“They weren’t supposed to be tied, Rid.” Mitchell paused. “Rid, why’d you do it?”
“Do what?” But Groendal’s eyes betrayed awareness; he knew.
“You’re a creative person, Rid. I know that. You’ve done some pretty good stuff in the past. You didn’t have to steal a play!”
“What?” Groendal did a bad job of stubbing out his cigarette. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your play.” Mitchell tapped the manuscript in his lap. “It’s about a seminary faculty composed of very educated men—as a matter of fact, it’s an all-male cast.”
“It was written to be performed by a seminary. And they’re always looking for all-male casts.”
“One faculty member is deathly ill,” Mitchell continued as if he’d never been interrupted, “and one is having serious problems with his faith. And there’s an agnostic doctor who is taking special care of the sick priest.”
Groendal nervously lit another cigarette.
“So there’s a miracle. Or at least it seems like a miraculous cure of the sick priest. And this partially restores the faith of the doubting priest. Until the doctor goes to confession and tells the doubter that the cure wasn’t a miracle. The sick priest simply responded to the medication. So the doubter is torn up by a knowledge he can share with no one because of the ‘seal’ of confession. And then at the end there’s a real miracle that restores the faith of the doubting priest.”
Groendal anxiously tapped a long cigarette ash into a tray. “Sounds like a pretty good plot to me.”
“It seemed like a pretty good plot to Emmet Lavery, too.” From beneath Groendal’s manuscript, Mitchell extracted the small black book he had checked out of the library. “Except that Lavery called it ‘The First Legion.’”
“A coincidence,” Groendal murmured.
“Coincidence! Change your seminary faculty to his small Jesuit seminary and everything is pretty much the same. Oh, I’ll give you credit for rewriting the ending . . . and I think yours is better, more believable. But the rest of it you stole.”
“Oh, come on, Mitch!”
“Sometimes word for word. Look at this . . .” Mitchell indicated parallel passages in the bound play and in Groendal’s manuscript. In both versions a character says, ‘I . . . begin to see . . . the biggest miracle . . . is faith . . . and to have faith is the miracle!’ To which another character responds, ‘I have prayed for faith like yours, but it won’t come.’
“And that,” Mitchell continued, “is only one example, Rid. They’re all over the place. And what’s more, you know it! You have to know it! You copied them!”
Groendal lit a fresh cigarette from the butt of the previous one. Ordinarily, he did not chain-smoke.
“This is why you were reluctant to exchange manuscripts with me, wasn’t it?”
“At first, yes,” Groendal admitted. “But then I wanted to see if it could get by you. Obviously, it didn’t.
“I knew I was taking a chance—with you and, to a lesser degree, with the faculty.” He shrugged. “I figured it was worth the gamble.” He looked at Mitchell. “What are you going to do about it?”
“The question, Rid, is what are you going to do about it?”
Groendal exhaled a long stream of smoke. “Nothing.”
“Nothing! Rid, don’t you understand? This is plagiarism. It’s a crime!”
“There’s no guarantee that it will be performed even if it wins.”
“You submitted it in a contest as if it were yours. And you stole it. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone!”
“What?” Clearly, Mitchell had not expected that response.
“What about your little adventure tomorrow afternoon?”
“What’s that got to do with this?”
“You’re not exactly sinless, you know. You’re going to fracture a prohibition that is so taken for granted that nobody even took the trouble to make a rule about it.”
“Apples and oranges, Rid. I’m going to fool around a bit . . . pay off on a promise I made. What we’re talking about here is serious. Rid, we—you and I—respect—reverence—the theater. We’ve spent a lot of time on stage. We’ve both written plays. You can’t throw all that in the gutter by stealing somebody else’s work! For us, especially, it would be like a sacrilege!”
His eloquent plea met with silence.
“Well?” Mitch finally prodded.
“I’m not going to do anything.”
“But you’ll be discovered. How’s it going to be to have plagiarism on your record?”
“They won’t discover it. I’m banking on it.”
“But I did.”
“You’re more perceptive than they are. I thought it might get by you. It didn’t. But it will get by them.”
“What if it does? What if it wins? What happens if you win with a stolen play?”
“I can live with it. Besides, I improved it; even you had to admit that!” Groendal hesitated. “What about you? Are you going to do anything about it?”
Mitchell’s eyes widened. Obviously he had not considered this eventuality. He had thought he’d be able to convince Groendal to clean up his own mess. “I don’t know, Rid. I’ll have to think about it.”
Mitchell rose and left. He took with him both the book and the manuscript. At that moment, Ridley Groendal knew what Mitchell would do. After their conversation, it was transparent. Mitch could not see that borrowing an idea was just a normal response to writer’s block.
Nothing was more dangerous than a self-righteous person bent on inflicting some sort of justice on a poor soul. If nothing was done about this, Mitchell would surely blow the whistle on him. So, something would have to be done. But what?
8
Robert Koesler stood in the seminary foyer. A very busy place this Sunday as a steady stream of visitors kept entering and gathering here, each bunch meeting their student and then dispersing to various designated visiting parlors.
He had heard that dying people have their lives pass before them. He didn’t know about that. But he did feel that his career as a seminarian and potential priest might be grinding to a halt as a result of what he was about to do. And most of his past transgression of seminary rules was marching through his memory.
His infractions ran from the prosaic, such as talking during periods of silence, tardiness, and unexcused absences, to the more exotic, such as playing table tennis during study period and helping to place another student’s bed beyond anyone’s reach atop a dormitory stall. But nothing approached today’s folly: in effect, smuggling human contraband within these sacred walls. And all out of a sense of loyalty to a friend.
When, he wondered, would he learn?
There, coming through the front door: a young lady in green. She seemed to be alone. As she climbed the steps, Koesler, with an expectant look, stepped in front of her. She gazed at him quizzically. Instantly he knew this was not Beth. Awkwardly, he tried to act as if he were moving forward to greet someone else as the young lady dodged by and joined her party.
What an outrageous adventure! Here he was, waiting for someone he didn’t know who, in turn, would be looking for someone she didn’t know.
For just an instant he wondered whether it might be feasible to simply call the whole thing off. The thought lasted no more than a split second. As foolish as he now considered his participation in this plot, he was indeed committed to it.
“Bob?”
He looked down. How did she get there? He hadn’t noticed her. But there she was, very pretty in a bright green dress.
“Y . . . yes,” he managed to stammer.
“I’m Beth.”
“Uh-huh.” How had she found him? Waiting for their visitors to arrive were many underclassmen in civilian clothes. And there were quite a few from the Philosophy Department, dressed as he was, in cassock and Roman
