“No, Louise said it was Julie.”
Bannen glanced up and tried to give her a reassuring smile. She was preferring to stand in the doorway leading into the dining room.
“Krieg, would all of this have anything to do with the phone call from that young girl?”
“All of what?”
“Krieg, are you blind? The cancelled invitations, the silences, the strange glances I get when I pass people on the street or see them at Cresthill Center.”
“Just your imagination, Peg,” Bannen said, but even as he spoke the words he knew there was no truth to them. The girl. She was systematically getting track at him for something. She was methodically and evilly hammering away at the foundation of. his private and professional life. But why?
On Sunday there was more bad news. It was the day the Evershams, who lived in the big Georgian at the end of the cul-de-sac, chose each year for their pool cleaning party. The Bannens were not invited.
Bannen dreaded what would await him on Monday at the college, but he had to face it. It was nearly what he had expected. His nine o’clock class was less than half full and. he knew why. Quickly, without explanation, he issued a paper assignment and cancelled the remainder of the hour...
“So, under the circumstances, Krieg, I think it might be very prudent to fix you up with a leave of absence. Say a month.”
Whittly, the head of the Philosophy Department, had always been somewhat of a maverick when it came to championing causes. But in Krieg’s case, he was backing down to campus pressure.
“That looks a little like running, Calvin,” Bannen told him. “And coming from a man who’s on record as the type who likes to stand and fight things out, I’m a little disappointed.”
“I’m a little disappointed myself, Krieg, but I’m afraid that in this case, fighting back against these rumor-mongering kids would only paint the picture blacker than it already is.”
“So I’m on a leave of absence. And just who’s going to buy that?”
“I’ll get hold of Voss in the Journalism Department,” Whittly told Bannen. “I’ll have him run a brief item about a Philosophy Conference in Berkley and that I’m sending you down to represent the department. Krieg, this is the best way, believe me I’ve known incidents similar to yours happening at other universities. Before they’re all over, they can get very ugly. And when they’re over, careers of brilliant young men like yourself have been blown to bits by rumors which turned into fact long before any real facts turned up.”
Whittly was letting him down as painlessly as he could, but it was. the beginning of the end and Bannen knew it. When he returned he would find himself transferred to some minor post in Administration when he would begin to rot away to dust, filing alumni letters and posting tuition payments.
“How did you learn about this?” Bannen wanted to know.
“Well, I could have, picked it up at a dozen places on campus, but I didn’t I got a phone call from a young girl, a friend of the girl against whom you—”
“Okay, okay. Did she give a name? Did you recognize her voice?”
“Neither, I’m. sorry to say.”
“But who the hell got it around the campus so quickly?”
Whittly made a gesture of total puzzlement. “Who knows? Maybe the girl has an older brother or boy friend going to school here at Shoreline. Or an older sister. That’s very likely, one of the three. I’ve arranged for young Hodson to take over your classes for the rest of the day. He’ll need a key to your office and copies of your syllabus for each course. Why don’t you take care of that now. Oh, and your wife called.”
“Peggi?”
“Yes,” Whittly said, with some difficulty. “She received a couple of nasty little calls at her office this morning, and two more at home when she took the rest of the day off.”
“I’d better call her, then.”
Whittly’s face twisted a little. “It won’t do you any good, Krieg. She told me to tell you she’s going to spend a few days at her parents’ place in Coeur d’Alene.”
“May I use your phone?”
“Go ahead, Krieg. But I don’t think you’ll catch her.”
Whittly was right. After a dozen rings, Krieg Bannen put up the phone with slow remorse. Impending divorce, certain total censure by his community, demotion by his college. The vicious circle a young girl was mysteriously drawing around him was nearly complete. And Lieutenant Speers would never reveal the. Complaintant to him unless Bannen chose the rocky road of a law suit for character defamation and slander, something Bannen felt instinctively would do him more harm than good.
Slowly, his philosophical mind was summing things up and the conclusion he finally reached wasn’t flattering. In his brain it became Bannen’s Theorem: The more abstract the concerns of a college professor, the more incapable of handling life’s real problems he is likely to be.
He headed along the footpath toward the low-slung wood-frame bungalow which served as offices and tutorial rooms for the Philosophy and. English Departments. Perhaps a leave of absence was the best course to take, Bannen mused to himself as he walked. Perhaps when he returned, the entire matter would be cleared up or forgotten. But he wouldn’t be moving on to Berkley, as Whittly had suggested. His tracks would instead be in the direction of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
Bannen was twenty yards from the pine-nestled bungalow when he spotted a student heading up on the footpath from a narrow tributary. Bannen recognized him as Mark Prosser, his determined pace telling Bannen he was trying to catch up with him at the fork.
Prosser was by no stretch of the imagination a good student, but he was a cagey one. He bought themes and book outlines at the Campus Bookstore and finagled written assignments from other students. And he wasn’t at all above cornering an instructor to glean small clues about the contents of quizzes and exams.
“Professor Bannen, glad I caught up with you, sir.”
Bannen smiled tightly. “As the football players say, you had a good and proper angle on me. What can I do for you, Prosser?”
“Well, it’s about your eleven o’clock quiz today, sir. I know the quizzes are supposed to be a test of a student’s preparedness and all that, but if you could just give me some idea of the general nature of—”
Bannen wasn’t disappointed, nor angry. Many of his students tried to catch him in a corner and narrow him down. “Priming isn’t exactly cricket, Prosser, you know that.”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“But if you’ll re-read Cicero’s First Philippic Against Mark Antony, and his Letter Twenty-Three to Antony, written following the. death of Caesar, you’ll recall — read and digest — your quiz grade might be helped.”
“The First Philippic and Cicero’s letter to Mark Antony.” Prosser hurriedly jotted the hints down in the fly leaf of one of his text books, going so fast he missed the crosses on his t’s and the dots over his i’s a good half-mile. It was Mark Prosser’s single biggest flaw in his academic make-up. Lack of attention to detail and lack of thoroughness.
Bannen started up the short flights of wood steps to his office but was halted by Prosser’s hand touching the sleeve of his jacket. Prosser wanted something else in the way of special help; and Bannen had a lot to do and a lot on his mind.
“Something else, Prosser? I’ve got a lot to do this morning.”
“Yes sir, there is. I don’t know if you’re aware of it yet or not, but I need a passing grade in your course to get into State University this Fall. A 2.5 will get me in by the skin of my teeth. It’ll be awfully close. Would you be interested to know, for instance, what my g.p.a. is now?”
“I’m only interested in the grade you receive, for my course, Prosser.”