College-Cut Kill

He gave me a long scornful look. “Now hold it up, Arlin. That’s kid stuff and you know it. Sure, the boys play politics. It’s a game. It’s good training. But nobody — nobody ever took it that seriously! Man, are you trying to tell me that old Arthur goes around killing people so he can get to be house president and then so he can keep his authority.” He turned to Tilly. “You ought to know better than that!”

Tilly counted if for him on her fingers. “Winniger, Sherman, Flynn, Carroll. All in the way, Harv. All dead, Harv. You know the law of averages. If you don’t care for our answer, give us your answer.”

I could see it shake him a little. But he kept trying. “People, you don’t kill guys for that sort of thing. Look! It’s a college fraternity.”

Then Tilly carefully explained to him about psychopaths. I was surprised at how much she remembered. She told it well. When she was through, Harv Lorr knew what a psychopath was.

“It seems so incredible!” he complained. But I saw from his eyes that we had him.

“If it was credible,” I said, “somebody would have found out a long time ago. If there’d been a million bucks at stake or something like that — some motive that everybody would be willing to accept, the whole thing would have looked fishy and friend Arthur would have been stopped in his tracks. But this way, for a goal that seems unimportant to the common man, he can hack away almost without interference.”

“What do you want me to do?” he asked humbly. He had given up. He believed us.

“Just sit tight,” I said. “Be ready to give over the facts when they’re called for.”

“What do you two plan to do?” he asked.

I looked at Tilly. I kept my eyes on hers. “We’ve got to give the guy a new reason,” I said, “and then jump him when he jumps.”

Her lips formed a soundless, “No!”

“There’s no other way,” I said. And there wasn’t. I wanted her to talk me out of it. I was ready to be talked out of it. I wanted no part of it. But she saw the logic of it, the same as I did.

“Keep your guard up,” Harv said.

“I’ll make him be careful,” Tilly said.

I looked at my watch. “If we can make fifty miles in fifty minutes, you stand a chance of not being expelled, Miss Owen.”

We left. I got her back in time. I went out to my place on the beach and wished I was in Montreal. I wished I was in Maine looking at the girls in their swim suits. I wore myself out swimming in the dark, parallel and close to the shore. I had a shot. I tried to go to sleep. I had another shot. I went to sleep. I dreamed of Arthur Marris. He had his thumbs in my jugular...

I waited for the coroner’s jury. I told myself it was the smart thing to do. They might force the issue. Then they returned a suicide verdict and sad-eyed people shipped Brad to his home state in a box. Laura went abroad...

Call it a ten-day wonder. A small town might have yacked about it until the second generation. A college has a more transient sort of vitality. Life goes on. Classes change. New assignments. Next Saturday’s date. Call it the low attention factor of the young. A week turns any college crisis into ancient history.

Tilly and I talked. We talked ourselves limp. The conversations were all alike.

“We’ve got to get him to make the first move, Tilly.”

“But to do that, Joe, you’ve got to be a threat to his setup. You’ve got to take Brad’s place.”

“You don’t think I can engineer a strong opposition move?”

“I know you can. That’s the trouble.”

“What’s the trouble?”

“You fool! I don’t want you being a target.”

“The other boys didn’t have their guard up. Not one of them knew until the very last moment. It must have been a horrid surprise. He won’t be able to surprise me.”

“How can you be sure?”

“By never being off guard.”

“People have to sleep, don’t they?”

“Now you’re handing me quite a sales talk, Till.”

We talked. At the drive-ins, between races at the dog tracks, on my small private beach, riding in the car, walking from class.

I didn’t tell her, but I was already starting the program. I took over Brad’s sales talk. I buttonholed the brethren and breathed sharp little words into their ears.

I racked up a big zero.

It was funny. When I had no axe to grind, I was Rod Arlin, a nice guy, a transfer, a credit to the house. As soon as I started to electioneer I became that Arlin guy, and what the hell does he know about this chapter, and why doesn’t he go back to Wisconsin...

Arthur tapped me on the shoulder after dinner. “Talk for a while, Rod?”

“Why, sure.”

We went to his room. He closed the door. I glanced toward the closet. I sat down and the little men were using banjo pics on my nerves. But I worked up a casual smile. “What’s on your mind, Arthur?”

I didn’t like him any more. That warm face was a mask. The deep-set eyes looked out, play-acting, pretending, despising the ignorance of ordinary mortals.

He stood by his desk and tamped the tobacco into his pipe with his thumb. He sucked the match flame down into the packed tobacco with a small sound that went paaa, paaa, paaa. He shook the match out.