Finally she had moved so she was standing between the two giant boilers, seeing nothing but shadow to the far wall, hearing nothing but the stream, the flames, and the thunder of her own heart.
Go, Jen! something warned her then. Go, now, before it’s too late.
But she had taken only one step when she heard the rustling ahead in the dark.
Rats? she wondered and shuddered.
And then, as she continued to stare and her vision adjusted, she saw something moving, back by the wall. It was too large to be a rat, too large for any animal that might have been trapped down there. She licked her lips nervously and flattened herself against the back wall, licked her lips a second time, and sidled toward the corner.
Halfway there she stopped.
The figure she had seen was crawling along the wall, and her eyes widened when she recognized him.
“Dr. Overbrook!” she cried.
And Borden Overbrook looked up and lifted a hand in weak greeting before collapsing to the floor.
Seven
“HAS IT ONLY BEEN A COUPLE OF DAYS?” OVERBROOK asked in weary amazement. “It feels like years.”
They were still in the basement, sitting on a pile of musty old rags in one corner, hidden from the rest of the room by a screen of cartons. Jennifer, after recovering from the shock of seeing her ecology instructor alive, had thrown the mop aside and run to him. He was conscious, but because of his weight it took her several minutes to help him to the bedding he had gathered for himself, and a few minutes more before she was able to help him to sit up against the wall.
“Well,” he had said hoarsely, “we meet again, Miss Field. This is getting to be a habit.”
The last time she had seen him, he and Pauline Klopher had been riding his motorcycle back to the Thaler campus after they had uncovered the alien hideout behind Ballad Hill, just past a small lake called Witch’s Eye. Jennifer had been in Conrad’s old car, with Conrad, Marysue, and Lee, following the motorcycle. Someone had run the car off the road. It had been badly damaged, and by the time they had been able to continue on foot something had happened to Overbrook and Klopher.
They had found the motorcycle abandoned at the side of the road, but the instructor and the librarian were missing.
Overbrook smiled as Jennifer told him about the rest of that night and the following days. “Incredible,” he said. “I can’t believe you haven’t said a word about what happened.”
“How could we?” she asked, whispering. “So far, you and Mrs. Klopher are the only adults who know we’re telling the truth. The police wouldn’t believe us, and we didn’t dare try to make up a story. We were—to be honest, we were too scared.”
“I don’t blame you. I haven’t exactly been laughing myself to sleep at night either.”
He was filthy. His hair and face were covered with smudges and clots of dust and grime, and his bandit’s mustache looked as if it were coated with grease. His dark trousers and shirt were the same, and torn in spots. And when he wrapped himself in his black leather jacket, she could see that it was in the same miserable condition.
She remembered thinking that he had looked too young to be a visiting professor from an Ivy League school; now, she thought, he looked like a man twenty years older.
He looked away when he saw her examining him, and she touched his arm in apology. He smiled gently and explained that he and Pauline had been speeding toward campus when a car, coming out of the dark with its headlights out, cut them off. Pauline had immediately leaped from the bike and raced down a slope into the woods, but his foot had gotten snared as he tried to jump off and run at the same time. He fell. Someone, it was too dark to tell who, had grabbed him while at least two others had chased after Mrs. Klopher. There had been a fight, and Borden was just able to scramble free and vanish into the trees. He had hidden there most of the night, but when he tried to get back to his apartment in one of the faculty boardinghouses, he spotted someone watching the building.
“I am not an outdoorsman,” he said ruefully. “And it was getting cold, if you remember. I didn’t favor hiding in the woods all night, and I didn’t know anyone in town very well, so I came to the first place I could think of—here.”
Though he had suffered no broken bones or other serious injuries, something must have been wrong because he awoke the next morning with a fever. A high one. It left him too weak to do anything but hide in the corner and pray no one would find him.
He had no idea what had happened to Pauline, but, though he was worried, he didn’t fear the worst. She was, he thought, a resourceful woman, and a competent one.
But Jennifer was afraid that wouldn’t be enough. The aliens had so far contented themselves with merely frightening them; but when Mrs. Klopher discovered the whole reason for the aliens’ being there, the picture had changed.
Now, Mrs. Klopher and all she knew were gone.
Suddenly Jennifer remembered where they were and scrambled to her feet.
“We have to get you out of here,” she said. “You can’t stay, and the dean wants to see me. I think it’s starting, Dr. Overbrook. I really think the assault is starting.”
He nodded and pushed himself up stiffly, leaned against the wall for a moment, and rubbed a hand across his face. With an effort, and a refusal of her help, he struggled into his leather jacket.
“Dr. Overbrook, look, can’t I—”
He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Jennifer,” he said. “I think, for the time being, we can dispense with the ‘doctor’ stuff. Borden will be fine, though my former wife told me it did make me sound like a dairy cow.”
