“Don’t bother,” snarled the woman. “I can take care of myself, thank you.”
She vanished into the storm, and Shandy passed gratefully back into the security office. He looked for the elf mask, but it was not to be seen. He sat down on the chair where it had been, and began digging snow out of his pant legs. The security chief took the chair beside him.
“Okay, Professor, what did you want to see me about?”
“For one thing, I’d like to know what happened to that elf mask that was hanging on this chair a few minutes ago.”
“Huh?”
“I was in here, Grimble, listening to you conduct your nocturnal revels. You forgot to lock the outer door.”
“Jeez! How could I—” The security chief caught himself. “Look, Professor, you don’t understand.”
“Yes, I do. Who was she?”
For a long moment, Grimble said nothing. Then a sly grin stole over his beefy countenance.
“Hell, Professor, do I have to answer that? What do you think she was so steamed up about?”
“You are referring to Miss Wrenne?”
“Well, like they taught us back at the police academy, you got to consider the evidence. It’s tough on them single dames in a place like this,” he went on in a voice of compassion. “Hot to trot and no place to go. I was just bein’ neighborly, as you might say.”
“Damned decent of you,” grunted Shandy. “Miss Wrenne must be a remarkably fast dresser. I trust President Svenson will be able to view the incident in its humanitarian aspect.”
“Hey, look, you wouldn’t rat on a guy?”
“Why hide your light under a bushel? Your motives were pure, weren’t they?”
“Oh, cripes, you know what he’s like.”
“Yes, I do. That’s why I believe you’re in no position to be uncooperative.”
Grimble made a remark. Shandy chose to ignore it.
“Are you going to tell me what happened to that elf tussle?”
“What elf mask?”
“The one that was hanging on this chair, soaking wet, about five minutes ago.”
“I never seen no elf mask,” the man muttered. “She must o’ brought it in with her an’ took it out again.”
“Why?”
“How the hell do I know? I tell you I never seen no elf mask.”
“I don’t believe you,” said Shandy, “nor do I believe it was Miss Wrenne you were canoodling with just now. However, I’m to tired to argue. What I want from you are the keys to the Administration Building and the comptroller’s office.”
“You can’t go in there. They got it sealed up.”
“We’ll unseal it. Get the keys and let’s go.”
“Do I have to come, too?”
“Yes. If we run into any more self-appointed vigilantes, I’d rather they clobbered you than me.”
Dragging the man who might be Ben Cadwall’s murderer along on a search of the place where he’d died probably wasn’t a brilliant thing to do, but Shandy wasn’t operating by reason just now. Anyway, killer dogs weren’t killers so long as the shepherd kept his eye on them. It didn’t make much sense to leave him running loose in the dark either. Shandy repeated his order. Grimble made another remark and fetched the keys. Together but not talking, the two men ploughed through the storm to that square of old red brick from which Dr. Cadwall’s rigid body had been taken just about twelve hours before. It wasn’t until he was actually unlocking the office that Grimble asked the inevitable question.
“What do you want in here, anyway?”
“Evidence,” said Shandy.
“What kind of evidence? They’ve already caught Miz Cadwall with the poison. She’s goin’ to be arraigned tomorrow.”
“I know. That’s why I have to get in here tonight.”
“Oh, Christen a crutch!”
“Look, Grimble, why don’t you stay out here? Then you won’t be able to see what I’m up to and your conscience won’t bother you.”
The security chief grunted and flung himself into the secretary’s chair. Shandy flipped the light switch, shut the comptroller’s door behind him, and stood wondering. Now that he’d gained entrance, his brain felt as numb as his overtaxed body. The point Grimble had raised was valid. What did he want in here?
Mostly, he wanted to flop down in Ben’s comfortably padded swivel chair and take a nap. On second thought, he didn’t. That yellow waxwork face, those half-open staring eyes, were still too clear in his mind’s eye. He shoved the chair out of the way and knelt in front of the desk.
