“You are so sensible, Miss Gorham! But I somehow feel that we ought to do something.”
A nervous knock sounded on the office door. “Come in!” shouted Dr. Sandys.
It was a cadaverous young man with a twitching little yellow mustache.
“I’m Elmer Drexel,” he said. “Assistant in Classics. Mr. Hyett told me to come and see you.”
“Oh yes. I’ve seen you around. Sit down.”
Gilda wondered for the hundredth time how it happened that from these unhealthy, decayed-looking graduate students were recruited the faculties of America, rather distinguished in appearance, on the whole. The charm of youth was very much overpraised. A repellent lot, mostly.
“I have something rather curious to tell you, Dr. Sandys. I was in Mr. Hyett’s workshop, looking over some of his collections in a merely desultory way. And I happened to notice on his desk a microfilm, with a Library label: ‘MS. B 58. Hilarius: Filius Getronis.’ Well, I had been hearing about it, of course, and out of curiosity I put the film in Mr. Hyett’s reader. You can imagine my surprise when I read, in the first frame, the words: ‘Thou shalt do no murder!’ ”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said! The words: ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ in English, written in large capitals.”
“But that can’t be part of the manuscript!”
“I don’t see how it could be.”
“What is this? A joke?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a joke. But it isn’t my joke.”
“You didn’t bring the film with you?”
“No, sir. Mr. Hyett came in while I was looking at it, and he told me I’d better come right over and report it to you.”
“I think I’ll run over and have a look at it. Come on along. I’ll see you later, Miss Gorham.”
The two left, and Gilda went soberly back to her work.
Half an hour later she dropped in at the Librarian’s office.
“What did you find out?” she asked, without introductory pourparlers.
“It’s a funny business, Miss Gorham. A very funny business. I looked at the film and saw nothing of what was reported to us. The film began with the first folio of the manuscript. I asked the assistant, Drexel, to point out the frame with ‘Thou shalt do no murder’ on it. He looked at the film and could not find it. He seemed genuinely surprised. I noticed that Mr. Hyett was tapping his forehead in a significant manner. Mr. Hyett said that he had examined the film and had seen nothing peculiar about it. I think I may say that we were all nonplussed. Nonplussed indeed.”
“Could such a frame have been patched in between the trailer and the film proper?”
“Certainly. It would be very simple. Someone could have written the words on a big sheet of paper, and then photographed them, and patched in the frame after the trailer. But if Hyett is right, it is all an invention of the student’s.”
“But why should the student have told such a story?”
“A hallucination, perhaps. Or a hoax. But I am nonplussed. I was just trying to get the psychiatrist of the Medical Department. He may be able to tell us something. Ah, the telephone. Probably that is Dr. Reed now.” Dr. Sandys picked up the receiver.
“Dr. Reed? This is Sandys, at the Library. Dr. Reed, I have a question to ask you. Rather a curious thing has been reported to me by a student. Elmer Drexel, his name is; Assistant in Classics. Almost an incredible thing. I wonder if you have any record of this Drexel. Has he shown any—ah—instability? . . . Oh, you know him, do you? . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . But exactly how serious is that? . . . Would it affect his credibility? . . . Yes, I see. . . . Thank you. Yes, I understand that this is entirely confidential, and I will keep it under my hat, as the boys say. Thank you very much, Dr. Reed.”
He replaced the receiver.
“Dr. Reed says that this Drexel has been under observation by his office. He had some sort of breakdown in his senior year, and withdrew for the second term. A mild psychotic condition, brought on by overwork and strain. He thought he was persecuted by Mr. Hyett, because he only got 85 in some course at mid-years. Not insane, Dr. Reed said, or at least not too insane to be a professor.” He laughed. “That I took to be a quip.”
“What do you make of it, Dr. Sandys?”
“Oh, a hoax, I imagine.” Dr. Sandys laughed comfortably. “The students love these hoaxes. I remember when I was a student we dressed up a doll in baby clothes and left it in a basket at the door of the Dean of Women. With a rather suggestive sign on it.” He laughed again.
