Oh, Murderer Mine, Norbert Davis [best romance ebooks TXT] 📗

CHAPTER ONE

HERE IT WAS SPRING AGAIN, AND THE bees were buzzing and the buds were bursting and the doves were cooing, and the sun was beaming on all these and lots of other activities in a benignly obscene way. It was just the same old tedious show that has been playing return engagements at regular intervals for a million years or more and certainly nothing to get worked up over, but nevertheless it seemed new and splendid and fine to Melissa Gregory, because she was happy. She was a simple and uncomplicated sort of a person, and it didn’t take much to put her in that state.

She walked along the edge of the Old Quad now with her head up and her shoulders back and her heels tapping in what she considered a briskly competent manner. She was slim and tall enough, and she had brown hair with copper-gold glints in it. Her blue eyes tipped a little at the outer corners, and her nose had three freckles on its bridge and turned up at the end. She was wearing the wrong shade of lipstick.

She was being happy at this particular moment because she had been promoted to a better job as the result of her outstanding merit and her faithful record of attendance at faculty tea parties. She was now an instructor. In the odd hierarchy of college faculties, an instructor rates somewhere between the head gardener and the lowest professor, if anyone can determine which one he is. An instructor is not allowed to lecture—or, for that matter, to talk loudly anywhere—but is entrusted with conveying the more elementary truths in certain subjects to beginning students.

Melissa taught anthropology, and she did this at an institution of higher learning called Breckenbridge University, Western Division, which specialized in the mass production of graduates of a standard size and competence. It was an efficient and impersonal sort of a place, but unfortunately one of its founders had once been on the campus of a well-known Eastern college and hadn’t forgotten it. Consequently the campus of Breckenbridge had as much functional design as a bunch of dice dumped out of a hat. The buildings were scattered in all directions and hidden under ivy and behind bushes.

Melissa’s headquarters was a building known as Old Chem because there were three beginning chemistry laboratories on the first floor. Old Chem was a solid, two-story, gray granite building with an ugly front and a splayed-out rear, and its architect had evidently had the theory that windows were designed to shoot Indians out of and not to facilitate the entrance of fresh air or light.

Melissa went up the block stone steps and through the arched entrance and then up the stairs to her right into the dimness of the upper corridor. Her office was the second one down, and she was fumbling in her purse for the key when she noticed that the door was slightly ajar. She pushed it open wider and looked in.

This was a fairly representative example of a college faculty office. It was quite a lot larger than a hall closet and ventilated about as well, and the furniture probably would have brought a comparatively good price at a fire sale. Melissa loved it in a proud and fiercely possessive way because it was the first one she had ever had that was hers and hers alone.

At present there was a man in it. He was sitting in Melissa’s chair. He had papers spread messily all over Melissa’s desk. And, in addition to all that, he was a young man.

Which was something to give Melissa pause, because when she thought about men—which was neither too often nor yet too infrequently—she thought about young men. As a matter of fact, when she was doing thinking of this sort and enjoying it most of all, she thought about a young man who looked almost exactly like this one.

Unfortunately, however, this was neither the time nor place for Melissa’s dream-man-come-to-life to suddenly appear. Obviously, she couldn’t go swooning at him even if she wanted to—and she told herself sternly she had no such desire—because he was an intruder. Worse than that, he had all the earmarks of being one of the vilest criminals the university faculty produced—an office snitcher—and here he was caught red-handed in an attempt to move into Melissa’s quarters even before she’d had an opportunity to get settled herself.

“Well,” said Melissa in a cutting way. “Good morning.”

“Uh,” said the young man. He was making some very involved mathematical computations on a scratch pad, and he didn’t look up. “Uh,” he said, and pulled a large, indistinct map toward him and made a careful, wavy line on it with India ink and a drawing pen. He was extremely handsome. He had blond hair that curled in ringlets and a straight, short nose. His eyes were blue, shaded with long, dark lashes. The effect of this collar-ad perfection was tainted a little by the way his mouth twisted down at one corner and the way he was scowling, but even at that he missed being pretty only by a very small margin.

Melissa stepped through the door. “I beg your pardon.”

He looked up sideways at her. “What do you want?”

“Well, really,” said Melissa. “It so happens that this is my office.”

“Not any longer.”

“What?” said Melissa blankly.

“It’s mine now.”

“What?” said Melissa.

The young man scowled. “Are you hard of hearing, or don’t you understand English? I’m going to use this office from now on—exclusively.”

Melissa swallowed hard. “Well, you can’t just move in like this!”

“I already have.”

“Well, who gave you the authority to do it?”

“The president of the university.”

“Oh,” said Melissa.

The young man eyed her coldly. “Was there anything else?”

Melissa’s voice was shaky. “But—but all my files and notes are in here.”

“Not now, they aren’t,” said the young man. He pulled one of the desk drawers open to illustrate that it was empty.

