“You didn’t patch it into the film yourself, for a joke, like?”
“No, sir. I would never have done such a thing.” Cameron seemed genuinely shocked.
“Well, somebody did. Unless everybody’s lying around here.” The Lieutenant glared balefully about. He seemed to be searching for a masterly question to ask. Finding none, he took another stick of gum.
“I beg your pardon,” Dr. Sandys interrupted tactfully. “I see that Mr. Casti is in the outer office.”
“All right. That’ll be all, Cameron. I’ll let you know when I want you again. Don’t go on any week-end trips.”
“Thank you, sir.” Cameron bowed respectfully and left the room.
He was very convincing, thought Gilda. He had given a perfect demonstration of how to behave when being questioned by the police. Almost too perfect. If anything could be almost too perfect. She remembered inconsequently how she had been lectured by Mr. Bury, the big Chaucer man of the English Department, for saying “too perfect,” since perfection admits of nothing more or less. And “almost too perfect” would probably send Mr. Bury into a frenzy. But come, come, pay attention.
Professor Casti was nervous. His face and fingers twitched. He collided with the desk and the chair, and had difficulty in sitting down. His state seemed to cheer Lieutenant Kennedy.
“Take it easy, prof; take it easy. Make yourself at home. You heard about the death of Prof Hyett?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, I just called you in for a little routine questioning. You don’t need to get excited. Just a little routine questioning.” He rolled and smacked his gum ominously, as if preparing to devour the witness horridly.
“Where was you at ten o’clock last night?”
“Why, why— At ten o’clock? I was in my apartment, working on a little problem. Yes, I was in my apartment, I think.”
The Lieutenant’s voice dropped to a bellow. “You just think? You don’t know?”
“Why, if you put it that way, I suppose I know, I think. Or I mean I do know. Because I went up to my apartment after dinner. And I just stayed there working.”
“Didn’t go out at all?”
“No. Or yes, yes! Come to think of it, I did go out. I was tired of working, so I went out for a little walk.”
“What for?”
“Just to clear my brain.”
“Put down he went out for a walk to clear his brain,” said the Lieutenant to the Sergeant, in a tone of heavy sarcasm. To Professor Casti: “Did you see anybody while you was clearing your brain?”
“No; no. I don’t think so. I don’t remember. I looked into the smoking-room when I stepped out, to see if there was anybody there. But the room was empty.”
“Well, that was certainly too bad. The room was empty. About what time was that?”
“I don’t know. Really I don’t know.”
“What time would you guess it was?”
“Oh, maybe ten o’clock or so. Because I walked around for perhaps half an hour or so, and then I came back to the Club and puttered around a little and went to bed, and I usually go to bed about eleven or a little later.”
“You don’t look at your watch when you go to bed?”
“Yes. But I didn’t notice the time especially. So I suppose it was about the usual time.”
“Ho. And you didn’t see anybody?”
“No.”
“Didn’t see Prof Hyett around anywhere?”
“No.”
“What time you get up this morning?”
“Why, at seven. I always get up at seven. I have an eight o’clock class. French 3.”
“What time you have breakfast? And whereabouts?”
“In the Club. At half past seven. I always have breakfast at half past seven.”
“All alone?”
“No. I had breakfast with Mr. Caleb of Education. There were several others in the dining-room. I didn’t notice particularly.”
Lieutenant Kennedy was feeling in his pocket. He pulled out the thesis slip and flashed it close before Professor Casti’s eyes. Casti recoiled, nearly upsetting his chair.
“What’s that? What’s that?”
“Suppose you tell me.”
“I don’t know. I never saw it before.”
“It seemed to surprise you.”
“Of course it surprised me. I thought you were going to hit me in the face. And when I saw it—well, of course I’ve been thinking about murder since I heard about poor Mr. Hyett.”
“You never saw nothing like it before?”
“No.”
“That microfilm of yours; you’ve examined it closely?”
“The Filius Getronis? Certainly.”
“Nothing like this on the microfilm?”
“Oh no, no. Dear me, no.”
“Um. You and this Prof Hyett, you was pretty good friends?”
