College-Cut Kill

Bradford Carroll, accompanied by a coed to whom he was secretly married, registered in at a local tourist court at ten o’clock last night. He was discovered shortly before three this morning by the proprietor of the court — who was attracted by the light which was left on. His throat had been cut with a straight razor which was found near his right hand.

Police took the coed into custody. She had returned to her sorority house some time before the body was discovered. Police report that before his wife collapsed, she testified that Carroll had been alive when she left, at approximately ten minutes of two.

Carrol, a senior at West Coast University, was a member of Gamma U, that same hard-luck fraternity which lost through suicide and accidental death, five members during the previous school year.

From there on the article went into his history and the school groups of which he was a member.

“It’s a ghastly thing,” Tilly said. “The police,” I said, “promise an early solution of Carroll’s mysterious death.”

A friend of Tilly’s came over to the car. Tilly introduced us. The girl said, “How do you like the new ruling, kids?”

“Haven’t seen it yet.”

“No? It’s on all the bulletin boards. Curfew for all students living on the campus in either houses or dorms. All special senior privileges rescinded. Now we stand a bed check just like the lower classes. All absences from living quarters after eleven are to be reported to the office of the dean until further notice. How do you like that?”

“I don’t,” Tilly said. “But what else can they do? Anxious parents will be giving the school a very bad time. They’ve got to have some sort of an answer.”

I dropped Tilly with a promise to pick her up later, and went to the house. Step Krindall looked as glum as his round pink face permitted.

“Special meeting tonight,” he said.

Bill Armand was standing in the lounge, staring out the windows toward the palms that bordered the drive. He gave me a crooked smile.

“Come to college for a liberal education,” he said. “Where have you been all day?”

“Comforting the shaken.”

“Tilly? When you need a stand-in, let me know.”

I was surprised at the sudden feeling of jealousy. “Sure, Bill,” I said easily. “What’s the voting around here? Murder or suicide?”

“The dopes, which I might say covers about ninety percent of our membership, favor suicide. They overlook the very real argument that Brad was too selfish to kill himself. He wouldn’t think of depriving the world of his presence for the next forty years.”

“I thought he was your friend!”

“Is friendship blind, like love?”

“Armand, the adolescent cynic. Who stepped on you, Bill? And how hard?”

His lips tightened and his face turned chalk white. He turned on his heel and walked away.

I ate with placid Step Krindall, Arthur, Al Siminik and a quiet senior named Laybourne at a table for four. It was a very subdued meal. Once I went to a slaughterhouse. I saw the look in the eyes of the steer after that first brutal smack between the eyes. Siminik wore that look. Arthur ate doggedly, as though from a sense of duty.

After coffee, Arthur looked up at the dining-room clock. He rapped on his glass with a knife. “We’ll go up to the meeting room in five minutes. You Step — you other latecomers — hurry it up.”

We filed up to the meeting room. It was a meeting without ritual, the lights on full. Arthur took the chair. “We’ll dispense with the minutes of the previous meeting and with the treasurer’s report. This is a special meeting called for a special purpose. What happened last night was a severe shock to all of us. Brad was... our brother and our friend.”

Siminik startled the group by sobbing once aloud. He knuckled his eyes like a small boy.

Arthur went on. “I have talked with the police, just before dinner. It begins to appear that the verdict of the coroner’s jury will be death by his own hand.”

“Nuts!” Bill Armand said loudly.