The Common Man

A line under the title of The Common Man says it would, of course, take a trio of Ivory Tower scientists to conceive of tracking down that statistical entity, the Common Man, and testing out an idea on him. Frederick Braun, M.D., Ph.D., looks up at a two-story wooden house with a small lawn and one tree. Crowley tells three strangers the place is kind of mussed up because his wife left him about a week ago. Frederick Braun asks Mr. Crowley whether it ever occurred to him that somewhere amidst nearly one hundred million American males there is the average man.

An estate that the "boys" had secured for Crowley lies two or three miles out of Tannersville on a mountainside and is quite remote. Two more of Crowley's confederates are introduced, and neither gives any indication that the three are present under duress. Ross says that in a way Crowley was right, and that we three eggheads didn't do so well up against what he called his common sense.