“How’s the coast, Rid?”
“We’re in luck; not a soul in sight,” Groendal replied.
“I’m Beth.” She extended her hand.
“Ridley Groendal.” His hand was in and out of hers in a second.
Koesler felt foolish for not having introduced her. But he would not be able to relax until she was out of his jurisdiction—which, with any luck, would only be a few seconds more.
Wordlessly, Groendal entered the hall and walked deliberately down its length, looking from side to side as he went. At the other end of the hall, he peered up and down the staircase until he was certain no one was around. Then he signaled to Koesler, who looked back down the main corridor. There was still a crowd at the front entrance but no one seemed to be looking down the corridor or paying any attention to them.
“Okay,” Koesler said, “go ahead.”
“Isn’t this a little too complicated?” Beth complained.
“Go!” Koesler almost shouted.
She gave a startled little jump and hurried into the hall.
“Room 12, don’t forget!” Koesler stage-whispered after her. He waited until he saw her knock rather timidly at the door of room 12, and enter. Then, as if the weight of the world had slipped from his shoulders, he almost skipped down the corridor toward the rear of the building. Two hours to go and the business would be done.
What to do with two hours on a bright, balmy spring day having just shed a heavy burden of responsibility? Nothing inside the building. He changed into casual clothes and went outside to play a little baseball. He had taken the precaution of advising any potential visitors not to come, thus avoiding any conflict on this trying day.
Pick-up games were in progress at several of the seminary’s five diamonds. He joined one. He hadn’t a care in the world. Well, one: He would have to be back on duty for this silly caper at four promptly. He consulted his watch. It was exactly three o’clock. Whatever Mitch and Beth were doing, they were right in the middle of it.
It was exactly three o’clock when there was a brief but insistent knocking at the door of room 12 in St. Thomas Hall. Summarily, the door was flung open.
Later, when he tried to recall that moment, Mitchell would say that all he could remember was a long row of red buttons and red piping on the black cassock of Monsignor George Cronyn, rector of Sacred Heart Seminary. Of course, Mitchell went into a state of shock.
Beth, on her part, remembered the Monsignor’s face, mostly because it was as red as the trimming on his cassock.
As the door swung open and banged against the wall, Beth instinctively pulled the sheet up so that it pretty well covered both of them to the shoulder level.
For a moment, no one said anything. There was almost nothing to say. Mitch and Beth had been caught in flagrante delicto. A most rare, if not unique, instance in the annals of the seminary, at least to that date.
“Mr. Mitchell,” Monsignor Cronyn snapped the syllables, “you have betrayed a sacred trust. I want you gone from the seminary by vespers this afternoon. Gone for good! Is that understood?”
Presumably the question was rhetorical; the rector did not wait for a reply. He merely retrieved the door whence it still vibrated near the wall and closed it behind him, again with a resounding bang.
Cronyn stormed along the corridor and up the staircase to his room. All the way he fought mixed emotions. He was furious with Carroll Mitchell, a young man who had shown such great promise. He might have made an impressive priest. His grades were well above average. He showed creative talent on the stage and as a playwright—abilities that promised great success in the pulpit. And he had an attractive, manly personality that easily would have drawn young boys to the seminary to test their vocations.
But what Mitchell had done was patently intolerable. If the seminary faculty had learned that he was even dating steadily, the student would have been warned most forcefully. If it had been proven that he had fornicated, Mitchell’s expulsion would have been seriously debated. But to flaunt the affair as Mitchell had done! Bring the girl into the seminary right into his room! A young man such as this could never again be trusted. But to have thrown away so promising a career so nonchalantly was a crime that very nearly cried to heaven for vengeance.
Nor was Monsignor Cronyn all that happy over how he had learned what was going on in room 12.
The principle of “fraternal correction” had been around a long time. Still, it remained a dangerous tool in the hands of almost anyone, let alone an adolescent with perhaps a personal ax to grind. At the beginning of each scholastic year, when Cronyn would explain the notion of fraternal correction, he would try to emphasize the dangers inherent in such an action. Nevertheless, it was part of seminary policy that a student report to the authorities any other student who was guilty of a flagrant violation of law—God’s or the seminary’s.
And thus it had been in the stated interest of fraternal correction that Ridley C. Groendal had come to Monsignor Cronyn’s office at approximately 2:45 that afternoon to inform on what he thought was happening in Carroll Mitchell’s room.
In all probability it had been the proper thing for Groendal to do. Still, it was extremely rare that any student would turn in another. Even though Cronyn understood the importance—historical if none other—of fraternal correction, in his heart the Monsignor was leery of, and indeed disliked, the principle. Nor did he much care, privately, for a student who would—he hesitated to use the word, but, yes—betray a confrere.
In spite of his intellectual acceptance of the procedure, at his core Cronyn found squealing distasteful; he could not help looking upon the informer with a certain amount of loathing.
There were exceptions, of course. It was thoroughly understandable to speak out to save oneself or another innocent party from harm, as in the case of incest or child abuse. But it was quite another thing to cry havoc just because a rule was being violated.
From this day forward, Monsignor Cronyn would have to force himself to try to be objective with regard to Ridley C. Groendal.
Regularly checking his watch, an action that was second-nature to him anyway, Koesler knew that it was precisely twenty minutes to four when he left the baseball game. He took a quick shower, climbed back into his cassock and returned to the entrance to St. Thomas Hall at exactly four o’clock.
He waited almost five minutes. Trying not to draw too much attention, he kept glancing down the hall. He was impatient and growing a little angry. Visiting hours were over at 4:30. There were just a few more minutes left to get Beth out of St. Thomas Hall and out of the building. A challenge was a challenge, but Mitch was taking unfair advantage of this situation.
At last, patience exhausted, he entered the hall and walked toward Mitchell’s room. As he neared it, he saw that the door was ajar. For one confused moment, he wondered if his watch had slowed or stopped. Had he erred and failed Mitchell? He hurried forward to the open door.
Inside the room, Mitchell was throwing clothes into a suitcase.
Koesler was perplexed. “What the hell’s going on, Mitch?”
Mitchell looked at him briefly, then returned to packing. “What the hell’s it look like?”
“You’re packing. But what for?”
“I’m out on my ear, Bobby. Just like you tried to warn me.”
“I don’t understand. Did something go wrong?”
Mitchell smiled bitterly. “I’d say so. The rector dropped in while Beth and—I were . . . uh ... in a sort of compromising position. And he took that occasion to fire me.”
“But that’s impossible. I was very careful when Beth and I were going through the halls. Nobody paid any attention to us. And I certainly would have noticed the rector if he had been in the corridor anywhere.”