by Zenith Brown
He looked at me quizzically from under his protruding grey brows. He pursed his lips. He shook his head.
“No, Mrs. Niles. No, we haven’t ever found him. He parked Fenton’s car in the garage and posted Miss Atwood the claim check with his love to me scribbled on the back of it. And that’s the last anybody’s seen of the fellow. Clever man, that.”
“I suppose he is,” I said.
Mr. Sullivan looked pleasantly at me.
“Do you know,” he said, “I could have pushed after him harder than I did.”
“You could?” I said.
“And do you know why I didn’t?”
“No, Mr. Sullivan. Why?”
“Because I don’t think, really, that he did it. Do you know, I don’t think I’d have a case against him if I did catch him. He had no motive, Mrs. Niles. Not a ghost of one. Fenton was different; but of course he didn’t have G.U. enough, if you know what I mean. There was only one other person who had the motive, and the opportunity, and the courage, Mrs. Niles. I mean a real motive. Not a sentimental false one like Thorn Carter’s.”
“Yes, Mr. Sullivan?”
“Yes, Mrs. Niles. Only one person with the motive, the courage, the opportunity.”
He looked steadily at me, with that same calculating glance out of narrowed eyes that annoyed me so much during his investigation.
“And can you find anyone else who’d give a greater shock to poor Tim Healy, for that matter, Mrs. Niles?”
Mr. Sullivan has never actually said it, of course, in so many words; and as far as I know he’s implied it only to me personally; but he still thinks I shot Daniel Sutton to save the chair of Anthropology and $8,000 a year for Ben, and that the shock of seeing me do it killed Tim Healy. Well, probably it would have, if he had seen me do such a thing.
Mr. Sullivan, encased firmly in the prejudices of his class, his profession and his locality, will never know who it was who shot Daniel Sutton. He has as little suspicion to this moment as I had then, when I talked with him as I was coming home from the tea in the library. Two people knew it then. I made a third. There will never be any more, and in the course of things, one of us at least is bound to go soon.
Commencement morning was warm, the campus was lovely with its feathery canopy of tulip poplars, maples and elms. The seats for the exercises had been arranged in front of Mascham Hall. I had shaken as much of the smell of mothballs from Ben’s gown as I could. You can always tell by the odor they leave in their wake whether a professor’s gown is his own or whether he rents it for the occasion.
A little before ten I went down to Aunt Charlotte’s to get her and bring her over to see the young gennamen all dressed up fit to kill. It’s one of her chief pleasures. I passed the great barred gate of Seaton Hall. All the Seatons had gone to Maine for the summer. I felt a little tightening in my throat, as I aways do when I go by the high wrought iron bars with the crest of the Seatons at the top.
Aunt Charlotte was ready, had been ready for hours, I imagine. She was done up in the assorted cast-off finery of fifty years of Seaton ladies. A hat not unlike my own was perched on her kerchiefed head, but it came off after a moment and we parked it under a box bush until after the ceremony. I deposited her in a chair especially placed for her, at some distance from the parents and other spectators, and went to look for some of my own friends.
They were mostly seated already. I looked around and caught sight of the mountainous bulk of Mr. Rand, standing under a tree at one side. He waved to me. I went over to join him.
“Aren’t you in the procession?” I asked, shaking hands with him.
“No,” he said a little wearily. “I’m getting too old. This is a day for young men.”
“I know,” I said. “Ben told me that Mr. Brice is to be our next president. I’m sorry Dr. Knox is leaving. I suppose we’ve all expected it, though, ever since the Guggenheim people adopted us.”
“They’ve let us go again,” he said surprisingly.
I looked at him, startled, but before I could speak the orchestra struck up and the academic procession appeared. Dr. Knox in his long black silk robe and brilliant hood, Mr. Brice beside him, somewhat less gaudy; and so on down to the young Bachelors of Arts, rather nude-looking in plain black. I glanced over the audience. I saw several mothers wipe their eyes, and now and then you could hear a male throat clear itself huskily.
