Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Vol. 32, No. 2, January 1973

Horror Story by Jerry Jacobson

Hate-packed, obscene, the voice came over the phone. Listening, he felt cold terror clutch him. For a good man can live only one way. But he can die in a thousand ways.

Though he did not know it, Krieg Bannen’s private horror story began at eight o’clock that morning. He rose early, had breakfast with his wife, Peggi, and toasted the first full-fledged day of Spring warmth and sunshine with his orange juice.

For a forty-three-year-old professor of moral philosophy whose key movements occurred mostly between his ears, he was even looking forward to testing out his legs by biking it into the college on the ten-speed English bicycle his wife had parked under a Christmas tree two years before.

Peggi had already left for her job at Wesco Insurance, in town, where she was a rater. In fact, except for Bannen, most of Cresthill Circle emptied out early, so that the community was almost deserted when Bannen walked out to his car for the short drive to Shoreline Community College for his nine o’clock lecture class, his first scheduled assignment.

Had it been a gloomy, rainy day a little thing like an undelivered morning newspaper might have set him off on a brief tirade. But just as the hint that Spring was coming made young delivery boys absent-minded, it also made middle-aged philosophy professors tolerant and forgiving.

Monday was his Monster Day, as Bannen called it. Three lecture classes at nine, eleven and one o’clock, with a guidance session sandwiched in the middle. But after Monster Day, it was all downhill. He was in better spirits this Monday than most because on Sunday, he and Peggi had won the local neighborhood Paddle Tennis Tournament on the backyard court of the Graysons.

And the Berruccis had invited them the upcoming Saturday for a boat trip through the San Juans. So what was a little thing like an undelivered newspaper?

The closest paper box was ten blocks out of Cresthill Circle, a block from the high school. He drove there in faded dungarees and an old college sweatshirt, passing throngs of students on their way to the high school and to Coan Middle School reaffirmed his sense of worth.

Once in a while it did his soul immeasureable good to witness the raw product, to know that these small, unformed things on two feet, seeming to motor eagerly, were indeed not being brought to him shackled, in barred vans, against their will.

In five minutes he was back home, parked the late model olive-green sedan on the street and went back inside the house for another cup of coffee and a few minutes with his Record-American.

When the telephone rang, Bannen was just wrapping up the college and pro basketball scores and his second cup of coffee. The abrupt intrusion caused him to start slightly. The last morning phone call he’d received had been to inform him of the death of his father in Medford, Oregon; and the one before that, to transmit the tragic news of the suicide death of a close friend in college.

He lifted the receiver tentatively, like a demolition expert lifting rocks in search of unexploded bombs.

The answering voice was a woman’s one he did not recognize. In it was coldness, impersonality. And a vague something else.

“Is this the Krieg Bannen residence?”

“Yes. This is Krieg Bannen speaking.”

“Mr. Bannen, this is Detective Lieutenant Grace Speers. Are you the owner of a green, 1971 sedan, with the license number DFG 606?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Bannen, we have a complaint lodged against your car,” said Lieutenant Speers, more coldly and distantly than before, Bannen thought.

“A complaint? What kind of complaint?”

“Mr. Bannen, I’m not allowed to discuss the nature of the complain t on the telephone. What I would like is for you to drop in and see me sometime this morning. The sooner the better, for everyone concerned.”

For everyone concerned? Then, there were others involved. But involved in what?

“This morning, you say.”

“Room 712, County-Municipal Building.”

“This morning? I really don’t see any way, Lieutenant Speers. I have lecture classes to teach all morning at Shoreline Community College. I’m a professor of philosophy there. If you could perhaps give me some idea of the nature of this complaint, perhaps it can be cleared up without my having to make a personal appearance.”

“I’m afraid that cannot be done, Professor Bannen. Can you arrange to come in sometime this afternoon?”

Something must have happened on the way to the paper box. Or earlier in the week. Some act involving his car. Was it some kind of collegiate prank being perpetrated against him. Spring weather had that kind of effect on young students. He had done nothing that he could recall. Absolutely nothing.

Now Lieutenant Speer’s official voice came firmly across the line, mincing no words. “Professor Bannen, please don’t force me to draw a warrant for your arrest. It can be done with a simple telephone call.”

His arrest? That didn’t sound at all good. What could he have done that was considered an offense serious enough for an arbitrary arrest?

“Can you make it for eleven o’clock this morning, professor?”

“Eleven o’clock,” said Bannen, numbly confused. “Yes, I’ll be there.”

Lieutenant Grace Speers put up the phone quickly, as though it contained a communicable disease. In the main, she liked her work in Juvenile, got satisfaction helping youths out of trouble and getting them back on the right track at home, in the schools, in society.

Five years a widow, before children of her own had filled her life, Grace Speers was compensating for that void by counselling and guiding the children of others. Female law officers still were not given the heavier, more physical field assignments; these were still rightly the province of the males. But here in Juvenile, happily and luckily, she’d found a real niche and a real need.

In her department only one. kind of crime left her inadequate, nauseous and revulsed: morals crimes. There was a depth of ugliness to these offenders which frightened her to her very marrow. She would rather sit across from a murderer at an interrogation table than a sex criminal, whose insidious unfatal acts killed by degree, killed by the implantation of its evil seed early in a young girl’s life or young boy’s life. And then walked away from a crime that was still happening, an offense that would have its greatest impact upon its victim much later.

Lieutenant Speers knew of what she spoke through painful personal experience. Her niece, her sister’s oldest daughter, was fourteen now. At nine, while returning with a small bundle of groceries from a neighborhood store, a man had driven up along side her in a “black car that looked like a big fish.”

He rolled down the passenger window and summoned the girl to the car. He was a friend of her mother’s, the man told the girl. She shouldn’t become alarmed, but her mother had been taken to the hospital. If she would get in, the man would drive her there just as fast as he could.

