“How do you know all this, Dean? — Floyd?”
Gunther showed his teeth in a grin. They were rather bad teeth. “It’s my business to know, Mike. I wish to hell I were better informed! I can only hope you find her and that she’s all right.”
“What are Eastman and Sullivan like?”
The Dean of Men shrugged. “Sullivan is mixed up in the student agitation. He’s the cocky sort — you find yourself wanting to punch his face in. Perry drinks a lot and I suspect takes drugs. I’ve talked to him about it, but of course he denies it.”
McCall questioned him in depth and soon concluded that the man knew nothing that might help. Gunther seemed under considerable strain, but this was probably because of what was going on.
“Maybe your presence here will accomplish some good,” Gunther said. “It might make them cool it while you’re on campus and give us a breather. But somehow I doubt it. If things don’t improve, one of these days the governor is going to have to call up the National Guard, and then there’ll be hell to pay.” The Dean glanced at his watch, a black-dialed, skin-diver’s chronometer, and McCall rose.
“I’ll be on my way, Floyd. I know you’re busy.”
“It’s not that,” Gunther said quickly. “Perry Eastman’s supposed to see me right about now. Disturbance in class; ridiculing a professor; drinking.”
“It’s lunch time anyway,” McCall said. “And I want to check Laura Thornton’s room. Where do I find the Sigma Alpha Phi house?”
Gunther gave him directions. “How about coming to dinner tonight, Mike? My wife’s a great cook, and we could explore the situation more thoroughly.”
McCall made the usual demurral, the Dean insisted and named eight o’clock. “We eat late these nights,” he said with a forced smile, and McCall turned to leave.
A tall, slat-built, round-shouldered young man was lounging beside a desk in the outer office, smoking.
“Come in, Perry,” Dean Gunther said.
Eastman wore snake-tight Levi’s and an enormous white terrycloth pullover that sagged like a wet horse-blanket. His black hair hung to his round shoulders, and bangs just missed his eyebrows. A brass necklace dangled on his chest. He wore leather sandals over dirty bare feet.
“Hi, Deanie,” Eastman said. He eyed McCall from puffy slits. “What’s with the system today? We getting down to the nitty-gritty?”
McCall stepped into the hall and shut the Dean’s door with a conscious effort at self-control. He was suddenly aware of the generation gap and the surge of aggression in the naked ape.
He thought of President Wolfe Wade and Dean Vance and Dean Gunther and wondered how they stood it.
3
The Sigma Alpha Phi house stood on an elm-guarded street just off campus, a squatty frame building of Victorian vintage with yellow shutters and lots of wooden embroidery and a gallery of windows rubbernecking in the sunshine. The reception room inside reminded McCall of an undersea grotto, blue lights glowing on bluish walls. There were carnivorous-looking plants in fancy tubs (did they eat only males? he wondered), feminine furniture, thick silky rugs; his nose was assailed with bath oils, perfumes, garlic from something cooking, and a not quite successful deodorizer. A slithery young woman with a bad complexion, dressed in a pajama-like East Indian lounging outfit, showed him in.
He explained who he was and asked to see Laura Thornton’s room.
“Naughty-naughty,” the girl said. “No dice, bud. We’re off-limits, according to the Great God Square in the ad building.”
“You’re all perfectly safe from me,” McCall said solemnly. “In my job sex is irrelevant.”
“I’ll bet,” the girl said, looking him over. “Oh, Prissy.”
A tall mannish girl in red bell-bottoms had drifted in to stare at him.
The pimply girl said, “This is Mr. McCall, Prissy. He wants to see Laura’s room.”
“You know that’s impossible, Cuddles,” the tall girl said. She had no hips and almost no breasts, and McCall got a sudden overwhelming charge of sexual hostility from her. Her voice had a point to it, like an icicle. “You’ll have to leave,” she said to McCall.
“Oh, don’t be like that, Priss. Remember the fuzz invasion?”
“I’m a kind of fuzz myself,” McCall said.
“Oh?” the mannish girl said, raising her unplucked eyebrows. “Then I suppose you’ve got credentials. Or something.”
“I should have shown it to you right off.” McCall brought out his shield case, with its impressive special gold governor’s seal. “Will this do?”
“Oh, that McCall.” The tall one shrugged. “This is making waves in strange places. I suppose we have no choice.”
“Goodness!” Cuddles said. “Of course not, Priss. I’ll take him up. Follow me, Mr. McCall?” And the girl led him quickly down a blue-suffused hall and up a carpeted staircase in the grand manner. “It’s this one,” she said, stopping at a closed door. “Nina’s not here just now, Mr. McCall, but I guess it’s okay. I mean Nina Hobart, Laura’s roomie.”
“I’m not going to steal anything,” McCall smiled, “if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“Oh, I don’t mean anything like that!” She weighed him again, shrugged slightly, opened the door, and pointed. “That’s Laura’s side. Mr. McCall?”
“Yes?”
“Think anything bad’s happened?”
“I certainly hope not. If Miss Hobart gets back while I’m here, please tell her I’d like to see her.”
“Okey-pokey.” She lingered. He stared at her, and she shrugged again and slithered away. He shut the door and took a long look about the room. This was the real beginning of his assignment.
The room was big and airy, with big windows covered with yellow-flowered marquisette curtains which threw a saffron light over everything. The left side of the room was a mess, bed unmade, piled with clothes; a psychedelic-colored rag rug hung over a chair; from an open dresser drawer dangled a black bra. A crude red-lettered poster on the wall above the bed announced: LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF SEXINESS. Another, in violet, read: OPEN FOR BUSINESS. WE NEVER SLEEP. The third half-wall displayed a chaster sign, with the cryptic inscription: KITTEN.
But the untidy side was not Laura Thornton’s side; it was Nina Hobart’s. The missing girl’s bed — McCall identified that side as hers from the initials on the trunk under the bed — was made with almost professional neatness, and the spread was a neutral écru affair. The wall space of Laura’s half of the room was covered almost completely with unframed canvases in brilliant colors. It was non-representational art, for which McCall had no particular liking; but he recognized a high and unusual quality. If these were examples of Laura’s painting, Kathryn Cohan had not exaggerated her talent.
A desk against one wall at about the center line seemed to be in neutral territory and therefore probably shared; but then McCall changed his mind. In a corner near a closet door, on Laura’s side, stood a small flat desk painted black.
He checked the nightstand, the bed, the closet, with no particular hope — Chief Pearson’s men had been over the room, and he had to assume that if there had been anything of significance they would have appropriated it — but out of routine thoroughness; one never knew. There was no clutter. He went through the little black desk. Nothing; a few books. The top of the desk was bare except for a portable typewriter and a thick stack of white typing paper.
He was about to turn away when he noticed something about the stack of paper. It seemed to hump slightly. He separated the pile and found a packet of paper matches lying in the middle of the stack. The cover was white, with green and black lettering; the packet had never been used. It was a souvenir of a motel called the Greenview. McCall remembered passing a Greenview Motel on his way to the inn. It was on the outskirts of Tisquanto.