“No doubt you are right, Dr. Sandys.”
Gilda retreated to the catalogue room.
She had hardly sat down when Francis Parry phoned, urging her to dine quietly with him in the country. Gilda declined, alleging a headache, one of those invaluable headaches. The headache would give her an opportunity for quiet and consecutive thought.
In her cosy living-room, after dinner, she prepared her favorite setting for meditation. She sat in her easy chair with a drawing-board before her, laid across the chair’s arms. On the drawing-board lay a pad of yellow paper and two soft pencils. On the table at her side were cigarettes, matches, an ashtray, and a tall glass of mixed ginger ale and grape juice, amply iced.
On the yellow pad she wrote:
1. Hoax.
2. Hallucination.
3. Genuine.
1. Hoax.
It was true that students were forever getting up hoaxes, some of them elaborate, some of them pretty funny, some of them in dreadful taste. Like that Royalist Party of America, which had provoked stern editorials in the New Republic. Who was it they had proposed for King? W. C. Fields, wasn’t it? The point of the hoax was usually brutally clear. It was intended to befool some person or group, by making them confess publicly to swallowing some absurdity. But this hoax, if a hoax, was not clear. It would give no opportunity for gloating publicity in the college paper. It did not seem to fit the rules of the type.
Perhaps the assistant, Drexel, having some suspicion about Lucie Coindreau’s death, was trying to scare Mr. Hyett. He hadn’t seemed to be playing a part, nor did he appear to be the sort who could play a part convincingly. And then, why in the world should he have come running to Dr. Sandys? Having succeeded in scaring Mr. Hyett, he should have avoided the complications which would follow upon his telling his story to others. He could have returned to Mr. Hyett with the report that Dr. Sandys was out or in conference or something. But then, people often don’t act very logically.
Perhaps this Drexel, who had suffered from delusions of persecution, had made up the whole story in order to point suspicion at Mr. Hyett? But in that case the suspicion would disappear as soon as people inspected the microfilm and found no warning written on it.
No, the whole hoax hypothesis didn’t seem to fit the facts.
2. Hallucination.
According to medical testimony, the student was neurotic, to say the least. If for some reason—not clear—he was haunted by the idea of murder, he might easily see the sixth commandment written on a wall, in the sky, or on a microfilm. That sort of vision was a commonplace of religious mysticism and of abnormal psychology. But in the circumstances it was a coincidence, and ipso facto suspicious. Also, it was what Mr. Hyett was deliberately trying to suggest. Perhaps Mr. Hyett had good reason for making the suggestion. Perhaps, perhaps!
On the whole, the hallucination explanation was possible, but pretty far-fetched.
3. Genuine.
If Drexel had actually seen the commandment, and if later it had disappeared, what implications and inferences could she find?
Gilda wrote on her pad:
A. How was it prepared?
B. Who removed it?
C. Who prepared it?
A. How was it prepared?
Probably you could write directly on a square of film. But that would be pretty awkward. And you would have to use some sort of crayon, a lithographer’s pencil or something, to hold on the film’s surface. Th
at would be difficult too. Dr. Sandys’s explanation was better; someone had written the words large on a sheet of paper and had photographed the sheet. He had developed it and patched it into the microfilm. Thus whoever had done it had a miniature type of camera and had the knowledge, and the opportunity, for doing photographic work. But that meant practically everybody nowadays.
B. Who removed it?
Hyett, obviously. It was no job to cut out a frame and patch the preceding and following parts of the film together. And since the warning had appeared between the trailer and the microfilm, probably patched together in any case, you couldn’t tell anything by looking at the film in its present state.
C. Who prepared it?
Gilda wrote, in a column, the names:
Hyett
Belknap
Casti
Parry
Sandys
Cameron
Ignotus
Hyett was the obvious suspect. He made superb photographs, stills and movies, plain and colored. He gave illustrated travelogues, in aid of properly patronized charities, on “Fabled Isles of the Ægean,” on “Highways and Byways of the Peloponnesus.” The microfilm was in his office. He had every opportunity.
