that nothing he could say would dissuade Charlie from going back
down there.
Henry Northrup glanced at his watch. They had been sitting in the
study for a little over an hour; Wilma wouldn't be back for another
two. Plenty of time. Unlike Charlie Gereson, he had passed no
judgment at all on the factual basis of Dex's story. But he had
known Dex for a longer time than young Gereson had, and he
didn't believe his friend exhibited the signs of a man who has
suddenly developed a psychosis. What he exhibited was a kind of
bug-eyed fear, no more or
less than you'd expect to see a man who has had an extremely close
call with... well, just an extremely close call.
'He went down, Dex?'
'Yes. He did.'
'You went with him?'
'Yes.'
Henry shifted position a little. 'I can understand why he didn't
want to get campus security until he had checked the situation
himself. But Dex, you knew you were telling the flat-out truth,
even if he didn't. Why didn't you call?'
'You believe me?' Dex asked. His voice trembled. 'You believe
me, don't you, Henry?'
Henry considered briefly. The story was mad, no question about
that. The implication that there could be something in that box big
enough and lively enough to kill a man after some one hundred and
forty years was mad. He didn't believe it. But this was Dex... and
he didn't disbelieve it either.
'Yes,' he said.
'Thank God for that,' Dex said. He groped for his drink. 'Thank
God for that, Henry.'
'It doesn't answer the question, though. Why didn't you call the
campus cops?'
'I thought... as much as I did think... that it might not want to come
out of the crate, into the bright light. It must have lived in the dark
for so long... so very long... and ... grotesque as this sounds... I
though it might be pot-bound, or something. I thought ... well, he'll
see it... he'll see the crate... the janitor's body... he'll see the blood...
and then we'd call security. You see?' Stanley's eyes pleaded with
him to see, and Henry did. He thought that, considering the fact
that it had been a snap judgment in a presure situation, that Dex
had thought quite clearly. The blood. When the young graduate
student saw the blood, he would have been happy to call in the
cops.
'But it didn't work out that way.'
'No.' Dex ran a hand through his thinning hair.
'Why not?'
'Because when we got down there, the body was gone.'
'It was gone?'
'That's right. And the crate was gone, too.'
