by Ruth Wade
“Doesn’t either of the Badgers ever say please?” Mike asked in awe.
“It would be a sign of weakness,” said Daly. “Why didn’t you arrest her?”
“Because Bradley, being dead, can’t charge her with threatening his life,” said Mike.
“Then you don’t think she poisoned him?”
“No. But I think I know who did.”
Chapter 15
As they walked slowly back to the College, Mike was fully taken up with answering Daly’s clamorous questions. Daly would allow no careless logic and gradually Mike himself became more and more impressed with the inevitability of his theory. At last Daly said: “Yes, that must be the explanation. I wonder how long it would all have continued if Bradley had not been poisoned.”
“It should never have developed so far at all,” said Mike severely.
“Now, now,” said Daly, wagging his head, “I warned you that university people all live at one remove from life.”
“Sometimes that gives them a real good view of what is happening,” said Mike. “The best hurler is the man on the ditch. Your friend Badger is a clever man.”
“I’m glad you see that.” Daly was delighted with this tribute. “I have a great regard for Badger’s ability. He’s overwhelmed with his family just now, but in a few years’ time he will develop still further.”
“Won’t he be a bit old then?” Mike asked doubtfully. “Not at all. Forty is infantile for a professor.” Although it was long after midnight by the time they reached the College, almost every window was still lit up. It seemed to Mike that there was a slightly mad air about the way in which the lights streamed out across the grass, as if the people who inhabited the College took no cognizance of the ordinary laws of night and day. Or perhaps it was that they were like children who have not yet learned the conventions that rule the world. This same child-like quality seemed to keep them in a state of wonder, highly conducive to the pursuit of research but entirely useless in protecting them from their more scoundrelly colleagues, or in revealing plots. Like children, they expected everything to come out right in the end, and when it did not, they closed their eyes tight until they had succeeded in forgetting that evil existed in the world at all. No other community, Mike thought in exasperation, would have allowed itself to be gulled as this had been. He tried to express some of this to Daly, who nodded and said, a little smugly:
“Yes, we live like the blessed in Paradise, taking no thought for the morrow.”
“There were snakes in Paradise, too,” said Mike. “There should be a few Guards inside every University College in the country to protect the inmates from this kind of thing.”
“Yes, it was too late when you arrived,” said Daly, with a sigh. “By the way, I don’t like that word, ‘inmates’.”
Lewis was in the little porters’ office in the main hall when they went in. He looked pale, and he drooped slightly, but otherwise he seemed to have recovered from his morning’s lapse. He came across to speak to them, trailing an evening paper on the floor as if to show the depth of his scorn for its contents.
“Did you see this rag, Professor?” He pointed down to it. “Our College is disgraced. Things will never be the same again. The President was a nuisance while he was alive, but he seems to be doing just as much harm now that he’s dead.” He dashed away a querulous tear that had splashed on to his chin. “People seem to be turning night into day — there was Professor Fox asking for you a few minutes ago, as cool as if it was midday instead of midnight. And that Guard is waiting in your study as if he owned it. I tried every means of getting him out, but he just wouldn’t go — ”
“It’s all right, Lewis,” said Daly soothingly. “You’ll see that things will improve in a day or two.”
“No, no, they’ll get worse,” Lewis insisted. “I know they will.”
His whining voice followed them up the stairs as he stood in the hall looking after them.
Daly opened the study door. The sergeant was sitting motionless on a straight chair in the middle of the room. He seemed to have made no attempt to entertain himself with a book or newspaper while he waited. Such people always reminded Daly of cab-horses, or cattle at a fair, deriving adequate occupation from their own slow thoughts. The sergeant’s face lit up when he saw Mike.
“I was afraid you might go home for a sleep, sir,” he said. “I wanted to tell you how I spent the evening.”