The police had locked the drawers and presumably taken the key, but Shandy had locked himself out of his own desk often enough to have learned a few useful tricks. In a matter of moments, he was peering into the comptroller’s most secret place.
It was a terrible disappointment. If Ben had found any clues, he certainly hadn’t kept them here. He hadn’t kept much of anything except the tools of his trade and one drawer amply stocked with patent medicines.
Shandy poked through the assortment. This could be a convenient way to poison a dedicated hypochondriac, but how had the deed been managed? Antacids, each in its sealed packet. Aspirins smooth and unmarred, Band-Aids, a clinical thermometer, foot powder, antibiotic salve, cough drops wrapped in silver paper, sunburn lotion, heaven knew why, a box of tissues, and a half-empty bottle of nose drops. Now he knew what he’d come for.
“Grimble! Grimble, come in here a minute.”
“What? What for?”
The security chief, who’d evidently been taking a nap in the secretary’s chair, stumbled into Cadwall’s office. “What’s the matter now?”
“You’re going to be a witness,” the professor told him, watching his face carefully. “I’m going to take this bottle of nose drops out of the drawer, holding it very carefully inside this tissue in case there might be any fingerprints on it other than Dr. Cadwall’s, which I don’t expect there are, and drop it into this envelope.”
“What the hell for?” Grimble didn’t look anything but sleepy and truculent.
“Because you and I are going to take it over to the organic chemistry lab. You’re going to unlock the place for me, and I’m going to analyze what’s in the bottle.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Get moving, Grimble.”
Chapter 23
GRIMBLE SNORED. HE HAD been snoring for hours, while Professor Shandy kept himself awake by counting every bottle, flash, pipette, test tube, and assorted whatnot in the laboratory. On the plastic laminated counter before him, Hannah Cadwall’s fate hung in the balance.
No, by gad, it didn’t! He shoved a cork into the vial that had just told him what he needed to know, packed it and the bottle of nose drops with scrupulous care into a small box he found, and pounded the security chief back to consciousness.
“Oh, Christ,” moaned the man, “what now?”
“We’re going to wake up the president.”
“He’ll kill us.”
“That’s a risk we have to take. Get your coat on.”
The snowstorm wasn’t going to amount to much. Already the flakes were falling few and far between, forming huge lumps as they collided in the air. But the cold was awful. Slopping along in his wet overcoat, Shandy wondered why he couldn’t have waited till morning to show Svenson what he’d found. Then he caught sight of the chapel clock through a gray haze and realized it was morning. Almost half past five and he still hadn’t managed to grab a wink of sleep. He’d begun to feel a personal hatred for the clever fiend who’d thought of putting taxine in Ben Cadwall’s nose drops. He thought of punching Grimble in the mouth on the chance that he might be the right man, but hadn’t the strength to do an adequate job.
The Svensons always claimed they kept farmers’ hours, and apparently they did. By the time Shandy and his unwilling companion hove in sight of the immense white house on the highest part of the hill behind the campus, a light was burning in the kitchen. Sieglinde herself came to the door, more Va
lkyrie-like than usual in a long pale blue robe, with thick flaxen braids down over her shoulders.
“Peter Shandy! What do you here? Thorkjeld is still in bed.”
“You’ll have to get him up.”
That was almost certainly the first direct order Mrs. Svenson had ever received from a faculty member. She gave Shandy a long, thoughtful look, then said, “Come in. Stand please on the mat while you drip.”
Incredibly, the president came down. Thorkjeld Svenson was awesome enough in ordinary garb; swathed in acres of brown wool bathrobe, unshaven and red-eyed, hair twisted up into iron-gray horns at either side of his thunderous forehead, he was terrifying.
“What do you want?” he roared.
Grimble cowered behind Shandy and tried to pretend he wasn’t there. The professor quailed, but stood his ground.
“I want you to get Mrs. Cadwall out of jail. She didn’t kill her husband.”
“Ungh.”
