WHEN the six chimpanzees
came into his life, Mr. Bainbridge was thirty-eight years
old. He was a bachelor and lived comfortably in a remote
part of Connecticut, in a large old house with a carriage
drive, a conservatory, a tennis court, and a well-selected
library. His income was derived from impeccably situated
real estate in New York City, and he spent it soberly, in a
manner which could give offence to nobody. Once a year, late
in April, his tennis court was resurfaced, and after that
anybody in the neighborhood was welcome to use it; his
monthly statement from Brentano's seldom ran below
seventy-five dollars; every third year, in November, he
turned in his old Cadillac coupe for a new one; he ordered
his cigars, which were mild and rather moderately priced, in
shipments of one thousand, from a tobacconist in Havana;
because of the international situation he had cancelled
arrangements to travel abroad, and after due thought had
decided to spend his travelling allowance on wines, which
seemed likely to get scarcer and more expensive if the war
lasted. On the whole, Mr. Bainbridge's life was
deliberately, and not too unsuccessfully, modelled after
that of an English country gentleman of the late eighteenth
century, a gentleman interested in the arts and in the
expansion of science, and so sure of himself that he didn't
care if some people thought him eccentric. Mr. Bainbridge had many
friends in New York, and he spent several days of the month
in the city, staying at his club and looking around.
Sometimes he called up a girl and took her out to a theatre
and a night club. Sometimes he and a couple of classmates
got a little tight and went to a prizefight. Mr. Bainbridge
also looked in now and then at some of the conservative art
galleries, and liked occasionally to go to a concert. And he
liked cocktail parties, too, because of the fine footling
conversation and the extraordinary number of pretty girls
who had nothing else to do with the rest of their evening.
It was at a New York cocktail party, however, that Mr.
Bainbridge kept his preliminary appointment with doom. At
one of the parties given by Hobie Packard, the stockbroker,
he learned about the theory of the six
chimpanzees. page
2262 It was almost six-forty. The
people who had intended to have one drink and go had already
gone, and the people who intended to stay were fortifying
themselves with slightly dried canapés and talking
animatedly. A group of stage and radio people had coagulated
in one corner, near Packard's Capehart, and were wrangling
about various methods of cheating the Collector of Internal
Revenue. In another corner was a group of stockbrokers,
talking about the greatest stockbroker of them all, Gauguin.
Little Marcia Lupton was sitting with a young man, saying
earnestly, "Do you really want to know what my greatest
ambition is? I want to be myself," and Mr. Bainbridge smiled
gently, thinking of the time Marcia had said that to him.
Then he heard the voice of Bernard Weiss, the critic,
saying, "Of course he wrote one good novel. It's not
surprising. After all, we know that if six chimpanzees
were set to work pounding six typewriters at random, they
would, in a million years, write all the books in the
British Museum." Mr. Bainbridge drifted over
to Weiss and was introduced to Weiss's companion, a Mr.
Noble. "What's this about a million chimpanzees, Weiss?" he
asked. 'Six chimpanzees," Mr. Weiss
said. "It's an old cliche of the mathematicians. I thought
everybody was told about it in school. Law of averages, you
know, or maybe it's permutation and combination. The six
chimps, just pounding away at the typewriter keys, would be
bound to copy out all the books ever written by man. There
are only so many possible combinations of letters and
numerals, and they'd produce all of them--see? Of course
they'd also turn out a mountain of gibberish, but they'd
work the books in, too. All the books in the British
Museum." Mr. Bainbridge was
delighted; this was the sort of talk he liked to hear when
he came to New York. "Well, but look here," he said, just to
keep up his part in the foolish conversation, "what if one
of the chimpanzees finally did duplicate a book, right down
to the last period, but left that off? Would that
count?" "I suppose not. Probably the
chimpanzee would get around to doing the book again, and put
the period in." "What nonsense!" Mr. Noble
cried. "It may be nonsense, but Sir
James Jeans believes it," Mr. Weiss said, huffily. "Jeans or
Lancelot Hogben. I know I ran across it quite
recently." Mr. Bainbridge was
impressed. He read quite a bit of popular science, and both
Jeans and Hogben were in his library. "Is that so?" he
murmured, no longer feeling frivolous. "Wonder if it has
ever actually been tried? I mean, has anybody ever put six
chimpanzees in a room with six typewriters and a lot of
paper?" Mr. Weiss glanced at Mr.