Two hours later, Lieutenant Speers’ niece was found dazed and wandering in a city park. She was stiff with muscular catatonia and could not speak. Her clothing was soiled and in tatters and the bluish bruises on her arms and shoulders were large and ugly.

It was six days before physical movement returned to her bruised body; and eight days before she could once again speak. Police and psychiatrists questioned her diligently and with great care. They learned only that the man had a black moustache, wore a ruby ring and had a black car that looked like a fish. Nothing more, and nothing of the foul acts he had done.

Grace Speers had seen it happen many times, but only in the case of her niece had she been able to keep close watch on the development of a victim. At fourteen, she showed little interest in boys. After dark, she would not go out of the house alone, not even to visit a neighbor girl across the street. She was reluctant to discuss problems concerning sexuality with her mother and as she grew she acquired a certain aloofness where her father was concerned.

These were the real crimes being committed; these were the tangible acts of moral offense. And Grace Speers, as the girl’s aunt, was helpless to do anything for her but pray that she would in time outgrow her fears and nightmares.

Lieutenant Speers took a call about a runaway girl, turning a pencil in her hands as she listened to the girl’s mother explain the circumstances. She thanked the woman for calling immediately and assured her they would do everything they could to locate her missing daughter.

Putting up the phone, she continued twirling the pencil. Runaways, kids on drugs, incorrigibles in the home and at schools, the mixed-up and the disturbed youths. These she could handle in stride. But the other. The other always let her speechless and shook.

Now, she found herself thinking again of Professor Krieg Bannen, of Shoreline Community College. Professor of Ethics and Morality. She set her lips and teeth in seething anger, pressing them together harder and harder. Until the pencil she held in her fingers snapped into two jagged pieces.

Krieg Bannen rode up in the elevator in silence. Along for the fide were two men in dark suits and two sullen youths, looking disenfranchised in grimy untucked shirts and hippy-hair tangled like dark snakes.

Bannen guessed they were under subtle arrest by the men in the suits. Next to them, he felt criminal and soiled.

Room 712 was narrow and gray-walled. The desks had been stripped of everything except essentials: typewriters, telephone and detectives. At a reception desk, Bannen gave his name to a flaccid, red-necked man.

“I have an appointment with Lieutenant Speers.”

“Grace, you got business!”

Lieutenant Grace Speers wore a dark blue suit and flowered neck scarf. Her blonde hair was styled slightly out of fashion, as brittle looking as the woman herself. Her total appearance told Bannen she was not there to impress men but to do her job.

“Professor Bannen, will you follow me, please?”

“If it isn’t into a room with an electric chair.”

“Just follow me, please.”

The interrogation room was just large enough to accommodate the two of them: a raw oak desk, two metal chairs and a manila folder centered on the desk and closed.

Lieutenant Speers verified some basic data about Bannen and then cleared her throat. She looked frightened to death of him.

“Professor Bannen, can you tell me where you were this morning between eight o’clock and eight-fifteen?”

“I can tell you precisely where I was. At eight o’clock I was on my way to a paper box at Elmwood Avenue and 33rd Street, necessitated by the fact that our delivery boy, absent-mindedly struck with the beauty and promise of a new Spring, missed our house. I went to pick up a paper.”

Yes, thought Bannen, that was it. Sometime during the morning, a crime had been committed somewhere in Cresthill Circle or nearabouts. They were narrowing down suspects and sifting rumor from fact.

Lieutenant Grace Speers could not look Bannen in the eye. Very possibly that was because she knew she would see in his deceitful face the unknown features of the man who had molested her niece. Very possibly she would sense behind his eyes a twisted brain concocting evils even as it was being picked by her.

“Was that near Cresthill High School, Professor Bannen?”

“That’s correct. The paper box is one block from the high school.”

“And during that time, did you drive in Price Avenue?”

“For one block, yes.”

“Between 32nd and 33rd Streets?”

“Yes. I used Price Avenue to swing back around to Elmwood for the drive back home.”

“Professor, while you were driving on Price Avenue, did you pull your car to the curb and speak with a young school girl? A Cresthill freshman?”

“No, I did not speak to a young girl in Price Avenue. I got my newspaper and returned directly home. I stopped for no one and I spoke to no one.”

“Professor, at roughly eight-thirty this morning, the mother of the girl in question called us. She said, she had just received a phone call from her daughter at school. The girl was upset, in tears. She explained to her mother that while she was on her way to Cresthill High in Price Avenue, a man driving a. green sedan pulled up along side of her and asked her if she would like a ride to school. When the girl refused his overtures, the man then asked what time she finished her classes and if she would like to take a, ride with him to Shell Shoal Beach.”

Bannen’s eyes were on Grace Speer’s hands, holding the information stapled to the manila folder. They were shaking.

“When the girl refused his second offer, the driver continued to keep pace with her as she walked to the end of the block. His suggestive statements continued until the girl warned him that if he did not stop bothering her, she would call the police. At this point the encounter was broken off. The driver of the car sped away, around the corner of 34th Street and Elmwood Avenue at high speed. Obviously he thought the girl would not have the time or presence of mind to remember his car or its license plate number.

“But she did have both time and composure. In the fly leaf of one of her text books she scribbled what she had seen. And what she saw was an olive green sedan, with the license plate number DFG 606. The color, model and license number of your car, Professor Bannen.”

The charge filled Bannen with anger. Obviously there was a mistake being made here, or a cruel joke being played.

“Can you tell me the girl’s name?”

Still the hard, feminine eyes would not meet his directly. “I’m afraid not, Professor Bannen. Since no formal charge is being made at this time, all the information I’ve received must remain confidential. The girl’s mother has asked only that I talk with you about the matter. She does not want to know your name nor anything else about you.”