She only nodded as she maneuvered around the cartons and looked for the exit. Borden came up behind her, put a hand against the small of her back, and guided her through the maze of aisles until they came to a series of steps in the wall. As far as she could tell, they were just opposite the staircase she had come down, and she groaned silently when she realized how she might have left without finding him. It was, she thought, about the only piece of decent luck she had had all day.
Until she remembered the envelope.
Quickly she touched her pocket to be sure it was still there, then followed the man up the stairs to a wide door at the top. He put a finger to his lips and pressed an ear against the metal, then eased the crossbar down without releasing the catch.
“We’re at the back,” he said. “I want you to go out first.”
“But—”
“You have to! If I go, and someone sees me, it’ll all be over. The one thing we don’t need now is the police, and they’ll definitely want to see me. I need food, a night’s rest in a decent bed, and time to think. All right?”
She wanted to ask about Mrs. Klopher, but she knew that he was right. Having one adult ally was, for the moment, an overriding concern. Once he was himself again, then they could find the missing librarian. And then perhaps they could tackle Jennifer’s plan for getting the police out to the woods.
“Okay,” she agreed, and when he pressed the crossbar all the way down, she slipped out and acted as if she had every right to be where she was. The act, however, was wasted. To left and right, the lawn that swept down a gentle slope to the forest at the back of the campus was empty. Farther down and to the right, where the grass leveled out beside the gymnasium, a class was engaged in a game of softball. When she looked up at the Union’s second story, the library windows reflected only the overcast sky.
She tapped the door twice, and when Borden Overbrook came into the open, she took his hand and without thinking led him to the back corner of the building. She looked down the gap between her dorm and the Union, and there was no one on the walkway at the front. They hurried across the gap, nearly running. Jennifer wondered if she’d have the nerve to carry out her idea.
Luck remained with them.
They reached her dormitory, and dashed through the fire exit and up the side staircase to the second floor. Borden Overbrook started grinning, and she tol
d herself she was out of her mind to bring a man in there, an instructor to boot. If the school ever found out, they’d lock her up and throw away the key.
A moment, then, while she checked the hall and tiptoed to her left, to the corner where her room was.
Again their luck held, and she ran back for Overbrook and practically dragged him into the room. The door slammed. The lock turned. And she sagged against the wall while the instructor made his way to one of the room’s two armchairs and dropped into it with a sigh Jennifer was sure could be heard all the way to Staines. Then he looked at the prints on the walls, the desk, the books, the view of the hills outside.
“So this is how the other half lives,” he said.
Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to smile. She was too uncomfortable having a man in her room, and she knew she couldn’t count on keeping him hidden for very long.
“Well!” he said so loudly that Jennifer knew he was uncomfortable as well. And when she dropped onto her bed, she allowed him that smile.
“You know,” Overbrook said, “what I don’t understand is what you were doing in that basement. It isn’t exactly the hot spot of Thaler’s social life.”
That was when she remembered the envelope.
Hastily filling him in on why she’d been in the library, she pulled her jacket into her lap and took the envelope from the pocket. She hefted it, turned it over, then held it up for him to see. After tossing the coat aside, she moved to the foot of the bed and tore the envelope open with trembling fingers. Inside were sheets of notebook paper folded in thirds, and when she opened them she knew that what she had in her hands were Pauline Klopher’s notes.
Trying to keep her excitement in check, she spread them out on the bed and stared at them, first eagerly and then with a growing sense of dismay.
“I can’t read them,” she said. “Borden, I can’t read them!”
She handed one page to the instructor, who frowned at it and wiggled his fingers until she gave him the rest of the sheets.
“Can you make anything out of them?”
“I’m not sure,” he said distractedly. “They’re in a kind of shorthand—some words, some abbreviations, and the rest is symbols. It must be a private code. Tell you what,” he added. “I’ll try to make this stuff out if you’ll be an angel and get me something to wash this garbage off my face. I feel like I’ve just been rescued from the gutter.”
Jennifer agreed, grabbed two washcloths from her dresser, and unlocked the door. After a check of the hall she raced down to the shower room, soaked both cloths, and snatched up a bar of soap someone had left on one of the basins. On her way back she heard laughter on the front stairwell and broke into a run, slamming the door behind her with such force when she reentered her room that Borden jumped to his feet and looked as if he were about to leap out the window.
“It’s all right,” she said after getting her breath back. “I just scared myself, that’s all. Did you learn anything?”
“I’m not sure,” he said as he picked up the note-paper. “But first, a little cleaning music, please.”
He took the cloths and the soap and stood in front of her mirror, muttering at his reflection. Jennifer continued to scan the papers, seeing a reference here and there that she recognized: one to the Witch’s Eye, and some scientific notations that made her wonder if the librarian had discovered the exact atmosphere the creatures needed in order to survive, and the woman had written “skeleton key” at least four times that Jennifer could see.
“Skeleton key,” she said to herself.
“Yes,” Borden answered, drying his face on one of her towels. “I saw that too.”
“What does it mean?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. A skeleton key is an all-purpose key. In theory it should open any lock of a certain type.”
