Tuesday The Rabbi Saw Red Read Online Free PDF Page A

probably had a great deal to do with it, we still get student agitation from time to time, of course, but nothing compared to ‘68 and ‘69, although there was a bombing last year. I’m sure you read about it in the papers.”
    “Yes, I remember.”
    “Our students weren’t responsible. I’m sure,” she said quickly. “The police are fairly certain it was the work of outsiders – the Weathervane organization probably. Of course, some of our students could be members, well, if you’ll excuse me. I’ll see to the mail. But first let’s see if President Macomber is free.”
    She spoke into the phone. “Ella? Dean Hanbury. Has President Macomber come in yet? Oh, I see, well, I’m in my office with Rabbi Small. You’ll let me know, won’t you?”
    She hung up. “He’s busy at the moment,” she said.
    There was a knock on the half-open door, and a workman with a tool kit stuck his head in. “Professor Hendryx’s office?”
    “No.” said Dean Hanbury. “It adjoins this one. I’m sure he’s not in yet, though.”
    “That’s all right, ma’am. I can start here, the order calls for cutting into your line.” The man ran his eyes expertly along the telephone wire above the molding of the chair rail. It fed over the frame of the closet door, then along the picture molding. “You say his office is right on line with this one?”
    “Yes –” A bump sounded from the other side of the wall. “Oh, he must have come in, after all,” she said. “Come along. Rabbi. I’ll introduce you.”
    They went down one corridor and then another and she stopped in front of a door whose upper panel of translucent glass had a long diagonal crack. “We’ll have to replace that.” said the dean mechanically, as though she had said it many times before.
    She knocked and Professor Hendryx let them in, he was of medium height with a van dyke beard that emphasized a full sensuous underlip, a pipe jutted out of one corner of his mouth. His eyes were dark and appeared even darker behind tinted glasses in heavy tortoiseshell frames, he was wearing slacks and a tweed sport coat with leather patches on the elbows. His shirt was open at the collar, he wore a silk kerchief, knotted with fastidious negligence around his throat, the rabbi estimated he was a little older than himself, perhaps thirty-eight, even forty.
    The dean introduced the two men and then said. “I’m afraid you and the rabbi will have to double up. John, there’s no other place in the building. Mr. Raferty can put in another desk.”
    “Where?” asked Hendryx, surprised and annoyed. “It’s almost impossible to move about in this cubbyhole as it is. If you put another desk in there’ll be no room between them. Will we climb over them to sit down?”
    “I was thinking of a smaller desk, John.”
    “I don’t really need a desk.” said the rabbi quickly. “Just a place to leave my hat and coat, and perhaps a text or two.”
    “Well, that’s all right then/ she remarked brightly. “I’ll leave you two to get better acquainted.”
    Hendryx circled the desk and pulled out his swivel chair so savagely that it banged against the rear wall, incidentally explaining for the rabbi how the Dean had known he was in the office. Finding Hendryx’s annoyance embarrassing, since he was the innocent cause of it. David Small looked around the dusty shelves lining the rear wall, the lower ones filled with stacks of bluebooks yellow with age. “It is rather confined,” he remarked.
    “It’s little more than a damn closet. Rabbi, although it’s better than the intolerable clack of the English office on the first floor where I spent two years, actually, this was a storeroom for freshman themes and exams and old library books. It’s pretty bleak, but I hope to bring over some more of my things and fix it up a little when I get a chance, that print” – pointing to a large framed drawing of medieval London – “is mine, and so is that bust of Homer” – nodding to a