There were four of them in the dormitory room, all in varying stages of night attire. One was sprawled across the bed in reverse, her chin and arms dangling over the foot. One was sitting perched on the windowsill, balanced with one pointed toe touching the floor, like a frozen ballet dancer. The third was sitting on the floor, clasping her reared knees, chin atop them. The fourth and last, the only one audible, was in a chair. Not sitting in it, as that position is commonly understood. She was spread across it flat like a lap robe. One chair arm supported her elbows, her legs rippled across the other. In the middle, where she sank in to meet the part of the chair usually reserved for sitting, a book balanced unsupported, rising and falling with her bodily breath. Rising and falling fairly rapidly at the moment.
“There’s a cabin waiting among the spruce and firs that needs a woman’s touch. Miss Judith,” he said.
She smiled shyly and her head dropped upon his chest. His strong arms slowly encircled her.
At this point the reader’s own shoulders twitched ecstatically, as though they were receiving the embrace in question. She let the book slide languishingly to the floor.
“I bet he’s just like that himself,” she rhapsodized dreamily, “Strong and reliant, and sort of bashful with it. D’you notice how he kept calling her ‘Miss Judith’ right through to the end, sort of respectful?”
“I bet with you he wouldn’t have been that respectful.”
The girl on the chair exulted: “You bet not, I would have seen to it he stopped being that formal right after the first chapter.”
The one on the bed said, “She’s sure got it bad.”
“I dreamed about him last night. He rescued me from an igloo that was just going to cave in.”
The other three tittered. “What else did he do?”
“That was all there was time for. The eight o’clock bell woke me up — dam it.”
“Pass around another cigarette,” somebody said.
“There’s only one left.”
“Oh, what’s the difference? We’ll get another pack for tomorrow night.”
“Yes, and don’t forget it’s your turn to bring them in next. I supplied this one.”
“All right, here goes. We’ll have to open the window again. If the smoke gets out in the hall and old Fraser comes along—”
The one in the chair gave a deep sigh that buckled her in the middle momentarily. “Why do you have to be old before you meet anyone thrilling, before anything exciting happens to you?”
“She’s still thinking about him.”
“How do you know he isn’t married, and with about thirty-two kids?”
“I know he isn’t, he couldn’t be.”
“Why couldn’t he?”
“Because it wouldn’t be fair.”
“Poor thing, I hate to see her suffer so.”
The one on the bed said impatiently, “Oh, all she does is talk about it, and it ends there. If she ever met him face to face she wouldn’t know what to do, she’d probably drop through the floor.”
The chair sprawler reared defiantly. “Is that so? I’d show you a thing or two. I’d have him eating out of the hollow of my hand in no time.”
Her detractor on the bed taunted: “I bet you wouldn’t even get past the front door.”
“I bet I would, if I ever made up my mind to! How much do you want to bet?”
“I’ll bet you my whole next month’s allowance from home!”
The one on the bed eyed her vindictively. “All right, mine against yours. And you either go through with it or keep still about him from now on. I’m sick of hearing about him.”
“Yes, get it out of your system once and for all,” one of the more sympathetically inclined listeners suggested. “It’s no use just going on pining like this.”
The skeptic on the bed said, “How’ll we know she’s telling the truth when she gets back?”
“I’ll bring proof back with me.”
“Bring one of his neckties,” one of them suggested jocularly.
“No, that’s no good, I know something better. She has to bring a snapshot of the two of them standing together.”
“And his arm has to be around her,” crowed the windowsill sitter. “We want our money’s worth!”
“Huh!” snorted the man killer in the chair self-confidently. “That’ll be putting it mild; the best parts’ll never get on the snapshot. If I ever really go to work on him, he’ll probably follow me back here on the end of a leash.”
“How’ll you get away from here?”
“I’ve got everything thought out. I’ve been daydreaming about it for the longest time, in French class and places like that, so I know just what to do. You know how scared stiff Miss Fraser is of epidemics — if you show two red dots on your face she can’t get rid of you fast enough. And my people are away right now—”
“You better see that you win,” one of the neutrals commiserated, “or you’ll be broke for thirty days straight — and don’t expect us to lend you any pocket money.”
The one bunched on the floor flew apart suddenly. “Fraser!” she hissed warningly. “I hear her step in the hall!”
The room dissolved into a flux of flurried motion, in which they all darted at cross angles to one another. Two of them made for the communicating door to the adjoining room and fled back to their own quarters. The one who had been on the windowsill dove for the recently vacated bed and disappeared with a great welling up of covers.
The one who had been in the chair was left stuck with the cigarette. She snapped out the light and its red ember made hectic spirals around in the dark, in search of a landing place.
“Take this! Take this!” she whispered frenziedly.
“You take it!” the unfeeling reply came back. “You were the last one holding it.”
It described a parabola out the open window, the bedcovers billowed up a second time, and then there was a sort of heaving silence. An instant later a grimly vigilant head was outlined against the insidiously opened hall door. It sniffed the air suspiciously, remained poised an uncertain moment or two, then finally withdrew, defeated but unconvinced.
When it had inspected the adjoining room, as well, and gone on from there, a whispered conversation in the latter was eagerly resumed.
“Don’t you think there’s something funny about her? I mean, she’s not like the rest of us, she seems older.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that, too.”
“After all, there’s nobody here really knows anything about her. Her parents didn’t even bring her here when she registered; I heard Miss Eraser say her application was received by mail and she was enrolled on the strength of a recommendation. Who is she? Where did she come from? She suddenly plops down in the middle of us from nowhere and in the middle of the term, too.”
“Well, she was transferred.”
“Oh, that’s what she says.”
“Nobody’s ever seen her people. And she never gets letters from home like the rest of us.”
“Why is she so insane about that silly writer? I don’t see anything so wonderful about him.”
“He has a country place not far from here; maybe that’s why she came here — to be near him.”
“Maybe she’s not a schoolgirl at all.”
There was a moment of silent, shivery conjecture.
“Then what is she?”
II
Holmes
Holmes’ roadster was crawling along at his usual snail’s pace, hugging the extreme outside of the road, German shepherd stiffly erect in the seat beside him, when the taxi flashed by, going the same way he was. He habitually drove in low like that, to help his thinking. He found he could get quite a lot of it done when he was out alone in the car for an airing, just drifting along aimlessly.