Irving Wallace - The Prize

‘What rules?’ she challenged.

He tried to explain the strictures placed upon him and his colleagues by the Nobel Foundation.

‘Gestapo nonsense,’ she exploded, when he was through. ‘They just want to muzzle everyone so the Swede newspapers can get the big breaks. We’re Americans-you and I-and we have different principles, don’t we? I’ll be bending your ear a dozen times. Why not start now? Of course you will-’

Her persistence annoyed him. ‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘I’m afraid not. Tomorrow at the official conference-’

‘To hell with that circus.’ She stared at him. ‘You really won’t co-operate?’

‘You make it sound awful.’

‘It is awful. What happened to freedom of speech? Now, come on, Dr. Garrett, just conversation.’

‘No.’

She snapped her handbag shut, too loudly, and sat back, narrow eyes still levelled at him. ‘You’re sure you understand what you’re doing? I told you this wasn’t the usual handout story. This is a big one, important, personal, behind the scenes.’ She paused dangerously. ‘I’d hate to continue going to other sources, sources other than yourself, for information about you. I have already, you know. Our bureaus all over the country have pitched in. Quite an eyeful. But I don’t like to get it all like that, secondhand. I like to get it straight from the horse’s mouth. That’s good reporting. That’s the way Nellie Bly used to operate.’ She paused a second time. ‘You want me to keep getting my material from other sources?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what more to say. I’ll co-operate when I can, but not now.’

‘Okay, Dr. Garrett,’ she said. She stood up. ‘But you know, I’ll bet Dr. Keller and your group therapy gang wouldn’t approve of your behaviour.’

She smiled a thin smile, wiggled into the aisle, and was gone.

Garrett sat with the disbelieving look of a man who has been handed a grenade two and a half seconds after the pin has been pulled, and has no place to throw it. His inability to function was total. His brain tried to unscramble the message it had just received. Dr. Keller was a secret. The group therapy sessions were a secret. Garrett had never been sufficiently liberated to discuss his treatment with a soul, except his wife. Who on earth knew of his group therapy? His physician, who had referred him to a psychiatrist, who had referred him to Dr. Keller. And Saralee, of course. But who else? Then he realized that the secret was shared by many: Mr. Lovato, Mrs. Perrin, Mr. Ring, Mrs. Zane, Mr. Armstrong, Miss Dudzinski. Which of them had talked? In what mysterious way had Sue Wiley, or her journalistic network, ferreted out this private information?

He tried to handle the predicament rationally. What did it matter if his group therapy attendance was published? Apparently it had mattered to Sue Wiley and to himself. She had thrown it at him as a threat, a form of blackmail. And he had fielded it as something explosive and destructive. Was it destructive? How would the research staff in Pasadena regard their star, once they knew that he was in group therapy? What would the Nobel Committee think? And the public? Worst of all, what would his arch-enemy, Carlo Farelli, think? Somehow, it gave Farelli the upper hand by disqualifying Garrett’s competence through mental illness-it reduced Garrett’s infallibility-it made him less than genius. Would Paré or Harvey or Lister have been in group therapy along with an errant wife, a half-potent actor, and a suffering homosexual? Unthinkable.

He glanced at his watch. Ten minutes remained before Stockholm. He was craven now, and knew it, and did not care, and he was ready for surrender, if that was the price of discretion. He jumped to his feet, just as Saralee came down the aisle from the washroom.

‘Where are you going, John?’ she asked.

He had no patience for her. ‘There’s a reporter-I promised-I want to talk to her. Sit down and wait.’

He brushed past her, trod up the aisle, oblivious of the other passengers, and found Sue Wiley idly staring out of the window. She was in the last seat, and, not unexpectedly, as if reserved for him, the chair beside her was vacant. He took it, and she met him with the thin, reptilian smile.

‘How sweet of you to come,’ she said.

‘Where did you hear that thing about me?’ Garrett wanted to know.

‘Group therapy? Oh, we have our sources.’

‘But where?’

‘Now, that’s not fair, is it? You know the old adage-newspaper people never reveal the sources of their information. If they couldn’t be trusted by informants, they’d never learn half as much as they do. Matter of fact, Mr. Garrett-Dr. Garrett-I was once a cause célèbre in that respect. Right in your fair city. I went to a marijuana party, chock-full of movie stars, and reported it, no names. Your narcotics squad hauled me in and asked for names. I said I’d been invited under the condition no names, and I was sticking to it, and I did. The judge gave me a month, but Consolidated Newspapers and every sheet in the country were up in arms, and I was released after five days. There’s your answer.’

Garrett substituted self-preservation for pride. ‘You’re not going to publish that-that gossip about my therapy-are you?’

Sue Wiley’s reaction was all ingenuous surprise. ‘I thought most people in psychiatry like to talk about it. That’s a signpost of improvement, isn’t it? What are you ashamed of, Mr. Garrett?’

‘There’s nothing I’m ashamed of,’ he said animatedly. ‘First of all, it’s private, my own business and no one else’s on earth. Secondly, it might be misunderstood. The public isn’t oriented. They think anyone on the couch-and I’m not on the couch, by the way-anyone like that-is, well, more or less unbalanced, sick.’

The wide eyes. ‘But aren’t you?’

‘Of course not! I needed some-some advice-that’s all. But if you blow this whole thing out of proportion-’ He was at a loss for words.

She had the words. ‘Readers might think you were a screwball? Maybe not to be trusted with that heart transplant routine? Less worthy of sharing a Nobel Prize with Dr. Farelli?’

‘All right, something like that, and it’s not fair, and you know it. As for Farelli, no one thinks I’m less worthy to share the award than he is. In fact, in many circles, it’s believed I should have won the prize myself.’

As she listened, Sue Wiley’s eyes were more gleaming than before. She smelt something far better, and she wanted to pursue it as quickly as possible. Hastily, she donned a new guise of personality. This one was softer, understanding, all co-operation. ‘Look, Mr.-Dr. Garrett-what do you think I am, Madame Defarge or something? I’m not out to hurt a great man like you or anyone else. Certainly, I won’t mention your private medical history, if you don’t wish me to. I only threw it at you to-I guess to show you how thorough we are in our work. If you don’t want me to write about your therapy, I won’t.’

Garrett wanted to kiss this suddenly lovely young lady. ‘I’d be obliged if you’d forget it.’

‘Righto. Forgotten. Okay?’

‘Thank you.’

‘I only hoped for a few minutes of your time, to make my stories more accurate.’

‘I’d be glad to help you in any way, that is, if you don’t tattle on me to the Nobel Foundation.’

‘I told you-we respect our sources.’

‘Well,’ said Garrett expansively, relieved, ‘what kind of stories are you going to write?’

For a fraction of a second, she was tempted to tell him. She was bursting to tell someone. She was proud of the idea, her own, but some inner signal, which she usually ignored, warned her to slow down, take care, and this time she observed it. The success of her series might depend on this crop of Nobel winners. A mistake with one of them, Garrett for instance, might turn them against her, and then her assignment might all be uphill. If she handled the first of them right, it might be her calling card to all the rest.