Man on Jupiter Island

Midway in the NATO Council meeting in Washington, the delegates stopped to send a message of friendship and sympathy to the man who seemed to personify the spirit of the week's unified stand against Communist threats: Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. But Dulles needed sympathy less last week, perhaps, than at any time since he turned into Walter Reed Hospital with a recurrence of cancer. Just 840 miles southwest of Washington, he was basking in a hot sun on plush, lush Jupiter Island, Fla., a guest in the vacation home of his good friend Under Secretary of State C. Douglas Dillon. Symbolic items in the Secretary of State's baggage: 1) a flop-brimmed straw hat that "cost about $1.98," and 2) a Brooks Brothers shirt box stuffed with paperback mysteries.

Backgammon & Rye. Daily, Dulles got up at 6:30 a.m., bathed, shaved, read the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post (the New York Times and Herald Tribune were brought in later), began to maneuver through an Ellery Queen. Breakfast was at 8 o'clock on the patio, with Dulles decked out in sports shirt, slacks and the hat. At 9:30 Army Captain Edward J. Kamin, an internal medicine specialist who had flown down in the presidential Columbine with Dulles and wife Janet from Washington, gave his patient a checkup. At 10:30 Dulles' capable personal assistant Joseph N. Greene called the State Department, got a 15-minute briefing, passed it along to his boss. "Well," said Dulles at one briefing's end, "let's go for a swim." After an hour in the pool, Dulles was ready for a light lunch: sandwich, glass of high-protein milk.

In the afternoon, Dulles dozed in the sun or prowled on through his mysteries. ("The detective must put his mind to work. My mind is relaxed as I read of his deductions.") Five-thirty was the cocktail hour for the Dulleses, "Jerry" Greene and Dr. Kamin--one shot of Old Overholt rye with a splash of water for Dulles, for Mrs. Dulles a martini. In the evenings the Dulleses dined alone (typical menu: consomme, chipped beef on toast, cake), afterward played backgammon. Since 1932, Janet and Foster have kept a notebook record of their backgammon scores. Last week Janet Dulles fell even farther behind.

Pooling & Perking. Dulles hoped that the stay at Jupiter Island in the warm Florida sunshine, with the cold war left behind him, would help him recover from effects of the heavy radiation treatment at Walter Reed, would also give doctors a chance to find out whether the radiation treatment had arrested the spread of his cancer. After he found the answers, he would decide whether to 1) carry on as Secretary of State, 2) resign as Secretary but carry on in perhaps the high-level, influential capacity of presidential adviser on foreign affairs, or 3) resign and retire. Last week's clues, for the deduction-minded, were few. Said Dr. Kamin: "He's aggressive in his convalescence. He's perking up since he came to Florida. He stays in the pool a little longer each day." Said one of his closest friends: "If he can stand on two feet, he's going to be at the foreign ministers' conference at Geneva on May 11."

One afternoon on Jupiter Island, Dulles got to talking enigmatically about how he and a classmate had made a study of probabilities at Princeton. "If you flipped a coin ten times and it turned up heads every time," said the Secretary of State, "what would be the probability that it would turn up tails on the eleventh flip?" The study, he said, had helped him in diplomacy. How he reckoned his chances in the eleventh flip just ahead he did not say.

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