Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 8, No. 7, July 1963

Devil in Ambush by C. B. Gilford

Placid-appearing professors may have infernos of their own which are far more encompassing than Dante’s and Medieval Literature.

Professor Howard Hollis, as he presided over his Survey of Medieval Literature class, was a lonely man. At least one reason for his loneliness was the fact that at Western Poly, a college busily turning out scientists and technicians, Medieval Literature was hardly a popular subject. Half a dozen students sat before him, heads bent, scribbling in their notebooks as his monotonous voice droned on about Dante and his Inferno.

Howard Hollis spoke absently, distractedly, but since he had taught the subject for a dozen years, he knew his material by heart. He lived, and was living at this moment, in an Inferno of his own, and his thoughts were as dark and painful as Dante’s. And his torment always reached its fever pitch at this hour, four o’clock on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays in Medieval Lit. Because Rowena Stanley attended this class.

He didn’t stare at her. That would have been the obvious thing, noticed and scorned by the other students, and so far, at least, he had managed to avoid the obvious. But he had a perfect right to glance at her now and then, as he glanced at the others. Impersonally. Just in passing. He glanced at her now, then quickly and guiltily away.

He had not been able to analyze the nature and all the reasons for his passion. Rowena Stanley could not be considered a beautiful girl. He had had other girls in his classes in the past, when the juices of youth had bubbled high inside him, girls who had really been beautiful, and he had felt no compelling attraction. As before a painting or a statue, he might have admired their beauty, but he had never gone beyond that. But Rowena was somehow, mysteriously, different.

He gave her another quick glance. She sat in the back tier of desks — her own choice lately — though there were plenty of empty closer seats. She had her legs crossed, her skirt carefully drawn over her knees. Her legs were good, feminine, but scarcely objects in themselves to send a man reeling. Her brown tweed suit was not new, not especially flattering. She did not dress to attract men, at least not in Professor Hollis’ class. Her head was bent diligently over her notes. She was blonde, naturally, he was sure. But it wasn’t just that. He’d had dozens of blondes in classes before. Rowena? The name? Scott’s heroine. But Howard Hollis, at age forty, was certainly beyond the stage of being infatuated by a romantic name.

The class dragged on, an exquisite torture. What a ridiculous situation to be in, to anticipate these thrice weekly sessions with-ecstatic expectations, like a lover impatiently awaiting a rendezvous, and then when the moment arrived, to be so frustrated and disappointed that the mere presence of his beloved was an agony and he desperately wanted her to be gone. He felt a sweat emerging on his brow, though the room had a wintry chill, and he clenched his fists in order to get a better grip on himself.

The Inferno. He lectured on automatically, detailing the dreadful punishments of Dante’s damned souls. How appropriate, he thought; he might have been describing his own anguish. He glanced frequently at his watch. The seconds were ticking by with the slowness of an eternity in hell. He wondered in a threatening panic if his strain were apparent. Possibly not. The heads remained bowed over the notebooks, including that blonde head whose errant tendrils formed a supernatural mist, a halo, over its owner. This madness could not go on!

It ended mercifully with the ringing of a faraway bell. His voice hummed mechanically to the end of his sentence, then finished abruptly with, “that’ll be all for today.” The students, except for Rowena, looked up at him in a kind of relief, and a chubby brown-haired girl gave him a vacant, perfunctory smile. No one stayed after time with a question. No one was that interested. They seldom were. They packed up books, donned coats that had lain over vacant chairs, and filed out, pretending not to be in a hurry, though they really were. Rowena went with the others, in the very middle of the group. Professor Hollis heard their chatter in the hallway. They weren’t talking about Dante. Five o’clock Friday afternoon, they were discussing week-end dates and activities. Possibly one of the young men was making a date with Rowena. She was not outstandingly popular as she was not outstandingly pretty, but on a predominantly male campus she received her share of attention.

Friday. He wouldn’t see her again till Monday. Seventy-two hours. The relief of not having to be in the same room with her for another seventy-two hours. And the simultaneous pain of seventy-two hours of separation from one whose company he ardently wished to share.

Acting on impulse and not quite knowing his own intention, Howard Hollis struggled hastily into his topcoat, grabbed his briefcase and hat, and stalked out of the room. The hallway was empty. All that was left of his students was the dying echo of their retreating footsteps and their fading laughter. But he knew which way Rowena usually went and that was the direction he took now.

In the shadowy entrance of the old building he came to a sudden halt. Rowena was there at the bottom of the stone steps, chatting with not one, but two, young men. Stabbed by jealousy, Howard Hollis didn’t know whether to change his mind and dash out the back way, or to linger here, hoping.

But while he still debated between beating a cautious, wise retreat and plunging ahead into foolishness, Rowena’s two young friends made off to the left toward the men’s dorms and she herself headed straight across the campus. The temptation was now quite irresistible, and Howard succumbed to it.

By the time he was outside and down the steps, Rowena was fifty feet ahead of him. He did not want to yell for her to wait for him, and it would have been just as unseemly for a professor to be seen running in pursuit of a student. He forced himself to be content with a brisk stride, although, since he was a short man, this gait did not devour distances too rapidly.

The girl was walking fast also. The winter wind, coming at her from her right side, ruffled her blonde hair and molded her skirt and coat around her body. In her low-heeled shoes, her legs seemed more sturdy than willowy. Lithe, graceful, even athletic, she was certainly not the wispy, large-eyed, horn-rimmed-glasses, intellectual type that Professor Hollis might have been expected to gravitate toward. But logic and reason did not impel him now.