Bannen rarely smoked. In fact he had given them up on the advice of his doctor six years earlier. But he needed one now. He motioned toward the half-filled pack near Lieutenant Speers elbow and she nodded consent. Still she looked in the vicinity of her suspect. The vicinity.

Professor Bannen spent a moment before he answered the charge, hoping the words would carry greater weight after the silence.

“It’s a complete lie.”

“Mr. Bannen, I am not discounting the fact that the girl, in her anxiety and fear, may have exaggerated the incident.”

“Exaggerated?” Bannen was aware that his official title had been dropped. He was now a Mister, stripped of a title he’d labored long and hard to acquire. “Lieutenant Speers, I did not stop in Price Avenue. And I did not speak to the girl in question. I spoke to no one.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Mr. Bannen. We have only the girl’s word so far.”

So far? Was she expecting witnesses to come forward at any moment?

“You said the girl, made suggestive statements. What exactly was I alleged to have said?”

“Again, I’m sorry, Mr. Barmen. Since this is only a complaint, the girl’s identity must remain confidential information.”

“Yes, yes, you’ve already told me. So what now? Do I walk around with a sign on my chest reading ‘Twisted Sex Criminal’? Will my neighbors understand that there is little chance of my perverting the neighborhood because I only do my dirty work near school grounds?”

“Mr. Bannen, I’ve been instructed only to discuss the matter with you. I’m quite sure the knowledge of this incident won’t stray beyond these walls, or beyond the confidence of a mother and her daughter.”

“Can you guarantee that, Lieutenant Speers?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bannen. When there is no charge, I can only warn the individual of his behavior; guarantees aren’t guaranteed.”

Bannen closed his eyes. He was sliding fast. From professor, to mister, to “individual”. Yes, he was sliding very fast.

The air was out of him now. A cruel, bogus file was thickening against him and there was nothing he could do to negate it.

“Is that all? Am I free to go now?”

“I have a few more questions, Mr. Bannen.”

Bannen endured them. How long had he been employed at Shoreline Community College? Were he and his wife planning children? Had he ever been under the care of a psychiatrist? Had his wife? Why had he not been in the military? What was the name of his immediate superior at the college?

Could he give six character references?

“Well, I think that’s all, Mr. Bannen,” said Grace Speers coldly, when she had closed the file on him. “You are free to leave.”

“What, no mug shots? No fingerprints to be filed under Dirty old men? Leave? When I leave here it will be back to a job and a community armed with every dirty little detail of this episode.”

“I really don’t think anything of the sort will occur, Mr. Bannen.”

“Can you guarantee that?”

Her silence told Bannen that the question was as patently unanswerable as the philosophical standoff in the timeless controversy of Chicken v. Egg.

“No stern lecture warning me to be out of Maidenbower Park by sunset? No admonishments about the dangers of going near schools where I might be tempted to commit sordid, career-ruining acts?”

“Officially, the current matter is closed,” Lieutenant Speers said.

“Then since no charge is being lodged against me,” Bannen said, “I now request that all the information you have gathered be destroyed.”

“The basic details must remain a matter of record, Mr. Bannen.”

“But shouldn’t I have been advised that I could have remained silent? And that I enjoy the right to retain legal counsel?”

A soft smile fell from Grace Speers lips. She was too good a cop to make a legal error in this regard. “This was not an arrest, Mr. Bannen. Merely an inquiry concerning a complaint. I suggest you now go home, Mr. Bannen and put the entire matter completely out of your mind.”

This was far, far too much. Bannen found himself on his elbows, glaring at her across the table. “Go home? And do what? Gird myself against the surge of rumor? Put my life back in order.”

Grace Speers stayed silent.

“Hell, even you think I’m guilty! I can read it in your eyes.”

“My job is not to decide guilt or innocence, Mr. Bannen.”

Bannen was close to tears, could sense them on the rim of his eyes. Yet they would not come.

“Can I tell you one thing, Lieutenant Speers?”

The woman nodded.

“I have to live in these shoes of mine. Not you. Me. Tell me what compensation there is for that?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Bannen.”

“Well, I know, Lieutenant. The compensation will be damn little. Damn, precious little.”

When two days passed without repercussions, Krieg Bannen’s fears began subsiding. There were no insinuating phone calls, no subtle cooling toward him by his students and fellow instructors at the community college, no unguarded, biting remarks overheard by Peggi on her shopping trips up to Cresthill Center. It was dying down and Lieutenant Speers had been exactly right. Whatever the reason for the unknown girl’s dark accusation, her family now wanted nothing else but to forget the incident had ever happened.

And then, insidiously, it began. On Thursday evening, Louise Holcombe called them with some distressing news. Their bi-monthly bridge game set for the next evening would have to be cancelled. Tina, their oldest daughter, had fallen down a treacherous set of basement stairs, fracturing her arm.

Bannen overhead his wife make the suggestion that they have their game the following Friday night. There was some discussion of the matter. Hanging up, Peggi told Krieg the Holcombs would think it over. Bannen himself thought it over and the conclusion he reached wasn’t encouraging.

Why, he asked himself, should a bridge game be cancelled because of a broken arm when all eight arms of the participants were healthy? The Holcombs had other reasons for cancelling out, like two daughters in the same house with a sex maniac.

The cancellation by the Holcombs continued to plague Bannen all the next day until the second straw was lifted into the ill wind blown into his life. It came in the form of conversation overhead by Bannen as he sat alone drinking coffee at a table in the college’s Student Union cafeteria. Four male voices at a nearby table were in discussion.

“You can never tell about guys like that, man. Definite personality deterioration.”

