The Campus Murders

9

At the Gunther home a uniformed man stood at the door.

“Sorry. No visitors.”

McCall told him who he was.

“Oh. Then I guess it’s okay, Mr. McCall.”

McCall went in. Another officer stood in the hallway, a heavyset older man. McCall identified himself and asked, “Where’s Mrs. Gunther, officer?”

“Upstairs in bed. A doctor’s with her.”

“Then she’s been informed about her husband?”

The man nodded. “Worst case of hysterics I ever saw. She’s under heavy sedation. They got a nurse up there with her, too.”

McCall made for Floyd Gunther’s study. The light over the desk was still on. The shadows in the room hung heavier than before.

McCall stood there.

This was where Gunther would come when he wanted to get away from people (from himself?).

He began to prowl the study.

He finally settled on the desk. Nothing on top of significance. He checked the drawers, with their freight of folders pertaining to college matters and Gunther’s duties as dean of men.

He had the bottom right-hand drawer open and was running through the folders there when he was struck with something. The drawer itself seemed short; it came little more than halfway out. It must be stuck.

He pulled, but it would not budge. He reached in and under the top of the drawer, felt around, and touched a steel bar. He jiggled it and thought he detected a slight sideward movement. He pushed the bar to the right as far as it would go and heard a click. He yanked, and the drawer slid out.

There was a rear compartment, which had a lid that was secured by a miniature padlock.

McCall glanced toward the door. He could not see the officer in the hall, but the man was still out there — McCall heard him clear his throat.

It wasn’t much of a lock.

On the desktop lay a large lump of clear heavy plastic shaped to resemble a boulder. Protruding from the boulder was a little Excalibur, King Arthur’s sword in miniature. Gunther’s letter-opener. It was made of stainless steel, and McCall thought it would do. He drew it from its sheath and inserted it under the lid of the secret compartment close to the little padlock. He listened for the cop, heard nothing, and jerked. The lock snapped with a loud snap.

He heard footsteps and sat down in Gunther’s leather chair. The police officer appeared.

“Oh. Yes, officer?” McCall said, looking up. From the policeman’s position he could not see the open drawer.

“I thought I heard something break in here.”

“Break?” McCall said. “Oh, it must have been this letter-opener. I was sitting here thinking and playing with it, and dropped it out of my hand.”

The man stared at him. I don’t give a damn if he buys it or not, McCall thought.

“I don’t know if I ought to let you stay in here, Mr. McCall,” the patrolman said finally, in an uneasy voice. “My orders were—”

McCall gave him his coldest executive look.

The man backed off. “I guess that was out of line, Mr. McCall,” he mumbled, and went back to his post.

McCall raised the lid of the compartment.

There were some documents. He looked through them. Family papers, two wills, some insurance policies. But, beneath, an unmarked folder. McCall seized it. It contained three sheets of ordinary white typing paper. Their contents were typewritten, like the “Lady G” note.

They were threatening letters, all in the same vein. The last one was typical:

The letter was signed, “Thomas Taylor.”

Dean Gunther bedding coeds? Then the woman who had written the note that lured Gunther to his death was probably the “young coed,” the “mutual friend” whose “cooperation” had laid the original trap.

Blackmail.

No wonder Gunther had been nervous!

There was a photocopier on a stand in the corner, and McCall warmed it up and ran the three notes through the machine. The copies he tucked into his inside breast pocket; the originals he replaced in the secret compartment of the desk.

By whatever hand Gunther had come to his nasty death, the fatal attack had been a surprise to him. He had obviously considered himself safe from bodily harm, or he would have left a record of his fears in the most logical place — the secret drawer in which he kept the “Thomas Taylor” blackmail notes.

Whoever “Thomas Taylor” was — and that was a false name, McCall was certain, over which Pearson, Long, and Oliver could break their heads — he was undoubtedly the man who plunged the knife into Gunther’s body so many times... Gunther’s blackmailer-killer.

Queer... blackmail was almost invariably a matter of squeezing money out of the victim. The three notes signed Taylor suggested something else. “So you had better see that everything goes without a hitch for me.”

Whatever that meant, it did not suggest money.

McCall left. He had something solid to chew on at last.

He drove back into town and stopped in at police headquarters.

Lieutenant Long was still on duty; McCall found him in the main corridor talking with another officer.

“You again,” Long said.

“Can I talk to you alone, lieutenant?”

The officer moved away at Long’s nod.

“Well?” Long said. “You going to hand me a killer or two, Mr. McCall?”

“Hardly. But I’ve got a clue for you.”

“Oh?” said Long. “What clue?”

“Have you examined Dean Gunther’s study?”

“Haven’t had a chance—”

“I thought not, or you’d have found it, too. If you’ll look in the bottom right-hand drawer of Gunther’s desk, you’ll find a secret compartment at the rear. It was secured with a small padlock, which I had to snap. In the compartment I found some personal papers — wills, policies, the usual — and a folder containing three typewritten notes. They’re threat notes, lieutenant. And they seem to implicate Gunther in something pretty nasty.”

“Where are they?” Long howled. “Gimme!”

“I’d hardly removed the evidence,” McCall said with a shake of the head. “I handled them with great care, lieutenant, so any prints you find on the notes won’t include mine—”

But Long was already sprinting for the entrance.

Not even a thank-you, McCall thought.

He was tired. He drove back to the Red Harbor Inn, ordered a weak gin-and-tonic in the bar, left half of it, and went to his room and bed.

He dreamed immediately and woke up in a sweat. He had been skiing on a black river which miraculously supported his weight, and his skis were made of two glittering swords. He was rushing along pursued by unseen things of great dreadfulness toward the jaws of unseen things of even greater.