As Evylyn Lascalles entered, followed shortly by a big clinking pillow cover which the proctor deposited beside her, Pat thought once more of the elm-covered campus of the University of Pennsylvania. He wished passionately that he were there. He wished it more than anything in the world. Next to that he wished that Doolan’s back, behind which he tried to hide by a shifting of his chair, were broader still.
“There you are!” she cried gratefully. “Oh, Mr Hobby—Thank God! I couldn’t get rid of them—and I couldn’t take them home—my mother would kill me. So I came here to find you—and this man peeked into the back seat of my car.”
“What’s in that sack?” demanded Dean Wiskith. “Bombs? What?”
Seconds before the proctor had picked up the sack and bounced it on the floor, so that it gave out a clear unmistakable sound, Pat could have told them. There were dead soldiers—pints, half-pints, quarts—the evidence of four strained weeks at two-fifty—empty bottles collected from his office drawers. Since his contract was up tomorrow he had thought it best not to leave such witnesses behind.
Seeking for escape his mind reached back for the last time to those careless days of fetch and carry at the University of Pennsylvania.
“I’ll take it,” he said rising.
Slinging the sack over his shoulder, he faced the faculty committee and said surprisingly:
“Think it over.”
V
“We did,” Mr Doolan told his wife that night. “But we never made head nor tail of it.”
“It’s kind of spooky,” said Mrs Doolan. “I hope I don’t dream tonight. The poor man with that sack! I keep thinking he’ll be down in purgatory—and they’ll make him carve a ship in EVERY ONE of those bottles—before he can go to heaven.”
“Don’t!” said Doolan quickly. “You’ll have ME dreaming. There were plenty bottles.”
