Read Online The Letter Killeth by Ralph McInerny - Free Book Online Page B

Larry said, “how about that fire in the professor’s wastebasket?”
    â€œLet’s not talk business,” Henry said, but Laura was all for the suggested topic.
    â€œAnd he didn’t even get one of those threatening letters,” she said.
    â€œWhat threatening letters?” Henry wanted to know.
    â€œThat’s confidential,” Larry said to Laura.
    â€œOh pooh. It’s all they talk about in the office.”
    â€œTell me,” Henry urged Laura, and Kimberley turned pouting away.
    So he got the official story. The provost, the dean of Arts and Letters, Professor Wack in English, and Charlie Weis, the football coach. Henry listened as if this were all news to him. He would have to tell Izquierdo of the reaction to those messages, if he didn’t already know. Izquierdo talked as if he wouldn’t mind firebombing Wack’s office himself.
    â€œLook,” Larry said, assuming a tone of authority. “They’re just a prank.”
    â€œSo why the secrecy?”
    â€œIt would still be bad publicity. Who wants such a story about Notre Dame to get around?”
    Who indeed? Henry pushed closer to Kimberley. “‘I’m nobody, who are you?’”
    â€œâ€˜I’m nobody, too.’” And she squeezed his arm. “I love that poem.”

14
    The story in Via Media about the fire in the wastebasket of Professor Izquierdo set the Old Bastards’ table aroar with excitement. Armitage Shanks felt vindicated. When he had passed on the rumor that threatening letters were circulating on the campus, he had been scorned.
    â€œI told you so,” he said with all the satisfaction the phrase conveyed.
    â€œHe probably dropped a cigarette in the wastebasket.”
    â€œYou can’t smoke in Decio.”
    â€œYou mean you’re forbidden to,” Goucher corrected. “Prohibitions don’t confer incapacity.” Goucher had taught philosophy for forty-two years, without great success.
    â€œHe blames a colleague. Some idiot named Wack.”
    A wide smile replaced the vague expression on Potts’s face. “Remember when we locked the dean in his private john?”
    The faculty had resented the fact that the dean had a private washroom, and locking him into it had seemed condign punishment. Chuckles went round the table. Debbie, the hostess, took an empty chair, singing softly, “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire.”
    â€œIs this a confession?”
    â€œAre you a priest?”
    â€œWhat do you hear about the conflagration in the wastebasket?”
    â€œJust what I read in the papers.”
    â€œMaybe that’s how they’ll get rid of this place, burn it down.”
    Debbie put her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
    Armitage Shanks developed his theory that they had entered a period analogous to the phony war that had been prelude to World War II. War had been declared, but nothing much happened for months. He began to develop the parallel—the threat to the club, the countering protest, now long silence—but no one listened.
    â€œWho was dean at the time?”
    â€œAt what time?”
    â€œWhen he got locked in the john.”
    â€œSheedy?”
    â€œNo, it was after him. Sheedy was all right. He was always hiding in the back room of the museum where he could read.”
    â€œHe had one assistant dean.”
    â€œDevere Plunkett.”
    â€œHave you seen the present setup? I think the dean-to-student ratio is smaller than faculty-to-student. And they’re all living like Oriental satraps. I’m surprised no one has firebombed the place.”
    â€œHe was one of those threatened.”
    â€œHow do you know these things?”
    â€œI make them up.”
    â€œGuess who I ran into yesterday,” Plaisance said.
    â€œIn your car?”
    â€œAn old student. He recognized me, I didn’t recognize him. Quirk. He asked me why