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his eyes, clearly pondering a weighty question. The guy was really a piece of work. “Mr. Wolfe,” he answered in a voice just above a whisper, “I don’t know the extent of your knowledge of university faculties, but their members can be appallingly petty—individually and corporately. Prescott is no exception. And if you happen to be politically conservative, that pettiness is particularly glaring.”
    “That sounds like paranoia,” Wolfe remarked.
    “Paranoia? Hardly. Hale Markham is arguably the most famous faculty member the school has ever had. He has—had—been on our faculty for almost forty years, and had garnered international attention for most of that period. He’d been widely published, both academically and in the popular press. Yet he was never, not once, offered the chairmanship of the Political Science Department, even though that chair has changed hands four times in the last nineteen years.” Cortland let loose of this damning fact and sank back into his chair triumphantly.
    If this evidence of academic injustice shocked Wolfe, he kept it well hidden. “Are you suggesting a left-leaning conspiracy against Mr. Markham?”
    “Don’t mock me, Mr. Wolfe,” Cortland shot back. The little guy had a spine after all. “The fact is, Prescott, like most schools, has a strong liberal-Socialist bias within its faculty, and to some degree in the administration as well. If you don’t subscribe to their ideologies, there are a hundred ways you can be passed over, slighted, ignored, frozen out, cut down. Believe me, I know.”
    Wolfe’s right index finger had begun tracing circles on the chair arm, an unmistakable sign he was losing whatever patience he had started this encounter with. “Sir, let us get down to cases. You came here because you contend that your colleague was the victim of a willful act of murder. So far, you have provided little in the way of suspects. Can you suggest someone within the university? Or anyone else, for that matter?”
    “I am hardly an authority on murder, Mr. Wolfe. I don’t pretend to divine the machinations of the criminal mind. That’s why I came to you. I can only tell you about those people who disliked Hale.”
    “Do so.”
    “Besides Potter, there was Orville Schmidt, for one—he’s chairman of the Political Science Department. He had been jealous of Hale for years.”
    “Because of Mr. Markham’s prestige?”
    “That’s part of it, yes. I’ve heard him more than once in meetings and social gatherings refer sarcastically to Hale as ‘our local celebrity.’ Never to Hale’s face, mind you—he was always cordial to Hale in person, even deferential, but then, that’s Orville for you: as two-faced as Janus himself.”
    “And Mr. Schmidt’s political philosophy?”
    Cortland screwed up his face. “Orville has always fancied himself as a profound liberal thinker. He’s written a number of articles about how Socialism is”—he paused to shudder—“an inexorable tide that will ultimately engulf the Western World. And of course there was his book on FDR’s social justice policies and programs,” he said, not bothering to keep the contempt out of his voice. “Eight hundred pages and not an original shred of research or an original idea. Little wonder it got such insipid reviews. And to make matters worse for Orville, it came out at almost the same time as Hale’s Bleeding Hearts Can Kill . Did you read it, Mr. Wolfe?”
    “Yes,” he said, tight-lipped.
    Cortland seemed oblivious to the reaction. “A brilliant volume—beautifully written, masterfully reasoned. God, how it galled Orville that Hale outsold him by—what?—twenty to one? Fifty to one? Maybe more. But poor Orville doesn’t give up. Next month, he’s got another book coming out—this one on George Marshall and his two years as Truman’s secretary of state, you know, the Truman Doctrine and all.”
    Wolfe drew in a bushel of air and expelled it slowly. “So you’re