Poetic Justice

by Amanda Cross

  In the past week Kate had had probing conversations with such involved students and faculty as she met and, since the troubles of spring, one seemed constantly to meet people and to stop and talk. From resembling a club where only the oldest members recognized and spoke to one another, the University had come to seem like a small town where everyone knew and greeted one another, and usually had news, gossip, or rumors to exchange. As always, Kate thought, it was danger and shared experiences which made the modern world like a village—not television, as that dreary medium-message man had said. She had talked to many and learned a good deal, but none of it seemed to move them very far forward.

  Frogmore reported that he had talked with almost all the members of the Administrative Council, and there was no question that University College had an overwhelming number of votes with which to carry their motion if they could ever get it before the Council. A number of members on the Council came from schools not immediately connected with the Undergraduate or Graduate Faculties of Arts and Sciences, and they clearly saw no reason why one branch of the University should be able to eliminate another—not without more cogent reasons than were being mentioned. Frogmore, as he told Kate, only hoped it would be that simple.

  McQuire, who sought Kate out to tell her how superior he thought Reed, said that he now believed Cudlipp had committed suicide as the best way to kill the University College. “Call it a kind of hari-kari,” he said. “ ‘I’ll go down and take the enemy ship with me.’ ” In that case, Kate had pointed out, it would have made more sense to accuse his putative murderer before collapsing instead of merely yelling “aspirin” in that unhelpful way. McQuire only shrugged. “There is no question,” he said, “that the whole plan went awry. We shall probably never know. He has succeeded all the same, and I’m powerfully gloomy. Let’s get a drink.”

  But Kate had gone on to talk to Carrier, who was beginning to intrigue her a good deal. He was the most restless man Kate had ever seen, almost as though he suffered from some muscular ailment which caused him to begin twitching if he stood or sat in one place too long. He would greet one pleasantly enough, with some provocative remark (“I’m on my way to interfere with a few elevators, how are you?” was a fair example) but after extracting a certain amount of information and imparting as little as he decently could he would twitch away as though some unseen string attached to him had been jerked offstage. A good deal of his restlessness, Kate surmised, came from his hunger for information and his utter inability to impart any. Since most people would rather talk than listen, Carrier’s method worked up to a point. He would listen, nodding furiously, and then, when questioned in turn, would depart in a stammered explanation of pressing engagements. But after a time Kate, and no doubt others, began to realize that the exchange of information was not mutual, that Cartier could not bring himself to trust anyone else’s discretion. Kate faced him with this one day, and he accepted it, in his usual curt style, nodding his head and thrusting out his arms in his puppet fashion. “What elevators, for example, are you going to interfere with?” “Oh, just a joke, just a joke,” he replied, retreating exactly, it seemed to Kate, like some actress playing Tinkerbell whose apparatus is not working properly.

  On the day when she had talked to McQuire she had gone to look for Cartier in the lounge of the Faculty Club. It was the best place to pick up information, and Cartier could never avoid it for long. She had, indeed, found Cartier and, with great difficulty, induced him to sit down with her on a couch. He offered every possible excuse, from imminent disasters to rising ill health, but Kate was firm: “I’ll only keep you a minute. Please sit down. I’m not feeling at all well.” This, while untrue, made Carrier’s refusal impossible. He perched on the couch, his weight on his toes and his knees drawn up, for all the world, Kate had thought, like a Victorian maiden lady anticipating an indecent proposal. Yet, Kate had thought, he is the only man I know who can resemble Little Miss Muffet without looking in the least effeminate.

  She had reported McQuire’s theory to him. “Interesting,” was his comment, “but I don’t believe it. The aspirin were merely the result of an unfortunate accident, pharmaceutical more likely than not; no one seems to have thought of that. The important question is the elevators.” Cartier always stopped talking as abruptly as he began, one of his more appealing characteristics these long-winded days.

  “Have any elevators been stopping lately that you know of?” Kate had asked. “And,” she had added ominously, “if you try to leave I shall sit in your lap until you answer me.”

  “Wonderful,” Cartier had surprisingly said, pushing himself back on the couch to make more lap available.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate had said. “The ultimate sin: pigeon-holing people, thinking you always know what they will say.” Cartier took the apology as dismissal, but then paused as Kate allowed her unanswered question about the elevators to echo between them.

  “There’s a meeting of the Chemistry Department late this afternoon,” he had said, departing. Kate had remained on the couch, treasuring this piece of information. She could not imagine what possible use it could be, but it was the only fact which Cartier had ever imparted to her. It was unfortunate that she had not taken it more to heart, or at least reported it immediately to Reed, because when she ran into Professor Fielding of Chemistry several days later, he mentioned that the whole Graduate Chemistry Faculty had been stuck in the science building elevator for forty-five minutes on the day of their meeting.

  Reed in the past week had interviewed maintenance men, guards, deans, secretaries, and receptionists until he was weary of endless opinions on the student generation, dire predictions about the future, and completely useless information. He told Kate as they emerged from the subway in time for her afternoon seminar that he hoped today would yield something, but he doubted it.

