“I mean,” she said, as they were cleaning their teeth together in the small bathroom of their apartment one night, “in the ordinary way in a new town you’d get things rolling even before they came in the door by hanging up a sign ‘Please Remove Your Shoes Before Entering’. Get people with their shoes off right away, and the ice is broken. But at a university—Gee, I don’t know how far this dignity stuff has to go.”

“Just carry on as you would anywhere, Dutchy,” advised her husband. “These people are all regular. All nice and normal, really. Some of them have talked to me pretty freely, and I think they could do with some shaking up. They need what you’ve got to give.”

“OK,” said Dutchy, and later, as they lay together in bed, she told Norm that the wonderful thing about him was his insight, and the way he sensed that practically everybody is really a great big kid at heart.

Pearl was one of those who had succumbed to Norman Yarrow’s charm. She had first met him in the stacks at the Library, when she was checking a reference for Dr Forgie in Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding.

“Can I help you?” the strange man had said.

“I doubt it; I’m looking for Understanding,” she had replied.

Norman Yarrow was not a man to miss such an opening; “Aren’t we all?” he said, and when Pearl blushed he did not laugh or pursue the conversation. But two days later he had appeared in Dr Forgie’s outer office with some questions about books for his students, and since then they had had two or three conversations in which Pearl, who was not used to a sympathetic male listener, had said a good deal more than she meant to say about her life. And thus the invitation for this evening came about.

When Pearl heard the rumble of a party through the apartment door she realized that she had not expected a big gathering, and had been secretly hoping for a very small one, perhaps a simple evening with understanding Dr Yarrow and his wife, who was certain to be equally understanding. But she had already rung the bell, and when the door opened the noise of the party seemed to jump out at her, like a big dog. And there was a young woman who must be Mrs Yarrow, radiating vitality like an electric heater, who seized her hand in a painfully muscular grasp.

“You’re Pearl,” she shouted, in a voice pitched for the noise within; “I’m Dutchy. Come on in, we’re just warming up and you’re a couple of drinks behind. Here’s the bedroom, throw your coat on the bed. Yeah, it’s a double bed and it’s legal; ain’t that wonderful!” Dutchy laughed the loud and shameless laugh of the enthusiastic bride. “The John’s in there; if you don’t want it now, you sure will later. Now don’t waste time primping, kid; they’re waiting for you inside.”

Dutchy had lost any misgivings she might have had about being a prof’s wife. Gin had banished it. Neither she nor Norman had been what they called “drinkers” when in social service work. But as people rise in the world their social habits change. Dutchy knew that as a prof’s wife she ought to make some advances in what she was unselfconscious enough to call “gracious living” and Alcohol, though bad for the poor, was probably expected in academic life. Norm was, after all, a PhD and she herself was a trained social worker, and had written an unusually good thesis, at the age of nineteen, on Preparing the Parent for the Profession of Parenthood; they were not the kind of people who were brought to ruin by drink, and so they had made a few experiments.

Gin had come to Dutchy like fire from heaven. At the first swallow she was conscious of that shock of recognition with which psychologists and literary critics are so familiar. It was as though, all her life, she had been dimly aware of the existence of some miraculous essence, some powerful liberating force, some enlightening catalyst, and here it was! It was gin! Why be nervous about being a prof’s wife, why worry about a party going well, when gin could make the crooked straight and the rough places plain? Dutchy, as Norm laughingly said, had taken to gin as a duck takes to water.

Pearl was hauled into the combined living and dining-room of the apartment by the hand, while Dutchy cried, “Gangway! Here’s a poor erring sister who’s a couple of drinks behind!” She was conscious of some familiar faces, but she saw no people whom she knew well. On the dining-table was a large glass jug, containing a purple liquid, and from this Dutchy poured a tumblerful, slopping a good deal on the table, and forced it upon her. “Drink up!” she ordered. Pearl sipped suspiciously. It was gin; unquestionably it was a great deal of gin, to which some grape juice and ice water had been added.

Dutchy subdued the conversation by shouting “Hold it! Hold it!” and when she had comparative silence she harangued her guests thus: “Now, gals and guys, we’ve come to the second part of the party. Maybe you didn’t know a party had a second part? Sure it has. There’s the Hello; that’s the beginning, when you meet everybody. You’ve had that. The second part’s the What Now? That’s where we’ve got to. This is the crossroads of a party. You can either go on to the Ho Hum, when everybody wishes it was time to go home, or you can go on to the Whee! What’s it to be? The Ho Hum, or the Whee?”

The guests, who were unfamiliar with up-to-date techniques of recreational programming, looked somewhat astonished, and made no reply. But Dutchy was used to carrying crowds on her own enthusiasm, and she immediately made enough noise for all.

“The Whee! The Whee! Come on, let’s hear it! Whee!”

A few guests politely said Whee, in rather low voices.

“OKAY!” shouted Dwtchy, in a clarion voice, and in no time at all the Whee was in progress.

Pearl was not quite able to see how the Whee worked, it was so rapid and so noisy. A bowl containing scraps of paper was shaken under her nose, and she chose one. All the people in the room seemed to be engaged in some very rough game. In her surprise and dismay she hastily gulped some of the sickly gin drink, and as someone jostled her she spilled it on her front. She was dabbing at herself with her handkerchief when a man seized her slip of paper, gave a yell, and darted away, to return at once dragging a protesting young man who had been lurking at the far end of the room. Before Pearl knew what was happening another man pressed a large piece of adhesive plaster over her lips, she was forced back to back with the protesting young man, who was similarly gagged, and they were tied, by the wrists and ankles with grocer’s string. This had been happening all over the room, and only Dutchy and two or three of her muscular lieutenants were free. Dutchy addressed her trussed-up guests.

“Now folksies, this is just the start of the Whee! You chose your partners by lot, and now you’ve got ‘em. I’m going to time you, and the first couple to get untied without breaking the string, and to pull off the adhesive tape without using your hands, gets the Grand Prize. Ready? Go!” She discharged a cap pistol which she held in her hand.

Pearl had heard of people wishing to die, in books, but she had never experienced that feeling herself until now. For the young man with whom she was bound and gagged was Solomon Bridgetower.

Professor Vambrace did not sit long in his chair after Pearl had gone. A plan was working in his mind, like yeast. That is to say, part of a plan was there, and he was sure that the remainder of it would follow soon. But he did not want to wait until the plan had completed itself. He wanted to be up and doing. He was still smarting from the feeling that his grievance and his lawsuit had been taken from him and had become the property of Mr Snelgrove. Pearl’s unwillingness to play the role of a submissive, wronged daughter with perfect trust in his power to win justice for her had nettled him. Nobody, it appeared, saw this matter in the proper light. But he was not a man without resource, and he would uncover the whole plot—for a plot it surely was.