Something the Cat Dragged In (7 page)

“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 it had been for all the others at which Sam had beaten the pants off opponents whose names Shandy couldn’t even remember.

Where did Bertram G. Claude hail from, anyway? He’d manifested himself in Hoddersville about eight years ago, started shooting his mouth off to anybody who could be prevailed upon to listen, and managed to glad-hand himself into the State House on the strength of some expensive dentistry, a fine taste in neckties, and a voice that would have made his fortune as a television revivalist.

Once in office, Claude had committed every iniquity in Shandy’s glossary, voting straight down the line in favor of big money against the independent farmer, the small businessman, against the old, the small, the weak, the sick, against anybody who hadn’t a hefty wad to contribute to a rising man’s next campaign. Claude’s record on open-land preservation, on toxic-waste control, on clean air, clean water, clean anything proved that as far as he was concerned, politics was indeed a dirty game.

Even Professor Daniel Stott of the Animal Husbandry Department, a man not easily aroused to wrath, had waxed hot in defense of the genus
Sus
when somebody had been so injudicious as to call Claude a swine. In Stott’s considered opinion, the district would have been far better advised to elect a sensible, well-disposed right-thinking sow or boar to the seat Claude now occupied. The local Plowmen’s Political Action Committee was said to be taking Stott’s recommendation under advisement.

And this was the oaf who was clamoring to address the student body at Balaclava. In a way, Shandy thought it mightn’t be a bad idea. For one thing, there was the doctrine of free speech to consider. Claude was as entitled to spout his slimy rhetoric as anybody else. What they really ought to do was set up a debate with Sam Peters and invite the public. It would be interesting to see what happened.

Claude would make mincemeat of Peters, that was what would happen. He’d flash that come-hither smile and toss his curls and finger his fancy tie and talk a lot of garbage that people who couldn’t listen and think at the same time would swallow hook, line, and sinker. On election day, there’d be good old Sam flat on his unhandsome face and Bertie packing his bags for Washington. Sam’s best and maybe his only hope was for the college to come out swinging on his side as they’d always done before. And how could they, with that silo ready to explode in their faces?

Shandy was trying to recall precisely how the Silo Supporters’ idea had got started in the first place. The college had needed the silo, no question about that. There’d been money enough in the coffers at the time to build a new one, and the plans were already drawn up. The builders were ready to roll when, for some reason not even the bankers could explain, farmers around Balaclava County began having a hard time borrowing money. Families that had been managing nicely found themselves caught in a squeeze with sound credit but no cash to finance their spring plantings. Naturally they appealed to the college’s Endowment Fund, and naturally they got the help they needed.

Shelling out so much so unexpectedly left the college pinched for cash, too. Svenson and the Board of Trustees had decided it would be foolhardy to embark on any new major expenditure until after the fall harvest when, God and the elements willing, the farmers would be solvent again and the loans paid back. By then, however, it would be too late to build the silo in time for it to house that year’s crop of ensilage. That raised the question of how the flaming hell they were going to winter over their newly augmented herds and flocks without putting the college in hock.

Everybody in Balaclava County knew what was happening. Those who hadn’t been required to nick Svenson for a loan knew somebody who had, and those who’d been hoping to get short-term jobs working on the building of the new silo were loud in their disappointment. The trustees hadn’t even thought of appealing to the citizenry for help because it was a fundamental tenet laid down by Balaclava Buggins himself on that long-ago founding day that Balaclava Agricultural College wasn’t never going to ask nothing from nobody, but that didn’t prevent the aforesaid citizens themselves from volunteering.

And volunteer they had. As soon as the word got around, a group of concerned neighbors, or so they’d described themselves, had clubbed together to form the Silo Supporters. Since the college was doing so much for the farmers, they clamored, it was no more than right the county should do something for the college. They’d seemed a well-meaning though somewhat bumble-headed lot. Even so, Shandy remembered, Thorkjeld Svenson had demurred until the Board of Trustees had decided what the hell, this bunch would never raise the price of a binful of concrete anyway and they might as well be given free rein.

So the Silo Supporters, spearheaded by fluffy little Ruth Smuth, had started holding bake sales, barn sales, plant sales, book sales, all the different kinds of sales by which well-meaning volunteers raise a few hundred dollars, if they’re lucky, for a worthy cause.

At first it had been rather touching and mildly amusing to watch the self-appointed do-gooders out on the lawns and commons peddling their homemade zucchini bread and hand-embroidered needle books. Shandy himself had contributed flats of seedlings and pots of geraniums to the plant sale. Every faculty family had cleaned out its attic, donated an armload of books, done something or other to further the cause, merely to show appreciation and not because they really expected anything to come of the project.

