“I’m in a hurry,” the girl said finally. But somehow she did not, or was not able to move. She had grown even paler in these moments, and all he could see of her was her dreadfully white face, like a disembodied mask, hanging there in the deepening darkness.
But her remark triggered in Howard a desire to dispense with the polite niceties and probe instead right to the fundamentals of things. “You’re always in a hurry whenever I want to talk to you,” he heard himself saying with a half-horror at his own boldness.
“I don’t know what you mean.” The girl at least still had the wit to parry.
He plunged on recklessly. “I’ve asked you to come to my office several times. We’ve made definite appointments, and I sat waiting, but you never came. You always said you’d forgotten, but then you forgot the new appointment too. Even in the corridors you avoid me. I’ve called to you, and you pretended not to hear. My dear girl, you must realize that a professor now and then must hold private conferences with students. That’s the only way to really make sure what the student is learning, how she is progressing. And you, Rowena, you are so wonderfully sensitive... I feel that little discussions could be so rewarding... I want to see my students grow in understanding and appreciation...”
He stopped. How asinine it all sounded, how hypocritical and untrue. This girl was intelligent. He could not convince her with patent lies.
“I have to go now,” she said. But still she did not move, afraid possibly that if she tried to leave, he would stop her.
“Please!” He was begging her. “Why won’t you talk to me? Why do you always have some excuse?” He was nakedly humble now, but he didn’t care. At least he was speaking from the heart. “Why can’t I be your friend?”
She was shaking her head. “You’re a professor...”
“What difference does that make? Do those young fellows have more of a right to speak to you just because they’re students? If I were a student, sitting next to you in class, would you speak to me then? Look, I’m a human being, a man, and you’re an attractive girl. I’m respectable, I’m not married...”
“You’re old!”
The way it sounded, coming from her lips, made age seem something horrible, ugly, repulsive, an epithet of scorn and contempt and loathing. It was the equivalent of a slap in the face, the same kind of undeserved insult.
“I’m thirty-nine,” he said quietly. It was only a small lie, since he was forty, and he hated himself for telling it. “I am not rich or handsome, but then some of your young fellows aren’t either. But I know a lot more than they do. I’ve read hundreds more books. Don’t judge me by my lectures. I know they’re dull and stupid, but those are the things I’m expected to say. I wouldn’t bore you if we were alone. I could be very interesting, and say so many clever things — I know I could — if I had you to listen to me. You could inspire me, Rowena, because I love you...”
When she tried to dart away from him, he seized her wrist and held her fast. She struggled in his grasp, but he found a masculine strength he hadn’t known he possessed, and she was helpless against him.
“Let me go,” she pleaded, her voice hoarse with fear. “If you let me go, I won’t tell on you...”
“You won’t tell whom? You won’t tell what?” He’d drawn her close to him now, and he hissed these questions directly into her face. “What am I doing that’s so terrible? When you go out on dates, those boys hold you tighter than this. Why do you allow them to do things I can’t do? Why must you treat me differently?”
She started to scream. No sound came out, but she opened her mouth, and the desire and necessity to scream glittered in her eyes. The threat of a scream lit the fuse of terror in Professor Howard Hollis, and his hands leaped to her throat in, order to silence that scream.
The weight and thrust of his violence bore her to the ground. He fell with her, never relaxing his hold. One thing, and that one thing alone, was in his mind. A scream that would bring people running to see him, a professor, rebuffed by his student — that scream must never be uttered. His hands squeezed harder, and the face that had been so pale and white in the dusk grew mottled and dark.
Then, a long time after, when Rowena Stanley had ceased to move and struggle, when no part of her body resisted him any longer, he rose slowly and heavily to his feet. She did not follow him, but continued to lie there, silent and voiceless, a shapeless thing on the ground, somewhat darker than the surrounding shadows.
He stood motionless for a while, trying to recover the rhythm of normal breathing. The confusion was clearing rapidly from his brain, and he was beginning to see the new and stark reality confronting him.
He, Howard Hollis, professor in good standing, had committed murder. He did not have to wonder whether the girl was dead. She was. She was lying there at his feet on a cold bed of damp, rotting leaves. He could see her nyloned legs, gleaming dully in the dark. And her eyes, wide open and staring up at him. And a book she had dropped, that had fallen open to reveal white pages fluttering in the wind.
“I’m sorry, Rowena,” he whispered softly. “I didn’t mean to.” But he didn’t love her any more. His love had fled when the last flicker of life had left the girl’s body. Whatever Rowena had been, whatever it was he had loved her for, was gone now. One cannot love a dead, departed thing.
He was alive. He had made a terrible mistake that he now wished he could undo, but he was alive. Some instinct that was a part of his every nerve and cell kept reminding his brain of this paramount fact. Rowena was dead, beyond help, but he was alive. And he must go on living.
The deep primitive urges sent frantic messages to his brain. Had anyone seen him entering the woods with the girl? No, he didn’t think so. The campus was all but deserted at this hour. And even if someone had seen him, could that someone identify him? Probably not in the failing light.
But even if he could not definitely be placed at the scene of the crime, would anyone connect him in a general way with Rowena Stanley? Yes, this much was possible. He was her professor in Medieval Lit, of course. But there was more than that. He’d pursued the girl in his professorial way, trying to corner her in hallways, insisting upon appointments in his office. Very possibly — not certainly but possibly — she had confided her problem to somebody. Therefore he was in danger.
Alibi? It was too late for that now. If he had intended to murder the girl, he might have arranged something. But his had been an unpremeditated crime, completely spontaneous, emotional, in an unguarded, almost insane moment.
Insane! No, he wasn’t that, nor had he been. He had very logically assessed the damage to his pride — and to his job at the college — that would have resulted from a foolish girl’s scream. But supposing he had been an insane killer, lusting after the girl, a savage predator denied his prey and raging over his disappointment? A madman sublimating his frustrated passion in an orgy of violence and revenge? What would such a man do? How would he kill? How could this crime be made to look, not like the work of a staid professor, but rather like the work of a demented monster?
Calmly Howard came to a conclusion. And calmly he came to a decision. Reaching into a pocket and fumbling there for a moment, he drew out finally a small and much soiled pen knife. It wasn’t much of a knife, and certainly not a weapon. He carried it for one purpose only, to ream out the clogged bowl of his pipe. It would have to serve another purpose now, however.
He had no stomach for what he had to do, but he realized it was necessary. He knelt in the leaves and flipped out the blade of the knife. It was dull and not made for this work any more than he was. Still it served. The cuts it made were not deep, but the blood flowed, and that was the important thing. He slashed Rowena’s forehead, her cheeks, her neck. And then her legs, right through the nylons. That was enough, he decided. There was too much blood already.