College teachers -- Fiction; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales; Spouses -- Fiction; Witches -- Fiction
Norman put down the phone. Jennings continued to sob agonizingly.
Norman looked at him with disgust.
* * * * *
An hour later Gunnison sat down in the same chair, and let off a sigh
of relief.
"I'm sure glad they're gone," he said. "It was awfully good of you,
Norman, not to insist on the police. Things like that give a college a
bad name."
Norman smiled wearily. "Almost anything gives a college a bad name. But
that kid was obviously crazy as a loon."
They lit up and smoked for a while in silence. Then Gunnison looked at
his watch.
"I'll have to hustle. It's almost seven, and we're due at your place at
eight."
But he lingered, ambling over to the window to inspect the bullet hole.
"I wonder if you'd mind not mentioning this to Tansy?" Norman asked. "I
don't want to worry her."
Gunnison nodded. "Good thing if we kept it to ourselves." Then he
pointed out the window. "That's one of my wife's pets," he remarked in
a jocular tone.
Norman saw that his finger was trained on the cement dragon, now coldly
revealed by the upward glare from the street lights.
"I mean," Gunnison went on, "she must have a dozen photographs of it.
Hempnell's her specialty. I believe she's got a photograph of every
architectural oddity on campus. That one's her favorite." He chuckled.
"Usually it's the husband who keeps ducking down into the darkroom, but
not in our family. And me a chemist, at that."
Norman's taut mind had unaccountably jumped to the thought of a
bull-roarer. Abruptly he realized the analogy between the recording of
a bull-roarer and the photograph of a dragon.
He clamped a lid on the fantastic questions he wanted to ask Gunnison.
"Come on!" he said. "We'd better get along!"
Gunnison started a little at the harshness of his voice.
"Can you drop me off?" asked Norman, more quietly. "My car's at home."
"Sure thing," said Gunnison.
After he had switched out the light, Norman paused for a moment,
staring back at the window. The words came back.
"_Eppur si muove._"
IV.
They had hardly cleared away the remains of a hasty supper, when there
came the first clang from the front-door chimes. To Norman's relief,
Tansy had accepted without questioning his rather clumsy explanation of
why he had gotten home so late. There was something puzzling, though,
about her serenity these last two days. She was usually much sharper,
and more curious. But of course he had been careful to hide disturbing
events from her, and he ought only to be glad her nerves were in such
good shape.
"Dearest! It's been ages since we've seen you!" Mrs. Carr embraced
Tansy in a matronly fashion. "How are you? How are you?" The question
sounded peculiarly eager and incisive. Norman put it down to typical
Hempnell gush. "Oh, dear, I'm afraid I've got a cinder in my eye," Mrs.
Carr continued. "The wind's getting quite fierce."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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