The president hurled himself into a vast wooden chair and held out one hand. Sieglinde put a cup of coffee the size of a washbasin into it. Shandy winced in envy and longing. At his back, Grimble whimpered.
“Grimble and I,” he began, because in spite of everything he felt a twinge of compassion for the security chief, “have been working all night.”
“Ungh.”
“Realizing that the police case rests only on the thin evidence of taxine somebody planted in Mrs. Cadwall’s effects—”
“Ungh?”
“Thorkjeld, listen to him,” said Mrs. Svenson. “No woman would be fool enough to keep such stuff after she had poisoned her husband with it. I certainly would not.”
“Ungh!”
“Anyway,” Shandy went on hastily, “we went looking for clues in the comptroller’s office and found a bottle of nose drops.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Seeing that the sky was not going to fall, Grimble decided to claim his share of the limelight. Shandy trod firmly on his toe and kept talking.
“This seemed a reasonable vehicle for a soluble poison with a nasty taste. The medication would disguise the flavor of the taxine, and by the time it trickled down the nasal passages into the throat, the victim would be almost certain to ingest a fatal dose.”
“Ungh.”
“So we took the bottle over to the organic chemistry lab and tested it and it’s bung-full of taxine. You’d better take it down to the jail right away and tell them to let Mrs. Cadwall out.”
At last the great man uttered what for him was a long sentence. “Why me?”
“Because you’re more impressive than I am.”
Sieglinde nodded. “That is true. Thorkjeld is impressive. You, Peter Shandy, are not. I will give you coffee.”
“No, thank you. I’m going home to bed. Come on, Grimble.”
“We might o’ waited for the coffee,” the security chief grumbled when they got outside.
“Don’t be a jackass, man. Could you honestly sit down at that table and drink coffee with the president glowering at you from behind his whiskers?”
“No, I guess not,” the man conceded. “Say, I guess I ought to thank you for—” he conquered his better feelings and turned off toward the security office.
Shandy wended his lone way downhill to the brick house, took a hot shower and three fingers of brandy, and climbed into bed. He did not wake until noon. His first conscious act was to telephone the library.
“Helen, can you meet me at the dining room?”
“I’d love to, Peter. Half past twelve?”
“Fine.”
That barely gave him time to shave and dress, but he managed. His overcoat was still sodden, so he grabbed the old plaid mackinaw in which he’d knocked about the turnip fields for more years than he cared to count. This was no time to fret over trivia.
He’d just snaffled the table least vulnerable to intrusion when Helen entered the dining room, wearing high boots and a brand-new bright red storm coat.
“I nipped down to the village first thing this morning and got myself some heavy-weather gear,” she said. “Now I can give that nice man back his socks. How are you, Peter?”
“Ask me later. I haven’t had time to think about it yet. Beef pot pie seems to be the pièce de résistance.”
“Fine, if the beef isn’t too resistant. My jaws are tired from arguing with Mr. Porble about the Buggins Collection. Peter, would you believe I actually got him to let me spend a little time there this morning, and he says I can go back after lunch?”
“Splendid. Would you mind sitting here beside me so I won’t have to shout?”
As soon as they’d got their orders in, he began telling her in a low voice all that had happened after he’d left her the night before.
“My personal conviction, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, is that it could not have been Shirley Wrenne who was—er—closeted with Grimble.”
“Of course it wasn’t,” said Helen. “If it were, she wouldn’t have come bashing away at the first man she met. She’d have made herself scarce, which I’m sure is what the other woman did while you were having your rumpus outside, not because women are ashamed of having sex these days, or say they aren’t, but because she’d hate to have you know she was doing it with Grimble. He’s not exactly love’s young dream.”
“I’ve been trying to think who around college would—er—succumb to a man like him. She’d have to be hard up for company.”
“Or else the original I-don’t-care girl,” said Helen. “I’ll get cosy with some of the secretaries, if you want. They’re always the ones who really know what’s going on.”
