Something the Cat Dragged In (13 page)

“I said is your radio on?” Shandy roared. “I hear a funny noise. Aside from all the other funny noises, I mean.”

“You must have good ears.”

“I do.” Shandy had unusually acute hearing, as many a student had learned a syllable too late. “Shut off that dratted engine a second, will you?”

Ottermole obliged. The chugging and rattling subsided, but the funny noise continued. Shandy cranked down the window and stuck out his head.

“By George, they are rioting. Listen to that.”

A great many voices were doing a great deal of yelling, in any event. As they listened, the random shouts settled into a steady chant.

“We won’t flirt with Dirty Bert! We won’t flirt with Dirty Bert!”

“Oh, Christ!”

It suddenly occurred to Shandy that he’d been supposed to think of something. He’d got so wrapped up in Professor Ungley’s murder he’d temporarily forgotten the potential bombshell parked underneath that misbegotten silo. The students must have found out Bertram Claude was planning to speak on campus, probably from that jackass Sill in person, and were reacting as any sane person might have expected them to. Were Ottermole to go charging up there in the police cruiser, they’d start rotten-egging him. Then the fat would be in the fire for sure.

“Ottermole,” he said quietly, “as man to man, I think it would be a sound move for you to go back and—er—make sure Mrs. Lomax’s cat gets home safely.”

“Huh? What for?”

“Because that call of Sill’s was just some more of his usual grandstanding. What’s happening up here is nothing you need to get involved with. In a nutshell, Bertram Claude has requested permission to make a campaign speech in our auditorium. The students have got wind of his request and are—er—making their opinions known, that’s all.”

“You can say that again,” said Ottermole as the volume of sound increased. “What the hell would Claude want to speak to the college for? Cripes, they’d tear him apart and stomp on his guts.”

“There is that possibility,” Shandy conceded. “I must say I don’t understand his reasoning myself, assuming that he does in fact reason.”

“You going to let him?”

“Me? I don’t have anything to say about it. The decision is up to President Svenson.”

“Hell, he wouldn’t say yes, would he?”

“That,” Shandy hedged, “is a question I’m not prepared to answer. The president may feel Claude’s as entitled as the next person to air his views.”

“They could use some airing,” Ottermole grunted. “Claude stinks to high heaven, as far as I’m concerned.”

“Hold the thought, Ottermole, and thanks for the ride.”

Shandy was getting out of the cruiser when Ottermole’s chop-fallen look made him pause in compassion. “If you’re going to be around later this evening, I’ll try and get Professor Joad to come down to the clubhouse and help us test for bloodstains. That’s something else we ought to do as soon as possible. There’s always the chance Ungley was killed inside and shoved out a back window or some thing.”

“By who, for instance?”

“At this stage, I’d have to say by almost anybody. What if he didn’t forget his keys and did return to the clubhouse after the rest had gone?”

“What for?”

“How do I know? Maybe he forgot his hat, or had to use the bathroom as you suggested earlier. Anyway, he could have dropped his keys back on that table where Mrs. Pommell found them, leaving the door unlocked since he didn’t intend to be there long—it’s the old-fashioned kind you have to turn yourself, I gather—and somebody followed him in. Or what if the entire Balaclavian Society membership rose up in a body when he’d got to about the fifteenth penknife on his agenda, and slaughtered him to shut him up?”

“That sounds more likely to me,” Ottermole grunted. “Cripes, the things people will do to kill time! Okay, Professor, I’ll deliver Edmund like you said, then go home and have a bite of supper. We usually eat early so’s the kids and I can have a game of Cops and Robbers before they go to bed. You can either call me at the house or check with the station and they’ll pass on the message.”

“Right. I’ll be in touch.”

As Ottermole dispersed peaceably, Shandy headed for the shouting. As he’d expected, he soon ran into a seething mass of malcontents, some of them carrying hastily made placards mounted on tomato stakes. He tapped one of the more vocal card carriers on the arm.

“For your future enlightenment, young lady, there’s only one ‘s’ in bastard.”

“Oh, hi, Professor Shandy. Thanks,” she replied politely. “Can you think up any good rhymes for Claude? I’m sick of screaming Dirty Bertie.”

“Understandably so.” He rubbed his chin. “Maude? Sod?” A vision of Edmund flitted across his mind and he added, “Double-pawed?”

