'I thought I'd tell her before. We've been so close.
I'd hate to do it without telling her.'
'If she's been so rotten to you the past two years...'
'Not rotten.'
'That was the word you used. Anyhow, she's liable to tell your father. He might do something to stop us.'
'What could he do?'
'I don't know. He would try anyway, wouldn't he?'
'All right. Whatever you say.'
'Afterwards you'll call her up right away. We'll tell everybody.'
'All right.' A final smile, and then she was walking to the sun-bright path, her hair glinting gold. He watched her until she disappeared behind the corner of a building. Then he picked up his books and walked away in the opposite direction. A braking car screeched somewhere, making him start. It sounded like a bird in a jungle.
Without forming a conscious decision he was cutting the rest of the day's classes. He walked all the way through town and down to the river, which was not blue but a dull muddy brown. Leaning on the rail of the black- girded Morton Street Bridge, he looked into the water and smoked a cigarette.
Here it was. The dilemma had finally caught up with him and engulfed him like the filthy water that pounded the abutments of the bridge. Marry her or leave her. A wife and a child and no money, or be hounded and blackmailed by her father. 'You don't know me, sir. My name is Leo Kingship. I'd like to speak to you about the young man you have just employed... The young man your daughter is going with... I think you should know...' Then what? There would be no place to go to but home. He thought of his mother. Years of complacent pride, patronizing sneers for the neighbors' children, and then she sees him clerking in a dry goods store, not just for the summer, but permanently. Or even some lousy mill! His father had failed to live up to her expectations, and he'd seen what love she'd had for the old man burn itself into bitterness and contempt. Was that in store for him too? People talking behind his back. Oh Jesus! Why hadn't the goddamned pills killed the girl?
If only he could get her to undergo an operation. But no, she was determined to get married, and even if he pleaded and argued and called her 'baby' from now till doomsday, she'd still want to consult Ellen before taking such a drastic measure. And anyway, where would they get the money? And suppose something happened, suppose she died. He would be involved because he would have been the one who arranged for the operation. He'd be right where he started-with her father out to get him. Her death wouldn't do him a bit of good. Not if she died that way.
There was a heart scratched into the black paint of the railing, with initials on either side of the arrow that pierced it. He concentrated on the design, picking at it with his fingernail, trying to blank his mind of what had finally welled to the surface. The scratches had exposed cross-sections of paint layers; black, orange, black, orange, black, orange. It reminded him of the pictures of rock strata in a geology text. Records of dead ages.
Dead.
After a while he picked up his books and slowly walked from the bridge. Cars flew towards him and passed with a rushing sound.
He went into a dingy riverside restaurant and ordered a ham sandwich and coffee. He ate the sandwich at a little corner table. While sipping coffee, he took out his memorandum book and fountain pen.
The first tiling that had entered his mind was the Colt .45 he had taken on leaving the Army. Bullets could be obtained with little difficulty. But assuming he wanted to do it, a gun would be no good. It would have to look like an accident, or suicide. The gun would complicate matters too much.
He thought of poison. But where would he get it? Hermy Godsen? No. Maybe the Pharmacy Building. The supply room there shouldn't be too hard to get into. He would have to do some research at the library, to see which poison...
It would have to look like an accident or suicide, because if it looked like anything else, he would be the first one the police would suspect.
There were so many details-assuming he wanted to do it. Today was Tuesday; the marriage could be postponed no later than Friday or she might get worried and call Ellen. Friday would be the deadline. It would require a great deal of fast, careful planning.
He looked at the notes he had printed:
1. Gun
2. Poison
a) Selection
b) Obtaining
c) Administering
d) Appearance of (1) accident or (2) suicide
Assuming, of course, that he wanted to do it. At present it was all purely speculative; he would explore the details a little. A mental exercise.
But his stride, when he left the restaurant and headed back through town, was relaxed and sure and steady.
He reached the campus at three o'clock and went directly to the library. In the card catalogue he found listed six books likely to contain the information he wanted; four of them were general works on toxicology; the other two, manuals of criminal investigation whose file cards indexed chapters on poisons. Rather than have a librarian get the books for him, he registered at the desk and went into the stacks himself.
He had never been in the stacks before. There were three floors filled with bookshelves, a metal staircase spiraling up through them. One of the books on his list was out. He found the other five without difficulty on the shelves on the third floor. Seating himself at one of the small study tables that flanked a wall of the room, he turned on the lamp, arranged his pen and memorandum book in readiness, and began to read.
At the end of an hour, he had a list of five toxic chemicals likely to be found in the Pharmacy supply room, any one of which, by virtue of its reaction time and the symptoms it produced prior to death, would be suitable for the plan whose rudimentary outline he had already formulated during the walk from the river.
He left the library and the campus, and walked in the direction of the house where he roomed. When he had gone two blocks he came upon a dress shop whose windows were plastered with big-lettered sale signs. One of the signs had a sketch of an hourglass with the legend Last Days of Sale.
He looked at the hourglass for a moment. Then he turned around and walked back towards the campus.
He went to the University Bookstore. After consulting the mimeographed booklist tacked to the bulletin board, he asked the clerk for a copy of Pharmaceutical Techniques, the laboratory manual used by the advanced pharmacy students. 'Pretty late in the semester,' clerk commented, returning from the rear of the store with the manual in his hand. It was a large thin book with a distinctive green paper cover. 'Lose yours?'
'No. It was stolen.'
'Oh. Anything else?'
'Yes. I'd like some envelopes, please.'
'What size?'
'Regular envelopes. For letters.'
The clerk put a pack of white envelopes on the book. 'That's a dollar-fifty and twenty-five. Plus tax -a dollar seventy-nine.'
The College of Pharmacy was housed in one of Stoddard's old buildings, three stories of ivy-masked brick. Its front had broad stone steps that led up the main entrance. At either side of the building were steps leading down to a long corridor which cut straight through the basement, where the supply room was located. There was a Yale lock on the supply room door. Keys to this lock were in the possession of the usual university functionaries, the entire faculty of the College of Pharmacy, and those advanced students who had received permission to work without supervision. This was the regular arrangement followed in all departments of the university which used enough equipment to necessitate the maintenance of a supply room. It was an arrangement familiar to almost everyone on campus.
He came in at the main entrance and crossed the hall to the lounge. Two bridge games were in session and