Abruptly she turned off to the right. If she had bothered to look she might have noticed him, but she did not look. She took the path between the Engineering and the Physics building, but Howard did not dare accost her there. But then she left the sidewalks and headed toward the well known short-cut through the little patch of woods. High Street lay beyond, but almost a block distant. Many students who did not want to go all the way around to Fulton Avenue took the short-cut. Perhaps she wanted to do some quick shopping before returning to her boarding house for dinner.

Dinner! He could catch up with her and invite her to dinner. That should certainly be within the bounds of propriety. She ought to crave a change from her boarding house fare, and not many of the students could afford to take a coed to dinner.

In the early winter dusk she was lost from view the instant she entered the woods. But the path was well marked, and now that he was hidden from onlookers, Howard broke into a trot. This wasn’t much of a woods really, and not very wild, merely a little tract that the college was saving for future development.

He almost stumbled into her in the dimness before he called out, “Rowena... Miss Stanley...”

The quick way she swung around and the pallor of her face told him that he’d startled her, and he hastened to apologize. “I’m sorry if I frightened you...”

“I’m not frightened.” Her voice, ordinarily such a pleasant, throaty voice, had a quaver in it, and the words seemed more intended to reassure herself than him.

“I saw you take the short-cut. Or at least I thought it was you.” The lie was transparent, and he was ashamed of his inability to make this encounter appear accidental. She was staring wide-eyed at him, obviously certain that he had followed her all the way from the classroom, and just as obviously apprehensive over that fact.

There was a long silence, with neither of them knowing what to say next. They stood in the midst of a larger silence. High Street would be full of cars and people, but their noise did not penetrate this far. Behind them, though closer, the campus was in a lull, the day classes having ended, and the few Friday evening classes not yet begun. The wood itself, devoid of wild life at this time of year, did not even yield the chirping of a bird.

This sudden solitude, this solitude in Rowena’s company, sent Howard’s pulse pounding, confused his mind, made him forget the easy talk that was so hard for him to make in the best of circumstances, made him forget even that clever dinner invitation.

“I’m in a hurry,” the girl said finally. But somehow she did not, or was not able to move. She had grown even paler in these moments, and all he could see of her was her dreadfully white face, like a disembodied mask, hanging there in the deepening darkness.

But her remark triggered in Howard a desire to dispense with the polite niceties and probe instead right to the fundamentals of things. “You’re always in a hurry whenever I want to talk to you,” he heard himself saying with a half-horror at his own boldness.

“I don’t know what you mean.” The girl at least still had the wit to parry.

He plunged on recklessly. “I’ve asked you to come to my office several times. We’ve made definite appointments, and I sat waiting, but you never came. You always said you’d forgotten, but then you forgot the new appointment too. Even in the corridors you avoid me. I’ve called to you, and you pretended not to hear. My dear girl, you must realize that a professor now and then must hold private conferences with students. That’s the only way to really make sure what the student is learning, how she is progressing. And you, Rowena, you are so wonderfully sensitive... I feel that little discussions could be so rewarding... I want to see my students grow in understanding and appreciation...”

He stopped. How asinine it all sounded, how hypocritical and untrue. This girl was intelligent. He could not convince her with patent lies.

“I have to go now,” she said. But still she did not move, afraid possibly that if she tried to leave, he would stop her.

“Please!” He was begging her. “Why won’t you talk to me? Why do you always have some excuse?” He was nakedly humble now, but he didn’t care. At least he was speaking from the heart. “Why can’t I be your friend?”

She was shaking her head. “You’re a professor...”

“What difference does that make? Do those young fellows have more of a right to speak to you just because they’re students? If I were a student, sitting next to you in class, would you speak to me then? Look, I’m a human being, a man, and you’re an attractive girl. I’m respectable, I’m not married...”

“You’re old!”

The way it sounded, coming from her lips, made age seem something horrible, ugly, repulsive, an epithet of scorn and contempt and loathing. It was the equivalent of a slap in the face, the same kind of undeserved insult.

“I’m thirty-nine,” he said quietly. It was only a small lie, since he was forty, and he hated himself for telling it. “I am not rich or handsome, but then some of your young fellows aren’t either. But I know a lot more than they do. I’ve read hundreds more books. Don’t judge me by my lectures. I know they’re dull and stupid, but those are the things I’m expected to say. I wouldn’t bore you if we were alone. I could be very interesting, and say so many clever things — I know I could — if I had you to listen to me. You could inspire me, Rowena, because I love you...”

When she tried to dart away from him, he seized her wrist and held her fast. She struggled in his grasp, but he found a masculine strength he hadn’t known he possessed, and she was helpless against him.

“Let me go,” she pleaded, her voice hoarse with fear. “If you let me go, I won’t tell on you...”

“You won’t tell whom? You won’t tell what?” He’d drawn her close to him now, and he hissed these questions directly into her face. “What am I doing that’s so terrible? When you go out on dates, those boys hold you tighter than this. Why do you allow them to do things I can’t do? Why must you treat me differently?”

She started to scream. No sound came out, but she opened her mouth, and the desire and necessity to scream glittered in her eyes. The threat of a scream lit the fuse of terror in Professor Howard Hollis, and his hands leaped to her throat in, order to silence that scream.