But then, by George, the money had started piling up. Those amateurish little fund-raising events were bringing in sums that left everybody gasping, notably Ruth Smuth and the Silo Supporters. Serendipity ran rampant. For instance, some family moving out of town contributed a pile of stuff to a rummage sale. Most of it was junk, but among the heap were a pair of genuine Chippendale side tables. The donors had left no forwarding address and in the general confusion nobody could exactly recall who they were. There really hadn’t been a thing the sellers could do except regard the tables as manna from heaven and price them accordingly.

That was no doubt the time somebody should have begun to smell a rat. Instead, the alleged windfall had served to turn enthusiasm into euphoria. After that, all Balaclava County was silo-happy. Ruth Smuth was everywhere, getting her picture plastered all over the
Fane and Pennon
as she tacked up yet another poster, sold yet another loaf of zucchini bread, or paid yet another tribute to the marvelous, fabulous, just too utterly darling folk of Balaclava.

Jemima Ames had, to be sure, taken a dark view. Along with everybody else, Shandy had at the time put her waspish utterances down to pique at the fact that she herself hadn’t been quick enough to grasp the reins of command. To make a long story short, the college had got its money, got its silo, and was now getting the shaft. And how in thunderation was Peter Shandy going to bail out Thorkjeld Svenson and defuse Ruth Smuth?

T
HEY FINISHED THEIR MEAL
and dispersed; Helen to observe developments with regard to Dr. Porble’s stiff upper lip, Peter to keep his appointment with Harry Goulson. He phoned down first to make sure Ottermole and Melchett would be on deck as scheduled, found they were even then closing in on the funeral parlor, and turned to Svenson.

“Care to come to the private viewing?”

“Ungh,” said Svenson, so they went. On the way down, Shandy filled the president in on what he and Mrs. Lomax had found out so far. Svenson listened without so much as a grunt until he’d run out of things to tell, then nodded.

“Files. Had ’em.”

Shandy was used to interpreting his superior’s gnomic utterances. “You mean you know for a definite fact Ungley kept things in that filing cabinet of his. How?”

“Saw ’em.”

Svenson took a few more giant steps, then condescended to utter. “Happened along the day Ungley was moving out of those old flats. Last one to leave, naturally. Demolition people standing around waiting. Movers bringing stuff out. Couldn’t manage that filing cabinet. Bunch of panty-waists. Took out the drawers and carried ’em one by one. Ungley having fits because it was raining a few drops and his blasted archives were getting wet. I went in and got the cabinet, shoved the drawers back in, and carried the damn thing down to Mrs. Lomax’s over my shoulder.”

“The very model of a modern college president,” Shandy murmured. “All four of the drawers were more or less filled, would you say?”

“Ungh.”

“Old papers and stuff, I suppose?”

“Don’t know. Didn’t notice. Wasn’t interested. Too damn glad to get rid of the old bastard. Pest. Bore. Expensive.”

“Expensive?” That surprised Shandy. Svenson wasn’t one to toss words around lightly, if at all. Nor was he a skinflint about paying decent wages to his faculty members, much less coughing up a respectable pension for a superannuated professor. “What do you mean, expensive?”

“Highest-paid man on the staff, God knows why. Wasn’t worth a plugged nickel. Squawked like hell at the size of his pension, too. Told him to take it or leave it. He took it. Too damn much as it was, damn it. What did Ungley need with all that money? No family, no house to keep up, not even a blasted goldfish to feed. No travel, no hobbies, no goddamn anything. Wouldn’t even buy his own books. Pinched ’em from the library till Porble got after him.”

“M’yes, so Helen told us. Surely Ungley hadn’t really held a grudge against Porble all these years?”

“Why not? Held everything else he could get his grabby mitts on. Still be holding on to his job if I hadn’t kicked him out. Did you know not one single student had enrolled in his course for three solid years before I retired him?”

“Er—no, I didn’t. Ungley was out before I ever got here, you know.”

“Show you in the records.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Yet you say Ungley was the highest-paid teacher on the faculty. That doesn’t make any sense, President.”

“No. Damn it. Engberg was no fool.”

Dr. Engberg had been Thorkjeld Svenson’s predecessor, though not for long. He’d been killed in an accident of some sort only a short time after he’d taken office. Shandy wasn’t sure of the details, since that, too, had occurred before he’d come to Balaclava. So it must have been the president before Engberg, old Dr. Trunk, who’d hired Ungley in the first place.

“Was it Engberg or Trunk who gave Ungley so much money?” he asked.

“Trunk. Signed a crazy yearly increment contract. Couldn’t be broken. Engberg tried. No go. Hodger.”

“Do you mean Henry Hodger couldn’t break the contract, or that he drew it up?”