One Coffee With

20

IN the studio downstairs Harley Harris paced back and forth in an uneasy ellipse. The studio was small and crammed with canvases, easels and odd-sized stretchers. It had been painted white only two years before, but already the walls were covered with anatomical drawings, mathematical formulas for problems in proportion and perspective, political slogans and a rather rude caricature of one of the red-tape lovers down in the Registrar's Office. There were crumpled wads of paper on the floor, and along the baseboard stood a line of coffee cans bristling with dried-up brushes and reeking of rancid turpentine. A trashy, unlovely room, but the light was good, and students with no place of their own to work elsewhere could use it on a shared-time basis.

An enormous purple and orange batik covered a whole corner from the floor to ceiling; smaller ones fluttered from the high molding; and one of Harris's prouder efforts-a huge snowscape peopled by tiny beetlelike figures and titled Hommage à Brueghel filled another corner.

"When the hell are they coming?" the boy fumed and flung himself down at a rickety worktable under the tall window. He picked up a ball-point pen and tried to concentrate on exact details of Wednesday morning.

A breeze from the open window stirred the batik hangings, and Harris looked at them nervously, chewing on his weak underlip.

He jumped as the door opened, and Lemuel Vance stuck his head in. "So you are here," said Vance. "Rudy Turitto said you had a hot little tidbit tucked away in your head."

"I'm waiting for Lieutenant Harald," the boy said, holding the papers in front of his thin chest like a shield.

"And you don't want to unburden your soul to anyone else first?" asked Vance hopefully.

"N-no!"

"How tiresome. Oh, well, suit yourself," Vance shrugged and withdrew.

The door closed, and Harris returned to his narrative struggles. In less than five minutes the door opened again. The boy tensed.

"I thought you could use a cup of hot chocolate while you wait."

Harris relaxed. "Oh, Jesus, yes! Thanks a lot."

"No trouble." The chocolate was set on the worktable beside Harley's scrawled pages. "The police arrested Sandy Keppler, you know."

" Sandy? But she didn't do it."

"You're sure of that?"

"Positive," said the boy. "There's something I can't quite remember, but I'm sure it's important. Something I heard or saw. I thought if I wrote down every single thing that happened Wednesday morning, maybe it would come back."

"I'm sure it will," said the other. "Perhaps the hot chocolate will help. Better drink it before it gets cold."

"Thanks," said Harley. "You know, you're just about the only person here who's been decent to me. It's really meant a lot."

He removed the lid from the disposable Styrofoam cup, tossed it toward the overflowing wastebucket and lifted the cup to his lips.

"Dammit, Harris!" cried an exasperated Sigrid Harald. She fought her way from behind the batik hanging. "I told you not to drink anything!"

"But it's okay!" he protested, the cup still in midair. "Professor Simpson gave it to me."

Albert Simpson stared at Sigrid in consternation, then his hand shot out and grasped the cup from Harley's unresisting fingers. Before he could drink, however, the thin young woman wrestled it from his grip, Detective Tildon, who'd been listening at the door ever since Simpson entered the studio, now came up behind the professor and held him immobile as Sigrid carefully retrieved the cup.

It still held a few drops of liquid. More than enough for analysis.

"A trap!" the old man said sadly. "Still, the boy would have told you."

"Told what?" wailed Harris. "I didn't see you do anything! I didn't see anybody do anything. It was all the lieutenant's idea!"

"I might have known. Finis coronal opus," Simpson said gloomily and declined further speech as Tillie led him away to a waiting squad car.