Read Online Something the Cat Dragged In by Charlotte MacLeod - Free Book Online
Authors: Charlotte MacLeod
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Dr. Porble went out on the sweep and made Professor Ungley bring the books back. They say Ungley never set foot inside the library again, and kept Dr. Porble out of the Balaclavian Society as a form of revenge. It all sounds like a plot for Donizetti to me, but you know how people are.”
“Urrgh,” said Svenson.
“Indeed we do,” Shandy interposed before catastrophe could ensue. “So now Porble thinks he can join that moribund mélange of malingerers. Why in Sam Hill would he want to?”
“Don’t ask me, but you know Dr. Porble. He’s not one to back down when he’s set his mind on something.”
That was most disturbingly true. Shandy liked and respected Porble, but he’d found out long ago that the librarian was a remarkably stubborn man. Furthermore, a temper of surprising proportions was concealed behind his scholar’s manner. Shandy sat and scowled at the menu until the student waiter got tired of waiting and ventured to remark, albeit in a somewhat frightened tone, that the chicken croquettes were very good today.
“I’ll have a club sandwich,” he replied perversely.
Helen prattled on like a good hostess, clearly wondering why Peter was so abstracted and Thorkjeld so gloomy, but clearly realizing this was no time to ask. Svenson at least managed to perk himself up a degree or so by eating three helpings of the chicken croquettes which he wouldn’t have got had Sieglinde been there to stop him. They did look good and Shandy was sorry he hadn’t chosen them after all; but he reflected that his own error in judgment was a bagatelle compared to that of Thorkjeld Svenson in accepting a concrete silo, three stories high and costing some amount his overstrained mind boggled at remembering, from what had now turned out to be a hostile political pressure group.
But how had Svenson made such an egregious blooper? If he said he’d checked, he’d most assuredly done so, backward, forward, and sideways. It was simply not credible there had been any discoverable connection at that time between Bertram G. Claude and the Silo Supporters, as they’d called themselves, though God and Ruth Smuth only knew why. So that meant either that Ruth Smuth had got involved with Claude later on and realized she was in a position to do him some good by doing the college in the eye, or else that the whole Silo Supporters’ affair had been part of some long-planned and fantastically well-covered-up ruse.
Raising that kind of money had been no jolly task of a few amateurs spending a few hours here and there putting the bite on their neighbors. The drive had gone on for months. Shandy couldn’t recall how many, but he did remember all too clearly that the late Jemima Ames, then a flaming spearhead of all good works, had been pretty miffed about Ruth Smuth’s having grabbed the initiative away from her. There had been hot words between the two women as to which of them was going to furnish the scissors to cut open the first bag of cement at the dedication ceremonies.
The entire fund-raising project had, in fact, taken on such a low comedy turn that even as the concrete was being poured, nobody had quite believed the Silo Supporters had actually pulled it off. Was it humanly possible that, during all those farce-crammed weeks so long ago, Ruth Smuth and Bertram Claude had been secretly conniving toward the seat that Claude was surely going to get beaten out of on the upcoming first Tuesday in November?
Claude had been spending a lot of money on his campaign. Shandy hadn’t been paying much attention, but now that he thought of it, it did seem he’d been turning off a lot of television commercials, throwing away a lot of pamphlets, and wadding up for fireplace kindling a lot of newspaper advertisements from which Claude’s sexy smirk flashed out at him. Sam Peters had sent out one of his usual lackluster, fact-filled newsletters at a net cost of about thirty-seven dollars, probably. That would be it for this go-round, as
“Urrgh,” said Svenson.
“Indeed we do,” Shandy interposed before catastrophe could ensue. “So now Porble thinks he can join that moribund mélange of malingerers. Why in Sam Hill would he want to?”
“Don’t ask me, but you know Dr. Porble. He’s not one to back down when he’s set his mind on something.”
That was most disturbingly true. Shandy liked and respected Porble, but he’d found out long ago that the librarian was a remarkably stubborn man. Furthermore, a temper of surprising proportions was concealed behind his scholar’s manner. Shandy sat and scowled at the menu until the student waiter got tired of waiting and ventured to remark, albeit in a somewhat frightened tone, that the chicken croquettes were very good today.
“I’ll have a club sandwich,” he replied perversely.
Helen prattled on like a good hostess, clearly wondering why Peter was so abstracted and Thorkjeld so gloomy, but clearly realizing this was no time to ask. Svenson at least managed to perk himself up a degree or so by eating three helpings of the chicken croquettes which he wouldn’t have got had Sieglinde been there to stop him. They did look good and Shandy was sorry he hadn’t chosen them after all; but he reflected that his own error in judgment was a bagatelle compared to that of Thorkjeld Svenson in accepting a concrete silo, three stories high and costing some amount his overstrained mind boggled at remembering, from what had now turned out to be a hostile political pressure group.
But how had Svenson made such an egregious blooper? If he said he’d checked, he’d most assuredly done so, backward, forward, and sideways. It was simply not credible there had been any discoverable connection at that time between Bertram G. Claude and the Silo Supporters, as they’d called themselves, though God and Ruth Smuth only knew why. So that meant either that Ruth Smuth had got involved with Claude later on and realized she was in a position to do him some good by doing the college in the eye, or else that the whole Silo Supporters’ affair had been part of some long-planned and fantastically well-covered-up ruse.
Raising that kind of money had been no jolly task of a few amateurs spending a few hours here and there putting the bite on their neighbors. The drive had gone on for months. Shandy couldn’t recall how many, but he did remember all too clearly that the late Jemima Ames, then a flaming spearhead of all good works, had been pretty miffed about Ruth Smuth’s having grabbed the initiative away from her. There had been hot words between the two women as to which of them was going to furnish the scissors to cut open the first bag of cement at the dedication ceremonies.
The entire fund-raising project had, in fact, taken on such a low comedy turn that even as the concrete was being poured, nobody had quite believed the Silo Supporters had actually pulled it off. Was it humanly possible that, during all those farce-crammed weeks so long ago, Ruth Smuth and Bertram Claude had been secretly conniving toward the seat that Claude was surely going to get beaten out of on the upcoming first Tuesday in November?
Claude had been spending a lot of money on his campaign. Shandy hadn’t been paying much attention, but now that he thought of it, it did seem he’d been turning off a lot of television commercials, throwing away a lot of pamphlets, and wadding up for fireplace kindling a lot of newspaper advertisements from which Claude’s sexy smirk flashed out at him. Sam Peters had sent out one of his usual lackluster, fact-filled newsletters at a net cost of about thirty-seven dollars, probably. That would be it for this go-round, as
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