A word of invitation was enough to start him off on a long and close recital of Bradley’s activities on the day of his death. A great part of the morning had been spent with Mr. Leahy. Porters from every part of the College could testify to the rage of their professors whose lectures had been interrupted so that Leahy could be shown the rooms. Burren, Donovan and Hamilton had mentioned to their students later that they were contemplating murdering Bradley. Burren’s students had approached the sergeant, eagerly offering to lay a trap for him and deliver him up alive. They had been palpably disappointed when MacCarthy had refused.
Bradley had spent the afternoon at home as he usually did. Nellie had already told MacCarthy about the people who had called on him then, and he had brought her over the list again for closer details. First had come Professor Daly. He had stayed almost for an hour, and had been seen to the door by Bradley himself with remarkable cordiality. Miss Milligan had come next. She had arrived like a lion and gone out like a lamb, also ushered by Bradley himself. Nellie had observed these things through the open door of the dining-room where she had been laying the table for dinner. After Miss Milligan had left, the President had come into the dining-room and told her that there would be two extra people for dinner.
The next person to whom Nellie had opened the door was Professor Delaney. He had seemed very excited and had said that he must see the President at once, on a very urgent matter connected with rats. He panted on her heels while she opened the study door to announce him, and darted in under her outstretched arm before she had time to speak. As she closed the door she heard him start off in a shrill monologue, interjected now and then with soothing noises from the President. She confessed without embarrassment that she had listened to the fun for a moment before going back to her work. Delaney had been pleading to be allowed to try one final plan for exterminating the rats for good and all. When he paused for breath the President had seemed to be giving him his blessing, but Delaney had paid no attention. He had continued to pour out his tirade as if he had received no answer at all. Then Nellie had tired of it and had gone back to the dining-room.
“I wonder why Bradley didn’t have in a firm of rodent exterminators,” said Daly thoughtfully. “You know those fellows with bandy legs and knee-breeches so that the rats can hop between their knees. You give them the run of the building and they go all over it, into every nook and cranny, with a special gas. According to Delaney, Bradley would have had to keep out of their way.”
Mike said:
“Yes, that would have satisfied Professor Delaney. But Bradley did not want people looking into every nook and cranny of the College. What was the end of that interview?”
MacCarthy said that it had taken the President about half an hour to soothe Delaney with promises and get him out of the house. Ten minutes after he had left, at about five o’clock, the doorbell had sounded again, and Nellie had let in Professors Hamilton and Fox together. Hamilton had waited in the hall while Fox went into the study. He had chatted to Nellie through the dining-room doorway in the most amiable fashion. Fox’s interview had been a short one, for after no more than ten minutes he had come out alone and had let himself out of the house. Then Hamilton had gone into the study and a few minutes later Nellie, decorously polishing glasses, had heard him shouting at the President about Miss Milligan. She had been afraid to go closer to the door and listen, Nellie said, because that Professor Hamilton was a terror and he would have been sure to catch her. But she had heard Miss Milligan’s name, and presently the President must have soothed him down, because they came out o
f the room arm in arm.
“Bradley was probably arm in arm, all right,’’ Daly murmured, “but not Hamilton. Bradley had a beastly habit of handling people, God rest him.”
That had been the last of the visitors, said MacCarthy, and Nellie had not seen the President again until dinner-time.
“Did he not take tea?” Daly asked.
“Yes,” said MacCarthy, “he nipped out and had it in the drawing-room after Delaney had gone. Nellie said he never gave tea to visitors because he was too mean. She said he’d rather do without his own than give it to a visitor. And by the way, sir, I found out the other things you wanted to know, too. The first one is that Bradley had an overdraft of about seven hundred pounds.”
“An overdraft!” Daly’s shocked tone was almost ridiculous. “Are you sure?”
“I am, so,” said MacCarthy. “He paid in his salary cheque every month and drew out more than he paid in — a very easy way for getting an overdraft.”