But what motive? Surely he wasn’t trying to teach himself moral lessons?
Probably he was planning to frighten somebody. By putting the film in the hands of someone who had reason to be frightened, he would give that someone the scare of his life.
Who was that someone? Most likely Hyett planned to substitute his prepared film for the film in someone else’s hands. The films were all exactly alike, with identical Library labels on the reel.
Belknap, Casti, and Parry had the other films.
Belknap? Did Hyett have some reason to suspect that Belknap had committed murder? Specifically, the murder of Lucie Coindreau?
But that brought her back to the question why Belknap should have murdered Lucie. Gilda had gone over all this before and had found no reasonable answer.
She thought, with a smile, of Francis’s speculation on the virginity of Belknap. She would like to bet that he was, shall we say, unsullied. He was a perfect example of the successful sublimation of the sex-instinct, if you wanted to be Freudian. She could not believe that there was some sort of emotional relation between him and Lucie. Love, in his case, would be as obvious as—as eczema. It was just ridiculous.
Casti? That earnest little fellow? Certainly the disappearance of Lucie cleared the way for his advancement. Ambitious people, she knew, had murdered for ambition. There were some very exalted examples in history, ancient and modern. And in this case only a single impulsive push was required. Still, it was hard to believe. The contrast between the terribleness of the deed and the meanness of the end was too great. No, it wasn’t likely.
But there was more to it than that. There was the story that Casti and Lucie had had a love affair, a passionate, thoroughgoing love affair. Love turned to hate. That was enough to satisfy a writer, or a reader, of mystery stories. Enough to satisfy a jury.
And still, it didn’t seem likely. . . .
Parry?
Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense!
But she wished she knew a little more about Parry. Not so much what he had actually done as what he actually was. He was like an open house, in a way, in which everyone was invited to wander at will, to make oneself at ease, to pick up and examine the objects of art. But there was one room you must never enter. Bluebeard’s secret room, she thought with a shiver.
Parry had not been very convincing in his denial that he had ever had an affair with Lucie. Of course, she didn’t really care if he had. She wasn’t a prude, she hoped. But she did wish he weren’t so careful. And that she could be sure he was telling the truth.
Supposing, now, he had had an affair with Lucie. And that she was jealous. And making trouble. How far would Francis go with someone who was making trouble?
She didn’t know.
But nonsense, nonsense!
Then there was Sandys. Could Hyett have been trying to frighten Sandys? He had, to be sure, no copy of the microfilm. But Hyett could have found some pretext to get him to look at one.
In fact, come to think of it, Sandys had been the first person to be informed of the mysterious warning. True, it had disappeared by the time he had reached Hyett’s workshop. Why had Hyett removed it? Cold feet, perhaps. Or a taste for mystery. Or perhaps merely because he had achieved his purpose, of alarming Sandys.
But why should Sandys have murdered Lucie?
If there was any motive, it was hidden.
Cameron? Cameron was out.
But not necessarily. Cameron, the general handyman of the Library, had made the microfilms in the first place, in his workshop in the Library. Hyett could have planned to send him the film, with a request that the trailer be lengthened or something. While working on it, Cameron would inevitably have seen the warning.
Motive? Only the horrible motive she had already thought of. But that was possible, certainly.
Then there was Ignotus.
Perhaps the assistant, Elmer Drexel? He might have patched in the warning, in order to frighten one of the others. Or, being somewhat on the skittish side mentally, he might have been frightening himself. Possible. But not very.
There was another possibility. Suppose one of the five, or Ignotus, had prepared the warning and put it on Hyett’s desk, in place of Hyett’s own microfilm? According to this supposition, Hyett, recognizing the warning, had immediately removed it from the film.