“A latent schizoid if I ever saw one. By day, ye olde. mild, professorial-type, but when the sun sinks behind the hills—”

“...woifman liveth!”

“Man like, I got a ten-year-old sister. Just knowing a creep like that is living around Cresthill...”

“They oughta put on a couple extra squad cars in Maidenbower Park. Guys like that just drool over parks.”

“...and Shell Shoal Beach... if you catch my meaning.” Bannen got up from his seat and when he came to the table where the rumors were being exchanged he stopped. One of the foursome Bannen recognized. It was a freshman in his nine o’clock class in Moral Philosophy. The other three seemed not to know who Bannen was, but the fourth made deadly sure they did by saying, in an exaggerated way, “Good afternoon, Professor Bannen.”

“Prosser.”

Mark Prosser’s mouth was working rapidly, as if it were trying to hook on something pertinent to say. Finally, it did.

“That, er, was a fine lecture this morning, sir.”

“You mean, I suspect, the comparison of the moral philosophies of Demosthenes and Cicero.”

“Y-yes sir. Really heavy stuff,” said Mark Prosser.

“Well, I’m pleased you’re getting into it. Because I’m toying with the idea of a quiz for Monday. I trust you’ll favor Sullivan Library or Hale Dorm over the Brass Bear Tavern this weekend and be sufficiently ready to dig it.”

“Dig it. You’re really up on the lingo, sir.”

“And you are correspondingly up on ours. Lingo is of my generation.”

Only Prosser seemed amused by all this light humor, and even his was false, tense laughter. The others at the table were staring at Bannen with condemning eyes like three Cicero’s pronouncing on him a sentence of death without vital due process of law.

Valiantly, Bannen made one last stab to break the icy stores bearing down on him. “And Prosser, not that I believe in giving students preferential treatment, a scoop in your case might help you bring up your grade point. Tuesday’s theme assignment will be a thousand word treatment on the repercussions of Cicero’s penchant for condemning to death and exile Roman citizens, without benefit of legal representation or public trial.”

One of the four saw what Bannen was obliquely driving at and lowered his head. But the denser Mark Prosser only grinned and stammered, “T-that’s good of you to tell me about the theme before hand, sir. I’ll get to work on it this weekend.”

Professor Bannen smiled weakly. He was sure the topic of the theme had already slipped out of Prosser’s feeble mental grip.

That evening after dinner, as Barmen sat in the living room carefully preparing his hinted quiz, the phone rang. Peggi answered it.

“What? Who is this, please?”

Bannen stopped his work, listening.

“You have no right to say a thing like that! Stop it, stop it! Who is this?”

With awkward speed, his wife put up the phone. When Bannen asked her about the call, she averted her eyes.

“A... a girl,” she told him.

“What girl? What did she want?”

“She said she was a friend of another girl. She... she...”

“Go on, Peg. She what?”

There was a deep sigh audible to Bannen across the room. “She said you made certain remarks to her girlfriend.”

“Who said that? Did she give a name?” asked Bannen.

“No. She didn’t even mention her own name. She said you asked the other girl to... to get into your car. She said you asked her girl friend to go with you to Shell Shoal Beach.”

Krieg Bannen tried to be casual, though his insides were shaking themselves into pieces.

“Just some kid fooling around with the telephone,” he said.

“But she knew your name, Krieg. And she mentioned the license plate and make of your car.”

“My name’s in the phone book, Peggi. And my car’s parked out front quite a bit. Probably a neighbor girl playing telephone roulette just to kill a dull Friday night.”

“But if it was a neighbor girl, you’d think I’d have recognized her voice,” Peggi said tensely.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. The kid is probably high and dry without a date. Either that or she’s been forced into a stint of baby sitting with Little Brother Melvin the Terrible, who every ten minutes bites an ankle and chucks the cat up on the roof. So the sitting sister decides to take out her frustrations on someone else. Believe me, Peg, the best thing to do is forget the whole thing.”

“I suppose you’re right, Krieg.”

“I know I’m right.”

If Bannen expected the one call would be the end to it, he was only wishing through his hat. Two more calls came that evening. The first was from the Graysons, informing them that the Paddleball Tournament for Sunday had been cancelled. And the second came from Frank Berrucci who, in a troubled nervous tone told Bannen weekend business had come up unexpectedly and that their scheduled cruise through the San Juans would have to be postponed.

They passed the remainder of the evening in painful, suspicious silence. Peggi washed in the basement, cooked mysteriously in the kitchen and obviously avoided the living room.

And that evening for the first time in his memory, she turned her back on him in bed.

It was the next afternoon and Peggi was just returning from her weekly Saturday session at the beauty parlor. “Krieg what’s happening?” she said.

Bannen was at the kitchen table, eating a salami and Swiss cheese sandwich and studying in a volume of philosophy translated from the third century Greek. “What do you mean what’s happening, Peg?”

“Only something like the end of our social life,” Peggi told him seriously. “This morning at Ardella’s Beauty Shop, Grace Callahan treated me like an escapee from Plague Island. And Louise Holcombe told me that she and her husband couldn’t, make it for bridge next Friday night, either. And that’s not all, Krieg. A little bit later, I saw. Julie Holcombe coming out of Tassit’s Drugs on the mall. I mean, a fractured arm is something very difficult to hide, Krieg, and Julie Holcombe wasn’t sporting so much as a bandage.”

“Maybe it was the other Holcombe girl who had the fracture,” Krieg said.

“No, Louise said it was Julie.”

Bannen glanced up and tried to give her a reassuring smile. She was preferring to stand in the doorway leading into the dining room.

“Krieg, would all of this have anything to do with the phone call from that young girl?”

“All of what?”

“Krieg, are you blind? The cancelled invitations, the silences, the strange glances I get when I pass people on the street or see them at Cresthill Center.”

