Quoth the Raven(24)

“It’s very impressive,” Bennis told him.

“Yeah. Well. Like I said, I’ll go get Freddie and Max, they’ll get the stuff out of your van and bring it to Father Tibor’s room. Are you staying in Constitution House?”

“Mr. Demarkian is staying in the guest suite in Constitution House,” Tibor said, “Miss Hannaford is staying in the guest suite in Liberty House.”

“Miss Hannaford is staying on your floor,” Bennis said, “or Gregor’s.”

“Miss Hannaford is a law unto herself,” Gregor said.

Jack Carroll wasn’t listening. His attention had wandered from the effigy. He was staring into the crowd with an expression that was half-puzzled and half on the verge of angry. Gregor stared into the crowd with him, but saw nothing he would have called unusual, under the circumstances. There was a young girl dressed as a harlequin. There was a boy dressed up as Scrooge. There was somebody else, sex indeterminate, in an elephant suit. No fake blood, no fake wounds, no imaginary mutilations. It was all positively benign.

“Mr. Carroll?”

Jack Carroll came to, blinked twice, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a lot to do. I’m afraid I’m a little tired.”

“Mr. Carroll is President of Students,” Tibor said.

Bennis smiled at him. “You must be exhausted.”

Jack Carroll pulled the black hood back over his head, smoothed it down, and fastened it at his neck—with Velcro.

“Glad to have met you,” he told them, shaking hands all around again, even with Tibor, as if he had learned his etiquette in a peculiarly rigid dancing school. “I’ll get on to Freddie and Max right away. You’ll have your baskets in under an hour. I promise.”

He strode away, the picture of a Hollywood superhero, except for a slight hitch in his gait. Gregor thought he could read that hitch, because he’d suffered from it once or twice himself. It was the walk of a man trying to control a steadily rising but doomed to be frustrated fury.

Something tugged at his sleeve. Gregor looked down to see Tibor trying to pull him along the path, in the direction of the college buildings.

“We must go now, Krekor, or we will miss lunch. It is important. At lunch, you will meet everybody I want you to meet.”

“At lunch, I intend to meet lunch,” Bennis said. “I’m starving.”





3


FIVE MINUTES LATER, GOING up the steps of Constitution House with Tibor in the lead, they ran into a tall, blond woman with a face like a Vogue cover girl’s and a pair of jeans that had seen better days in 1968. The woman was paying no attention to them, or to much of anything else. Constitution House was a faculty residence, but it had been decorated as thoroughly and exuberantly as any of the student dorms. White plastic glow-in-the-dark skeletons had been hung around the rim of the great double doors like fringe on a gypsy curtain. The edges of each of the steps were occupied by gigantic pumpkins cut into jack-o’-lanterns of every possible expression. Gregor saw one with a sheepish smile on its face and another that looked about to go cannibal. Fine white threads, knotted into webs, hung in the open doorway. Clusters of Indian corn, red and orange and yellow and black and brown, were tied to every window but one on the second floor.

Halfway down the steps, the blond woman stopped, turned, and looked up at the second floor. She shook her head, impatiently but almost imperceptibly. Then she turned around again and saw Tibor.

“Father,” she said.

“Dr. Elkinson.” Tibor was smiling. “Dr. Elkinson, these are friends of mine, Gregor Demarkian and Bennis Hannaford.”

Dr. Elkinson bowed in Gregor’s direction. The gesture looked perfectly natural. “Mr. Demarkian,” she said. “I’ve heard a great deal about you. All my students are very anxious to hear your lecture.”

“They may be something other than anxious after they do hear it.”

“It isn’t until tomorrow night, isn’t it? You’re here early.”

“He is here because of me,” Tibor said. “I was getting lonely in all of this. I am not used to it.”

Gregor thought Dr. Elkinson was going to ask just what it was Tibor wasn’t used to, but she didn’t. She merely adjusted the waistband of her jeans and brushed at her hair. Neither gesture seemed to accomplish anything. She didn’t seem to expect them to.

“I was looking for Ken,” she said abruptly. “Have you seen him around, Father? We were supposed to meet for lunch and he seems to have gone missing.”

“I haven’t seen anybody around today,” Tibor said, “except Jack Carroll. That I know of. Possibly, if Dr. Crockett is in costume…”