The weight and thrust of his violence bore her to the ground. He fell with her, never relaxing his hold. One thing, and that one thing alone, was in his mind. A scream that would bring people running to see him, a professor, rebuffed by his student — that scream must never be uttered. His hands squeezed harder, and the face that had been so pale and white in the dusk grew mottled and dark.

Then, a long time after, when Rowena Stanley had ceased to move and struggle, when no part of her body resisted him any longer, he rose slowly and heavily to his feet. She did not follow him, but continued to lie there, silent and voiceless, a shapeless thing on the ground, somewhat darker than the surrounding shadows.

He stood motionless for a while, trying to recover the rhythm of normal breathing. The confusion was clearing rapidly from his brain, and he was beginning to see the new and stark reality confronting him.

He, Howard Hollis, professor in good standing, had committed murder. He did not have to wonder whether the girl was dead. She was. She was lying there at his feet on a cold bed of damp, rotting leaves. He could see her nyloned legs, gleaming dully in the dark. And her eyes, wide open and staring up at him. And a book she had dropped, that had fallen open to reveal white pages fluttering in the wind.

“I’m sorry, Rowena,” he whispered softly. “I didn’t mean to.” But he didn’t love her any more. His love had fled when the last flicker of life had left the girl’s body. Whatever Rowena had been, whatever it was he had loved her for, was gone now. One cannot love a dead, departed thing.

He was alive. He had made a terrible mistake that he now wished he could undo, but he was alive. Some instinct that was a part of his every nerve and cell kept reminding his brain of this paramount fact. Rowena was dead, beyond help, but he was alive. And he must go on living.

The deep primitive urges sent frantic messages to his brain. Had anyone seen him entering the woods with the girl? No, he didn’t think so. The campus was all but deserted at this hour. And even if someone had seen him, could that someone identify him? Probably not in the failing light.

But even if he could not definitely be placed at the scene of the crime, would anyone connect him in a general way with Rowena Stanley? Yes, this much was possible. He was her professor in Medieval Lit, of course. But there was more than that. He’d pursued the girl in his professorial way, trying to corner her in hallways, insisting upon appointments in his office. Very possibly — not certainly but possibly — she had confided her problem to somebody. Therefore he was in danger.

Alibi? It was too late for that now. If he had intended to murder the girl, he might have arranged something. But his had been an unpremeditated crime, completely spontaneous, emotional, in an unguarded, almost insane moment.

Insane! No, he wasn’t that, nor had he been. He had very logically assessed the damage to his pride — and to his job at the college — that would have resulted from a foolish girl’s scream. But supposing he had been an insane killer, lusting after the girl, a savage predator denied his prey and raging over his disappointment? A madman sublimating his frustrated passion in an orgy of violence and revenge? What would such a man do? How would he kill? How could this crime be made to look, not like the work of a staid professor, but rather like the work of a demented monster?

Calmly Howard came to a conclusion. And calmly he came to a decision. Reaching into a pocket and fumbling there for a moment, he drew out finally a small and much soiled pen knife. It wasn’t much of a knife, and certainly not a weapon. He carried it for one purpose only, to ream out the clogged bowl of his pipe. It would have to serve another purpose now, however.

He had no stomach for what he had to do, but he realized it was necessary. He knelt in the leaves and flipped out the blade of the knife. It was dull and not made for this work any more than he was. Still it served. The cuts it made were not deep, but the blood flowed, and that was the important thing. He slashed Rowena’s forehead, her cheeks, her neck. And then her legs, right through the nylons. That was enough, he decided. There was too much blood already.

He stood up, aware that his position was still perilous. He had to take the knife home with him, because if he threw it away somewhere, it might be found and identified. He wrapped it in his handkerchief, stuffed it into his briefcase. That could be bloody too, as his hands might be, or other parts of his clothing. Certain things would have to be cleaned or destroyed. But he would have time if he could escape from the woods without being seen.

He chose to retrace his footsteps so as to emerge onto the campus. He was wise in this choice. The campus was almost deserted. He crossed it all the way to the library before he saw anyone. From there he kept right on going, straight to Mrs. Finch’s boarding house, where it would behoove him not to be late for dinner.

The body was discovered that same evening, and the newspaper ran a huge headline in the morning. Howard skipped Saturday breakfast, sleeping late, as was his custom. Of course this morning he didn’t sleep. He heard them all downstairs, discussing the newspaper story. When he went down at last, they were all preparing to go to the campus, and he went with them, so as not to seem suspiciously uninterested, and thus conspicuous.

An enormous crowd was gathered there, students, faculty, townspeople, numbering perhaps in the thousands. They swarmed over the grassy areas and into the wood itself. If there had been such a thing as footprints, the crowd had conveniently trampled them.

The body had been removed long before, so the morbid-minded had missed that. But there were ample descriptions being circulated. All of them emphasized the horrible slashing. Some maintained that the body had been nude and violated. Everyone seemed to agree that the crime was certainly the work of a maniac. Delicious shudders of fear ran through the crowd.

Howard returned home well satisfied. At least no one had immediately gone to the police with the suggestion that Rowena’s Medieval Lit professor might have murdered her. In due course, the police would question him, he was sure of that. But they would question everyone who had known Rowena. Quite natural.

Meanwhile he felt he had covered his trail pretty well. No one had seen him enter the house last night, and he’d dashed straight to his room and locked his door. A thorough examination of his accounterments revealed a fortunate fact. There was very little blood.