“Just your imagination, Peg,” Bannen said, but even as he spoke the words he knew there was no truth to them. The girl. She was systematically getting track at him for something. She was methodically and evilly hammering away at the foundation of. his private and professional life. But why?

On Sunday there was more bad news. It was the day the Evershams, who lived in the big Georgian at the end of the cul-de-sac, chose each year for their pool cleaning party. The Bannens were not invited.

Bannen dreaded what would await him on Monday at the college, but he had to face it. It was nearly what he had expected. His nine o’clock class was less than half full and. he knew why. Quickly, without explanation, he issued a paper assignment and cancelled the remainder of the hour...

“So, under the circumstances, Krieg, I think it might be very prudent to fix you up with a leave of absence. Say a month.”

Whittly, the head of the Philosophy Department, had always been somewhat of a maverick when it came to championing causes. But in Krieg’s case, he was backing down to campus pressure.

“That looks a little like running, Calvin,” Bannen told him. “And coming from a man who’s on record as the type who likes to stand and fight things out, I’m a little disappointed.”

“I’m a little disappointed myself, Krieg, but I’m afraid that in this case, fighting back against these rumor-mongering kids would only paint the picture blacker than it already is.”

“So I’m on a leave of absence. And just who’s going to buy that?”

“I’ll get hold of Voss in the Journalism Department,” Whittly told Bannen. “I’ll have him run a brief item about a Philosophy Conference in Berkley and that I’m sending you down to represent the department. Krieg, this is the best way, believe me I’ve known incidents similar to yours happening at other universities. Before they’re all over, they can get very ugly. And when they’re over, careers of brilliant young men like yourself have been blown to bits by rumors which turned into fact long before any real facts turned up.”

Whittly was letting him down as painlessly as he could, but it was. the beginning of the end and Bannen knew it. When he returned he would find himself transferred to some minor post in Administration when he would begin to rot away to dust, filing alumni letters and posting tuition payments.

“How did you learn about this?” Bannen wanted to know.

“Well, I could have, picked it up at a dozen places on campus, but I didn’t I got a phone call from a young girl, a friend of the girl against whom you—”

“Okay, okay. Did she give a name? Did you recognize her voice?”

“Neither, I’m. sorry to say.”

“But who the hell got it around the campus so quickly?”

Whittly made a gesture of total puzzlement. “Who knows? Maybe the girl has an older brother or boy friend going to school here at Shoreline. Or an older sister. That’s very likely, one of the three. I’ve arranged for young Hodson to take over your classes for the rest of the day. He’ll need a key to your office and copies of your syllabus for each course. Why don’t you take care of that now. Oh, and your wife called.”

“Peggi?”

“Yes,” Whittly said, with some difficulty. “She received a couple of nasty little calls at her office this morning, and two more at home when she took the rest of the day off.”

“I’d better call her, then.”

Whittly’s face twisted a little. “It won’t do you any good, Krieg. She told me to tell you she’s going to spend a few days at her parents’ place in Coeur d’Alene.”

“May I use your phone?”

“Go ahead, Krieg. But I don’t think you’ll catch her.”

Whittly was right. After a dozen rings, Krieg Bannen put up the phone with slow remorse. Impending divorce, certain total censure by his community, demotion by his college. The vicious circle a young girl was mysteriously drawing around him was nearly complete. And Lieutenant Speers would never reveal the. Complaintant to him unless Bannen chose the rocky road of a law suit for character defamation and slander, something Bannen felt instinctively would do him more harm than good.

Slowly, his philosophical mind was summing things up and the conclusion he finally reached wasn’t flattering. In his brain it became Bannen’s Theorem: The more abstract the concerns of a college professor, the more incapable of handling life’s real problems he is likely to be.

He headed along the footpath toward the low-slung wood-frame bungalow which served as offices and tutorial rooms for the Philosophy and. English Departments. Perhaps a leave of absence was the best course to take, Bannen mused to himself as he walked. Perhaps when he returned, the entire matter would be cleared up or forgotten. But he wouldn’t be moving on to Berkley, as Whittly had suggested. His tracks would instead be in the direction of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

Bannen was twenty yards from the pine-nestled bungalow when he spotted a student heading up on the footpath from a narrow tributary. Bannen recognized him as Mark Prosser, his determined pace telling Bannen he was trying to catch up with him at the fork.

Prosser was by no stretch of the imagination a good student, but he was a cagey one. He bought themes and book outlines at the Campus Bookstore and finagled written assignments from other students. And he wasn’t at all above cornering an instructor to glean small clues about the contents of quizzes and exams.

“Professor Bannen, glad I caught up with you, sir.”

Bannen smiled tightly. “As the football players say, you had a good and proper angle on me. What can I do for you, Prosser?”

“Well, it’s about your eleven o’clock quiz today, sir. I know the quizzes are supposed to be a test of a student’s preparedness and all that, but if you could just give me some idea of the general nature of—”

Bannen wasn’t disappointed, nor angry. Many of his students tried to catch him in a corner and narrow him down. “Priming isn’t exactly cricket, Prosser, you know that.”

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“But if you’ll re-read Cicero’s First Philippic Against Mark Antony, and his Letter Twenty-Three to Antony, written following the. death of Caesar, you’ll recall — read and digest — your quiz grade might be helped.”

“The First Philippic and Cicero’s letter to Mark Antony.” Prosser hurriedly jotted the hints down in the fly leaf of one of his text books, going so fast he missed the crosses on his t’s and the dots over his i’s a good half-mile. It was Mark Prosser’s single biggest flaw in his academic make-up. Lack of attention to detail and lack of thoroughness.

Bannen started up the short flights of wood steps to his office but was halted by Prosser’s hand touching the sleeve of his jacket. Prosser wanted something else in the way of special help; and Bannen had a lot to do and a lot on his mind.

