…A Dangerous Thing (6 page)

"Probably not," Burns said.
 
"Have you remembered anything about Holt since you talked to Earl?"

"Not a thing," Henderson said.
 
He took the pipe out of his mouth and laid it on the desk beside the bronze bust of Sigmund Freud.
 
"He looks familiar for some reason, but I can't put my finger on it."

"Maybe you knew him in grad school," Burns said.
 
"He went to North Texas."

"It can't be that, then," Henderson said.
 
"I went to school in California.
 
San Diego State."
 
He smiled.
 
"I was certainly glad to get away from there.
 
You can't imagine the things that went on there in those days."

Burns could imagine, all right, but that wasn't the point of his talking to Henderson.
 
"Have you seen him at any professional meetings?"

"I don't know.
 
Not unless he's been attending meetings out of his field.
 
I know that I haven't been going to any English meetings."
 
He picked up the pipe again.
 
"Is he in any trouble, Burns?"

"It's nothing," Burns said.

Henderson reached out bony fingers and fiddled with the pipe.
 
"I've heard a few things," he said.

"Rumors," Burns said.
 
He wasn't going to share anything with Henderson.
 
"You know how things get started around this place."

Henderson's mouth twisted in a sort of grin.
 
"Do I not."

Burns didn't have anything to say to that.

Henderson left off his fiddling with the pipe and leaned back in his chair,
steepling
his thin fingers and resting them against his pointy chin.

"I wouldn't be bothered by rumors if I were you, Burns," he said.
 
"Too many good men are brought down by nothing more than the animosity spread by idle tongues."

Burns wondered if Henderson had been involved in some recent incident that Fox hadn't gotten around to telling him about.
 
It wasn't likely.
 
Henderson was no doubt speaking from past experience.

"You're probably right," Burns said.
 
"I shouldn't let things like that bother me."

"True.
 
But if you're really bothered, the best thing to do is to get things out in the open.
 
Don't be afraid of a confrontation."

Henderson certainly wasn't afraid of confrontations.
 
In fact, he seemed to encourage them.
 
Burns, however, wasn't that sort of person.
 
He glanced at the bust of Freud.
 
There was probably some deep-seated reason in
Burns's
childhood that had caused him to be basically non-confrontational, just as there was something in Henderson's that had made him enjoy conflicts with others to the point that he actually sought them.

Burns stood up.
 
"Thanks, Tom," he said.
 
"You're right.
 
I think I'll just do my job and not worry about everything I hear."

"I'm sure that's best," Henderson said.

Burns was sure, too, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to call Barry Towson.

I
t was almost noon, and Burns drove home to make the call.
 
He could have called from his office and paid with his credit card, since it wasn't really a business call, but he didn't want the call to go through the school switchboard.

He was lucky and caught Towson in his office.
 
The
Austamont
operator connected them.

Towson remembered Burns well, and he was eager to talk about unknown paperback writers.
 
He was not, however, eager to talk about Gwendolyn Partridge and the great letters of recommendation that had been sent to Hartley Gorman College.

"You know how things are," Towson said.

"I'm not sure that I do," Burns said.
 
"That's why I called you."

"You can't be too careful these days," Towson said.

Burns didn't get it.
 
"About what?" he asked.

"About anything.
 
Everything.
 
You can't be too careful."

"I wish you'd help me out a little here, Barry.
 
I don't know what you're trying to tell me."

There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line.
 
Then Towson said, "I'm trying to tell you that you have to be careful in everything you do.
 
Even in writing letters of recommendation.
 
When did you get your degree, Burns?"

Burns didn't know what that had to do with anything, but he told him.

"How were the letters of recommendation handled?"

Burns had to think about that for a second.
 
It had been a while.
 
Finally he remembered.
 
"I got the professors to write the letters, and they sent them directly to the school's placement office," he said.

"And were you allowed to see the letters?" Towson asked.

"No," Burns said.
 
"I went to the placement office to be sure all the letters were in my file, but I wasn't allowed to see them.
 
Not even a glimpse."

"Things are nothing like that now," Towson said.
 
"Letters are open to the person being recommended, and if he or she doesn't like what he or she sees, he or she can sue the pants off you."

Burns didn't think he'd ever heard so many "he or
shes
" in one sentence before.
 
Dr. Partridge had undoubtedly been quite influential at
Austamont
.

"So what can you do?" he asked.

"If you write a letter, you make negatives into positives.
 
A contentious person has 'a strong personality,' for example.
 
A bully is 'a good leader.'
 
You see what I mean?"