Soap and water took care of most of it, on the briefcase, his shoes, and his hands. There seemed to be no stains anywhere on his clothes, but he would reexamine these articles again and again, just to make sure. The handkerchief in which he’d wrapped the knife was red. He burned it in an ash tray, then flushed the remains down the toilet. The pen knife caused him some concern. Hiding it or losing it somewhere would force him to replace it with a new knife, and this small circumstance might be noticed and commented upon. He ended by washing and scraping the knife as best he could, and this process left no obvious stains. When he finished, he considered himself reasonably safe from detection by the route of chemical analysis of blood stains.

Lunch — Mrs. Finch served Saturday lunches to her clients, as she called them — again featured the topic of the murder. Since they had visited the campus, they could now speak with some authority.

Mrs. Finch presided over the discussion. She was in her fifties, an amiable woman, the widow of a professor, shrewd if not intelligent, portly and large-bosomed, but still physically able to do most of the work around the place. “The poor girl,” Mrs. Finch said, “the poor, poor girl. It must have been just dreadful.”

“And so young,” said Miss Jensen, a gaunt, grayed spinster of indeterminable age who worshipped the principle of youth. She was an assistant librarian.

“Nice girl, too,” said Professor Trimble. Trimble taught mathematics, and had almost reached retirement age. His eyes weakened from long years of studying equations, he wore very thick-lensed spectacles.

“Did you know her?” Mrs. Finch asked avidly.

“I think so,” Trimble replied. “Red-haired girl...”

“Blonde,” Howard corrected him.

“Ah, yes!” Jules Manson’s face lit up. Jules was young, dark, round-faced, bespectacled, small, not more than five-five or six, and slight in the bargain. But he was a terribly intense person. He was an instructor in psychology. “The Stanley girl was in your class, wasn’t she, Howard?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact she was.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Mrs. Finch shrilled.

“I thought I had. Yes, she was in my Madieval Lit.”

“Tell us about her. What kind of girl was she?”

“Just a girl. All coeds are rather alike, aren’t they? Or are they?”

“No two human beings are alike,” Jules Manson interrupted. “That’s what makes psychology so fascinating.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. But I’m not concerned about the girl. As you say, all the coeds are somewhat alike. Twenty years old, fairly pretty, interested predominantly in men. Almost a category, you might say. The one who appeals to me, as a psychologist, is the killer. Now there’s a rather special human being.”

“What kind of fellow would he be?” Howard asked, really curious.

“A maniac!” Mrs. Finch put in.

“A fiend!” Miss Jensen added.

“After a fashion, yes,” Jules agreed. “A murderer is unusual enough, you know. All of us feel like committing murder now and then, but most of us lack either the sheer courage or else the capacity for an emotion violent enough to trigger a murderous act. But this kind of courage and this kind of emotion, though unusual, are nevertheless normal. The slashing, however, indicates abnormality.”

“What kind of abnormality?” Howard wanted to probe this matter. The police psychologist would probably theorize just like Jules.

“Well, I’d say this just offhand.” Jules liked to display his specialized knowledge, and this was his great opportunity. “Take a normal man. Granted that he has sufficient motive for murder, has the cold courage or the violent emotions, the act of murder itself and the destruction of the victim is quite enough to satisfy the murderer. If I had a wife, for instance, and thought she was unfaithful, and I killed her, the very process of killing, and the fact she was dead would surely satisfy my jealousy. I wouldn’t cut her up. What does this cutting signify? A disturbed mind, surely. But disturbed in what particular way? In this way. Murder wasn’t enough. The act of strangulation didn’t purge this man’s emotions. The fact that Rowena Stanley was dead didn’t satisfy his desire for revenge, didn’t even the score. This killer wanted more. So he disfigured the corpse.”

“How clever, Jules,” Mrs. Finch said with genuine admiration.

“Routine,” Jules answered airily. “But that isn’t all.”

“What’s the rest?” Miss Jensen stared goggle-eyed.

“The question now remains,” said Jules, “was the killer satisfied with the disfigurement of the corpse?”

After a long hush around the table, old Trimble put the question. “What do you mean there?”

Jules gazed over their heads at the abominable wallpaper. “I theorize now. Our man is a lonely fellow. Loneliness is almost always a factor in these cases. This is not a loneliness merely of the moment, of temporary circumstances. This chap is lonely by temperament, and possibly, also, as a result of an unfortunate childhood, a traumatic adolescence, and finally, a lack of any real achievement in the adult world, achievement which might have won him recognition and respect among his contemporaries. Add this up now, this long history of rejection. What is our man at present? He is a bachelor certainly. And a recluse. I don’t mean he lives off in a cave somewhere. He sees people. He meets people. But he has no friends, no confidantes, of either sex. He suffers from a dreadful and complete loneliness. He has been rejected, rebuffed, shunted aside all his life. Now tell me, if you were such a man, would you have any affection for the human race?”

It was not an audience chosen well for such a question. Or perhaps it was an audience very well chosen. Mrs. Finch was the only person in the group who had ever married. Jensen was a spinster. Trimble and Howard were bachelors, and for that matter, so was Jules. Jensen was staring down at her plate, rather embarrassed. Trimble blinked, his tired mind still fumbling with the question. Howard was vaguely disturbed in the midst of his elation over the success of his impersonation of a maniac.

“There are two possibilities in regard to the Stanley girl,” Jules went on. “One is that the killer knew her, and she rejected him personally. The other is that she was a stranger to him, but he took his spite out on her as a representative of all humanity. One possibility is as likely as the other.”