“I’d be grateful,” said Shandy. “Every fresh discovery I make seems to put me one step farther back.”
“Nonsense, Peter. You’re the only one who’s doing anything constructive. Here, let me pour you some more coffee.”
For a blissful second, Shandy was Thorkjeld Svenson, reaching out for the cup he knew Sieglinde would have ready. It wasn’t the coffee that mattered, it was the caring. Helen was only showing common courtesy but a man could dream, even a man fifty-six years old who was almost certainly coming down with a rotten cold. He drank the coffee.
“After all your adventures,” said Helen, “I feel silly telling you about my own little mystery. I thought it might possibly mean something, but—”
“Tell me anyway,” Shandy urged.
“Well, it’s just that—Peter, I have to confess to you that I have this ridiculous habit of counting things. I simply can’t be left alone with more than three related objects for two minutes before I find myself totting them up. It’s awful.”
“I’ve always found it a source of innocent pleasure and sometimes of illumination,” said Shandy.
“Peter, you don’t!”
“I do. On that necklace you wore last night, there are seventy-four pearls.”
“Seventy-five. There’s a little one set in the clasp. It’s always flipping over so you probably couldn’t see it. Oh, Peter!”
Surely not even Thorkjeld and Sieglinde had experienced such a moment. When the stars quit reeling in the firmament, Shandy spoke again.
“You were saying—”
“Oh yes. As I believe I mentioned last evening, Dr. Porble let me go into the Buggins Room for just a short while late yesterday afternoon. There wasn’t much I could do in those few minutes anyway, so I stood there like a ninny—sorry, comrade—and counted them. And it was such fun that this morning when I got in there again, I—”
“Counted them over, as any reasonable person would do. How many?”
“That’s my mystery. Yesterday, there were two thousand, six hundred and thirty-eight. Today there are two thousand, six hundred and thirty-three. And the room was locked and nobody’s been in there except me.”
“That is odd.”
The professor consumed a forkful of beef pie thoughtfully. “There’s no chance you—er—”
“Got mixed up in my count? Would you?”
> “Perish the thought!”
“There, see, you’re outraged at the mere suggestion. We compulsive counters do not lose count. Even if I did happen to skip one, I couldn’t be out by five whole, great, fat books, could I?”
“Not possibly.”
“Then where did they go?”
“You’re suggesting that somebody obtained entrance by some method as yet undetermined, and snitched them? Considering that nobody in all these years has ever willingly set foot in the place, much less taken away any books—”
“How do we know that?”
Shandy put down his fork. “We don’t, do we?”
“Would Jemima have known?”
“She ought to, if anybody did. Do you think there’s the remotest possibility any of those books is worth anything?”
“I’m wondering. The collection is old, Peter, much older than I’d been led to believe. I thought it would be all Warwick Deeping and Gene Stratton Porter, but Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs seem to be among the more recent publications. I happened to pick up a copy of Vanity Fair that I thought might be a first edition, and—and I think I’m going to get in touch with an old friend in Boston who knows a great deal more than is legal about the rare book market. Do you mind if I leave you?”
“Yes,” said Shandy.
He bolted the last of his lunch and flung money on the table. “Come on, you’d better use the phone at my house. No sense in running up toll calls on Tim.”
“Oh, I completely forgot to tell you, he called last night shortly after I’d got in the house. Jemmy has a baby boy. I’m shaky on the details because neither of us could make much sense of what the other was saying, but he sounded positively ecstatic.”
“I’m glad.”
Shandy was in truth happy for his old friend, but more immediately concerned with the question of whether Helen’s call was going to turn up anything. It didn’t take long to find out. After an exchange of pleasantries, she stated her problem and got her answer. He thought she was going to faint.
“Oh no! That’s just not possible. Yes, I know you—but I simply cannot believe—and have you any idea how much—oh, my God!”
Shandy thought he’d better fetch the brandy.
Rest You Merry Page 20