“My files!” Melissa shrilled. “My class notes! What have you done—”

“Nothing,” the young man said shortly. “I didn’t touch them. Some dusty, beefy party who makes noises like a tin mouse took them away.”

“Do you mean Professor Sley-Mynick?”

The young man shrugged. He had custom-built shoulders.

Melissa took a deep breath. “Now look here, this is all wrong, and I don’t care what the president of the university said. This office is mine. It was assigned to me. You haven’t any right to just walk in and take it.”

“What’s your subject?” the young man asked indifferently. “Anthropology.”

“Oh, that silly stuff. You don’t need any particular office for that. Go find one somewhere else.”

Melissa swallowed again. “What is your subject?”

“Meteorology.”

“Hmmph,” said Melissa contemptuously. “And just why do you need this particular office for that?”

The young man jerked his thumb toward the ceiling. “It has a trap door. My instruments are on the roof.”

“What instruments?” Melissa asked. “I thought you people used crystal balls to predict the weather.”

The young man didn’t answer. He just curled his lip. He reached down and rattled the weather map. He was waiting very pointedly for Melissa to leave.

Melissa changed her tactics. “Now, listen,” she said, smiling. “I really want this office. This particular one. I like it. And I was here first. Let’s make a deal.”

“Let’s not.”

Melissa lost her smile. “Well, damn you anyway, you supercilious imitation of a Greek statue. This office is the only one in the building that has a private ladies’ powder room. Do you think I’m going to come here and knock on the door and ask your permission every time I—well, every time?”

“I know you’re not. I have to make progressive calculations, and it’s important that I’m not interrupted in the middle of them when I’m plotting a front. You’ll have to make some other arrangements.”

Melissa breathed hard through her nose, staring at him. He stared back.

“I’ve seen you somewhere before!” Melissa stated accusingly.

To her amazement, he cringed. There was no other word for it. Melissa watched him narrowly, sensing her advantage, but not knowing what it was.

“Yes,” she said, feeling her way. “I_ know_ I’ve seen you somewhere before. Your face is very familiar.”

He was blushing, very painfully. The flush crawled in red waves up from his collar.

“What’s your name?” Melissa demanded.

He moistened his lips. “Eric Trent.”

It didn’t mean a thing to Melissa. She was baffled.

Eric Trent knew it, and he sighed lengthily. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with my work. Good day.”

Melissa scrambled around frantically in her mind looking for an inspiration. She didn’t find one. “Oh, all right.” She shot her hand out suddenly, forefinger pointed rigidly. “But I’ll remember where I’ve seen you! And then, you’ll find out!”

She stepped back into the hall and slammed the door violently, and then she marched down the stairs and back along the lower hall to the office door opposite the largest of the chemistry labs. She hammered on the dark, scarred panels vigorously. There was no answer. Impatiently Melissa tried the latch. It clicked, and she pushed the door open and looked in the office. It was larger and considerably more cluttered than hers, and dust motes stirred and glinted uneasily in the sun beams that pried their way through the narrow windows. There was no one in sight.

Melissa shut the door, and then she had a sudden hunch and opened it again very quickly. She caught Professor Sley-Mynick in the act of crawling cautiously out from under his desk. He froze there on his hands and knees and made wordless little pip pipping noises.

Also, he seemed to be stuck, for he was by no means a small man and the space he was in looked to be about three sizes too small. He was fat, as a matter of fact—fish white and jelly fat—but despite his size, the fierce, jet-black mustache he was wearing was still too big for him and Melissa got the impression the mustache was leading him around willy-nilly. He was bald and wore tiny rimless spectacles so thick they were opaque.

“Good morning, Professor,” Melissa said.

“Oh,” said Professor Sley-Mynick. “Yes, it is. Good, I mean. Isn’t it?”

It was strange hearing such a pipsqueak voice emerge from such a roly-poly body. By dint of great exertion, the professor extricated himself from the trap he was in.

“What were you doing under your desk?” Melissa asked.

“Desk?” Professor Sley-Mynick repeated blankly. He spoke with an accent that gave his words a just noticeable blubber. “Under it? Oh. My fountain pen. I mean, it dropped and rolled, I guess. Didn’t it?”

“No,” said Melissa. “It didn’t. You were hiding.”

“I?” said Professor Sley-Mynick, amazed.

“Yes, you.”

“From—from what?”

“Me.”

“Why?”

“Because you are the senior professor in this building, and you are in charge of assigning offices in it!”

“Oh, dear,” said Professor Sley-Mynick.

“Just what,” said Melissa, “do you mean by giving my office to that matinee-faced moron upstairs?”

“Oh, he’s not a moron. He’s a meteorologist. It’s the science of the weather—storms and the climate and—and things. It’s very important work. He said.”

“Never mind what he said. Answer my question. Why did you give him my office?”

“Oh, that,” said Professor Sley-Mynick. “The president! T. Ballard Bestwyck.