This reasoning suited Howard. The killer could have been someone who wasn’t even acquainted with Rowena Stanley, who had never seen her before the time of the murder.

“But I ask you this,” Jules pursued. “If our man bears such a deep grudge against humanity that he had to disfigure the corpse, has his resentment been satisfied with that act? Or...” He paused dramatically.

“...Will he strike again?”

“Preposterous!” Howard blurted it out before he thought.

Jules turned him a cool stare. “What makes you so sure of that, Howard?”

Howard came near to. losing his nerve then, much nearer than he had last night in the woods, when he’d realized he’d committed murder. “Well, I mean...” He looked around the table. They were all staring at him, waiting for his explanation. “I mean, no matter how large one’s resentment might be, surely a murder should satisfy it.”

“What about the slashing?”

“That should be rather satisfying too...”

“Or it could just possibly whet the killer’s appetite for revenge.”

Howard was trembling visibly, unable to control himself. “I still think you’re wrong,” he stammered.

“We’ll see.” Jules was enjoying himself immensely, feasting upon the sensation he’d created. And now for dessert he turned to Miss Jensen, dropping his voice to scarcely more than a whisper. “If I were a female in this town, I’d be mighty careful, at least till they catch this lad.”

Jensen reacted perfectly. Turning very pale, she swooned.

Police Chief Abe Keegle took personal charge of the case. He was a balding, paunchy man, but he had piercing black eyes behind his rimless glasses that hinted of a shrewd intelligence. Also he was thorough.

Howard Hollis was questioned along with a dozen other professors who had had Rowena Stanley, at one time or another, in their classes. Howard thought the questions themselves rather harmless, but he was wary of Keegle. He wasn’t asked to provide an alibi, or anything so direct, but merely to give what information he had about the dead girl. But he suspected that Keegle was observing his general manner more than he was listening to the answers. Howard waited for the thunderbolt to strike — somebody had reported that Professor Hollis had paid rather special attention, to Rowena Stanley, how about it? But this question was never asked. Of course, Keegle might have known things he wasn’t revealing, but Howard felt much better after the interview anyway.

Something else disturbed him, however. A pathologist had subjected the corpse to a microscopic examination, according to the newspaper. The cuts had been made with a rather blunt knife. Which was curious, of course — if the killer wanted to slash his victim, why hadn’t he brought along a good sharp knife for the purpose? Also, there was some strange material, in the wounds. Chemical analysis determined that the substance was hardened tobacco tar, such as is found in the bowls of pipes. The killer was a pipe smoker, therefore, and had used the knife with which he cleaned his pipe.

But how many pipe smokers were there on the campus? Dozens among the faculty. And pipes were always a popular undergraduate affectation. Not to mention possibly hundreds of townspeople. Not a very helpful clue certainly, and Howard decided to forget about it.

Meanwhile, Professor Jules Manson was interviewed by an enterprising reporter, and Jules gave the whole town the same opinion that he had given Mrs. Finch’s clients. The maniac who had waylaid Miss Stanley would very possibly kill again. It might or might not have been good psychology, but it was successful journalism. The town — especially the womenfolk — was convulsed in fear.

Howard saw evidences of it wherever he went. No more was a coed seen walking alone on the campus, not even in broad daylight. In the town, there seemed fewer women in evidence generally, as if they were keeping to their homes and going out only when necessary. How stupid and unnecessary it all was, Howard kept thinking. He would like to assure the community that the killer would not strike again.

Of course he realized that Jules had actually played into his hands. Jules had swallowed the maniac theory, enlarged upon it, popularized it. Let some detective worry about a dull knife soiled with tobacco tar as not being typical of a slashing maniac. Jules’ theory, repeated often enough, would convince even that stubborn detective.

But if anybody was convinced, it was Jules himself. Having elaborated the theory, it was his brain child — the killer would kill again. Jules talked of nothing else — in his classes, according to report, and certainly at Mrs. Finch’s table.

“There’s one reason our maniac won’t strike again,” Howard proposed at dinner one evening.

“What’s that?” Jules asked, pouncing.

“He won’t have a chance.”

“How do you mean?”

“There are simply no unescorted females wandering about.”

Which was quite true, Jules had to admit. Miss Jensen was a case in point. Jules himself, Howard, even old Trimble, were being regularly dragooned into providing convoy across the campus for poor Jensen. And when her fellow boarders weren’t available, the librarian bribed students by doing bits of research for them. Jensen was an hysterical, but typical example.

Jules, however, was loath to accept this as final. “It won’t last,” he predicted. “Naturally the man is lying low at the moment, because he doesn’t have an opportunity. This state of siege can’t last forever though. Women will begin to get careless, and finally they’ll forget entirely. People have short memories.”

“I won’t get careless, and I won’t forget,” Jensen promised.

“Others will. The man will have another chance eventually.”

“He might move on,” Howard suggested, “to where the fields are greener. He might have been a transient in the first place.”

“Perhaps,” Jules conceded. Obviously he would be unhappy if his theory did not prove out with a second murder.

But Howard’s prediction was fast coming true. Even such a sensational item as a grisly murder can’t retain the public interest indefinitely; There’d been a chapel memorial service for the dead girl — the real funeral took place in Rowena’s home town — which had been well attended, and had provided a new stimulus to fear. But the great surge of terror had subsided. Coeds were only too happy to accept male escort on every possible occasion. But this was not always convenient. Now and then they could be seen making short dashes between buildings. None of them did this after dark, of course, and none ventured near the woods at any time.