“Something else, Prosser? I’ve got a lot to do this morning.”

“Yes sir, there is. I don’t know if you’re aware of it yet or not, but I need a passing grade in your course to get into State University this Fall. A 2.5 will get me in by the skin of my teeth. It’ll be awfully close. Would you be interested to know, for instance, what my g.p.a. is now?”

“I’m only interested in the grade you receive, for my course, Prosser.”

“Well, it’s at 2.6, sir,” Prosser rambled on, hurriedly. “The grades in my other courses will keep me right around the C+-area and even a D-grade in your course might squeeze me into State.”

Professor Bannen sighed as his mind’s eye ran down the standings of his 26 students in Moral Philosophy 206. “But you’re not even doing D-work, Prosser. How can I falsify your achievements? I’d be undermining my own moral values at the same time.”

“Your — own moral values, sir?” Bannen didn’t like the insinuation in Prosser’s tone. “Aren’t those a... a little tarnished these days, sir?”

So that was it, finally. Bannen was revulsed to clenching his fists. There were strong penalties for hitting a student, Bannen warned himself with difficulty.

“If you’ve got something on your mind, Prosser, spit it out.”

“Don’t jump to any conclusions, sir. I personally don’t believe there’s a word of truth to the rumors going around about you.”

“So you don’t believe in gossip. What else?”

“Just this, sir. I like you, as a good instructor and as a pretty straight head. I’d like to help you out.”

“How can you do that, Prosser?”

“Well, I think I just might know the girl who’s making all this trouble for you. She’s a notorious liar and, well, a little unbalanced. If it’s the one I think it is.”

“And what makes you so sure you know who the girl is?”

“Talk gets around, sir. Somebody hears something and tells it to a friend and pretty soon, half the Western world is in on it. And I got a kid sister and she hears a lot of stuff, too.”

Krieg Bannen looked at Mark Prosser with a steady gaze.

“Why don’t you just tell me the girl’s name?” he said evenly. “I’ll take it from there.”

“No deal, Professor. I mean, you’d probably tell the police and there’d be a big stink about it. A better way would be for her to just go down to the police herself and tell them she was exaggerating a little. She’d tell them she didn’t want to get you into any trouble and to just drop the whole thing.”

“I don’t see where that would do much good,” Bannen told Prosser. “Most of the damage is already done.”

“That’s just it, sir. We’ll undo it. I mean, when people find out she was just doing it to get attention, they’ll forget all about the incident ever happening.”

Carefully, Bannen said, “And I imagine that since you’re doing this favor for me, you’ll want one done for you in return.”

Suddenly, even before Prosser could speak his terms, the dawn was beginning to come up to Bannen. Like thunder. “Like see my way clear to give you a passing grade in my course. A nice, fat C, for instance.”

“Now you’re getting the picture, Professor. Actually, even a D-grade would be all right, because I could still pull down my 2.5. g.p.a.”

Bannen’s stomach tumbled with nausea. Mark Prosser, despicable and dense as he was, had Bannen over a barrel with his backside showing. It was plain and simple blackmail. Somehow he had managed to crack through to the core of this whole grisly episode and now had no qualms about using the knowledge to his own advantage. He might not be directly involved, but he was playing it like a ruthless pro.

“I’ll give it some thought, Prosser.”

“You do that, sir. Remember, I’m in a position to get you out of a real bind here. But I wouldn’t think on it too long. These scandals have a way of becoming fact if they aren’t undone right away. Be seeing you, Professor.”

In his cramped office, Bannen went through the motions of preparing for his forced sabbatical. He laid out a spare key and syllabus copies for Jeff Hodson, one of the department’s associate professors. But his thoughts were on Mark Prosser and the more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that Prosser was behind the entire nightmare. It was specifically designed to gain him a passing grade in Bannen’s course and get him into a chair at State University, squeezing out a more promising, better qualified student.

That still left Banned to wrestle with the identity of the girl who had turned his life into a pile of rubble. But there were two girls Bannen recalled now. The calls to his home and to Horace Whittly at the university had been from a “girl friend” of the young girl who had been ficticiously confronted that morning in Price Avenue. Who were they?

Obviously, they were girls acquainted with Mark Prosser. And then he remembered Prosser mentioning that he had a younger sister. And it seemed to him that Prosser also had a steady girl friend, one Bannen had seen in Prosser’s company on many occasions. Randomly gathering books and papers to take with him to Coeur D’Alene, he tried desperately to afix a name to the almond-shaped face with wild blonde hair.

It was just a face, one which might take him weeks to run into on a campus the sprawling size of Shoreline C.C. Just a face without a name. If the face was a sophomore, as Mark Prosser was, then he had a copy of it in a drawer in his desk! In last year’s yearbook!

Humorists had a theory about the futility of looking for things you need. What was it? They never turned up until you didn’t need them? Fruitlessly he emptied the three drawers in his desk and then started in on the bookcase when Jeff Hodson interrupted his frantic search, regarding him seriously, the way a psychiatrist might regard a patient going berserk.

“Listen, if you’re planning to set the torch to these ancient facilities, I can come back later with the firemen and throw on some gasoline.”

“I’m looking for a book,” Bannen said not looking back.

“Lot of them on the floor there.”

“Copy of last year’s annual. You seen it?” Hodson often used the office to grade themes and finals.

“Next shelf down. Ten books in from the left. You got a crush on a frosh, or something?”

“Looking for a face,” Bannen explained as he found where Hodson was pointing and began tearing through the pages. “A girl.”

“I understand what Spring does to a man, Krieg. Your secret’s safe with old Hodson.”

If Hodson knew of his current difficulty, which was very likely, he was trying his best not to let it show. Bannen was grateful for it.