“Oh yes. Very good friends, I would say. I have been deeply afflicted by the news.”
“Do you know anybody who might have wanted to do him in?”
“No, no. It’s quite incredible.”
“Well, I guess that’ll be all. You got any questions, Mr. Wither?” He turned to the young man from the District Attorney’s office.
Mr. Wither had no questions.
Professor Casti was dismissed. As he left he bumped into the side of the door.
“Hey!” shouted Lieutenant Kennedy. “If you see Prof Belknap or Parry out there, send them in.”
Professor Casti smiled weakly.
Professor Belknap entered, courteous but annoyed. He sat down, fingering his Phi Beta Kappa key like an amulet. It was soon evident to Gilda that he regarded the Lieutenant as a dull fellow, one of the bores he was accustomed to enduring in the way of business. He made Gilda think of the professors she had interviewed when, a naïve sophomore, she had been a competitor for the college paper. The same air of polite fortitude. The way the Sphinx looks at tourists.
He reported that at ten the previous evening he had been in his rooms, reading. He had seen no one; he had gone to bed, according to his custom, at about half past eleven. He had come down to breakfast at about a quarter to eight. He had breakfasted alone, reading his newspaper, as was his invariable habit.
“But if you want a corroborating witness,” he added, “I can refer you to the student waiter, and to several others of the faculty who were having breakfast. Mr. Parry was there; and Mr. Coffman; and I could probably think of several others.”
“We don’t question your word at all, prof,” replied Lieutenant Kennedy. “Just routine, you know; just routine.”
“Certainly. Just the routine examination of suspects in a murder case.” Professor Belknap smiled.
Lieutenant Kennedy’s dramatic presentation of the thesis slip with its injunction against murder was, relatively, a failure. Professor Belknap started, indeed, at the Lieutenant’s gesture; he was not disconcerted. He denied that he had ever seen the slip before, and that a similar warning had appeared on his microfilm.
“You know, that suggests something,” he volunteered. “Early yesterday evening, just after dinner in fact, quite a group had forgathered in the smoking-room. We were talking about murder, but rather in a tone of badinage. And Mr. Hyett suddenly exclaimed, in a very strange manner: ‘Thou shalt do no murder!’ I think we were all somewhat taken aback.”
Lieutenant Kennedy’s gum was stilled during a moment’s meditation.
“Well, that’s something! So it looks like this Prof Hyett was making a warning! And maybe he wrote out this here slip for a warning, too. And then he got choked to death for his trouble!”
“There is another possibility,” said Professor Belknap, mildly. “Maybe this warning was directed to him. And his curious remark in the Faculty Club: ‘Thou shalt do no murder,’ may have been prompted by remorse.”
“Remorse for what?”
“Remorse for murder.”
“What murder?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Well, I guess you’re talking about that Coindreau accident case. And you’re trying to suggest that this Prof Hyett did in this Miss Coindreau, and then he got sorry and wrote himself warning notes, which he photographed and patched into films of a manuscript, and then he busted into the safe and took the manuscript and ate it and strangled himself!”
“Someone else could have written the warning note to him, and inserted the warning in his copy of the microfilm. And someone else could have strangled him, in revenge for the death of Mademoiselle Coindreau.”
“And how did he open the locked press? And the safe? And what for? One thing, we’ll soon find out what typewriter this note was written on. Um. What’s happened to that manuscript, young feller?”
“What, you don’t mean the Filius Getronis! Is it missing?”
“Where is it, I’m asking you?”
“The Filius Getronis! It couldn’t be! It was in the safe!”
“It ain’t in the safe now.”
“But this is appalling! The Filius Getronis! We must get it back! Dr. Sandys, we must make every effort to get it back!”
Gilda was interested to note that Professor Belknap was so much more excited about the loss of the manuscript than he had been about the loss of Professor Hyett. Dr. Sandys uttered something like a groan.
Lieutenant Kennedy champed his gum.
“Well, I guess that’s all, prof. You got any questions, Mr. Wither? No? Prof, if this Prof Parry is out there, send him in.”