Abe Keegle had organized a group of special auxiliary patrolmen for night duty, so he apparently shared Jules’ opinion that danger still lurked. These fellows were armed, and went about on foot. There were more uniformed cops in evidence too, and undoubtedly there were plainclothes men in strategic places.

Howard took to strolling about the campus and surrounding neighborhoods, constantly amazed at what his hand had wrought, and rather enjoying his secret knowledge that all of these precautions were futile. No one questioned his movements, of course, since he was a man, and no one, not even Jules, had ever suggested that the male population was in any danger.

It was on one of these strolls — two and a half weeks after the crime and when people were beginning to think and talk about other subjects — that Howard was startled by a strange and unusual sight. The time was eight o’clock, hardly late by normal standards, but more than two hours after dark and considerably late by the standards of this fear-haunted college town. The night was cloudy, damp, unpleasant, with patches of ground fog eddying about and half obscuring the glow of the street lamps. And it was in this grim setting that he saw the girl.

For a ghastly moment he even imagined that it was Rowena Stanley. As she passed under one of the lamps, her head, uncovered even in this chilly weather, shone bright and blonde. And though she was muffled in a heavy coat, she seemed the same size as Rowena. But of course it wasn’t Rowena. He had seen her coffin put aboard a train.

But what was this foolish girl doing abroad at this hour? Didn’t she know there’d been a murder? She was a student, because she was carrying books under her arm. What made her braver than the others? Strangely he resented her bravery.

And with an ungovernable curiosity he followed her. Across the quadrangle, then toward the Engineering and the Physics buildings. Howard’s heart began to pound faster. She was taking almost the same route that Rowena had taken on that fatal night. His curiosity mounting, he trailed after her. She was not walking too fast; he had to slow down to keep from closing the gap between them.

Then she did an utterly inconceivable thing. She abandoned the path and turned straight toward the short-cut to High Street. The madness of it appalled him. She was completely out of the light now, and only the dull glow of her blonde head, floating before him like a beckoning will-o’-the-wisp, allowed him to keep sight of her. He broke into a trot, but too late. The blonde head had disappeared. She was in the woods.

He wanted to shout to her, and he almost did, but at the last moment managed to control himself. He had almost committed a dangerous error. He couldn’t have the girl mentioning to anyone that she’d been hailed by Professor Hollis in the woods where Rowena Stanley had been murdered. Not even if he made it plain to her that he was concerned for her safety. No point in calling attention to himself that way.

Perspiring from an emotion he could not identify, he turned back. He stopped at the library, fiddled away some time, then at nine escorted Miss Jensen home. In the parlor nursing a cup of tea thoughtfully provided by Mrs. Finch, he waited for Jules. The psychologist arrived about ten-thirty and Howard pounced upon him.

“I’m very disturbed, Jules,” he began.

“How so?” The younger man was weary, but he submitted to the conversation.

“I saw a coed wandering about the campus after dark. She was quite alone.” He decided not to mention that the girl had entered the woods, for that would mean revealing that he had followed her.

But Jules perked up even without that. “What did I tell you, Howard? I knew the girls would get careless eventually.”

“But isn’t it dangerous? One oughtn’t to be careless about matters of life and death.”

“I thought you pooh-poohed the possibility of another murder.”

“Well, I still do.”

Jules smiled. “Then you shouldn’t worry.” The little psychologist stood up and commenced pacing the room. “I’m quite worried myself, however. A girl walks the campus alone after dark. Soon there will be others doing the same thing. This is the time I’ve dreaded. Our murderer will have another opportunity.”

“He won’t accept it,” Howard said with certainty. “He wouldn’t dare. If he’s still in town he must know that the police are on the look-out.”

Jules shook his head. “That won’t faze him. He’s used to taking chances. He took rather a chance when he murdered the Stanley girl, didn’t he? Why should he hesitate now? Besides, he really doesn’t have a choice. A man is not exactly a free agent when he acts under a compulsion.”

“Compulsion?”

“Of course. This man has to commit another murder.”

Howard stood up too. “That’s ridiculous!” he exploded.

“It’s perfectly logical. This first murder was committed out of revenge, resentment against society for society’s having rejected him. Have these conditions changed? In the past two weeks, do you imagine that this man has suddenly found new friends, a newer, happier existence? Of course not. He is more unhappy than ever. Society forced him to commit murder. Now he feels remorse. Also he knows that he can never again be a normal man. He has taken a human life. His hands are bloodstained. All these things are the fault of society too. Don’t you see? This man now has more of a grievance against the human race than he ever had before. So his compulsion is stronger than before, irresistible. No, Howard, I’m very pessimistic about this whole business. I feel like a spectator at a tragedy, where there is always more than one death. I have seen one already, but as a sophisticated member of the audience, I know there are others in store. It is as inevitable as the rising of the sun tomorrow morning.”

It was a moment before Howard could speak, and then he replied almost involuntarily. “You make it sound very convincing, Jules, very.”

The little psychologist nodded his acceptance of the compliment. “This is one of those times,” he said, “when I wish I was ill some other profession, when I wish I didn’t know so much about human nature.” He walked to the archway. “I’m very tired. Good night, Howard.” And then he was gone, up the stairs.

In his own room, Howard lay rigid and sleepless on his bed, staring at the black ceiling. His thoughts were chaotic, his emotions confused.