“Here it is,” he said aloud. “Carmine Baggroli. Now, to find out where she is on campus!”

“I have to hand it to you, Krieg. When Spring comes, you don’t waste any valuable time.”

Ignoring Hodson’s barbs, Bannen quickly dialed the registrar’s office, mindful that all nine o’clock classes would be breaking in ten minutes.

“Yes, this is Professor Bannen of the Philosophy Department,” he said when a voice came on the line. “I’d like the Monday morning classes of Carmine Baggroli, sophomore pre-major. Yes, I’ll wait.”

“I know you didn’t do it, Krieg,” Hodson said suddenly. “Excuse me, but it’s all over the campus like ivy. You didn’t, did you?”

“No.”

“Knew it all along. Oderint dum metuant, eh?”

“The only Latin I know is Cesar Romero,” Bannen said, who in fact had a better command of it than Hodson, but didn’t have the time to wrestle with the translation.

“ ‘Let them hate so long as they fear,’ ” Hodson said. “You got some hatred on your hands, Krieg?”

“No, I think it’s just a simple matter of blackmail,” Bannen said as he quickly took down the data now being spoken to him over the phone.

“Something to do with this business with the girl?”

“No time to explain now, Hodson. I’ve got to get over to Rammaford Hall. Key and your syllabus copies are on the desk someplace. And straighten this room up, will you? It’s a mess.”

Rammaford Hall, by footpath, was a five-minute run, but Krieg Bannen, by taking some shortcuts over hills and behind campus buildings, cut his traveling time to two minutes.

He still had time enough when he reached Rammaford, to make his way to the building’s second floor, eliminating the chance of missing the almond-shaped face and blonde hair in the crush of students outside the building. He reached Room 212 just as a bell rang harshly and with his back arched against an opposite wall, Bannen waited for the face of Carmine Baggroli to appear. Which, seven faces later, it did.

As he pulled her to one side out of traffic, Bannen was aware of the hard faces recognizing him.

“Excuse me, Miss Baggroli, but I’d like to talk with you a minute. Do you mind?”

The pretty blonde sophomore blinked her eyes in confusion. “Professor Bannen, isn’t it? No, I really haven’t time. I’ve got an eleven-o’clock clear across campus.”

Bannen looked at her evenly. “I’ve checked with the registrar’s office, Carmine. Your next class doesn’t meet until one o’clock.”

If he’d caught her in one lie, how many more could he expect?

“You’re Mark Prosser’s girl, aren’t you?” Bannen said.

“His girl? I’m totally liberated, Professor Bannen Mark just happens to be another name in my book. And you’re detaining me against my will.”

Krieg Bannen knew precisely what he was doing. But he had to go carefully.

“I’m doing nothing of the sort, Carmine. You’re free to go anytime you wish. It’s just that I’ve been asked by Professor Whittly of the philosophy department to contact you regarding Mark.”

“Regarding Mark about what?” The pale blue eyes had darkened defensively when Bannen had first confronted them. But now they were softening to their natural color.

“About his work in my course, Moral Philosophy 206. As you may or may not know, Mark Prosser is in jeopardy of failing my course, an eventuality that would very likely negate any chances he has of transferring to State University this year.”

Bannen was counting on one vital thing: that Mark Prosser, though he may have thoroughly discussed his blackmail plan with Carmine Baggroli, hadn’t, yet had time to tell Carmine that the blackmail plan was set in motion. What he hoped she would read in his conversation was just a simple plea for Prosser’s delicate status.

“All he needs is a C plus or D,” Carmine Baggroli said. “And Mark says that won’t be tough to swing.”

“The fact of the matter is it will be tough to swing,” Bannen told Carmine Baggroli. “And that is why Professor Whittly has asked me to talk to you. He would like a short conference session with you. He feels that as Mark’s friend, you may possibly be able to shed some light on the reasons for his difficulties.”

He could faintly sense in her expression now, a knowingness that Bannen had not yet been hit with Mark Prosser’s trump card. She smiled easily.

“Well, Professor Bannen, I really don’t think a conference session will be necessary. Mark has a way of finishing with a good kick. I have a hunch he’ll pull himself out before Spring Finals.”

“Then, if I read you right, Miss Baggroli, you’d rather not consent to a conference with Professor Whittly,” Bannen said.

“You read me correctly, Professor Bannen.”

“Well then, for the record, Professor Whittly must have a signed waiver to that effect, or a telephonic denial in the presence of a witness. Will you accompany me to his office for that, or would you rather call him?”

“Well, I’m meeting some kids in the Student Union in a few minutes,” Carmine Baggroli said.

“There’s a telephone in Professor Mallory’s office in 201,” Bannen said. “I’m sorry, but it has to be done. As I say, we’re trying to give Mark every chance to pass this course.”

So liberally naive was Bannen’s wan expression, he expected Carmine Baggroli to break into instant laughter.

“Well, I have a hunch Mark won’t need any preferential guidance, Professor. Sure, I’ll call Professor Whittly.”

In Room 201, Krieg Bannen managed to confiscate the telephone from the impending clutches of a student and put through his call. By ritual, Calvin Whittly never left his office before twelve-thirty. Bannen could only hope that Whittly, in the face of all the recent unusual happenings, hadn’t suddenly decided to break from tradition. And he hoped, too, that Whittly would lock-on to the gist of his plan.

Bannen’s luck was holding firm. He instantly recognized Whittly’s tired, urbane voice as it came across the line.

“Professor Whittly, this is Krieg Bannen. I’m at Rammaford Hall and I’ve contacted Carmine Baggroli, as you’ve asked. She has declined the conference session regarding Mark Prosser. I have her here now, to inform you of her declination over the telephone. Can you speak with her? Good. I’ll put her on.”

