“Dr. Manders is the head of the Psychology Department,” Bast explained, and it was immediately obvious that a subject had been broached which was disturbing to him.
“He’s a good man,” Jenny said. “Not many of these scholarly types would go along with something like this. I think he’d like to pitch right in himself if it wasn’t beneath his dignity.”
Bast seemed to feel increasingly uncomfortable as the discussion of his superior went on.
“Shouldn’t you kids be getting on over to the party?” he asked, looking at his watch.
“Right,” Jenny said. “I promised to help touch up the decorations. Will you bring Mr Templar? Don’t be late, though. Prize giving’s at midnight sharp.”
“What other time could it be?” Simon said.
“You’re absolutely groovy. It’s right around the corner — basement of the University Club, and...”
“I’ll see that he makes it,” Bast assured her, recovering enough of his former good mood to laugh and shake his head as she and Grey went out.
“Quite a girl,” Simon remarked. “Does she ever slow down?”
“Never. But Mr Templar, there’s something I must talk to you about,”
Simon did not miss Bast’s sudden reversion to an apprehensive tone.
“Yes?”
“In fact, I have to admit that wanting to involve you in this — to give myself an opportunity of talking with you — was one of my motives in making the bet with Grey Wyler.”
“It does seem a little touchy, attacking strangers on the streets, even in fun. They might fight back — with real bullets. Or lawsuits.”
“I know. You were the first one. Outside the college, I mean.”
The Saint was growing a little impatient with Bast’s reluctance to get to the point.
“Well,” he said, glancing at his watch, “just what is it that’s bothering you?”
Bill Bast hesitated once more and finally got it out.
“I’m afraid that the Death Game... is becoming something more than a game.”
3
But that was as much enlightenment as the Saint was to receive just then on the subject of Bill Bast’s worries. The unannounced entrance of a third party cut off his words as abruptly as if a guillotine had cut off his head. Simon himself was almost startled by the entrance, which was so entirely unheralded that there was something suspect about it. The sound of a walking man should have been audible for some distance through the almost deserted building, and yet there had been no sound at all until the door opened and a short, round-headed, balding man stepped in, his middle-aged portly frame invested with more dignity than it probably deserved by the black folds of an academic gown. He spoke with what might have been either ungraceful surprise or ill-concealed irritation.
“Ah, Bast... not at the party?”
“Dr. Maunders,” Bast said. “We weren’t expecting you here.”
“I trust not.”
“This is Mr Templar. Mr Templar, this is Dr Maunders, head of the Psychology Department.”
Dr Maunders gathered enough aplomb to grant Simon a soggy handshake and a limp rendition of a smile. Even those improvements, however, failed to put him anywhere near the category of people whom the Saint found charming at first sight. The only things intriguing about Dr Maunders — who otherwise seemed as spiritually weak as his handshake and as characterless as the bald expanse of his forehead — were his unhappy effect on Bill Bast and his peculiar ability to approach doors without making any noise.
“How do you do?” said Simon, realizing even as he spoke that certain groups of synapses were meshing beneath Dr Maunders’ hairless cranium, bringing cloudy recognition to the Grey lenses of his eyes.
“Could it be Simon Templar, the Saint, by any chance?” he asked.
Simon nodded.
“I confess. My halo’s in need of some repairs, though, after my contact with your students.” Maunders looked puzzled.
“I didn’t know you were acquainted with any of them.” He put down the book he had been carrying when he entered, at the same time trying to suppress the annoyance which had crept again into his face. “But of course there’s no reason for me to know the details of my students’ and associates’ private lives.”
“Mr Templar was brought into the Death Game,” Bast said, reminding Simon of a ludicrously overgrown George Washington confronting his father beside the cherry tree. “By Grey Wyler.”
Maunders’ irritation broke the surface entirely.
“Wyler? Brought in a non-student? There could be serious trouble from something like that. I really must say...”
“He had my permission,” Bast said.
Possibly it was a well-formed habit of coming to the rescue which prompted Simon to interpose himself.
“Not that he’d need anyone’s permission necessarily,” he put in. “I assume that what students do with their time outside the college is their own business. I can’t say I was delighted to have my hair parted by your prize pupil’s arrow, but I wouldn’t hold anyone responsible but Wyler himself.”
Whatever gratitude the Saint’s intervention earned from Bill Bast was more than balanced by the obvious hostility he seemed to provoke in Dr Maunders.
“I’m pleased that you take such a broadminded view,” said the professor acidly. “On the other side of the situation, however, is the fact that the Death Game is so closely associated with my department here at the university that any public unpleasantness that grew out of it would reflect very seriously on me.”
Bast was holding himself in a state of controlled rigidity. His tone was stiffly correct but not obsequious.
“I didn’t expect you’d be quite so upset. Now that it’s done there’s nothing I can say except that it won’t happen again, as far as I have any control over it.”
“There’s no harm done,” Simon said. “And the fad will probably pass after a few more weeks anyway. Why don’t we just forget it and go see how the new generation enjoys itself in between mock murders?”
Bast looked at his watch and began pulling off his laboratory smock.
“You’re right. We should be getting along.” He paused and then gave Dr Maunders’ sensitivity another inevitable tweak. “They’ve asked Mr Templar to give out the prizes.”
Manders turned away abruptly to busy himself with some charts on a nearby table.
“Oh, really?”
“You don’t mind, I hope?”
“I assumed... It doesn’t matter.”
“Dr Manders,” Simon said, “if I’m interfering with any plans of yours I’d be more than willing to withdraw.”
Manders looked up pettishly from his charts and performed another of his flaccid smiles, making only too clear the effort it cost him.
“Not at all, Mr Templar; the students will be thrilled to have such a... celebrity at their bash. Go right ahead, please. I’ll join you there in a few minutes.”
“Pleasant chap,” Simon remarked when he and Bast had left the laboratory. “Sort that makes you love the human race.”
Bast, his gangling stride emphasizing his eagerness to get away from the awkwardness they had just experienced, shook his head.
“He wasn’t always like that. A year ago he was a different man. Jolly almost. Then...”
“Hullo there, Mr Bast! They’re waiting.”
Two young men had appeared from around the corner as Bast and Simon came out onto the sidewalk, evidently a search party from the student assemblage, and any more private conversation was impossible.
A couple of blocks’ walk through the clammy mist brought them to a large brick building whose staid facade bore the modest legend, lettered on a small wooden plaque, THE UNIVERSITY CLUB.
The basement of the Club — or at least that one moderately sized room of it which had been commandeered for the night’s social affair — was anything but staid. Jammed with thirty or forty students from wall to wall, unlighted except for candles, it gave the immediate impression of a tin of anchovies viewed from the inside. On closer inspection, it became apparent that the students were sharing the confined space with a half dozen round tables covered with red and white checkered tablecloths, with a mercifully silent juke box, with a small dais near the door, and with a striking assortment of strange or macabre decorations: strings of onions with black ribbon bows on them, skull and crossbone pennants, ketchup-stained rubber daggers, and hangmen’s nooses.