When it was time for the meeting, Nemur steered us through the gigantic lobby with its heavy baroque furnishings and huge curving marble staircases, and we moved through the thickening knots of handshakers, nodders, and smilers.
Two other professors from Beekman who had arrived in Chicago just this morning joined us. Professors "White and Clinger walked a little to the right and a step or two behind Nemur and Strauss, while Burt and I brought up the rear.
Standees parted to make a path for us into the Grand Ballroom, and Nemur waved to the reporters and photographers who had come to hear at first hand about the startling things that had been done with a retardate adult in just a little over three months.
Nemur had obviously sent out advance publicity releases.
Some of the psychological papers delivered at the meeting were impressive.
A group from Alaska showed how stimulation of various portions of the brain caused a significant development in learning ability, and a group from New Zealand had mapped out those portions of the brain that controlled perception and retention of stimuli.
But there were other kinds of papers too—P. T.
Zeller-man's study on the difference in the length of time it took white rats to learn a maze when the corners were curved rather than angular, or Worfels paper on the effect of intelligence level on the reaction-time of rhesus monkeys. Papers like these made me angry.
Money, time, and energy squandered on the detailed analysis of the trivial.
Burt was right when he praised Nemur and Strauss for devoting themselves to something important and uncertain rather than to something insignificant and safe.
If only Nemur would look at me as a human being.
After the chairman announced the presentation from Beekman University, we took our seats on the platform behind the long table—Algernon in his cage between Burt and me.
We were the main attraction of the evening, and when we were settled, the chairman began his introduction.
I half expected to hear him boom out: Laideezzz and gentulmennnnnn.
Step right this way and see the side show!
An act never before seen in the scientific world!
A mouse and a moron turned into geniuses before your very eyes! I admit I had come here with a chip on my shoulder.
All he said was:
"The next presentation really needs no introduction.
"We have all heard about the startling work being done at Beekman University, sponsored by the Wel-berg Foundation grants, under the direction of the chairman of the psychology department, Professor Nemur, in co-operation with Dr. Strauss of the Beekman Neuropsy-chiatric Center.
Needless to say, this is a report we have all been looking forward to with great interest.
I turn the meeting over to Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss."
Nemur nodded graciously at the chairman's introductory praise and winked at Strauss in the triumph of the moment.
The first speaker from Beekman was Professor Clinger.
I was becoming irritated, and I could see that Algernon, upset by the smoke, the buzzing, the unaccustomed surroundings, was moving around in his cage nervously.
I had the strangest compulsion to open his cage and let him out.
It was an absurd thought—more of an itch than a thought—and I tried to ignore it.
But as I listened to Professor Clinger's stereotyped paper on
"The effects of left-handed goal boxes in a T-maze versus right-handed goal boxes in a T-maze," I found myself toying with the release-lock mechanism of Algernon's cage.
In a short while (before Strauss and Nemur would unveil their crowning achievement) Burt would read a paper describing the procedures and results of administering intelligence and learning tests he had devised for Algernon.
This would be followed by a demonstration as Algernon was put through his paces of solving a problem in order to get his meal (something I have never stopped resenting!).
Not that I had anything against Burt.
He had always been straightforward with me—more so than most of the others—but when he described the white mouse who had been given intelligence, he was as pompous and artificial as the others.
As if he were trying on the mantle of his teachers.
I restrained myself at that point more out of friendship for Burt than anything else.
Letting Algernon out of his cage would throw the meeting into chaos, and after all this was Burt's debut into the rat-race of academic preferment.
I had my finger on the cage door release, and as Algernon watched the movement of my hand with his pink-candy eyes, I'm certain he knew what I had in mind.
At that moment Burt took the cage for his demonstration.
He explained the complexity of the shifting lock, and the problem-solving required each time the lock was to be opened. (Thin plastic bolts fell into place in varying patterns and had to be controlled by the mouse, who depressed a series of levers in the same order.) As Algernon's intelligence increased, his problem-solving speed increased—that much was obvious.
But then Burt revealed one thing I had not known.
At the peak of his intelligence, Algernon's performance had become variable.
There were times, according to Burt's report, when Algernon refused to work at all— even when apparently hungry—and other times when he would solve the problem but, instead of taking his food reward, would hurl himself against the walls of his cage.
When someone from the audience asked Burt if he was suggesting that this erratic behavior was directly caused by increased intelligence, Burt ducked the question.
"As far as I am concerned," he said, "there's not enough evidence to warrant that conclusion. There are other possibilities.
It is possible that both the increased intelligence and the erratic behavior at this level were created by the original surgery, instead of one being a function of the other.
It's also possible that this erratic behavior is unique to Algernon.
We didn't find it in any of the other mice, but then none of the others achieved as high a level of intelligence nor maintained it for as long as Algernon has."
I realized immediately that this information had been withheld from me.
I suspected the reason, and I was annoyed, but that was nothing to the anger I felt when they brought out the films.
I had never known that my early performances and tests in the laboratory were filmed.