The Letter Killeth Read Online Free PDF Page A

sees me coming in my golf cart, he cuts off across the lawn to avoid me. He accuses me of corrupting the young.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI am sure I was his target. It was in a four part series he wrote for the Observer. He spoke of unearned and inflated reputations.” Roger patted his tummy. “He inveighed against the resurrecting of authors who were enjoying a deep and deserved obscurity. I am told he is less oblique in class, where I am mentioned by name. The dark Knight of the soul, that sort of thing.”
    â€œMaybe you pasted together these threats.”
    â€œOh, I did worse. I referred to him in my class as Wack, O. It was taken up by the students.”
    *   *   *
    Phil went first to the Guglielmino Center to find that Weis was on the road recruiting. Father Carmody had prepared the way with a phone call, and an assistant took Phil into his office and handed him the letter.
    â€œI thought the provost ought to know.”
    â€œHe got one, too.”
    The man’s face brightened. “He did?”
    â€œThere were others as well.”
    â€œWhy do I find that reassuring?”
    The letter to Weis had a different message. BewaRe! gOlden boWls brEaK. BoMbs awAy.
    â€œCoach said ignore it. I didn’t think so. What do you think?”
    â€œSome nut.”
    â€œSome nuts are dangerous.” The man looked around. “If anything happened to this place…”
    â€œHow many people know about this?”
    â€œHere? Only me. And Coach, of course.”
    *   *   *
    The office of the dean of Arts and Letters was a warren of rooms reached from a posh reception area. Phil was led as through a maze to the inner sanctum where the dean, in shirt sleeves and gaudy suspenders, rose, smiling a crooked smile.
    â€œPhil Knight.”
    â€œI know. The provost called. I think he’s making too much of this. I get threats all the time.” The smile went away, and then came back. “Usually anonymous e-mails.”
    â€œThreatening to bomb your office?”
    â€œThat is a new touch.”
    â€œCould I see the letter?
    A ladder leaned against a bookshelf, providing access to higher shelves. The dean went up a rung or two and felt along the top of the books. He brought down the folded page. He looked at Phil. “I told the provost about this, but no one else.”
    â€œAs in no one?”
    â€œIt’s not the sort of message one circulates.”
    Phil unfolded the paper. It had been put together in the same way as the ones to the provost and the football coach, but the message was different. AcHtung! A coNtraCt has bEEn taKen oUt on yOu.
    â€œAny ideas?”
    â€œI would say a faculty member. Because of the mention of contract. Maybe someone who didn’t get renewed.”
    Phil asked him to explain and got more lore than he wanted about the various adjunct and auxiliary appointments to the faculty, men and women taken on for piecework, without tenure, and consequently vulnerable to being let go when the need for them lessened.
    â€œHow many people are we talking about? That didn’t get renewed?”
    â€œI made a list.” He had it in a drawer of his desk, handwritten.
    â€œYou are worried, aren’t you?”
    â€œNot about violence. This is the kind of thing that can hurt the college, and the university. It would be pretty bad publicity that we have a nut running loose on campus. The fact that he or she is harmless would only add to the fun of it. From a journalistic point of view.”
    *   *   *
    Oscar Wack proved more elusive. He was not in his office in Decio; there was no off-campus phone for him listed; the English department was reluctant to help.
    â€œYou’ve come from the provost?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œAnd you want information about a faculty member?”
    â€œI want to talk to him.”
    â€œWho exactly are you?”
    â€œWhy