Possible. Anyone might have heard or seen or merely suspected something and have chosen this melodramatic means of alarming Hyett. For the means was melodramatic, certainly. If the suspicious person had been willing to do the simple, obvious thing, he would merely have sent his warning as an anonymous letter, by mail.
Gilda got up, realizing that she had been sitting on her right leg, which now felt as though it had been frozen up to mid-thigh. She shook herself, walked around the room, lit a cigarette, and sat down.
There were some other queer things that came into it. Casti and the drawer in the French Seminary. Papoose. How did a papoose get into it?
Well, there didn’t seem to be any answer. She would try to stop thinking about it. Get a little music, calm down, go to sleep.
She crumpled the paper and threw it in the waste-basket. She turned on the radio and found a station that was broadcasting old favorites from the operas, interspersed with anxious, motherly appeals to music-lovers to correct their stomach acidity.
The music did not soothe her. Someone was trying to tell her something. Was it the soprano, trumpeting her arias? Or an interloping voice, doing its best to ride the waves of ether to her ear? Or was it something deep in her memory, struggling to rise to the surface of her conscious mind?
She snapped off the radio, went to the waste-basket, and fished out the crumpled sheet. She smoothed it out and stared at it for a long time. Then she crumpled it again and threw it viciously into the waste-basket.
Chapter X
IT WAS the custom of the members of the Faculty Club to gather (or, as some preferred to say, to “forgather”) in the smoking-room after dinner. There the events of the day were reviewed, and light, digestive conversation indulged in, to the accompaniment of sucking pipes.
On this Thursday evening several of the bachelors, with certain of the married men whose wives were out of town and whose maids were taking maid’s day out, were there gathered, or forgathered. The early comers picked up the popular magazines and glanced at them casually. The later comers appeared, looked for the popular magazines, saw them lying unregarded in the laps of the talkers, and waited patiently or impatiently. From time to time someone drifted in or drifted out. According to the custom of the smoking-room, greetings and farewells were dispensed with.
“I hear you made a Doctor of Philosophy this afternoon,” said Professor Caleb of Education to Parry.
“Yes. A woman named McGee. Majors in E
nglish, minor in Dramatics. She had a thesis on the length of the sentence in certain modern authors. She has been counting the words in sentences since 1935. She proved conclusively that some authors use longer sentences than others. But I forget which.”
“How did the exam go?”
“Very well. Mr. Gosse, the big Milton man, you know, asked some brilliant questions, and Mr. Bury, the big Chaucer man, shone in his cross-examination. He made the candidate cry three times. Of course, it wasn’t like that great Doctor’s Oral three years ago, when he brought the candidate to a fit of hysteria. I didn’t do so badly myself, though I felt I wasn’t quite at the top of my form. I asked several questions that neither the big Milton man nor the big Chaucer man could have answered, though they pretended they could.”
“Did you pass her?”
“Certainly. We were all very pleased.”
Professor Belknap, who hated Parry’s tone of levity about serious matters, changed the subject.
“I hear that two girls have been quietly dropped by recommendation of the Dean of Women.”
“What for? Spots on their morals?” asked Professor Hyett.
“I imagine so.”
“What gripes me,” said Professor Coffman of Psychology warmly, “is that they don’t drop the young men who are presumably involved. Why take it out on the poor girls? It probably isn’t their fault.”
“It has always been presumed to be their fault,” said Professor Belknap. “The lawgivers, and society too, have always said that the woman is to blame. If a man attacks and a woman yields, the woman is to be punished for yielding, while the man becomes a kind of hero.”
“And you think that’s right?”
“Not according to your theories about the equality of the sexes. But it must be right according to the judgment of history. Men in all times and places have felt it to be right, by an instinct deeper than logic. So it is right. Women offend against society by being temptresses.”
“Women offend against society by being women, then? That’s nonsense, my dear Belknap!”
“I don’t think so. I think it is a truth too profound for the Department of Psychology.”
The Widening Stain Page 10