Francis Parry entered, his jauntiness barely subdued by a solemnity proper to the occasion. He informed the Lieutenant that he had spent the previous evening in his rooms, reading, correcting early themes, and writing letters. He had not gone out after ten o’clock. He had seen no one. When the Lieutenant flashed the thesis slip at him, he was taken aback, but not overcome. When questioned, he remembered the scene in the smoking-room, and Professor Hyett’s exclamation of “Thou shalt do no murder!” which had seemed rather peculiar at the time. He had no theories about the death of Professor Hyett. He was shocked to hear of the disappearance of the manuscript, but could give no helpful suggestions toward the solution of the mystery.
“Well, I guess that’s all, prof,” said the Lieutenant.
Parry rose and nodded good-by. He turned toward Gilda and made a gobbling grimace.
“Hey, what you doing?” cried the watchful Lieutenant.
“I was inviting Miss Gorham to lunch.”
“Miss Gorham regrets,” said Gilda.
The Lieutenant chewed moodily.
“Say, just to make it complete, where was you, Prof Sandys, at ten o’clock last night?”
Dr. Sandys roused from his thoughts.
“Me? Why—why—I was working here in the Library. I dropped in here from the Faculty Club. I stayed on until nearly closing-time.”
“All alone?”
“Yes. All alone. I met some people going out. Mr. Noble of Economics. We were in the lobby when the exit bell rang at ten twenty-five. I remember he made some joke about escaping in time. Then I went back to the Club.”
“Um. How about you, Miss Gorham?”
“I was home. Reading. All alone.”
“How about this morning?”
“I got my own breakfast. I came up on the bus at a quarter to nine. I suppose I could have strangled Professor Hyett, rifled the safe, and spent the night at the Library. Then I could have rushed to my apartment at eight, changed quickly, and caught the eight forty-five bus. But I would have missed my breakfast.”
“Huh. Well, I guess that’s all for now. We got a lot of routine work to do, hey, Mr. Wither? We’ll just get going on this case. None of you folks leave town.”
He spat his gum into the Librarian’s waste-basket. Probably the first time in a hundred years there was gum in the Librarian’s waste-basket, thought Gilda.
Chapter XIII
BEFORE ENTERING the catalogue room, Gilda paused. Most of the staff and some of the faculty were certainly gathered there, putting their imaginations together. The girls would have done practically no work during the morning, and what they had done would have to be done over. Her entrance would assemble the whole group about her, demanding news. Her gorge rose at the thought. She didn’t feel like going over the whole dirty business in detail. And she was tired of noise and bluster. What she wanted was peace and quiet.
It was nearly lunch-time. She could run over to the University Union. Fortunately she had clung to her bag throughout the morning.
Without a hat? Certainly without a hat. If anyone wanted to worry about it, they would take her for one of the free spirits from the Graduate School of Social Studies.
She put on her luncheon face and strolled to the Union. She dismissed the idea of feeding in the cafeteria, where long lines of students and staff members prodded one another in the kidneys with aluminum trays, and where they ate placidly amid the piled refuse of previous feeders. She dismissed the Blue Room, where one was served with Economy Specials on bare tables, with paper napkins. She entered the restaurant popularly known as the Tablecloth Room, which was commonly deserted, except for visiting parents, guests of the University, and a group of fastidious professors who liked to believe that linen napkins enhanced their morale. Here she had a table to herself, and quiet.
She experimented briefly with the first course, Tomato Juice Delight, an invention of the College of Home Economics, a blob of peach ice cream in tomato juice. And she let her thoughts run on their way.
Whoever had done the deed—why not call him the murderer?—had had access to the locked press and had known the combination of the safe. That suggested immediately Dr. Sandys. It meant that Dr. Sandys was rifling his own safe and ruining his own career. Perhaps he was interrupted by Mr. Hyett, and he strangled the intruder. Perhaps. But aside from the fact that Dr. Sandys had always seemed the soul of uprightness, a jealous guardian of his Library’s treasures, and just not the sort of person to commit murder and grand larceny, Gilda felt certain that the crime was somehow connected with the death of Lucie Coindreau. And if Dr. Sandys was implicated in that, he must be a homicidal maniac. All right, maybe he was a homicidal maniac. Homicidal maniacs exist; they are just like ordinary people until their mania seizes them. Dr. Sandys, as well as anyone else, might be one.
