“I’m way ahead of you, Governor.”
“I wish I could get down there myself, but it’s just not possible. I’m tied up here. But I’ll be down as soon as I can, especially if an emergency develops. By the way, don’t tangle with Thornton. He’ll land down there loaded for bear.”
“I understand, Governor.”
“And Mike? I can’t trust the local police on this student rebellion. That’s why I wanted you there in the first place. The truth is, I don’t know whom to trust in good old ’Squanto. So I’m relying on you and your judgment.” The line went dead.
The governor’s tone had been light. McCall was not fooled. The old man’s really worried, he thought, Thornton must be applying a lot of pressure. He knew how much Sam Holland wanted a renomination; he felt that his work for the people of the state, faced as he was with an unpredictable legislature, needed at least another term for completion of his program of social legislation.
McCall turned away from the telephone to see Dr. Littleton hurrying up the corridor toward him.
“The girls at her sorority use a Dr. Williams,” the M.E. said, “but there seems to be doubt that she’s ever seen him for anything. Personally I wouldn’t recommend him. He’s more interested in his golf handicap than in what’s going on in medicine.”
“Then we’d better let Dr. Edgewit handle it till Mr. Thornton gets here and makes his own decision. Thanks, doctor.”
8
A light shone in an upstairs window. McCall stepped onto the porch. The front door was open, the hall in a dim light.
“Dean Gunther?” McCall hesitated. “Floyd?”
A tiny breeze scudded across the porch and a few winter leaves eddied about his feet. Some blew into the front hall as he held the door open. He called again.
McCall stepped in and shut the front door. He stood listening.
After a moment he checked the living room and dining room. The dining table was set, a tall candle burning. He looked into the kitchen. Food was on the range, warming. He returned through a back passage to the entrance hall, hesitated again, and glanced into Gunther’s study. The desk lamp was on, but the room was empty. He stepped inside and made for the desk.
He heard a light step behind him and turned sharply.
It was little Rose Gunther. She had changed into a blue flowered dressing gown. Her heavily made-up eyes were worried.
“Where’s Floyd, Mr. McCall?”
“I thought he was in here,” McCall said. “The front door was open, Mrs. Gunther, so I came in. I called but nobody answered.”
“I was upstairs lying down. Where can Floyd be?” A tiny hand was plucking at the neck of her gown. “He hasn’t been himself lately, Mr. McCall. But I told you that, didn’t I? Where can he have gone? He was here when I went upstairs. Oh, dear, I haven’t even asked you about Laura Thornton. Is she dead?”
“No, she’s alive, although she’s unconscious. She’s suffered a bad beating.”
The dean’s little wife shuddered. “What a world we’re living in. We never know what’s going to happen to our children, do we, Mr. McCall? Even the best-brought-up ones. You’ll have to tell me all about it.” She kept fluttering like a hummingbird. “What am I thinking of!” she exclaimed. “You haven’t had any dinner, your coat is soaked — would you like a cup of coffee while we’re waiting for Floyd? Not that dinner is going to be any good, it’s absolutely ruined...”
“Coffee?” McCall had moved over to the desk, on the side away from Mrs. Gunther. There was an envelope lying on the Navajo Indian rug, unsealed; a bit of wrinkly paper stuck out of the flap. “You took the word out of my mouth, Mrs. Gunther. I’d love a cup of hot coffee. No cream or sugar, though if you have some saccharine I’d appreciate it. Two tablets, please.”
She left the study. McCall pounced on the envelope.
The envelope was smooth. The note was wrinkled. Evidently the notepaper had been angrily crumpled after the recipient read the note, and jammed back into the envelope.
The message was typewritten:
“Dear F.G. — I am leaving this at the front door because naturally I don’t want to be seen. You wouldn’t like that either, would you, darling? I’ll just knock discreetly on the door and flee. I know you’re alone downstairs, your wife in her room. You must meet me immediately behind the Bell Tower, by the big oak. You’d better show up this instant, my dear, or you’ll regret it like mad. No joke, m’lord. I’ll be waiting. Your Lady G”
Lady G?
McCall rammed note and envelope into his pocket just as Rose Gunther appeared again in the study doorway.
“It’ll be ready in a minute, Mr. McCall.”
“I’m afraid I can’t stay after all,” McCall said ruefully. “Just remembered something I forgot to take care of.”
“What a shame.”
“I’ll make it as fast as I can, Mrs. Gunther. You keep the coffee hot. Bargain?”
She smiled more openly now.
“If Floyd gets back before I do, ask him to wait for me.”
“I do hope everything’s all right...”
“Now don’t worry, Mrs. Gunther.”
He drove fast toward the campus, blessing Kathryn Cohan for having pointed the Bell Tower out to him earlier in the day.
Blackmail? He blanked his mind. No point in speculating. He’d know in a few minutes. Past the Student Union McCall made a quick turn. Moments later he saw the towering trees, then the music building. The Bell Tower thrust against the night sky like a wind-testing thumb.
He killed his engine and jumped out. The campus was ridiculously peaceful after the turbulent events of the evening. There was no one about at all.
He walked across the lawn toward the silent building. In the semidarkness close to the building, he checked the trees. A small oak stood beside the tower. That couldn’t be the one. He moved carefully around to the rear of the building and saw a giant oak looming in the dark. He paused to listen.
Nothing.
At the same instant he spotted the figure on the ground, a blacker blackness against the lawn, and sprang forward.
Dean Gunther’s yellow-ivory face glowed in the moonlight. Something about the frosted-over sheen of his wide-open eyes told McCall that Gunther was dead.
McCall got out his pencil flash and flicked it on. He made a face. The Dean’s chest and throat were something out of an abattoir. He had been stabbed with a knife over and over, all over the neck and chest and well down into the abdomen. The right leg hooked under the body in an unnatural position. The mouth gaped bloodily. The back was arched, the chest thrown out in an almost comical military posture.
McCall deliberately put Rose Gunther out of his mind. That would come later.
There was a twinkle of light near the body. He sought its source, squatting on his heels. It was a bone-handled hunting knife. The blade was stained, all but the steel near the hilt. He did not touch it.
So now Floyd Gunther, dean of men, had been murdered in an act that by the very violence of its savagery linked it inescapably with the beating of Laura Thornton. The dean had been lured to this dark oak behind the Bell Tower of the Music Building and his death — the “F.G.” in the salutation made it clear that the note had been intended for him. But who was “Lady G?” There had been a threat with teeth behind it in the note. What connection could there be among “Lady G,” the note, Gunther’s murder, and Laura’s beating?
He hurried back to his Ford and drove over to the Student Union; he remembered a row of telephone booths near the entrance.