“But we all thought Bradley was a wealthy man,” Daly spluttered. “I told you that, Mike, didn’t I? That was one of the reasons why they made him President — I told you — ”
“That was the impression he wanted to give, certainly,” said Mike, remembering Bradley s air of being mysteriously superior to everyone else. “Did he never have money?” he asked the sergeant.
“When he came back from Africa the last time he had about a hundred pounds, his bank manager says. That was nearly gone by the time he got the job here and he has lived from month to month since then. But last week he mentioned that he wanted to open a deposit account as well as his current account, and that he would call about it again in a few days.”
“And have you checked where the people went after the dinner-party?”
“Yourself and Professor Daly came here,” said MacCarthy woodenly. “Tennyson-Smith brought Miss Milligan home. The housekeeper let them in, and she says that they fought with each other until about two o’clock in the morning. She heard the front door banging when the young fellow went away. Perhaps he nipped back here and poisoned the President?” he finished hopefully. “I wouldn’t mind arresting that fellow.”
“It’s not so easy to poison a President,” Daly pointed out. “You can’t just say: ‘Open your mouth and close your eyes,’ and pop the poison in.”
The sergeant was not amused.
“Professor Burren didn’t get home until four in the morning, though he has rooms right here near us. It was the night watchman that told me that. The Badgers went home at once, but we don’t know whether they got into bed and stayed there. I didn’t question any of those professors. I told you I’d be afraid, remember?”
“So long as you got the information,” said Mike soothingly. “What about the ticket?”
The sergeant opened a large envelope which he had been clutching and drew out the little piece of blue paper.
“You should have heard the language of the man that tested that for fingerprints,” he said with satisfaction. “He wanted to know if it had been handed to every monkey in the zoo before he got it. He says there isn’t a hope of learning anything from it.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Mike mildly, reaching for the ticket and putting it away in an inside pocket. “And the forged five-pound notes?”
“Tennyson-Smith gave two of them to a Grafton Street jeweller,” said the sergeant, “and that’s the first time that we have been able to tell where the money came from. I handled them myself and I’d say they’re almost perfect. The fellow in the shop noticed that the lady on one of them had a little squint and he showed it, innocent-like, to another fellow. The two of them were laughing over them hearty when the boss came along and he didn’t see anything to laugh at. There’s terrible excitement over them in the office — I was down there for a few minutes a while ago. I told them to send a few extra lads up here, in case we’d be needing them.”
“Good man. Have they come yet?”
“Not yet. This place is like a flea circus,” said the sergeant restlessly. “There’s always someone hopping in and out, and they never seem to go to sleep.”
“I think we should find Delaney,” said Professor Daly suddenly. “I’m not happy about him at all.”
“That poor man wouldn’t hurt a fly,” said the sergeant. “He’s as innocent as a new-laid egg.”
“I know,” said Daly. “That’s why I want to find him. I think our murderer may see his possibilities — oh, come along, for heaven’s sake.” He paused on his way to the door to add, with a kind of pleading intensity: “It’s Badger who has made me uneasy about him.”
Mike looked at him sharply and then stood up without a word to follow him out of the room. The sergeant came after, heavy-footed. By the time they had reached the corridor Daly had already opened the door of the suite opposite his own. They could see by the sudden droop of his shoulders that he had retained some hope of finding Delaney stooping over his desk, lifting his head with that innocent, gentlemanly, myopic expression, to invite him hospitably in.
Mike came closer and looked over Daly’s shoulder into the room. It had plainly been occupied by Delaney for a very long time. Masses of papers, handwritten in faded ink, were heaped everywhere, coated with layers of dust which varied in thickness according to the length of years of the pile. Magazines and newspapers had collected in drifts in the corners. The desk was a foot deep in still more papers, scattered about with a kind of wild abandon as if a frantic mouse had been gathering nesting material among them. Daly crossed quickly to the desk and looked down at the papers. He lifted one or two of them and said sharply:
“This is odd. A newly written article torn across, and look how the creases go here. You can see that he grabbed a handful of papers quickly from the top. This is not like Delaney.” He glanced around the room. “Some newspapers gone, too. See where there is a clean patch among the dust. Oh, I don’t like this.”
