabroni interrupted. “What about Ward?”
“Nothing, but there’s a reference to his doctoral thesis in an article on the random error theory of aging Ruth Gordon wrote for our science editor.”
“What’s his thesis?”
“ The Conductive Effect of Electromagnetic Attraction in the Hydrocarbon Bonding of Unstable Protein
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