It was a great moment for Landover College when Dr. Knox rose and came to the front of the platform, built out over the steps of Mascham Hall.
“I have an announcement to make,” he said, “that we have guarded very carefully the last few weeks, so as not to mar in any way this occasion.”
I looked at the new president.
Dr. Knox went on in his deep musical voice. Only the soft rustling of green young leaves overhead could be heard.
“Under the will of the late Daniel Sutton of this city, there was bequeathed, to the Board of Visitors and Governors of Landover College, the residue of his estate.”
In the surprised and utter silence, his voice grew stronger, and rang out from the Corinthian columns of the old building.
“The residue of Daniel Sutton’s estate includes a vast tract of land in the state of New Mexico, formerly used for the raising of stock, and known as El Rancho del Ojo del Espiritu Santo. It has only recently been discovered that this great property, which includes two hundred and fifty thousand acres, is rich in oil and minerals, and is consequently, of what can, at the present moment, only be described as of incalculable value.”
A silence as deep as the tomb came over the gay little company there on the college green. The full meaning of enough money to endow Landover College for ever only vaguely struck home.
Dr. Knox went on, deliberately.
“The Visitors and Governors of Landover College, after deliberation, have decided to develop this property for the perpetual benefit of the college. I think, gentlemen—and ladies—that our task, in so far as it concerns the financial support of the College, is over. I feel that this occasion is one of deepest thankfulness, rather than noisy jubilation. May I ask you, gentlemen—and ladies—to stand and bow your heads a moment, in thanks to Providence for its benefits to this ancient institution of learning; and may I ask you further to think reverently a moment of the man who bequeathed us so vast a gift.”
I stood like a statue beside Mr. Rand.
I looked up at him, an urgent question in my eyes. His face was calm, but I could see the steely glint in his kindly blue eyes.
“It was Dr. Knox,” I whispered. “It was Dr. Knox.”
He looked steadily at me without a word.
Dr. Knox was speaking again, but I was thinking of other things.
“How did he know?” I said.
He hesitated only a second.
“I told him,” he said then, very quietly. “It was my first violation of professional faith. Sutton left us the ranch as a joke; he thought it was valueless. ‘Knox wants land for the college,’ he said. ‘Here’s miles of it.’ And Knox was with him when he made that memo, for me. He said he was taking back the land, but he’d find something else for the College.”
I watched the brilliant shifting scene, the happy and enthralled faces upturned to the platform, like a person in a dream.
“The revolver in the river?” I whispered.
“Chance—pure and simple. Franklin thought Thorn had done it. I thought till then that he was protecting his father. Franklin simply thought that that’s what he’d do with a gun if he had to throw it away—and that’s just what his father had done.”
Dr. Knox’s tall slender figure dominating this civilized scene came back to me. I heard him announcing and introducing the new president.
“Mr. Brice,” he was saying, “is very young, as you saw in the papers. I have only one word more to say, and it is my advice to all of you. It was said by an English schoolmaster, and it is profoundly true. ‘Remember, none of us knows everything—not even the youngest.’
”
He lifted his mortarboard with its golden tassel, and returned to his seat. There he sat, erect, courtly, everything a gentleman of Maryland should be. I felt the wave of tenderness and gratitude that swept the audience and burst into a cheer, long and sustained. Even Professor Miggs, who teaches Latin, raised his hat and wrinkled his leathery face.
Mr. Rand and I stood there together. Aunt Charlotte, rocking her chair on the other side of the graduating class, patted her foot as the college orchestra struck up “Landover Forever.”
Contents
COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVII
CHAPTER XVIII
CHAPTER XIX
CHAPTER XX
CHAPTER XXI
CHAPTER XXII
CHAPTER XXIII
CHAPTER XXIV
CHAPTER XXV
CHAPTER XXVI
CHAPTER XXVII
CHAPTER XXVIII
CHAPTER XXIX
Guide
Cover
CHAPTER I
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