“None of those has the right ring to it, somehow.”

“Sorry. The atmosphere around here is not conducive to the poetic mood. How did this fracas get started?”

She shrugged. “It just did, I guess. That old man who’s always making speeches came around about half an hour ago and started plastering up posters about Bertram G. Claude and free private enterprise. Some of the kids got sore and then it kind of snowballed. Free private enterprise!” She waggled her sign furiously. “You know what he means by that. Let the rich guys do as they please and to heck with the rest of us.”

Despite her righteous dudgeon, the young woman began to giggle. “The old coot brought his girl friend with him.”

“Girl friend?” Shandy’s eyes narrowed. “She wouldn’t be a fluffy little blonde with somewhat prominent blue eyes, by chance?”

“Wearing a bright red coat and a blue-and-white scarf and making a spectacle of herself all over the place. Do you know her?”

“I’ve seen her around.”

Heading the silo drive and digging an elephant trap for Thorkjeld Svenson to fall therein. Ruth Smuth might be short on principles, but she certainly was long on gall. Shandy doubted very seriously that Sill had brought her. Most likely, it was Mrs. Smuth who’d dragged the old halfwit along to help her put on her show. Her object must be to put Svenson at odds with the student body and remind him she had him under her thumb. Or thought she had.

No thought about it. As of now, she did. How in Sam Hill was Svenson to be got out from under?

The young woman student was tugging at his coat-sleeve. “Professor Shandy, I’ve thought of something. You wouldn’t happen to have a Magic Marker on you, by chance?”

“I’ve got this thing I use for labeling plant sticks.”

Shandy produced the pen. The student took it, flipped over her sign, and scribbled, “Let’s Declaw Claude” on the back.

“Thanks, Professor. How’s that for a slogan.”

“First-rate and congratulations on the spelling. Carry on, and may your efforts be rewarded.”

There was no sense in telling her that declawing Ruth Smuth would be more to the point. Without his alleged campaign manager, Claude wouldn’t have a talon hold on campus in the first place. As it was, he’d clearly be letting himself in for a rough time up here if he tried to make that speech. But if he got the raspberry, Thorkjeld Svenson would get a lot worse from Ruth Smuth.

Good gad! The dirty work had already begun. Shandy couldn’t believe it, but there it was, a little parade of television mobile news units and newspaper reporters in cars, except for one on a motorcycle who had to be Cronkite Swope from the
Balaclava County Weekly Fane and Pennon,
crawling through the mob with the cameramen already shooting film out the car windows.

This was no spontaneous free-for-all, but a carefully orchestrated performance. There was no way those media people could have got out here this fast. According to the student, Sill and Smuth hadn’t even arrived until about half an hour ago. It would have taken a while for the students to notice what they were up to, to get hot under the collar, to hunt up their poster boards and plant sticks and get this thing rolling.

Sill hadn’t put in his riot call to Ottermole until less than ten minutes ago, but he or his lady friend must have alerted the news services at least an hour before. They wouldn’t have done that unless they’d been positive in advance there’d be a demonstration to cover.

Their timing was perfect: late enough for most students to be out of classes, early enough for daylight to take pictures by, and just right for the six o’clock news broadcasts. Who’d touched off the fuse, and how? Shandy looked around for the young woman who was set on declawing Claude, but she’d been sucked into the maelstrom.

Just as the rest of this crowd had got sucked in, including Sill himself, like as not. Shandy could see the ex-Congressman now, beetling toward the television cameras as fast as his dignity and girth would allow, all primed to gas on for as long as they’d let him about anything they wanted him to say. The worst of it was, many people in the audience might not realize they were listening to a blithering idiot. Shandy grabbed another student, one of his own seniors who happened to be a cousin of Ottermole’s man Dorkin.

“Who started this clambake?” he roared into young Dorkin’s ear.

“I dunno, Professor.”

“Then how did you get involved in it?”

“Somebody told me Claude was coming here to speak and it made me sore, so I waded in with the rest of ’em. Say, you’re not for Claude?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m merely trying to find out who rigged this farce. We’ve been suckered, in case you hadn’t realized it.”

Dorkin lowered his placard, clipping the man next to him on the ear. “What do you mean, suckered?”

“Haven’t you noticed what’s happening up by the Administration Building?”

“Too many signs. Bend over, Fred.”