Of course Jules sounds logical, he told himself. But that’s because he is starting from a mistaken premise. A maniac did not murder Rowena Stanley. I did. And I purposely arranged things to make it seem like the crime was the work of a maniac. This is what Jules doesn’t know. Nobody knows. So one can’t blame Jules for going off on the wrong track any more than one can blame the women of this town for being frightened.

Except that blonde girl who took the short-cut. She was the crazy one.

Yes, Jules was logical if the original murderer had been insane, unbalanced, acting under that compulsion. And the compulsion for violence and revenge was also logical if the murderer had experienced a lonely, unhappy childhood, and especially painful adolescence, and then had grown to manhood still unappreciated, unaccepted by his fellows.

This thought plunged Howard into a sea of memories. He could admit this now, here in this solitary darkness, with no one to observe his tears. He’d been a mama’s boy. Yes, he had. He had adored his mother. Why? He didn’t know for sure. Perhaps because he’d never been very strong or athletic, and so never could do the things his father expected him to do. Or maybe it was simply because he had preferred his mother. She’d been so beautiful, with her long blonde hair.

Blonde! No, there was no connection whatsoever. Rowena Stanley had not resembled his mother. Rowena had been athletic, more like his father. The blonde hair was only a coincidence.

Why had his mother left him when his father died? He could have comforted her, become the man in her life. But she needed more than him. Possibly because she’d still been beautiful, and hadn’t wanted to waste her beauty. So she’d needed other men, one at first, and then many of them. It had been something of a scandal, and finally he had gone to live with an aunt, his father’s sister.

But in high school and college, it was the blondes he’d always fallen for. He couldn’t even remember all their names now, there’d been such a long succession of them. He hadn’t been a shy young fellow by any means. Why, he’d proposed to a dozen of those blondes...

There was a sudden tingling in his body, a sensation that ran down to each separate finger end. Yes, the memory was quite clear and certain. Proposed a dozen times. And had been a dozen times refused.

He lay there trembling in the darkness. Damn Jules Manson! A shot in the dark, that was all it had been. Howard’s own life did not at all resemble the life of Jules’ hypothetical maniac murderer. When he, Howard, had strangled Rowena Stanley, he had been murdering her and her alone, not also his mother, not also all those lovely young blonde girls who had refused to marry him.

No, it did not follow. He was not lonely, he was not unhappy. Wasn’t he doing the sort of work he liked best? Not many men were as satisfied in their professions as he. He loved literature. He wanted to communicate this love to other people, so he was a teacher. This was the career he had chosen deliberately, in the full knowledge that a professor’s pay was small, not enough really to properly support a wife. So it was just as well those blonde girls had declined.

Lonely? Perhaps, but wasn’t it almost inevitable for a bachelor? Most of his fellow professors of ten or fifteen years ago had decided to risk poverty and had gotten married. Married men and bachelors have little in common. So the chasm had widened, the wall risen.

The life of Professor Howard Hollis had been centered entirely in his students. He had devoted himself to developing and refining their young, unformed minds. He had looked at those rows of fresh faces year after year, and he had said silently to them. “I love you. I want to help you. I want to open the wonderful world of literature to you. I have devoted my whole life to your betterment. I love you. Don’t you understand that? Teachers and students aren’t enemies, they’re friends. I’m your friend. Please let me be your friend. Acknowledge me as your friend. Call me friend. I love you. Speak to me. Tell me that you realize that I’m alive, I’m a person, I’m entitled to something. Recognize me. I’m Howard Hollis. A man. A person. Tell me that you recognize this. It’s all I expect. I love you. Speak to me...”

But Rowena Stanley had refused. Rowena Stanley had rebuffed him. Rowena Stanley had rejected him. That’s why he killed her. She deserved it. Now he understood this, he understood why he had to kill her. And if he had the chance he’d do the same thing again!

But she wasn’t any different from the others. Why had he chosen Rowena Stanley to try to approach? Merely because she was blonde? That was hardly an adequate reason. He hadn’t been in love with her, despite what he’d told her in the woods. He loved her, yes, but not in the way she’d thought. Not romantic love. He was too old for that, long past that stage. Nor lust. He’d never been lustful even in his youth, and now he was middle-aged. No, his affection for Rowena had been more the fatherly kind, the professorial kind, the same affection that he felt for his other students.

But they all ignored him! They always had. He hated them all, not just Rowena, but all of them... all... all...

He lay there drenched in sweat, quivering in every muscle, clenching and unclenching his fists. Waves of a strange new passion washed over him, a passion he had never remotely experienced before, not even while he was strangling Rowena.

A passion? Or a compulsion? Compulsion... compulsion... compulsion...

The brave blonde girl had a pattern of movement. He did not get close enough to see whether he knew or remembered her, because he did not want to. He preferred that she remain anonymous, just a member of the student body. But he watched her from afar.

She left the library every evening about eight — probably she was doing research there for a special paper or thesis. She took the same path, always alone, across the quadrangle, between Engineering and Science, and thence to the short-cut.

For three nights she kept to this schedule. And each night he stalked her, always a little closer, always a little farther. On the third night he went clear to the edge of the woods. Next time, he knew, he would enter the woods.

“There’s another course of action this man could take,” he suggested to Jules. It was late, and Jules had just returned to the house. They were having a cup of tea. “He could give himself up.”

