But in high school and college, it was the blondes he’d always fallen for. He couldn’t even remember all their names now, there’d been such a long succession of them. He hadn’t been a shy young fellow by any means. Why, he’d proposed to a dozen of those blondes...
There was a sudden tingling in his body, a sensation that ran down to each separate finger end. Yes, the memory was quite clear and certain. Proposed a dozen times. And had been a dozen times refused.
He lay there trembling in the darkness. Damn Jules Manson! A shot in the dark, that was all it had been. Howard’s own life did not at all resemble the life of Jules’ hypothetical maniac murderer. When he, Howard, had strangled Rowena Stanley, he had been murdering her and her alone, not also his mother, not also all those lovely young blonde girls who had refused to marry him.
No, it did not follow. He was not lonely, he was not unhappy. Wasn’t he doing the sort of work he liked best? Not many men were as satisfied in their professions as he. He loved literature. He wanted to communicate this love to other people, so he was a teacher. This was the career he had chosen deliberately, in the full knowledge that a professor’s pay was small, not enough really to properly support a wife. So it was just as well those blonde girls had declined.
Lonely? Perhaps, but wasn’t it almost inevitable for a bachelor? Most of his fellow professors of ten or fifteen years ago had decided to risk poverty and had gotten married. Married men and bachelors have little in common. So the chasm had widened, the wall risen.
The life of Professor Howard Hollis had been centered entirely in his students. He had devoted himself to developing and refining their young, unformed minds. He had looked at those rows of fresh faces year after year, and he had said silently to them. “I love you. I want to help you. I want to open the wonderful world of literature to you. I have devoted my whole life to your betterment. I love you. Don’t you understand that? Teachers and students aren’t enemies, they’re friends. I’m your friend. Please let me be your friend. Acknowledge me as your friend. Call me friend. I love you. Speak to me. Tell me that you realize that I’m alive, I’m a person, I’m entitled to something. Recognize me. I’m Howard Hollis. A man. A person. Tell me that you recognize this. It’s all I expect. I love you. Speak to me...”
But Rowena Stanley had refused. Rowena Stanley had rebuffed him. Rowena Stanley had rejected him. That’s why he killed her. She deserved it. Now he understood this, he understood why he had to kill her. And if he had the chance he’d do the same thing again!
But she wasn’t any different from the others. Why had he chosen Rowena Stanley to try to approach? Merely because she was blonde? That was hardly an adequate reason. He hadn’t been in love with her, despite what he’d told her in the woods. He loved her, yes, but not in the way she’d thought. Not romantic love. He was too old for that, long past that stage. Nor lust. He’d never been lustful even in his youth, and now he was middle-aged. No, his affection for Rowena had been more the fatherly kind, the professorial kind, the same affection that he felt for his other students.
But they all ignored him! They always had. He hated them all, not just Rowena, but all of them... all... all...
He lay there drenched in sweat, quivering in every muscle, clenching and unclenching his fists. Waves of a strange new passion washed over him, a passion he had never remotely experienced before, not even while he was strangling Rowena.
A passion? Or a compulsion? Compulsion... compulsion... compulsion...
The brave blonde girl had a pattern of movement. He did not get close enough to see whether he knew or remembered her, because he did not want to. He preferred that she remain anonymous, just a member of the student body. But he watched her from afar.
She left the library every evening about eight — probably she was doing research there for a special paper or thesis. She took the same path, always alone, across the quadrangle, between Engineering and Science, and thence to the short-cut.
For three nights she kept to this schedule. And each night he stalked her, always a little closer, always a little farther. On the third night he went clear to the edge of the woods. Next time, he knew, he would enter the woods.
“There’s another course of action this man could take,” he suggested to Jules. It was late, and Jules had just returned to the house. They were having a cup of tea. “He could give himself up.”
The little psychologist arched his black brows and stared through his spectacles. “Why on. earth should he do that?” he asked.
“Well, let’s say he feels this compulsion you described, this uncontrollable desire to kill again. But supposing there’s another part of his personality, a better part, that doesn’t want to kill. So there’s this inner conflict. But the better part, to prevent the worse part from committing another crime, might want to surrender.”
Jules shook his dark head grimly and ponderously. “Why should he Want to surrender to a society that he hates?” he demanded.
“To spare another life.”
“This life he wants to spare, why is it so precious to him?”
“Well, I don’t know...”
Jules smiled with sly triumph. “Of course you don’t know, because there isn’t any reason. This desire for the preservation of human life, this quality of mercy, is completely foreign to our murderer. He committed the first murder out of hate. Has the hate subsided? Does he love now? Does he want to atone? Preposterous, my friend. Consider this man’s present position. In the death of Rowena Stanley he achieved a measure of revenge, but not total revenge. He has not been apprehended. The police are nowhere near a solution. Believe me, I know that, because I’ve talked with Chief Keegle. So our man knows he can take his revenge and get away with it. Why should he stop when he’s winning, and when his job isn’t finished? When it’s far from being finished?”
“You’re quite right, Jules. I see it now.”
Jules drained the last of the tea from his cup, and rose to leave. “Stick to your own field, Howard,” he advised. “Fiction and poetry, the artistic, the make-believe. Leave the real life problems to the experts.”
“All right,” Howard conceded, “I won’t argue again.”
“Fine. Good night then, Howard.”
“Good night, Jules.”
Friday night again, a shiveringly cold, blustery night that would make most people stay indoors even if there were not a maniac-murderer loose in the town. The wind blew cruelly across the open stretches of the campus, whined around the corners of buildings, set the bare branches of trees to creaking and groaning.
Standing outside the library, sheltered in the blackest shadow, Howard waited. Unaware of the cold wind, he had not even raised his coat collar against it. His hat brim was turned down, however, to hide his face. But even aside from this precaution, it was doubtful whether anyone would recognize him. For he was without his briefcase, his constant companion, his trademark.
The briefcase, he had decided, would only be in his way, and be something else to get bloodied. In fact, he had determined upon a whole new approach to the problem of blood. He would use the same knife, but he could not afford this time to walk into Mrs. Finch’s with stains on him or anything he carried. So he had a cloth, a cloth with no identifying marks, with which to wipe his hands and the knife. The cloth he would simply drop at the scene. It could not be traced.