“But what locks?”
“I don’t know, Jennifer. I don’t even know if she means the locks on a door or if she’s speaking figuratively.”
Again she tried to make sense of what she was looking at, gave up, and handed the papers back to her instructor. She could see that he was close to exhaustion, but he couldn’t sleep then. That would take time. And time was the one thing they were rapidly running out of.
Time!
With a gasp she looked at her watch and realized that Marysue should have returned long ago. She explained that Beauford would be the one to get them all safely off campus.
Borden frowned. “But what about what’s-her-name? Holt? Doesn’t she have a car?”
“She’s gone,” Jennifer said as she slipped back into her jacket. “She left a while ago, and I have no idea where she is.”
“So what are you—”
“Just don’t move,” she told him. “Wait here until I get back. Three knocks, two, and then two, okay? Don’t open the door to anyone else.”
Impressed, he nodded. “You do know what you’re doing, right?”
“No,” she admitted. “If I did, I wouldn’t feel so much like screaming.”
Eight
JENNIFER LEFT THE ROOM TO THE SOUND OF HIS QUIET laughter, hurried down the hall, and swore vehemently to herself when she could not rouse Marysue. If Beauford doesn’t get back here with the car pretty soon, she thought as she ran to the front stairs, taking them down two at a time, I don’t know what I’ll do.
She hastened to the front door and glanced into the common room. Only a handful of girls, curled on the couches, reading; in the study room to the left, the tables were empty, waiting for the evening study time.
Once on the porch, she vacillated, not knowing which way to turn, which way to run. She couldn’t see the entire student parking lot and could not see the tell-tale red of the Thunderbird. Nor was she able to pick out either Lee or Conrad from among the few boys who walked between the buildings.
Please! she wished silently and started for the Student Union, staying close to the posts that held up the porch and walkway roofs, in case she spotted the dean. No one spoke to her, though a few girls looked at her oddly, and by the time she reached the Union she was frantic. They had to be there; they just had to. It was almost an hour since Marysue had left for town, and even though she wasn’t a recklessly fast driver, it wouldn’t take that long to get to the garage and back, even picking up the boys along the way.
Calm yourself, she ordered. Just take it easy and use your head.
A deep breath, another, and she was about to reach for the door handle when Dean Dramon put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
She couldn’t find the words, couldn’t create the excuse, and couldn’t find a reason to delay when he began leading her toward the administration building. He said nothing. He nodded to other students, had a brief whispered word with a hurrying instructor, and all the time kept his hand on her shoulder, not obviously gripping it, but the slight pressure let her know that it would do her no good to try to get away.
A silent prayer for someone, anyone, to appear and save her, and they were through the high double doors, across the white marble floor of the foyer, and past the fan-shaped staircase. There were other open doors off the foyer through which she could see secretaries and clerks working at their desks, but none of them looked up, and she didn’t bother to try to attract their attention when the man opened a dark oak door and ushered her into his office.
“Sit,” he said, pointing to a black leather chair.
The room was huge, lined with shelves, and dominated by a highly polished walnut desk. Dramon sat behind it and rested his elbows on the top.
Jennifer sat on the edge of her chair, her hands clasped tightly in her lap. She found it difficult to breathe and even more difficult to keep her expression neutral, but she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was afraid.
“You’ve been in here before,” he said at last.
She nodded, swallowing.
“You’ve been in a lot of places since we last talked,
Miss Field.”
It was an invitation to confess, and she was having no part of it.
The dean sat back and smiled at her, the smile of a hunter who has finally cornered his prey. “You know, I’m willing to wager that your parents have no idea what a troublemaker you are, no idea at all.”
She braced herself, feeling suddenly that soon she was going to have to run.
Dramon held up his right hand in a fist, then slowly uncurled his forefinger and smiled at her again. “First, you are mixed up in some rather strange business that eventually resulted in the destruction of academy property. You even ended up in the hospital for a day or so, as I recall.”
A second finger raised. “There was, as well, the business of your being involved with the death of my predecessor, whose murderer still hasn’t been found. That little affair, I believe, resulted in the death of a policeman.”
Jennifer, her temper overriding the fear that had settled over her like a cloak, stood slowly. The dean showed no outward reaction.
A third finger raised. “And then one night you were seen, by me, leaving one of the faculty houses. Where you had no business being. The same night, I might add, that Mrs. Klopher’s rooms were burglarized and she disappeared. You were visiting Dr. Overbrook. Who is also gone.
“Very strange, Miss Field. Very strange indeed.”
She took the two steps to his desk just as his hand curled back into a fist.
“The phrase is, I believe,” he said, “three strikes and you’re out.”
Heat burned at her cheeks, flared through her stomach. Her knees locked, and her hands clenched tightly in fists at her sides. “You’re not going to expel me,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Oh, no.” His eyes were flat, the corner of his mouth lifted just slightly. “There are no grounds.”
She waited.
Somewhere in the building a telephone rang.
Skeleton Key Page 5
