Фрэнсис Фицджеральд: The Pat Hobby Stories

Pat paused, trying to think of everything.

'—of course, we've got to release it in the southern states, so it's got to be one of your players that's white.'

There was an unquiet pause. Mr Doolan came to his rescue.

'Not a bad idea,' he suggested.

'It's an appalling idea,' broke out Dean Wiskith. 'It's—'

Doolan's face tightened slowly.

'Wait a minute,' he said. 'Who's telling WHO around here? You listen to him!'

The Dean's assistant, who had recently vanished from the room at the call of a buzzer, had reappeared and was whispering in the Dean's ear. The latter started.

'Just a minute, Mr Doolan,' he said. He turned to the other members of the committee.

'The proctor has a disciplinary case outside and he can't legally hold the offender. Can we settle it first? And then get back to this—' He glared at Mr Doolan,'—to this preposterous idea?'

At his nod the assistant opened the door.

This proctor, thought Pat, ranging back to his days on the vineclad, leafy campus, looked like all proctors, an intimidated cop, a scarcely civilized beast of prey.

'Gentlemen,' the proctor said, with delicately modulated respect, 'I've got something that can't be explained away.' He shook his head, puzzled, and then continued: 'I know it's all wrong—but I can't seem to get to the point of it. I'd like to turn it over to YOU—I'll just show you the evidence and the offender … Come in, you.'

As Evylyn Lascalles entered, followed shortly by a big clinking pillow cover which the proctor deposited beside her, Pat thought once more of the elm–covered campus of the University of Pennsylvania. He wished passionately that he were there. He wished it more than anything in the world. Next to that he wished that Doolan's back, behind which he tried to hide by a shifting of his chair, were broader still.

'There you are!' she cried gratefully. 'Oh, Mr Hobby—Thank God! I couldn't get rid of them—and I couldn't take them home—my mother would kill me. So I came here to find you—and this man packed into the back seat of my car.'

'What's in that sack?' demanded Dean Wiskith. 'Bombs? What?'

Seconds before the proctor had picked up the sack and bounced it on the floor, so that it gave out a clear unmistakable sound, Pat could have told them. There were dead soldiers—pints, half–pints, quarts—the evidence of four strained weeks at two–fifty—empty bottles collected from his office drawers. Since his contract was up tomorrow he had thought it best not to leave such witnesses behind.

Seeking for escape his mind reached back for the last time to those careless days of fetch and carry at the University of Pennsylvania.

'I'll take it,' he said rising.

Slinging the sack over his shoulder, he faced the faculty committee and said surprisingly:

'Think it over.'

'We did,' Mr Doolan told his wife that night. 'But we never made head nor tail of it.'

'It's kind of spooky,' said Mrs Doolan. 'I hope I don't dream tonight. The poor man with that sack! I keep thinking he'll be down in purgatory—and they'll make him carve a ship in EVERY ONE of those bottles—before he can go to heaven.'

'Don't!' said Doolan quickly. 'You'll have ME dreaming. There were plenty bottles.'