The second course appeared. It was another creation of the College of Home Economics: a combination of sweet potatoes, bananas, and peanut butter, wrapped in bacon, crowned with marshmallow, and crouching on a leaf of lettuce.
“Would you rather have a chop?” said the sickly-looking student waitress, dully repeating the usual formula.
“No; I don’t care; just bring me some black coffee,” said Gilda. She separated the dainty into its component parts and ate them separately with rolls and butter. She avoided the surprise in the center of each roll: a ball of cheese, a piece of ginger, a maraschino cherry. She recalled a remark of Francis’s, that he wouldn’t be astonished to find a Black Widow spider in the middle of a Home Economics roll.
Supposing the murderer was not Sandys. Maybe he was a professional safe-robber, who could feel the tumblers of the lock with sensitive fingertips, pared to the blood. Why don’t they use a stethoscope some time? Or one of these laboratory devices that amplify sound a thousand times? But this was mere fancy. Much more likely that the thief had learned the combination of the safe from Sandys. Did Sandys talk in his sleep? Had he in some access of folly told the combination to another? Had someone wormed it out of him by threats or bribes? Not likely, certainly; but after all, a possibility.
Of course, the previous Librarians had known the combination. Perhaps they had told—
Ah! The last Librarian was old Dr. Pickard, the cousin of Professor Hyett! They had been very close friends. Hyett had practically nursed Dr. Pickard through his final illness, a year ago. Perhaps in a moment of sick and aged folly the old Librarian had told Hyett the combination, and had given him the opportunity to duplicate the key to the locked pre
ss. Hyett was—had been —very handy with tools; probably he had plenty of equipment in his workshop to cut a blank key down to size.
This was good; this was excellent. Perhaps then Hyett had gone into the locked press and opened the safe and removed the manuscript, for some purpose of his own. And the thief had followed him, murdered him, and taken the manuscript.
Why? For gain? Or driven by the overpowering lust of the collector? Or, possibly, as a blind, to conceal the true reason?
In other words, was the murder a by-product of the theft, or the theft a by-product of the murder?
No answer.
There was another possibility. Perhaps the thief had known that Hyett possessed a key to the locked press and knew the combination of the safe. An incautious remark in the Faculty Club might have revealed Hyett’s knowledge. And the thief could have forced Hyett to open the safe, and could then have killed him, on the principle that dead men tell no tales. Or again, the thief, knowing the combination, could have been surprised at work by Hyett and could have taken his grim revenge.
Hyett certainly had suspected something, or known something. Gilda remembered his warning to her, on the night of the Nobles’ dinner, to keep out of the Library mystery. But what he had warned her about was inquiring into the death of Lucie Coindreau. So, as her woman’s instinct (a detective instinct) had told her, the two deaths in the Wilmerding Library were connected. How?
The waitress brought her dessert, a fruit salad heavily lathered with whipped cream. Gilda carefully scraped off the cream into a little puddle at the side of her plate.
There was also, she thought, the whole question of time. The murderer, Ignotus, could have done his deed any time between ten and midnight. No one had an alibi for those hours. Not Sandys, Casti, Belknap, Parry, nor Cameron. Nor, in fact, Gilda Gorham. Except that she would hardly be suspected of choking a man to death with her bare hands. Not that it was impossible, however. She could have got a good grip on that soft elderly neck, with her thumb-knuckles on the windpipe, and simply pressed. Brr-rr! She realized that she was crooking her thumbs and slowly strangling her napkin.
Supposing Ignotus had done his work after closing-time. How, then, did he escape from the Library? If his method was to wait till eight in the morning and then walk out, Ignotus was not Casti, nor Belknap, nor Parry, who had breakfast alibis; nor Sandys, who was outside the Library at closing-time. That left Cameron.
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