“Down to the hall,” said Mike. “Lewis may have seen him.”
Lewis was angry and resentful when he found three determined faces glaring at him. He wasted an agonizing minute before he admitted that he had seen Delaney go down the stairs carrying a bundle of papers, just before Mike and Daly had come in.
“Why did you not tell us?” Daly thundered, in a voice that made old Lewis jump in his aged skin and bite his tongue.
He wept like a baby as he answered:
“You didn’t ask me. And I thought you were my friend, Professor Daly — ”
“Oh, go roll your hoop!” Daly shouted, as he charged out into the quadrangle.
He was whimpering like a dog when Mike caught up with him. The sergeant followed, keeping a forceful silence. Daly looked up at the smooth brick facade with its lighted windows and groaned:
“Where to begin, that’s the question! And the wind has come up.”
The night had clouded over and a heavy wind was moving through the trees in the park behind them. Here, in the shelter of the quadrangle, they could only hear its intermittent roar. Then Daly put his hand on Mike’s arm and pointed to the corner of the quadrangle that adjoined the President’s Lodging. While they watched, a deep red glow ripened and spread behind the upstairs windows. Daly plunged across the grass to the door in the comer. The sergeant pounded back to the main hall, where the telephone was, while Mike flitted after Daly as light as a shadow. A sudden gust of wind seemed to sweep them on with a derisive whistle. Daly wrenched the door open and held it until Mike was inside. Then he closed the door and they stood still to listen.
Now the glow of light came down the well of the great oak stairway that mounted from the hall. Above them they could hear a crackle like rifle-fire, with a long roar, like the sound of a blacksmith’s bellows, breaking through at intervals. Smoke drifted gently downwards.
Mike was the first up the stairs. Daly followed him more slowly, feeling the weight of every one of his seventy-four years. At the half-landing he paused and looked upwards. All the doors stood open up there, so that he c
ould see the sheets of flame that filled the rooms. Mike was sitting on the top step of the stairs, beside Professor Delaney, whose face in the light of the fire bore the look of a man whose life’s dream has at last come to fruition.
“You’ll come with us now, Professor,” Mike was saying persuasively. “Look, here comes Professor Daly to ask you to come.”
“I’ve done it, John,” said Delaney. His voice was sharp and vibrant with fulfillment. “I swore I would do it before I would retire. Now I will always be remembered at King’s College.” He cocked an eye towards the conflagration behind him and stood up. “That,” said Professor Delaney, “will finish the rats!”
Chapter 16
They got Delaney out into the quadrangle just as the first fire-engine shrieked up the avenue. A sudden enveloping blast of smoke had frightened him in the midst of his exultation, so that now he clung to Professor Daly in a way that made the older man stagger and almost lose his balance. Mike looked with compassion on the two of them, clutched in a kind of crazy waltz under the walls of their burning College. Hearing the fire-engine, people had begun to pour out into the quadrangle. Quickly Mike set Daly to the task of directing them all to the shelter of the chemistry building. Milligan, who had been working late on an experiment at the bench in his big lecture theatre, received them with guarded hospitality.
The extra policemen arrived just then and they took up positions, rather pointedly, at the various doors and windows. At the upper end of the room Delaney was telling an enraptured audience of students exactly how he had lifted up the floor-boards, ignoring the hard, glittering gaze of the watching rats, and had lit sheets of paper and pushed them underneath.
“Smoke them out,” said Delaney earnestly. “That’s the only way with rats.”
A tall gangling student at the back of the group burst into a wild guffaw, while his big ears twitched. His friends suppressed him and gently urged Delaney to tell them more, but he had been disturbed at not being taken seriously, and he retreated into injured silence.