Bainbridge's empty cocktail glass and said drily, "Probably
not." page
2263 Nine weeks later, on a
winter evening, Mr. Bainbridge was sitting in his study with
his friend James Mallard, an assistant professor of
mathematics at New Haven. He was plainly nervous as he
poured himself a drink and said, "Mallard, I've asked you to
come here--Brandy? Cigar?--for a particular reason. You
remember that I wrote you some time ago, asking your opinion
of . . . of a certain mathematical hypothesis or
supposition." "Yes," Professor Mallard
said, briskly. "I remember perfectly. About the six
chimpanzees and the British Museum. And I told you it was a
perfectly sound popularization of a principle known to every
schoolboy who had studied the science of
probabilities." "Precisely," Mr. Bainbridge
said. "Well, Mallard, I made up my mind. . . . It was not difficult
for me, because I have, in spite of that fellow in the White
House, been able to give something every year to the Museum
of Natural History, and they were naturally glad to oblige
me. . . . And after all, the only contribution a layman can
make to the progress of science is to assist with the
drudgery of experiment. . . . In short I--" "I suppose you're trying to
tell me that you have procured six chimpanzees and set them
to work at typewriters in order to see whether they will
eventually write all the books in the British Museum. Is
that it?" "Yes, that's it," Mr.
Bainbridge said. "What a mind you have, Mallard. Six fine
young males, in perfect condition. I had a--I suppose you'd
call it a dormitory--built out in back of the stable. The
typewriters are in the conservatory. It's light and airy in
there, and I moved most of the plants out. Mr. North, the
man who owns the circus, very obligingly let me engage one
of his best animal men. Really, it was no trouble at
all." Professor Mallard smiled
indulgently. "After all, such a thing is not unheard of," he
said. "I seem to remember that a man at some university put
his graduate students to work flipping coins, to see if
heads and tails came up an equal number of times. Of course
they did." Mr. Bainbridge looked at his
friend very queerly. "Then you believe that any such
principle of the science of probabilities will stand up
under an actual test?" "Certainly." "You had better see for
yourself." Mr. Bainbridge led Professor Mallard downstairs,
along a corridor, through a disused music room, and into a
large conservatory. The middle of the floor had been cleared
of plants and was occupied by a row of six typewriter
tables, each one supporting a hooded machine. At the left of
each typewriter was a neat stack of yellow copy paper. Empty
wastebaskets were under each table. The chairs were the
unpadded, spring-backed kind favored by experienced
stenographers. A large bunch of ripe bananas was hanging in
one corner, and in another stood a Great Bear water-cooler
and a rack of Lily cups. Six piles of page
2264 typescript, each about a
foot high, were ranged along the wall on an improvised
shelf. Mr. Bainbridge picked up one of the piles, which he
could just conveniently lift, and set it on a table before
Professor Mallard. "The output to date of Chimpanzee A,
known as Bill," he said simply. "'"Oliver Twist," by Charles
Dickens,' " Professor Mallard read out. He read the first
and second pages of the manuscript, then feverishly leafed
through to the end. "You mean to tell me," he said, "that
this chimpanzee has written--" "Word for word and comma for
comma," said Mr. Bainbridge. "Young, my butler, and I took
turns comparing it with the edition I own. Having finished
'Oliver Twist,' Bill is, as you see, starting the
sociological works of Vilfredo Pareto, in Italian. At the
rate he has been going, it should keep him busy for the rest
of the month." "And all the
chimpanzees"--ProfessOr Mallard was pale, and enunciated
with difficulty--"they aren't all--" "Oh, yes, all writing books
which I have every reason to believe are in the British
Museum. The prose of John Donne, some Anatole France, Conan
Doyle, Galen, the collected plays of Somerset Maugham,
Marcel Proust, the memoirs of the late Marie of Rumania, and
a monograph by a Dr. Wiley on the marsh grasses of Maine and
Massachusetts. I can sum it up for you, Mallard, by telling
you that since I started this experiment, four weeks and
some days ago, none of the chimpanzees has spoiled a single
sheet of paper." Professor Mallard
straightened up, passed his handkerchief across his brow,
and took a deep breath. "I apologize for my weakness," he
said. "It was simply the sudden shock. No, looking at the
thing scientifically-- and I hope I am at least as capable
of that as the next man--there is nothing marvelous about
the situation. These chimpanzees, or a succession of similar
teams of chimpanzees, would in a million years write all the
books in the British Museum. I told you some time ago that I
believed that statement. Why should my belief be altered by
the fact that they produced some of the books at the very
outset? After all, I should not be very much surprised if I
tossed a coin a hundred times and it came up heads every
time. I know that if I kept at it long enough, the ratio
would reduce itself to an exact fifty per cent. Rest
assured, these chimpanzees will begin to compose gibberish
quite soon. It is bound to happen. Science tells us so.
Meanwhile, I advise you to keep this experiment secret.
Uninformed people might create a sensation if they
knew." "I will, indeed," Mr.
Bainbridge said. "And I'm very grateful for your rational
analysis. It reassures me. And now, before you go, you must
hear the new Schnabel records that arrived
today." During the succeeding three
months, Professor Mallard got into the habit of telephoning
Mr. Bainbridge every Friday afternoon at
five-thirty, page
2265 immediately after leaving
his seminar room. The Professor would say, "Well?," and Mr.
