One might string his academic honors after him, like dutiful beads; one might recount the extraordinary tale of how, in the manner of Uther Pendragon, Dr. Barlowe bewitched some dumfounded Missourians and took a whole series of substantial buildings out of their pockets; one might produce a volume on the subject of his acolytes alone, who have sped his humanistic gospel into the far corners of the land. Alas, this far more rewarding reportage must await the service of one who has, at the very least, a thousand pages at his disposal. Here there is space merely to record that the liveliness of Barlowe’s alarming approach to scholarship is totally the inspiration of Dr. Isaiah St. Joseph A. Barlowe.
Those who would instruct at Barlowe must pass a rather unusual entrance examination. The examination is conducted in camera, and its nature is as sacredly undisclosable as the Thirty-Third Rite; nevertheless, leaks have occurred, and it may be significant that in its course Dr. Barlowe employs a 16-millimeter motion-picture projector, a radio, a portable phonograph, one copy each of The Bible, The Farmer’s Almanac, and The Complete Sherlock Holmes; and the latest issue of The Congressional Record — among others. During examinations the voices of Donald Duck and Young Widder Brown have been reported; and so on. It is all very puzzling, but perhaps not unconnected with the fact that visitors often cannot distinguish who are Barlowe students and who are Barlowe professors. Certainly a beard at Barlowe is no index of dignity; even the elderly among the faculty extrude a zest more commonly associated with the fuzzy-chinned undergraduate.
So laughter and not harumphery is rampant upon the Gold and the Puce; and, if corpses dance macabre, it is only upon the dissection tables of Bio III, where the attitude toward extinction is roguishly empirical.
Then imagine—if you can—the impact upon Barlowe, not of epic murder as sung by the master troubadours of Classics I; not of romantic murder (Abbot, Anthony to Zangwill, Israel) beckoning from the rental shelves of The Campus Book Shop; but of murder loud and harsh.
Murder, as young Professor Bacon of the Biochemistry Department might say, with a stink.
The letter from Dr. Barlowe struck Ellery as remarkably woeful.
“One of my faculty has disappeared,” wrote the president of Barlowe College, “and I cannot express to you, Mr. Queen, the extent of my apprehension. In short, I fear the worst.
“I am aware of your busy itinerary, but if you are at all informed regarding the institution to which I have devoted my life, you will grasp the full horror of our dilemma. We feel we have erected something here too precious to be befouled by the nastiness of the age; on the other hand, there are humane—not to mention legal—considerations. If, as I suspect, Professor Chipp has met with foul play, it occurred to me that we might investigate sub rosa and at least present the not altogether friendly world with un mystère accompli. In this way, much anguish may be spared us all.
“Can I prevail upon you to come to Barlowe quietly, and at once? I feel confident I speak for our Trustees when I say we shall have no difficulty about the coarser aspects of the association.”
The letter was handwritten, in a hasty and nervous script which seemed to suggest guilty glances over the presidential shoulder.
It was all so at variance with what Ellery had heard about Dr. Isaiah St. Joseph A. Barlowe and his learned vaudeville show that he scribbled a note to Inspector Queen and ran. Nikki, clutching her invaluable notebook, ran with him.
Barlowe, Missouri, lay torpid in the warm September sunshine. And the distant Ozarks seemed to be peering at Barlowe inquisitively.
“Do you suppose it’s got out, Ellery?” asked Nikki sotto voce as a sluggish hack trundled them through the slumbering town. “It’s all so still. Not like a college town at all.”
“Barlowe is still in its etesian phase,” replied Ellery pedantically. “The fall term doesn’t begin for another ten days.”
“You always make things so darned uninteresting!”
They were whisked into Dr. Barlowe’s sanctum.
“You’ll forgive my not meeting you at the station,” muttered the educator as he quickly shut the door. He was a lean gray-thatched man with an Italianate face and lively black eyes whose present preoccupation did not altogether extinguish the lurking twinkle. Missouri’s Petrarch, thought Ellery with a chuckle. As for Nikki, it was love at first sight. “Softly, softly—that must be our watchword.”
“Just who is Professor Chipp, Dr. Barlowe?”
“American Lit. You haven’t heard of Chipp’s seminar on Poe? He’s an authority—it’s one of our more popular items.”
“Poe,” exclaimed Nikki. “Ellery, that should give you a personal interest in the case.”
“Leverett Chisholm Chipp,” nodded Ellery, remembering. “Monographs in The Review on the Poe prose. Enthusiasm and scholarship. That Chipp...”
“He’s been a Barlowe appendage for thirty years,” said the doctor unhappily. “We really couldn’t go on without him.”
“When was Professor Chipp last seen?”
Dr. Barlowe snatched his telephone. “Millie, send Ma Blinker in now... Ma runs the boarding house on the campus where old Chipp’s had rooms ever since he came to Barlowe to teach, Mr. Queen. Ah! Ma! Come in. And shut the door!”
Ma Blinker was a brawny old Missourian who looked as if she had been summoned to the council chamber from her Friday’s batch of apple pies. But it was a landlady’s eye she turned on the visitors from New York—an eye which did not surrender until Dr. Barlowe uttered a cryptic reassurance, whereupon it softened and became moist.
“He’s an old love, the Professor is,” she said brokenly. “Regular? Ye could set your watch by that man.”
“I take it,” murmured Ellery, “Chipp’s regularity is germane?”
Dr. Barlowe nodded. “Now, Ma, you’re carrying on. And you with the blood of pioneers! Tell Mr. Queen all about it.”
“The Professor,” gulped Ma Blinker, “he owns a log cabin up in the Ozarks, ’cross the Arkansas line. Every year he leaves Barlowe first of July to spend his summer vacation in the cabin. First of July, like clockwork.”
“Alone, Mrs. Blinker?”
“Yes, sir. Does all his writin’ up there, he does.”
“Literary textbooks,” explained Barlowe. “Although summer before last, to my astonishment, Chipp informed me he was beginning a novel.”
“First of July he leaves for the cabin, and one day after Labor Day he’s back in Barlowe gettin’ ready for the fall term.”
“One day after Labor Day, Mr. Queen. Year in, year out. Unfailingly.”
“And here ’tis the thirteenth of September and he ain’t showed up in town!”
“Day after Labor Day... Ten days overdue.”
“All this fuss,” asked Nikki, “over a measly ten days?”
“Miss Porter, Chipp’s being ten days late is as unlikely as—as my being Mrs. Hudson in disguise! Unlikelier. I was so concerned, Mr. Queen, I telephoned the Slater, Arkansas, authorities to send someone up to Chipp’s cabin.”
“Then he didn’t simply linger there past his usual date?”
“I can’t impress upon you too strongly the inflexibility of Chipp’s habit-pattern. He did not. The Slater man found no sign of Chipp but his trunk.”
“But I gathered from your letter, Doctor, that you had a more specific reason for suspecting—”