The Non-Statistical Man by Raymond F. Jones Page B

worth.
    He was rather hopeful of hearing something from Johnson regarding the reporter’s impressions and plans concerning the campaign agannst Magruder. But he heard nothing at all that day, nor the next. A sense of loneliness assailed him. He wanted somebody to talk to about this thing, but there was nobody at all to give him companionship under this burden. Sarah continued moody and cool and convinced of the approach of disaster.

6

    Hap Johnson called on the succeeding day, and he had news. “This bird is more clever than you’ve given him credit for!” he said. “It’s no wonder the previous chemical analyses showed a harmless filler supporting a few vitamins in his pills.”
    “What do you mean?” said Bascomb.
    “I had five different outfits run tests on these pills before I found the answer. They all gave the same story you already had. Then I asked Joe Archer, who runs toxic checks for the police department, to look at them. He got it in a minute, just by looking at the other guys’ results.
    “They were right. The pills are about as potent as dried carrots—individually; but put them together in the combi nations and succession Magruder prescribes and you’ve got something!”
    “What?” asked Bascomb.
    “Joe couldn’t give me the answer to that, but he said it was obvious these chemicals would combine in the body, and with the body chemicals, to form some items only slightly less potent than dynamite.”
    “We really ought t0 have a case against Magruder then,” said Bascomb. Peculiarly, he thought, there was no sense of elation or triumph at all, now that defeat of his enemy was in sight.
    “That’s the devil of it,” said Hap; “I’m not so sure we have. That’s where Magruder has been so clever. The things he has actually been prescribing are inconsequential. I’m not so sure we could pin him down on the basis of the fact that his pills recombine inside the human system to form new and more potent drugs. He could argue he’d never prescribed or administered those ; and, technically, he’d be right.”
    “But it would ruin him even if the courts had to agree with that argument; and that’s all I’m interested in,” Bascomb replied. “Can’t your friend, Archer, give us enough basis for a complaint to the District Attorney.”
    “He said it ought to be made known, at any rate. It would help if we could get some witnesses who could swear they’d been injured by the pills. Why don’t you talk to Joe yourself, and see if you can round up any such witnesses? You know who’s been taking in these lectures; in the meantime I’ll put a gentle word in the paper to start the ball rolling.”
    Charles Bascomb agreed and hung up. From what he’d seen, however, he doubted that it would be possible to get any of Magruder’s followers to complain against him. They were a devout bunch—all those he’d seen, anyway.
    A doubting weariness came over him again as he sat there staring at the black shape of the telephone. How in Heaven’s name had this all begun? How had he become so involved in a senseless, unbelievable tangle like this?
    Why was he the only one, out of the hundreds who’d contacted Magruder, who understood the threat of Magruder’s work? It was as if the Professor had singled him out, as his greatest potential enemy, to show him exactly what he could do. And Bascomb remembered that Magruder had said this was just what he had done—in order to recruit Bascomb’s aid. But surely Magruder hadn’t actually believed he’d accept the validity and desirability of the Professor’s work!
    That was the dilemma presented by the whole thing. To recognize it as a threat, Magruder’s claim had to be accepted as valid. A hundred times a day, Bascomb had to ask himself again if he accepted this. And because of what he had seen, his answer was still a forced, unwilling yes.
    And if so incredible a work was valid, could it not function for good instead of harm? This also gnawed