It was not an audience chosen well for such a question. Or perhaps it was an audience very well chosen. Mrs. Finch was the only person in the group who had ever married. Jensen was a spinster. Trimble and Howard were bachelors, and for that matter, so was Jules. Jensen was staring down at her plate, rather embarrassed. Trimble blinked, his tired mind still fumbling with the question. Howard was vaguely disturbed in the midst of his elation over the success of his impersonation of a maniac.
“There are two possibilities in regard to the Stanley girl,” Jules went on. “One is that the killer knew her, and she rejected him personally. The other is that she was a stranger to him, but he took his spite out on her as a representative of all humanity. One possibility is as likely as the other.”
This reasoning suited Howard. The killer could have been someone who wasn’t even acquainted with Rowena Stanley, who had never seen her before the time of the murder.
“But I ask you this,” Jules pursued. “If our man bears such a deep grudge against humanity that he had to disfigure the corpse, has his resentment been satisfied with that act? Or...” He paused dramatically.
“...Will he strike again?”
“Preposterous!” Howard blurted it out before he thought.
Jules turned him a cool stare. “What makes you so sure of that, Howard?”
Howard came near to. losing his nerve then, much nearer than he had last night in the woods, when he’d realized he’d committed murder. “Well, I mean...” He looked around the table. They were all staring at him, waiting for his explanation. “I mean, no matter how large one’s resentment might be, surely a murder should satisfy it.”
“What about the slashing?”
“That should be rather satisfying too...”
“Or it could just possibly whet the killer’s appetite for revenge.”
Howard was trembling visibly, unable to control himself. “I still think you’re wrong,” he stammered.
“We’ll see.” Jules was enjoying himself immensely, feasting upon the sensation he’d created. And now for dessert he turned to Miss Jensen, dropping his voice to scarcely more than a whisper. “If I were a female in this town, I’d be mighty careful, at least till they catch this lad.”
Jensen reacted perfectly. Turning very pale, she swooned.
Police Chief Abe Keegle took personal charge of the case. He was a balding, paunchy man, but he had piercing black eyes behind his rimless glasses that hinted of a shrewd intelligence. Also he was thorough.
Howard Hollis was questioned along with a dozen other professors who had had Rowena Stanley, at one time or another, in their classes. Howard thought the questions themselves rather harmless, but he was wary of Keegle. He wasn’t asked to provide an alibi, or anything so direct, but merely to give what information he had about the dead girl. But he suspected that Keegle was observing his general manner more than he was listening to the answers. Howard waited for the thunderbolt to strike — somebody had reported that Professor Hollis had paid rather special attention, to Rowena Stanley, how about it? But this question was never asked. Of course, Keegle might have known things he wasn’t revealing, but Howard felt much better after the interview anyway.
Something else disturbed him, however. A pathologist had subjected the corpse to a microscopic examination, according to the newspaper. The cuts had been made with a rather blunt knife. Which was curious, of course — if the killer wanted to slash his victim, why hadn’t he brought along a good sharp knife for the purpose? Also, there was some strange material, in the wounds. Chemical analysis determined that the substance was hardened tobacco tar, such as is found in the bowls of pipes. The killer was a pipe smoker, therefore, and had used the knife with which he cleaned his pipe.
But how many pipe smokers were there on the campus? Dozens among the faculty. And pipes were always a popular undergraduate affectation. Not to mention possibly hundreds of townspeople. Not a very helpful clue certainly, and Howard decided to forget about it.
Meanwhile, Professor Jules Manson was interviewed by an enterprising reporter, and Jules gave the whole town the same opinion that he had given Mrs. Finch’s clients. The maniac who had waylaid Miss Stanley would very possibly kill again. It might or might not have been good psychology, but it was successful journalism. The town — especially the womenfolk — was convulsed in fear.
Howard saw evidences of it wherever he went. No more was a coed seen walking alone on the campus, not even in broad daylight. In the town, there seemed fewer women in evidence generally, as if they were keeping to their homes and going out only when necessary. How stupid and unnecessary it all was, Howard kept thinking. He would like to assure the community that the killer would not strike again.
Of course he realized that Jules had actually played into his hands. Jules had swallowed the maniac theory, enlarged upon it, popularized it. Let some detective worry about a dull knife soiled with tobacco tar as not being typical of a slashing maniac. Jules’ theory, repeated often enough, would convince even that stubborn detective.
But if anybody was convinced, it was Jules himself. Having elaborated the theory, it was his brain child — the killer would kill again. Jules talked of nothing else — in his classes, according to report, and certainly at Mrs. Finch’s table.
“There’s one reason our maniac won’t strike again,” Howard proposed at dinner one evening.
“What’s that?” Jules asked, pouncing.
“He won’t have a chance.”
“How do you mean?”
“There are simply no unescorted females wandering about.”
Which was quite true, Jules had to admit. Miss Jensen was a case in point. Jules himself, Howard, even old Trimble, were being regularly dragooned into providing convoy across the campus for poor Jensen. And when her fellow boarders weren’t available, the librarian bribed students by doing bits of research for them. Jensen was an hysterical, but typical example.
Jules, however, was loath to accept this as final. “It won’t last,” he predicted. “Naturally the man is lying low at the moment, because he doesn’t have an opportunity. This state of siege can’t last forever though. Women will begin to get careless, and finally they’ll forget entirely. People have short memories.”
“I won’t get careless, and I won’t forget,” Jensen promised.
“Others will. The man will have another chance eventually.”
“He might move on,” Howard suggested, “to where the fields are greener. He might have been a transient in the first place.”
“Perhaps,” Jules conceded. Obviously he would be unhappy if his theory did not prove out with a second murder.
But Howard’s prediction was fast coming true. Even such a sensational item as a grisly murder can’t retain the public interest indefinitely; There’d been a chapel memorial service for the dead girl — the real funeral took place in Rowena’s home town — which had been well attended, and had provided a new stimulus to fear. But the great surge of terror had subsided. Coeds were only too happy to accept male escort on every possible occasion. But this was not always convenient. Now and then they could be seen making short dashes between buildings. None of them did this after dark, of course, and none ventured near the woods at any time.
Abe Keegle had organized a group of special auxiliary patrolmen for night duty, so he apparently shared Jules’ opinion that danger still lurked. These fellows were armed, and went about on foot. There were more uniformed cops in evidence too, and undoubtedly there were plainclothes men in strategic places.