  In this he was wrong.

  To begin with, they ran into Castleman. He stopped to talk to them, resting his briefcase on the ground. “I have seen more progress,” he said, “made by an inch-worm on frictionless terrain. Oh, not your fault, not mine, not anybody’s. Cartier thinks he’ll catch someone at the elevators, but it will be the same story over again. Whoever is doing this isn’t going to walk into any trap. If someone’s there, they go away; if someone comes in on them, they run faster.”

  “Is there a meeting of some sort today?”

  “Yes. Political Science.”

  “Why haven’t you tried to keep these meetings secret?” Kate asked.

  “We thought of it—and then we thought a bit more. First of all, it’s impossible; if you have a meeting of eight people, there are at least double that number or more in the world who have to know it; we aren’t running a secret organization, God forbid. Besides, our only chance is either to get the offenders to stop out of sheer boredom, or to catch them. It isn’t as though there were any real danger; people terrified of being caught in elevators walk—they always have at this place anyway. Let’s face it, the elevators, even in the best of times, were problematical.”

  “What time is the meeting?” Reed asked.

  “Four. It could go on till six. And chances are nothing will happen.” He wearily picked up his briefcase and left them.

  Kate and Reed continued across the campus, feeling defeated and eager to act if only some possible action presented itself. Reed was just leaving Kate at the entrance to Baldwin when Clemance came along.

  “You two,” he announced, “the first really pleasant sight in days.” He smiled his characteristic, sideways smile and stopped a moment with his oddly courteous air, implying that if they had anything to say he was delighted to hear it, but that he was bereft of the power of speech.

  “I must be getting very old indeed,” he finally murmured. “I actually find myself dreaming of the old days here, when we attended chapel in our gowns with fair regularity. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that this used to be a world of gentlemen, and I wish it still were. Nostalgia is a dangerous disease.” />
  “You’re just gloomy about this Cudlipp business, and no wonder,” Kate said, really worried about him. “What’s dangerous about nostalgia is that it’s phony. It’s a daydream in reverse. Like thinking we loved the books of our youth, when all we love is the thought of ourselves young, reading them.”

  “You’re right. I resent so much being old, and being thought stuffy, that out of a kind of childish petulance I talk as though I were considerably older than I am. I don’t mind telling you there are moments when, quite apart from wanting Cudlipp back again, I wish that someone had handed me a poison, instead of him.”

  “You must be pleased about O’Toole becoming Dean of the College.”

  “I guess I must. My daughter’s going to have a baby.”

  “One’s daughter’s having a baby must, in a certain way, be the most shocking thing that can happen to a man,” Reed said. “I’ve seen it often.”

  “You’re probably right,” Clemance said. “Anyway, it’s getting to be winter, and that’s always dreary. Let’s hope that this will be a better spring—that the grass will not be trampled to dry earth, or the tulips crushed and broken.” He raised his hat and left them.

  “So he noticed exactly what I did—the death of the grass and flowers. The war-torn countryside is always desolate; grass only grows later, among the crosses.”

  “For God’s sake, Kate, I’m glad you at least waited till he was gone to make that heartening observation.”

  “I can’t see making him greet a grandchild as the mark of doom as exactly designed to cheer him up.”

  “It at least gives him a natural cause for feeling glum, instead of despair about the University. Where does the Political Science Department keep itself?”

  “In Treadwell Hall—over there.”

  “I’m going to reconnoiter. Kate …”

  “Yes?” Kate said when he did not seem to be continuing.

  “Oh, nothing. I’ll see you later.”

  “Yes. I must give some thought to my seminar. We all of us spend so much time at committee meetings that we forget what we’re really here for.” She waved at Reed as she walked away.

  Reed waited, he scarcely knew for what, in the basement of Treadwell Hall. It was dimly lit and unfinished. Reconnoitering, he had discovered the door leading to the tunnels connecting the buildings. They had been used for years, Kate told him, by professors who did not want to emerge into the cold in winter, the rain in spring, or student greetings at any time. Another door apparently hid some machinery which made a good deal of noise but seemed otherwise of no interest. The box with the switches for the elevator was, as might have been expected, in the darkest corner. Reed looked at his watch. He went back upstairs and out onto the campus and walked about, thinking.

  When he returned it was to contemplate the extremely wide pipes that ran along the basement about a foot from the ceiling. He jumped for one, but found he could not reach high enough to pull himself upward. He tried a running jump, but the basement did not provide adequate leaping room. Finally, he opened the door leading to the tunnel and pulled himself up on it until one of his feet rested on the knob. As he climbed he had to keep pushing the door, whose nature was to close itself, open with his other foot. At last he worked himself into a position to swing from the door onto one of the broad pipes. The door, relieved of his weight, closed. He was able to lie across the broad pipe on his stomach, resting his head on his hands. He was not invisible to anyone who looked up, but people do not normally look up in empty basements. Should he be discovered, Reed thought, he would merely go about the business of climbing down and make as dignified an exit as was possible under the circumstances. But he hoped to remain unnoticed long enough to see who came, and why.