The little psychologist arched his black brows and stared through his spectacles. “Why on. earth should he do that?” he asked.

“Well, let’s say he feels this compulsion you described, this uncontrollable desire to kill again. But supposing there’s another part of his personality, a better part, that doesn’t want to kill. So there’s this inner conflict. But the better part, to prevent the worse part from committing another crime, might want to surrender.”

Jules shook his dark head grimly and ponderously. “Why should he Want to surrender to a society that he hates?” he demanded.

“To spare another life.”

“This life he wants to spare, why is it so precious to him?”

“Well, I don’t know...”

Jules smiled with sly triumph. “Of course you don’t know, because there isn’t any reason. This desire for the preservation of human life, this quality of mercy, is completely foreign to our murderer. He committed the first murder out of hate. Has the hate subsided? Does he love now? Does he want to atone? Preposterous, my friend. Consider this man’s present position. In the death of Rowena Stanley he achieved a measure of revenge, but not total revenge. He has not been apprehended. The police are nowhere near a solution. Believe me, I know that, because I’ve talked with Chief Keegle. So our man knows he can take his revenge and get away with it. Why should he stop when he’s winning, and when his job isn’t finished? When it’s far from being finished?”

“You’re quite right, Jules. I see it now.”

Jules drained the last of the tea from his cup, and rose to leave. “Stick to your own field, Howard,” he advised. “Fiction and poetry, the artistic, the make-believe. Leave the real life problems to the experts.”

“All right,” Howard conceded, “I won’t argue again.”

“Fine. Good night then, Howard.”

“Good night, Jules.”

Friday night again, a shiveringly cold, blustery night that would make most people stay indoors even if there were not a maniac-murderer loose in the town. The wind blew cruelly across the open stretches of the campus, whined around the corners of buildings, set the bare branches of trees to creaking and groaning.

Standing outside the library, sheltered in the blackest shadow, Howard waited. Unaware of the cold wind, he had not even raised his coat collar against it. His hat brim was turned down, however, to hide his face. But even aside from this precaution, it was doubtful whether anyone would recognize him. For he was without his briefcase, his constant companion, his trademark.

The briefcase, he had decided, would only be in his way, and be something else to get bloodied. In fact, he had determined upon a whole new approach to the problem of blood. He would use the same knife, but he could not afford this time to walk into Mrs. Finch’s with stains on him or anything he carried. So he had a cloth, a cloth with no identifying marks, with which to wipe his hands and the knife. The cloth he would simply drop at the scene. It could not be traced.

The blonde girl emerged from the library almost precisely on schedule, her arms loaded with books. She passed within thirty feet of Howard, her head bent low against the wind, the dim light from a street lamp shining dully on her yellow head. Howard caught a fleeting glimpse of her profile, enough to give him the vague notion that he didn’t know her. That pleased him, the thought of killing a stranger. He received other quick impressions also. Her legs did not seem particularly attractive, nor was her walk graceful. That satisfied him too. His grudge was not against just the beautiful girls. And this was perhaps why she dared to go alone at night — she imagined her unattractiveness was a protection.

He let her get something of a start and stay well ahead of him as she crossed the quadrangle. But as she passed between Engineering and Physics, he lengthened his stride and began to catch up. By the time she’d reached the edge of the woods he’d almost overtaken her. But she did not seem to be aware of his approach, because of the howling of the wind.

There was just enough starlight and reflected glow from High Street and the campus to give some illumination as the woods closed in around them. The blonde head bobbed ahead of him like a beacon. But he was not impatient. He waited until they were well within the concealment of the trees. Then he closed the gap, treading almost upon her heels, and measuring his distance, he sprang.

He landed with his hands already around her neck, not with as good a grip as he had hoped, but good enough to stop her scream. The impact of his weight bore her to the, ground, with him on top. But she fought valiantly, and she was strong. Only then did he realize his mistake. An approach from the rear is not the best when trying to strangle someone. The thumbs, not the extended fingers, need to be placed on the windpipe. He let go for a second, and tried to roll around to a better position.

That was his second error; The girl seemed to be trying to reach inside her purse. What did she have there, a whistle? Desperate now, he sought his second hold, the fatal one, with thumbs at the throat. A fraction of a second late. A word issued from his victim’s mouth, a single, word, not really loud, not really dangerous even, but a word containing a whole revelation.

“Help!” Not a woman’s voice. But a familiar voice. Belonging to Psychology Instructor Jules Manson.

A wig, a disguise, easy enough in the bundling-up winter weather. Jules Manson, so sure that the killer would strike again that he offered himself as bait.

Howard bent low, snarling into Jules’ face. “You made me do this... you talked me into it... you damned pedant... you expert... you deserve to die... I’m glad it’s you...”

The explosion was muffled by the closeness of their two bodies. Howard felt a sharp stab of pain in the fleshy part of his left arm. Jules had a gun. Well, it didn’t matter. Howard’s thumbs pressed down hard, and the gun didn’t fire again.

When he let go finally, when there was no longer any need to hold on, there were shouts coming from High Street. Somebody had heard the report. All right... all right... he could never have explained the gunshot wound anyway.

He rolled off Jules’ inert body, and fumbled in his pocket for the little knife. It wasn’t sharp, but it managed to open the veins in his wrists. Then he crawled away a little off the path, under some bushes where they wouldn’t find him in time. He lay there, feeling his life drain out of him.

His life... Jules had been wrong... what did Jules know about anything? He had had a very happy life.