Channel 13 had written the men’s names in white above their heads. Olin Taverner, austere, hair combed back from his forehead, looked like the model for the upright public man. In contrast, Congressman Walker Bushnell, the committee chair, had a face as round as a lollipop; his buzzcut hair turned him into the caricature of a thug.

Taverner spoke first. “You were at a meeting of the Committee for Social Thought and justice on June 14, 1948, in Eagle River, Wisconsin, were you not, Mr. Bayard?”

Calvin Bayard chuckled. “I attend a great many meetings, Olin, just as you do. I don’t remember all the names and dates. You must have an amazing calculating machine in your head if you can remember the exact date of meetings that far back.”

Taverner leaned forward. “We have testimony from other witnesses whose memories are good that you were in Eagle River on June 14, 1948. Do you dispute this?”

Bayard answered impatiently, “I can’t discuss the matter because I don’t know whether you had testimony or not, and I don’t know who did or didn’t provide it.”

Taverner slapped the tabletop. “We have reliable testimony that you were at this meeting. Who else was present with you?”

Bayard hooked his fingers in his belt loops and leaned back in his seat. “Mr. Chairman, when Mr. Taverner and I were boys in rural Illinois, we often found weasels and rats prowling around our henhouse. They like to slide through the cracks under cover of dark. The weasel doesn’t come out in broad daylight and meet you face to face the way a dog will.

“Now, I wouldn’t like to characterize any of my distinguished friends in the publishing or entertainment industry this way, or even those serving this committee, because every man at the end of the day has to face his own conscience in the privacy of his bedchamber, and my conscience may tell me something different than what yours, or those of my friends’, do. But slithering around under cover of darkness, or under pretense of patriotism, why my dog would know what to do with a creature that acted like that.”

A gasp went up among the spectators in the committee room. Taverner himself started to shout something, but Walker Bushnell silenced him by reaching across to put a hand over Taverner’s microphone.

“So you refuse to tell this committee who was at the meeting with you on June 14, 1948,” Bushnell said.

Bayard looked at him steadily. “Mr. Chairman, the greatest pleasure America’s enemies have is seeing her leaders attack our cornerstone, the right to free speech, a free press, free association. I will not give succor to our enemies by violating those rights.”

The tape, ended there; the camera tonight flashed back on Renee Bayard. She was dabbing tears away from the corners of her eyes. I felt pretty sniffy myself.

Dennis Logan said, “That was a fine speech your husband gave, but people are still left wondering why it moved Olin Taverner and Walker Bushnell. After all, your husband was the only person who ever got Olin Taverner to let go once he’d dug his heels in. But Calvin didn’t name names, he didn’t go to prison, he wasn’t even fined. What was his secret?”