  His position was not uncomfortable. It interested him to realize that for all the physical vigor of the storybook detective, this was the only time he had had the crease in his trousers endangered by anything more extraordinary than the heat of a courtroom. After a time, he began almost to doze.

  But not quite. As the door from the stairway opened, he came fully awake. A man entered silently and hurried noiselessly across the basement to the door behind which was housed the machinery. He opened the door with a key and, reaching inside, extracted first a wooden doorstop with which he braced open the door, and then a long, hollow tube with which he moved to the center of the room. Raising the tube above his head, he proceeded to slip it over the light bulb and turn it until the light went out. Fortunately the man, who was Carrier, had his back to Reed while he worked. Having plunged the basement into darkness, Cartier, carrying his tube, retreated into the machinery room and closed the door behind him. All was dark and silent.

  Not long after, the door from the stairway opened again, and another man entered—Reed could not, in the darkness, tell who it was. The new arrival walked over to the corner near where the power box for the elevator was and crouched down, resting, Reed supposed, on his heels. Again there was silence. For a great period of time, it seemed, they waited. Periodically, Reed could hear the elevator motor start up and then stop. He longed to switch his position on the pipe, but dared not. From time to time he felt rather than heard the man in the corner shift his weight.

  Up in Mabel’s room, Reed thought, and we shall all be here until morning. And at the thought of explaining to Kate how he had happened to spend a whole night on a pipe in the basement of Treadwell Hall, Reed began to feel himself hideously on the verge of the giggles, about the only calamity, he thought, which never befell Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe.

  How long it was until the door from the stairway opened was a question which might well have inspired agonized deliberations about the relativity of time. When the door did open, however, whoever entered was clearly bewildered to find himself in darkness. He listened—as Reed, holding his breath, listened, as the other two, he was certain, listened; but there was no sound. Running his hands along the wall to find his way, the last arrival moved around until he was in front of the elevator. Reed saw him take out a tiny pocket flashlight and consult his wristwatch. Before long, the elevator machinery could be heard running: the elevator had been called, one supposed, to a top floor. There was a pause as the light which indicates when the elevator is in motion went out; then it lit again. The listeners could hear the elevator descending. The newcomer moved toward the box containing the elevator power switch and the silence broke into clamoring noise. The door to the machine room was flung open, several men seemed to be grabbing one another, there was a scuffle toward the doors, Reed heard a man’s voice whisper: “For God’s sake get out of here,” and then there was the sound of a pressurized can being sprayed. “You goddam idiot,” the same voice whispered. By this time Reed had dropped down from the pipe and was guarding the door to the stairway. A man rushed against him and they were both propelled into the lighted stairway hall. The man with Reed was Hankster, and he was covered with bright, luminous paint. As they stared at each other, speechless, they were joined by Carrier who simply announced “Ha!” in pleased tones, and refused to utter another syllable. The fourth man there, whoever he was, had vanished.

  It took several hours to straighten the whole thing out, if “to straighten out,” as Reed later said to Kate, was possibly the correct verb.

  Carrier was mightily pleased with the success of his “spy kit.” He had apparently begun his James Bond operations with a camera equipped with extremely fast film or, in the event of almost total darkness, a strobe light. This, he readily admitted, had been a dismal failure. Either he was not quick enough in handling the equipment, or the camera was not focused on anything very enlightening. Carrier had already, he said, come close enough to touch at least two of the elevator interferes, but even if he pursued them into a lighted area, they mingled with groups of students too quickly for him to feel certain of identifying them. Hence the pressurized paint can: it covered its victim with paint so that he could be readily recognized; melting away into a crowd would not be possible.
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  The only problem in this case was, as Hankster pointed out to Carrier in agonized whispers, the wrong man had been sprayed, the wrong man’s expensive clothes had been ruined, and they had all made idiots of themselves.

  “Then what were you doing there?” Carrier had not unnaturally asked.

  “Trying to prevent a misguided youngster from getting himself into serious trouble for the wrong cause,” Hankster said.

  “One of your radical students, no doubt,” Cartier said.

  “Perhaps, as you say, a radical student, though hardly mine. The idea of disrupting the University by elevator hanky-panky did not originate with me, or him, or any radical in the ordinary sense of the word.”

  “With whom, then, did it originate?” Reed asked.

  “Cudlipp, of course,” Hankster said. “Didn’t you guess?”

  They both stared at him for a moment. “And,” Reed asked, before Cartier could make some remark as rude as it was concise, “would you be willing to arrange for us to meet one of the students involved in this at Cudlipp’s instigation?”

  “No,” Hankster said. “I’ll do my best to stop this business, if I have enough influence to accomplish it, enough persuasive powers, and am not poisoned by all this paint, but I won’t give you a single name. Sorry about that.”

  He marched out, probably the first man, as Kate later observed, to desert a conversation with Cartier before Cartier did.