“I don’t know; it never occurred to me.”
“You read too many detective stories,” said Rankin, taking off his coat. “‘Well, we’ll skip that for a minute. I’m Sergeant Rankin and will probably be in charge of this case, at least for the time being, and if you’ll just tell me how you happened to find the body, you can go.”
Jupiter decided the case was in competent hands. The Sergeant was solidly built and wore a well-fitting suit and good-looking tie. Jupiter had a habit of classifying people by their taste in ties. His eyes were deep-set and it was hard to tell where he was looking. Jupiter thought he might be a trifle cross-eyed. His apparent intelligence and machine-gun type of speech made Jupiter wonder if he had been excessively brilliant in picking up the purse.
“What’s your name?” asked the Sergeant, to start the ball rolling.
“Edmund Jones,” he said.
“Undergraduate?”
“No, I graduated last year; I’m doing graduate work.”
“Oh. Where do you live?”
“Entry B, room eleven, or Winnetka.”
“It’s right next door,” said Mr. Swayle, who was feeling out of it.
“It’s in Illinois,” stated one of the fat policemen unexpectedly.
“I mean his room,” said Mr. Swayle.
“Quiet!” snapped the Sergeant. “I’ll ask the questions; Jones will answer them. . . . Now, tell me what you did from — say six-thirty.”
Jupiter was enjoying himself; he liked the scene, he felt that things were going as they should. Especially he liked the fattest of the policemen. He decided to call him “Illinois.” Mr. Swayle was becoming more and more owlish, his head jerking from one to the other and then back to the dead man. Jupiter wouldn’t have been surprised if he had hooted; the life of a House janitor is usually uneventful.
In a few well-chosen words he told how he had found Professor Singer.
“I guess that’s about all,” he concluded, “except that I’ve wiped off all the fingerprints and hidden the important clues.”
“A wise guy,” said Illinois.
“Thanks,” said Rankin. “How well did you know Singer?”
Jupiter hesitated. “That’s hard to say. He was my tutor for three years and I’ve worked with him a lot this year.”
“Your tutor?” asked the Sergeant blankly.
Jupiter was glad to explain the tutorial system, one of his favorite subjects. “Yes. The unsuspecting sophomore is put in the hands of a tutor in his chosen Field of Concentration — in my case, Fine Arts. The tutor assigns him reading in related subjects that he ordinarily wouldn’t get in his regular courses. He also helps prepare him for divisional exams. The amount of work done by the student depends on the tutor and the student himself. It’s not exactly obligatory, although it’s becoming more so. The tutor and tutee meet once a week or every two weeks, sometimes less if the student can think of enough original excuses for not going. Each tutor has around eight or ten tutees, and — well, the conversation at their meetings isn’t likely to be about their private lives, so the average student knows little or nothing about his tutor, and vice versa.”
“I see,” said the Sergeant, but he didn’t look it. “You spoke about the ‘average student’; would you call yourself that?”
“Well, I don’t know. What I meant was that if a student and tutor happen to be congenial, they may have dinner together or go to the theatre; but it seldom gets beyond that.”
“The death of your tutor hasn’t upset you very much,” observed Rankin.
“I never cared for the gentleman,” said Jupiter simply.
“He means he don’t like the guy,” explained Illinois, who seemed to be the spokesman for the boys in blue.
“All right,” said Rankin, “now tell me something about Singer. What was he a professor of?”
“He lectured on the architecture, sculpture, and painting of Italy.”
“Was he considered an authority?”
Jupiter laughed. “About every professor at Harvard is supposed to be the greatest living authority on something, it doesn’t matter what. In Singer’s case it is Italian Renaissance painting. His best-known course was called ‘Venetian Painting in Relation to Florence and the Central Italians,’ which just about covers everything.”
“He don’t look like a wop,” said Illinois, looking at Singer carefully.
The Sergeant was going through the papers on Singer’s desk. They seemed to be in order. He picked up a pad marked “Engagements.” Then he turned to Jupiter.
“Do you still think he was murdered?” he asked.
“Unless you’ve found a Suicide Note, I do,” answered Jupiter.
“So do I,” said the Sergeant grimly. “A guy that makes out a programme like this wouldn’t kill himself. He’s got about every hour taken up for the next two days.”
“One of his little ways,” said Jupiter, looking at the pad. “Never a dull moment. . . . Can you make out the abbreviations? He abbreviated everything to a kind of shorthand. We called him the Great Abbreviator.”
“No, but we’ll go over that later; I want another look at that knife.”
Again Professor Singer was set upright in his chair, while the Sergeant studied the knife hilt. Jupiter noticed that Singer’s healthy color had departed, leaving his face pasty like a plate of cold mashed potatoes. He guessed that Singer was around forty-five, not much more, young to have a full professorship. He had taken pride in the graying hair at his temples, brushing it carefully to get the best effect. He had once tried a moustache and small beard, but they had made him look too much like an effete billy goat and he had shaved them off. Jupiter realized that everything he had done was for effect. He had long slender hands, well manicured, and during a lecture or even in conversation displayed them cleverly, pulling at his chin or letting one finger follow the contour of his lips. His success with women had been unusual, although in some cases not unquestioned.
“When you get the guy that owns that, you’ll have your killer,” said the nondescript policeman, alluding to the knife.
“I’m afraid not,” said Jupiter.
Rankin straightened up. “Why not?”
“It belonged to Singer;
