collar. “How could you tell it was I?”
“I asked around. Somebody pointed you out.”
“You didn’t!”
“Yes, I did. How else was I going to find you?”
“I guess you had no choice.”
Would her inquiries prove embarrassing for him if this whole plot came unraveled?
“Well, come on; let’s go.”
After they had walked a considerable distance, Beth remarked, “My, this is a large building!”
It was. But familiarity had artificially shrunken the distance for Koesler. “It helps if you remember that basically it’s built in a square. The chapel’s in the middle of the square. Then the four corners sprout their own extensions. There’s the auditorium in one corner, the convent and infirmary on another, the gymnasium on the third, and St. Thomas Residence Hall on the fourth.”
“Ah, St. Thomas Hall. That’s where we’re going, isn’t it?”
“That’s right.” As far as Koesler was concerned, they couldn’t get there too soon.
They walked in silence for a while. Koesler had to admit she certainly was pretty. But, worth the risk? Not as far as he was concerned. Anyway, in a few minutes, if all went as planned, his role would be completed until it was time for her to leave. And that, compared with getting her in, would be duck soup.
“Hmmm . . . I was wondering,” Beth said, “why are you wearing that?”
“What?”
“That uniform.”
“The cassock?”
“Yes. It’s a priest’s uniform. But you’re not a priest—she looked up at him incredulously—are you?”
Koesler grinned. “No. We’re supposed to start wearing the cassock in third-year college. It’s sort of the uniform of the day. We wear it just about everywhere, I guess, except for sports and in our rooms.”
Her nose crinkled. “Does Mitch wear one of these cassocks?”
“Uh, ordinarily, yes.” That was it. That was the reason Mitch did not want to meet her himself: He would have had to be wearing his cassock. He didn’t want her to see him in a “priest’s suit.” It might well cramp both their styles.
They arrived at the double doors leading to St. Thomas Hall. This was it. Koesler took a deep breath. It was considerably reassuring to find Groendal on duty.
“How’s the coast, Rid?”
“We’re in luck; not a soul in sight,” Groendal replied.
“I’m Beth.” She extended her hand.
“Ridley Groendal.” His hand was in and out of hers in a second.
Koesler felt foolish for not having introduced her. But he would not be able to relax until she was out of his jurisdiction—which, with any luck, would only be a few seconds more.
Wordlessly, Groendal entered the hall and walked deliberately down its length, looking from side to side as he went. At the other end of the hall, he peered up and down the staircase until he was certain no one was around. Then he signaled to Koesler, who looked back down the main corridor. There was still a crowd at the front entrance but no one seemed to be looking down the corridor or paying any attention to them.
“Okay,” Koesler said, “go ahead.”
“Isn’t this a little too complicated?” Beth complained.
“Go!” Koesler almost shouted.
She gave a startled little jump and hurried into the hall.
“Room 12, don’t forget!” Koesler stage-whispered after her. He waited until he saw her knock rather timidly at the door of room 12, and enter. Then, as if the weight of the world had slipped from his shoulders, he almost skipped down the corridor toward the rear of the building. Two hours to go and the business would be done.
What to do with two hours on a bright, balmy spring day having just shed a heavy burden of responsibility? Nothing inside the building. He changed into casual clothes and went outside to play a little baseball. He had taken the precaution of advising any potential visitors not to come, thus avoiding any conflict on this trying day.
Pick-up games were in progress at several of the seminary’s five diamonds. He joined one. He hadn’t a care in the world. Well, one: He would have to be back on duty for this silly caper at four promptly. He consulted his watch. It was exactly three o’clock. Whatever Mitch and Beth were doing, they were right in the middle of it.
It was exactly three o’clock when there was a brief but insistent knocking at the door of room 12 in St. Thomas Hall. Summarily, the door was flung open.
Later, when he tried to recall that moment, Mitchell would say that all he could remember was a long row of red buttons and red piping on the black cassock of Monsignor George Cronyn, rector of Sacred Heart Seminary. Of course, Mitchell went into a state of shock.
Beth, on her part, remembered the Monsignor’s face, mostly because it was as red as the trimming on his cassock.
As the door swung open and banged against the wall, Beth instinctively pulled the sheet up so that it pretty well covered both of them to the shoulder level.
For a moment, no one said anything. There was almost nothing to say. Mitch and Beth had been caught
“Mr. Mitchell,” Monsignor Cronyn snapped the syllables, “you have betrayed a sacred trust. I want you gone from the seminary by vespers this afternoon. Gone for good! Is that understood?”
Presumably the question was rhetorical; the rector did not wait for a reply. He merely retrieved the door whence it still vibrated near the wall and closed it behind him, again with a resounding bang.
Cronyn stormed along the corridor and up the staircase to his room. All the way he fought mixed emotions. He was furious with Carroll Mitchell, a young man who had shown such great promise. He might have made an impressive priest. His grades were well above average. He showed creative talent on the stage and as a playwright—abilities that promised great success in the pulpit. And he had an attractive, manly personality that easily would have drawn young boys to the seminary to test their vocations.
But what Mitchell had done was patently intolerable. If the seminary faculty had learned that he was even dating steadily, the student would have been warned most forcefully. If it had been proven that he had fornicated, Mitchell’s expulsion would have been seriously debated. But to flaunt the affair as Mitchell had done! Bring the girl into the seminary right into his room! A young man such as this could never again be trusted. But to have thrown away so promising a career so nonchalantly was a crime that very nearly cried to heaven for vengeance.
Nor was Monsignor Cronyn all that happy over how he had learned what was going on in room 12.
The principle of “fraternal correction” had been around a long time. Still, it remained a dangerous tool in the hands of almost anyone, let alone an adolescent with perhaps a personal ax to grind. At the beginning of each scholastic year, when Cronyn would explain the notion of fraternal correction, he would try to emphasize the dangers inherent in such an action. Nevertheless, it was part of seminary policy that a student report to the authorities any other student who was guilty of a flagrant violation of law—God’s or the seminary’s.
And thus it had been in the stated interest of fraternal correction that Ridley C. Groendal had come to Monsignor Cronyn’s office at approximately 2:45 that afternoon to inform on what he thought was happening in Carroll Mitchell’s room.
In all probability it had been the proper thing for Groendal to do. Still, it was extremely rare that any student would turn in another. Even though Cronyn understood the importance—historical if none other—of fraternal correction, in his heart the Monsignor was leery of, and indeed disliked, the principle. Nor did he much care, privately, for a student who would—he hesitated to use the word, but, yes—betray a confrere.
In spite of his intellectual acceptance of the procedure, at his core Cronyn found squealing distasteful; he could not help looking upon the informer with a certain amount of loathing.
There were exceptions, of course. It was thoroughly understandable to speak out to save oneself or another innocent party from harm, as in the case of incest or child abuse. But it was quite another thing to cry havoc just because a rule was being violated.
From this day forward, Monsignor Cronyn would have to force himself to try to be objective with regard to