Krieg Bannen smiled at Carmine Baggroli and handed her the receiver. Would she have the presence of mind to consider the consequences of what she was about to do? Bannen hoped not.

“Professor Whittly? Yes, this is Carmine Baggroli speaking. I’m told that I must make a formal refusal to a conference regarding Mark Prosser’s status in Professor Bannen’s Philosophy course. I don’t feel a conference is necessary. I believe that is all you need, isn’t it?”

There followed a short pause. Then, Carmine Baggroli was presenting the receiver to Bannen. “He wants to talk to you.”

Whittly’s first words were not the ones Bannen wanted to hear. “What the devil is this all about, Bannen? There is no conference set up with this girl! And what is all this business about Mark Prosser?”

From the corner of his eye, Bannen got the Baggroli girl moving back a few steps. He placed the receiver tightly against his lips and said: “The voice, Calvin! Do... you... recognize... the... voice!”

Bannen held his breath. He could feel the perforations, each small hole, against his ear. He waited for the response that could save his life and his career, his pride, his marriage... everything. He waited desperately.

And then Calvin Whittly’s voice was exploding across the line. “That’s her, Krieg! That’s the girl who called me on the phone this morning!”

“You’re sure?” Banned said.

“Yes, I’m sure. Just don’t let that girl get out of your hands, or you’ll never make your way to the source of this thing!”

It was a prophetic statement because, out of the edge of his eye, Bannen how caught the Baggroli girl breaking into a Sprint down the hallway.

Bannen left the phone hanging and broke out after her. The mass of wild blonde hair descended in a disappearing act down the U-shaped staircase leading to the first floor of Rammaford Hall. Shorter legs and heeled shoes were not the best apparatus for escape.

Bannen caught her at the apex of the U, spun Carmine Baggroli around and pinned her against an unyielding wall. He was in no mood to pussyfoot. His thumbs dug into the slender shoulders.

“It was you who made that phone call to my wife, wasn’t it, Carmine! And the call to Professor Whittly this morning! Wasn’t it! Wasn’t it!”

Trapped into a monumental error, Carmine Baggroli was trembling now like a caged animal.

“Please. You’re hurting my shoulders.”

“Hurt? You don’t know the meaning of the word. Do you know what it’s like to lose your self-respect in your community? In your profession? In your marriage? Give me the name of the girl who slandered me and the names of the people behind all this. If you don’t, so help me I’ll break your collar bones right here and walk away from you without a backward glance!”

Bannen was going all the way with her now. He was on the raw edge of losing everything and there was really nothing else left to lose.

“Tell me! Or heaven help me—”

“It was Mark’s idea, Professor Bannen,” came the words now, rushing out like water from a tap opened wide. “He said it couldn’t fail and no one would get hurt.”

“Hurt,” said Bannen. “Would it interest you at all, Miss Baggroli, to know that my wife has left me over this?”

“Your wife?”

“Did you expect this would effect only me? Did you think it would wrap itself up into a nice, neat package, with four tight walls and a pretty ribbon?” Bannen released the pressure on the girl’s shoulders slightly. “What was it for? So Mark Prosser could get a passing grade in my course? Was that it?”

The almond-shaped head nodded. The blonde hair shuddered like gold mist. The pale blue eyes cried.

“It was Mark’s sister,” said the small voice. “Mindy. She doesn’t even know you. God, I told Mark it wouldn’t work. I told him!”

The end in sight, the dark tunnel of this nightmare showing light, Bannen kept at her relentlessly.

“The girl, Mark’s sister, said she wrote down my automobile’s make and license number in a textbook.”

“Mark wrote it down for her,” said the shaken voice. That could be easily verified. Krieg Bannen knew Mark Prosser’s slapdash handwriting, his helpless habit of uncrossed t’s and undotted i’s.

“People don’t do things against their will unless they are threatened. How was Mark Prosser threatening Mindy, Carmine? What was he using against her as a weapon?”

“Drugs,” came Carmine Baggroli’s thin voice as big tears began to fall unabated. “She’s a barb-freak, a fourteen-year-old Barbie Doll. She was into the works, Professor Bannen. Red birds, yellow jackets, blue heavens, goofers. If it’s in a cap, Mindy will pop it.”

“And her parents had no idea she was on her way to Speed and Acid and the whole trip.”

“If they ever found out, it would rip a hole in their whole straight bag big enough to drive a truck through. I mean, they’re nose-to-the-old-grindstone types and Mark’s dada has a heart condition. Like, Mindy is out of her mind ninety percent of the time, but she isn’t so tripped out she doesn’t know what it would do to her dad if he found out she lived out of a capsule.”

The pale blue eyes had finished their crying. Bannen introduced a handkerchief and then led Carmine Baggroli down the final flight of stairs to Rammaford’s first floor.

“We’re going downtown to See a police detective, Carmine. And you’re going to repeat to her precisely what you’ve said to me.”

“Her? I thought detectives were all men?”

“Women’s Lib’s made fantastic inroads everywhere, Carmine.”

It was not until they hit the unpopulated freeway that Krieg Bannen felt his life coming back together again. There were so many things to do, so many wrongs to be right. He sighed. Detective Lieutenant Grace Speers was first. He would go at it one step at a time.

Relaxed, Bannen reached for a cigarette in his shirt pocket and discovered a spreading blue stain from a ballpoint pen which had suddenly choosen to leak. And because he was a man devoted to precepts and symbols, and not precisely of this world until lately, Krieg Bannen read the stain in a symbolic way. The thing about stains, he decided, was that they were difficult to eradicate and very long in vanishing. But they did vanish, they did go away.

And Krieg Bannen, now of this world and a victor in its wars, saw tremendous hope and redemption in that.