"I really couldn't say, Professor. I only just met her an hour ago."

"I can't conceive of it, virginity in a woman her age. Yet the notion of those milkmaid's thighs wrapped around a pair of rutting buttocks is equally preposterous." He drank more whiskey, contemplated Margaret Dopplemeier's sex life in silence, and stared off into space.

Finally he said: "You're a patient young man. A rare quality."

I nodded.

"I figure you'll come around when you're ready, Professor."

"Yes, I do confess to a fair amount of childish behavior. It's a perquisite of my age and station. Do you know how long it's been since I taught a class or wrote a scholarly paper?"

"Quite a while, I imagine."

"Over two decades. Since then I've been up here engaged in long solitary stretches of allegedly deep thought - actually I loaf. And yet, I'm an honored Professor Emeritus. Don't you think it's an absurd system that tolerates such nonsense?"

"Perhaps there's a feeling that you've earned the right to retirement with honor."

"Bah!" He waved his hand. "That sounds too much like death. Retirement with honor and maggots gnawing at one's toes. I'll confess to you, young man, that I never earned anything. I wrote sixty - seven papers in learned journals, all but five utter garbage. I co edited three books that no one ever read, and, in general, pursued a life of a spoiled wastrel. It's been wonderful."

He finished his whiskey and put the glass down on the table with a thump.

"They keep me around here because I've got millions of dollars in a tax - free trust fund set up for me by Father and they hope I'll bequeath it all to them." He smiled crookedly. "I may or may not. Perhaps I should will it all to some Negro organization, or something equally outrageous. A group fighting for the rights of lesbians, perhaps. Is there such a cabal?"

"I'm sure there must be."

"Yes. In California, no doubt. Speaking of which, you want to know about Willie Towle from Los Angeles, do you?"

I repeated the story about Medical World News.

"All right," he sighed, "if you insist, I'll try to help you. God knows why anyone would be interested in Willie Towle, for a duller boy never set foot on this campus. When I found out he became a physician, I was amazed. I never thought him intellectually capable of anything quite that advanced. Of course the family is firmly rooted in medicine - one of the Towles was Grant's personal surgeon during the Civil War - there's a morsel for your article - and I imagine getting Willie admitted to medical school was no particular challenge." "He's turned out to be quite a successful doctor."

"That doesn't surprise me. There are different types of success. One requires a combination of personality traits that Willie did indeed possess: perseverance, lack of imagination, innate conservatism. Of course, a good, straight body and a conventionally attractive face don't hurt, either. I'll wager he hasn't climbed the ranks by virtue of being a profound scientific thinker or innovative researcher. His strengths are of a more mundane nature, are they not?"

"He has a reputation as a fine doctor," I insisted. "His patients have only good things to say about him."

"Tells them exactly what they want to hear, no doubt. Willie was always good at that. Very popular, president of this and that. He was my student in a course on European civilization, and he was a charmer. Yes, Professor, no Professor. Always there to hold out my chair for me - Lord, how I detested that. Not to mention the fact that I rarely sat." He grimaced at the recollection. "Yes, there was a certain banal charm there. People like that in their doctors. I believe it's called bedside manner. Of course his essay exams were most telling, revealing his true substance. Predictable, accurate but not illuminating, grammatical without being literate." He paused. "This isn't the kind of information you were expecting, is it?"

I smiled. "Not exactly."

"You can't print this, can you?" He seemed disappointed.

"No. I'm afraid the article is meant to be laudatory."

"Hale and hearty blah - blah stuff - in the vernacular, bullshit, eh? How boring. Doesn't it bore you to have to write such drivel?"

"At times. It pays the bills."

"Yes. How arrogant of me not to take that into consideration. I've never had to pay bills. My bankers do that for me. I've always had far more money than I know what to do with. It leads one to incredible ignorance. It's a common fault of the indolent rich. We're unbelievably ignorant. And inbred. It brings about psychological as well as physical aberrations."

He smiled, reached around with one arm, and tapped his hunch. "This entire campus is a haven for the offspring of the indolent, ignorant, inbred rich. Including your Doctor Willie Towle. He descends from one of the most rarefied environments you will ever find. Did you know that?"

"Being a doctor's son?"

"No, no." He dismissed me as if I were an especially stupid pupil. "He's one of the Two Hundred - you haven't heard of them?"

"No."

"Go into the bottom drawer of my desk and pull out the old map of Seattle."

I did what I was told. The map was folded under several back issues of Playboy.

"Give it to me," he said impatiently. He opened it and spread it on the table. "Look here."

I stood over him. His finger pointed to a spot at the north end of the South. To a tiny island shaped like a diamond.

"Brindamoor Island. Three square miles of innately unappealing terrain upon which are situated two hundred mansions and estates to rival any found in the United States. Josiah Jedson built his first home there - a Gothic monstrosity, it was - and others of his ilk mimicked him. I have cousins who reside there - most of us are related in one way or the other - though Father built our home on the mainland, in Win demere."

"It's barely noticeable."

The island was a speck in the Pacific.

"And meant to be that way, my boy. In many of the older maps the island isn't even labeled. Of course there's no land access. The ferry makes one roundtrip from the harbor when the weather and tides permit. It's not unusual for a week or two to elapse without the trip being completed. Some of the residents own private airplanes and have landing strips on their properties. Most are content to remain in splendid isolation."

"And Dr. Towle grew up there?"

"He most certainly did. I believe the ancestral digs have been sold. He was an only son and when he moved to California there seemed no reason to hold on to it - most of the homes are far larger than homes have a right to be. Architectural dinosaurs. Frightfully expensive to maintain - even the Two Hundred have to budget nowadays. Not all had ancestors as clever as Father."

He patted his midriff in self - congratulation.

"Do you feel growing up in that kind of isolation had any effect on Dr. Towle?"

"Now you sound like a psychologist, young man."

I smiled.

"In answer to your question: most certainly. The children of the Two Hundred were an insufferably snobbish lot - and to merit that designation at Jedson College requires extraordinary chauvinism. They were clannish, self - centered, spoiled, and not overly bright. Many had deformed siblings with chronic physical or mental problems - my remark about inbreeding was meant in all seriousness - and seemed to have been left callous and indifferent by the experience, rather than the opposite."

"You're using the past tense. Don't they exist today?"

"There are amazingly few young ones left. They get a taste of the outside world and are reluctant to return to Brindamoor - it really is quite bleak, despite the indoor tennis courts and one pathetic excuse for a country club."

To stay in character I had to defend Towle.

"Professor, I don't know Doctor Towle well, but he's very well spoken of. I've met him and he seems to be a forceful man, of strong character. Isn't it possible that growing up in the type of environment you describe Brindamoor to be could increase one's individuality?"