Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [131]
“You choose to be frivolous,” said Mrs. Jackson. “What would you say if a Congressman did ask you such a question? As one sometime might.”
“But Helen,” said Henry Janin from the nearer cot, “none of these geologists has any information that’s worth thirty cents to your husband or me. I’ve pumped them, I know. The Survey’s function is to publish on pretty maps what’s already known to everyone.”
“Including the diamond-producing formations,” Emmons said into his empty brandy glass.
It seemed to Susan that for a moment everybody held his breath. She thought in dismay, It’s the kind of remark duels are fought over! But Janin only reeled from the hips, contorting his dark Creole features into an expression of anguish, and with his hand on his heart said in a high voice, “Unfair! Murder most foul!”
“Poor Henry,” King said. “Deceived by unscrupulous men, he vouched for the authenticity of that wretched diamond mine. So a government scientist, whom out of modesty I forbear to name, had to expose the fraud. It very neatly demonstrates the difference you inquire about, being private interest and government principle.”
Conrad Prager, consulting his long beautiful hands, said, “I’ve always wondered about that case, if it wasn’t a put-up job. Private expert and government scientist could have planned the whole thing together, hired their accomplices, salted the mine. Janin could have gone and inspected it, all properly blindfolded and all that. Then comes King, like a knight on a white horse, to expose it–well after the accomplices have flown. Janin consoles himself for the trifling loss of his reputation with a good slice of cash–takes the cash and lets the credit go, you might say–and King gets not only cash but a great deal of credit. It’s like letting thieves into the vaults of the Bank of England and then knighting them for crying ‘Stop thief!’ after they’ve stolen everything.”
“Must I bear this?” Janin said.
They were all laughing, Susan not least. How characteristic, she was thinking, that these men of great capacity, captains and heroes involved in great affairs, should take their accomplishments as a light-hearted joke, and their expertness with such levity that they could joke Mr. Janin about his error, accepting the fact that they were his equals in that as in other things. Their life was the life toward which Oliver had always aspired, and she for him-a life that could provide real elegance and association with first class minds. Stopped for a moment while she watched Oliver, in shirt sleeves, sitting on the floor, reach King’s brandy bottle across to Emmons, she said, “I never till now knew how unprincipled you are, Mr. King.”
King said, “I call the jury’s attention to the way in which speculation has become supposition, supposition certainty, and certainty accusation. It’s a lesson in the workings of the expert mind, which can go from a hunch to an affidavit, and from an affidavit to a fee, within minutes. With great authority the expert says what is not necessarily so.”
“I was only suggesting some of the possibilities of government science,” Prager said.
“Now that you’ve abandoned ship and joined the enemy. Tell the people what’s happened to Ross Raymond, as a possibility of private expertise.”
Prager laughed and laid his hand on his thigh. “Alas.”
“Alas, why?” Jackson asked.
“Alas his mine is played out. It’s been high-graded to death.”
“According to whom?”
“According to an upright government scientist, who just might have been tipped off by a private expert. They both got here too late to keep him from making a mistake that’s going to cost somebody a lot of money.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Susan said. She had liked Rossiter Raymond, and he had been so uplifted by the altitude, and the prospects of the mine, and the company in her cabin. “He was such a good companion,” she said.
“When he had that well-ventilated head here,” Prager