The Non-Statistical Man by Raymond F. Jones

his—practising medicine without a license.”
    “I don’t know whether that would stop him or not—”
    “It might not stop him, but it would get him some darned unfavorable publicity, if it’s handled right. We could play it from there. I’ll get a ticket to his lecture; you can introduce me, and we’ll see what kind of story he gives me.”
    Bascomb neglected to tell Sarah anything about his visits with Dr. Magruder and Hap Johnson; but he caught her eyeing him as if she knew all about it, anyway. It gave him the old, familiar, uneasy sensation. He knew she couldn’t possibly have learned what he’d done, but she had feelings abou;l things; he wished he dared ask precisely what those feelings were.
    On the evening of the next lecture she volunteered the information. Bascomb had just told her about arranging for Hap to go with them.
    “ That’s what I’ve been feeling!” Sarah exclaimed. “It’s been as if tonight were a turning point of some kind. I can’t tell whether it’s going to be good or bad for us—but it depends on something that’s going to happen to Dr. Magruder. And Hap Johnson is responsible! He doesn’t want to come to find out what Dr. Magruder teaches; he just wants gossip for that cheap tabloid he works for, and he doesn’t care who he hurts in getting it.”
    “I thought you liked Hap.”
    “I used to—until he did this to Magruder!”
    “He hasn’t done anything yet,” Bascomb reminded her; “so far there’s nothing but your own slightly overworking imagination.”
    Sarah ignored his remark. “Let’s not go tonight, Charles. Don’t take Hap down there; he’ll kill Magruder with what he’ll print.”
    Bascomb felt the perspiration starting under his collar. “Don’t be ridiculous, darling; you’re imagining things. I’ve asked Hap along, and he’d think I was crazy if I tried to back out now. Nothing’s going to happen; you’ll see.”
    The evening seemed to go smoothly enough in spite of Bascomb’s mixed anxieties. He let his attention be held only mildly by Magruder’s double-talk, and afterwards, when he went up to introduce Hap Johnson the Professor smiled knowingly. Magruder’s face clouded a trifle, however, as he took the reporter’s hand, and Bascomb saw a new tension come at the same moment into his wife’s expression.
    Then it was past and Magruder was shaking Hap Johnson’s hand cordially, inviting him back, making an offering of a generous sample of his pills and the circulars describing his exercises.
    “This will make me a superman, huh?” Hap asked dubiously as he accepted the articles and examined them.
    “Guaranteed!” Dr. Magruder slapped him on the shoulder and laughed jovially. “It never fails when instructions are followed faithfully. Of course,” he added soberly, “I realize you are not sufficiently interested to go along with me to that extent; but I trust that if you write up our little course of lectures here, you will keep in mind that we actually offer nothing at all. Anything that occurs as a result of coming here is due strictly to the student’s own efforts.”
    “If that were true,” said the reporter with sudden iciness in his eyes, “it would not be necessary for you to hold lectures at all, would it? The buck isn’t passed as easily as all that!”
    On the way home, Bascomb tried to console his wife; he reminded her repeatedly that nothing had happened to verify her fears. Sarah remained unresponsive, apparently accepting as fact that Magruder’s doom was sealed. She felt it, she said.
    Bascomb drove carefully, acutely aware of the sense of exhaustion that filled him. It was futile to close his eyes any longer to the fact that Sarah’s feelings corresponded exactly with Magruder’s description of a moderately wellworking intuition.
    In the early years of their marriage, he’d laughed at her and shrugged off her hunches and lucky guesses; then he’d begun to keep tab—
    There was no question about her