Bainbridge would reply, "They're still at it, Mallard.
Haven't spoiled a sheet of paper yet." If Mr. Bainbridge had
to go out on Friday afternoon, he would leave a written
message with his butler, who would read it to Professor
Mallard: "Mr. Bainbridge says we now have Trevelyan's 'Life
of Macaulay,' the Confessions of St. Augustine, 'Vanity
Fair,' part of Irving's 'Life of George Washington,' the
Book of the Dead, and some speeches delivered in Parliament
in Opposition to the Corn Laws, sir." Professor Mallard
would reply, with a hint of a snarl in his voice, "Tell him
to remember what I predicted," and hang up with a
clash. The eleventh Friday that
Professor Mallard telephoned, Mr. Bainbridge said, "No
change. I have had to store the bulk of the manuscript in
the cellar. I would have burned it, except that it probably
has some scientific value." "How dare you talk of
scientific value?" The voice from New Haven roared faintly
in the receiver. "Scientific value! You--you~~chimpanzee!'~
There were further inarticulate sputterings, and Mr.
Bainbridge hung up with a disturbed expression. "I am afraid
Mallard is overtaxing himself," he murmured. Next day, however, he was
pleasantly surprised. He was leafing through a manuscript
that had been completed the previous day by Chimpanzee D,
Corky. It was the complete diary of Samuel Pepys, and Mr.
Bainbridge was chuckling over the naughty passages, which
were omitted in his own edition, when Professor Mallard was
shown into the room. "I have come to apologize for my
outrageous conduct on the telephone yesterday," the
Professor said. "Please don't think of it
any more. I know you have many things on your mind," Mr.
Bainbridge said. "Would you like a drink?" "A large whiskey, straight,
please," Professor Mallard said. "I got rather cold driving
down. No change, I presume?" "No, none. Chimpanzee F,
Dinty, is just finishing John Florio's translation of
Montaigne's essays, but there is no other news of
interest." Professor Mallard squared
his shoulders and tossed off his drink in one astonishing
gulp. "I should like to see them at work," he said. "Would I
disturb them, do you think?" "Not at all. As a matter of
fact, I usually look in on them around this time of day.
Dinty may have finished his Montaigne by now, and it is
always Interesting to see them start a new work. I would
have thought that they would continue on the same sheet of
paper, but they don't, you know. Always a fresh sheet, and
the title in capitals." Professor Mallard, without
apology, poured ai~tother drink and slugged it down. "Lead
on," he said. page
2266 It was dusk in the
conservatory, and the chimpanzees were typing by the light
of student lamps clamped to their desks. The keeper lounged
in a corner, eating a banana and reading Billboard,
"You might as well take an hour or so off," Mr.
Bainbridge said. The man left. Professor Mallard, who had
not taken off his overcoat, stood with his hands in his
pockets, looking at the busy chimpanzees. "I wonder if you
know, Bainbridge, that the science of probabilities takes
everything into account," he said, in a queer, tight voice.
"It is certainly almost beyond the bounds of credibility
that these chimpanzees should write books without a single
error, but that abnormality may be corrected by--these!"
He took his hands from his pockets, and each one held a
.38 revolver. "Stand back out of harm's way!" he
shouted. "Mallard! Stop it!" The
revolvers barked, first the right hand, then the left, then
the right. Two chimpanzees fell, and a third reeled into a
corner. Mr. Bainbridge seized his friend's arm and wrested
one of the weapons from him. "Now I am armed, too,
Mallard, and I advise you to stop!" he cried. Professor
Mallard's answer was to draw a bead on Chimpanzee E and
shoot him dead. Mr. Bainbridge made a rush, and Professor
Mallard fired at him. Mr. Bainbridge, in his quick death
agony, tightened his finger on the trigger of his revolver.
It went off, and Professor Mallard went down. On his hands
and knees he fired at the two chimpanzees which were still
unhurt, and then collapsed. There was nobody to hear his
last words. "The human equation . . . always the enemy of
science . . ." he panted. "This time . . . vice versa I, a
mere mortal . . . savior of science . . . deserve a Nobel .
. ." When the old butler came
running into the conservatory to investigate the noises, his
eyes were met by a truly appalling sight. The student lamps
were shattered, but a newly risen moon shone in through the
conservatory windows on the corpses of the two gentlemen,
each clutching a smoking revolver. Five of the chimpanzees
were dead. The sixth was Chimpanzee F. His right arm
disabled, obviously bleeding to death, he was slumped before
his typewriter. Painfully, with his left hand, he took from
the machine the completed last page of Florio's Montaigne.
Groping for a fresh sheet, he inserted it, and typed with
one finger, "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, by Harriet Beecher
Stowe. Chapte . . . Then he, too, was dead, page
2267
.