in particular, or was it just a social call?” I inquired. Young Mark Fordyce, in addition to being one of my best students in behavioristic psychology at the university, was the son of our next-door neighbor, Dr. Eric Fordyce, who had moved to our city a little over a year before to work with one of the men in our chemistry department on some experimental work which I suspected had Government backing. He was not, however, an actual member of our faculty.
“He told me,” Deirdre replied in answer to my question, “that Professor Barto had offered him the leading role in the Senior play this year. I believe he wanted to talk it over with you.”
“The Senior play! Mark!” I exclaimed. “And his father violently opposed to dramatics in any shape or form. Oh, good Lord!”
“I think that was what he wanted particularly to discuss with you,” Deirdre said. “He knows that if he accepts the part, he’ll have to tell his father about it sooner or later, and he probably wants you to advise him as to the best approach. Paddy, why do you suppose Dr. Fordyce is so very antagonistic to Mark’s interest in the theater?”
“Heaven alone knows,” I answered. “Unless it’s that, being a serious-minded scientist himself, he can’t bear the thought of a son of his going into a field which must appear frivolous to him by comparison.”
“That could be the explanation, I guess,” she agreed thoughtfully. “Dr. Fordyce is a strange man. At times he seems passionately devoted to his son, while at others he’s so strict with him, it’s almost as if he actually hated him.”
She paused a moment, then added speculatively, “I wonder whether Professor Barto would have offered Mark the part in the play if he’d known about his father’s attitude.”
A little to my own surprise, I found myself speculating with something more than casual interest upon what Barto’s attitude in the matter would have been. Although the man and I had become only casual acquaintances since his arrival on campus the preceding fall, there was that about him which piqued my curiosity. With his fiery Latin temperament and his own particular code of ethics, he was in many ways a wholly unpredictable quantity.
Deirdre broke across my thoughts with an apparently irrelevant question. “Paddy,” she asked, “do you suppose Mark’s mother could have been Irish?”
“Why?” I teased. “Because of his flair for dramatics?”
“Of course not,” she answered. “Because of his coloring. Dr. Fordyce is blond, almost the Nordic type, but Mark has black hair and deep blue eyes, the same as you have.”
“The combination of black hair and blue eyes isn’t confined to Northern Ireland,” I reminded her. “Mark could have inherited the one from his mother and the other from his father. Incidentally, he never knew his mother. He told me once that she died when he was born.”
Deirdre’s small, cool hand came to rest upon mine. “I wonder,” she speculated, “whether that’s why Dr. Fordyce acts at times as though he hated his son. If he loved his wife very much, he might blame Mark. . . .”
“For having been the cause of his mother’s death?” I inquired. “I doubt it, Derry. Dr. Fordyce is too fair-minded a man for that sort of melodramatic injustice. However, it’s a pity he can’t be more in sympathy with the boy where this question of a theatrical career is concerned. In his way, Mark is as strong-willed as his father. I’m afraid there may be real trouble over this matter of the Senior play.”
We sat for a little while in silence then, both thinking about the boy and his problems. Suddenly the stillness around us was ripped to pieces by the sound of a sharp explosion that seemed to have had its origin not more than a hundred feet from where we sat. We both sprang up from the swing.
“Merciful heaven,” Deirdre exclaimed. “That came from Dr. Fordyce’s garage, where he’s set up his experimental laboratory! Come on, Paddy; we must go over there and find out whether he’s been hurt.”
CHAPTER II
With Deirdre’s arm linked through mine to guide me, we hurried across the intervening stretch of lawn in the direction of the Fordyce property. As we reached it, a door at the rear of the house slammed, and Mark Fordyce shouted to us.
“Professor Laing, can you help me?” His voice was tight with fear that was verging on panic. “That explosion came from Dad’s laboratory, and he’s in there! Can you help me get him out in case—”
He didn’t stop to finish the sentence, and I heard his running footsteps pounding down the drive ahead of us.
“Does the place appear to be on fire, Derry?” I asked as we hurried after him. “If it is, you’d better run back to the house and call the fire department.”
“No,” she answered. “I don’t see any flames, and there’s no smell of smoke—” She broke off and released her pent-up breath in a sigh of relief. “There’s Dr. Fordyce now, standing in the doorway,” she told me. “And he doesn’t look as though he’d been hurt.”
“It’s all right, everybody,” Eric Fordyce’s quiet, almost coldly reserved voice called to us. “No damage has been done. At least no serious damage.”
Mark had reached his father’s side by that time. “Dad, what happened?” he demanded. Relief and a still lingering anxiety made his own voice not quite steady. “Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“Positive, Mark.” There was a depth of genuine affection in Dr. Fordyce’s voice as he spoke to the boy. “Gas formed in a test tube that I was heating over a Bunsen burner, and it exploded. Against the surrounding stillness of the night, it probably sounded a lot worse than it actually was. Which means I’ll have to be more careful in future, or I’ll find myself being regarded as a neighborhood nuisance, if not a downright menace.” He gave a brief, half rueful laugh, which was evidently intended to dismiss the whole matter.
“There’s a cut on your left cheek, Dr. Fordyce,” Deirdre pointed out as we came up. “It’s bleeding.”
“Probably a scratch from a splinter of flying glass,” he said negligently. “I’ll put a bit of plaster on it as soon as I’ve cleaned up the mess in here. Sorry if I frightened you, my dear, with my extemporaneous fireworks—you, too, Laing. And now if you’ll both please excuse me . . .” He went back into the laboratory, and I heard the door close behind him.
“Well, I’m glad it was no worse than that,” I observed to Mark as Deirdre and I turned to go back to our own place; then, remembering my wife’s statement that the boy had called to see me earlier that evening, I added lest he should think I didn’t want to be bothered by him, “By the way, Mark, Derry tells me you had something you wanted to discuss with me.”
“I did have, Professor Laing,” he answered—still a little shakily, I noticed. “But after what just happened, or almost happened, I’m afraid I don’t feel up to talking about it tonight. So if you don’t mind, I’ll let it go until some time tomorrow morning, when we’ve both got a free period.”
I assured him that I didn’t mind in the least. “I’ll be in my office in the psychology department between ten and eleven,” I said. “You can drop around then.”
It was a few minutes after ten the following morning when he arrived at my office in College Hall. As Deirdre had suspected, the thing he wanted to talk to me about was the matter of