The man who’d got whacked with the sign obliged, rather to Shandy’s surprise, and Dorkin climbed up on his back for a clear view.

“Hey, we’re on TV!”

“Precisely. To be more precise, Congressman Sill is hogging the cameras, no doubt making an oration about how Balaclava students are trying to deny freedom of speech to the candidate not of their choice. Do you happen to see a small blond woman wearing a red coat and a blue-and-white scarf?”

“Yeah, she’s behind Sill.”

“She’s also behind Bertie Claude. She claims to be his campaign manager.”

“But that’s Mrs. Smuth!” Dorkin almost fell off Fred in his astonishment. “My mother worked with her on the silo drive. They made me go around on my bike delivering leaflets. She can’t be pro-college and pro-Claude, can she?”

“Good question. Now see if you can pick out some demonstrators whom you don’t recognize.”

“Sure. Hey, Fred, mind turning around slowly?”

Fred minded, but he turned. After he’d completed the circle, Dorkin slid down.

“At ease, Fred. Professor Shandy, I don’t know what’s going on here but I spotted at least twenty I’ll swear I’ve never set eyes on before. They’re all right up there in front of the cameras, putting on a big act, yelling and giving Sill the finger, making us look like a bunch of yahoos. Come on, Fred. Let’s go straighten ’em out.”

“Don’t let them drag you into a fracas,” Shandy warned. “Twenty professional agitators, which I suspect is what we’ve got here, can make plenty of trouble. Your best bet is to put on a better act than theirs. Roll up your pant legs, tie bandanas around your noses, play leapfrog, do any fool thing that comes into your heads, but get those cameras on you instead of them. Round up some of your friends and pass the word. Block the agitators off and herd them back into the crowd as good-naturedly as you can. Above all, no rough stuff. Make it look as if this is all a big joke.”

“Right on, Professor.”

Cavorting here and there, Dorkin and iron-man Fred began gathering supporters, clowning their way steadily toward the nucleus of the action. Shandy went on with his missionary work. None of the students he buttonholed knew who’d started the demonstration, so he told them.

“You’ve been manipulated into staging a rally to make you look like a bunch of hicks and roughnecks and gain sympathy for Claude. His people brought in their own goon squad and alerted the media long before this melee got started. You’ll be interested to know Congressman Sill phoned a riot alarm to the town police, but Chief Ottermole had better sense than to believe him.”

“Sill’s a pill,” somebody started to scream, but Shandy managed to quell the bedlam.

“You have every right to express your views, but for God’s sake keep it light. Claude wants a nasty riot, so give him a Halloween party instead. Get the laugh on him and his plan will fizzle.”

“Okay, Professor! Come on, everybody, clown it up. Flirty Bertie had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-o. And on this farm he had a Sill—”

“With a baa-baa here and a baa-baa there!”

They were laughing, singing, capering, painting each other’s faces with lipstick, switching clothes, improvising silly costumes from whatever came to hand. Two young geniuses rushed to get a milking bucket and some apples, then charged straight for the cameras.

“Congressman Sill, want to bob for apples? Come on, don’t be scared of getting wet. You must be thirsty anyway, after all that talking.”

Sill did not want to bob for apples. As the cameramen focused gratefully on the charming, smiling milkmaids, the politician realized he’d been upstaged and turned fretfully to look for Mrs. Smuth. She, however, was already stalking off in the direction of President Svenson’s office, tight-lipped as a terrorist who finds out he’s been sold a dud bomb. Sill stood around puffing and snorting for a moment, then tried to back off.

“Hey, you’re not leaving?” shouted Dorkin, who’d been doing headstands and handsprings with a bunch of other hastily recruited acrobats, screening the imported roughnecks behind a sea of waving boots. “Mr. Sill, wait! What about those guys you brought with you? You’re not going to leave them stranded?”

“What guys?” demanded one die-hard reporter who was still trying to make sense out of the chaos.

“This gang right here. The ones with the headbands.”

“They’re not Balaclava students?”

“Of course not! Couldn’t you tell from the way they’ve been acting? We don’t know who they are. They just buzzed along and started yelling Claude’s a clod, so we joined in for kicks.”

“That’s a blanking lie,” shouted one of the headbands, to employ a Victorian euphemism for an Elizabethan adjective. “We are too students.”