"Are you telling me that Dr. Partridge is a contentious bully?"

"I'm doing nothing of the sort."
 
Towson's tone was resentful.
 
"Don't put words into my mouth."

"But there were problems with Dr. Partridge?"

"I didn't say that."

"I know you didn't.
 
I did, but—"

"Let's just say that Dr. Partridge was very strong-minded.
 
That she wanted to make a lot of changes here at
Austamont
that a lot of people weren't ready for."

"Political correctness," Burns said.

"In a nutshell, yes," Towson said.
 
"Not that many of the changes weren't for the better, mind you.
 
Most of them, even.
 
But in a small, conservative community, well, some of them just didn't sit too well."

"So no one was sorry to see Dr. Partridge go?"

"I didn't say that."

"OK," Burns said.
 
"You didn't say it.
 
Let me ask you something easy.
 
How did Dr. Partridge find out that there was an opening here at Hartley Gorman for an Academic Dean?"

There was a short silence.
 
Towson cleared his throat and said, "I believe our president may have mentioned it to her.
 
But I'm not certain about that."

Burns was.
 
He could imagine the scene.
 
Partridge goes into the president's office for a meeting or conference, and the talk turns to deanships.
 
The president is sure she's administrative material, but there just never seem to be any openings at
Austamont
.
 
However, the president has just noticed that there's a vacancy at good old Hartley Gorman College, "that fine little school down there in Texas.
 
You're originally from Texas, aren't you, Dr. Partridge?"
 
Her interest piqued, Dr. Partridge investigates, decides to apply, with the blessings and strong recommendation of her president, and gets the job.
 
HGC gets a new dean, and
Austamont
gets rid of potential controversy.

"Thanks, Barry," Burns said.
 
"You've been a big help.
 
By the way, do you know Eric Holt, by any chance?"

"Who?"

"Eric Holt.
 
You must have seen his articles.
 
He's published in things like
Modern Fiction Studies
and
The Journal of Popular Culture
."

"Oh, sure.
 
That
Eric Holt.
 
What about him?"

"Did he ever visit your campus, do a lecture there, anything like that?"

"No," Towson said.
 
"Never.
 
We don't get many visiting critics around here, especially not of Holt's caliber.
 
Why do you ask?"

"He's working here now.
 
I thought you might know him."

"I wish I did.
 
It must be great to work with someone like that."

"Oh, it is," Burns lied.
 
Then he changed the subject.
 
"Now tell me.
 
If you were making a list of the top ten paperback writers of the '50s and '60s, who'd be number one?"

That was a subject that Towson warmed to rapidly, and Burns, who had his own list, ran up quite a phone bill.

T
hat was almost the end of
Burns's
investigation, but then he decided that Tom Henderson had the right idea.
 
The thing to do was to talk to Holt in person.

But first Burns looked over the list of paperback writers that Towson had come up with.
 
Burns, who liked making lists, also liked comparing his list with those others made, especially when the two did not necessarily agree.
 
Towson ranked Harry Whittington at the top, for example, and Burns thought that was a good choice, depending on the criteria you used.
 
Burns could never really make up his mind among Whittington, Jim Thompson, Charles Williams, and John D. MacDonald.
 
You could certainly make a case for Donald Hamilton, too, though Hamilton didn't really hit his stride until the early sixties.

Burns put the list in his desk and went back to school.
 
It was nearly two o'clock, but there was no chance that he would miss Holt, who, unlike most members of the English Department, liked afternoon classes.
 
In fact, he taught one class on Mondays and Wednesdays from three until four-thirty and another on Tuesdays and Thursdays from two-thirty until four.
 
His other class met on Tuesday evenings.
 
That way he had most of the day open for his scholarly writing.

Burns parked his 1967 Plymouth on the street in front of Main and got out.
 
The car looked like some kind of dinosaur among the Toyotas and Hondas and Ford Escorts.
 
Because of the dry, cold air, Burns received a mild static shock when he shut the door.

When he mounted the front steps, he was faced by a note taped to the door.

Burns didn't want to get on the bad side of Rose.
 
No matter what anyone said about who was in control of things, no matter how the organizational charts read, the secretaries and the maids were the really essential people at the school.
 
A department chair could be gone for a week and no one would notice; if a secretary missed a day, there was chaos.
 
And it would be easier to move the Rock of Gibraltar than to get a faculty member to empty a wastebasket.
 
Some of them didn't even flush the toilet in the men's room.

Burns went around the building to the east entrance.
 
He went inside and walked down the hallway to the front of the building, where he encountered the wet floor.
 
The other floors and the stairways were carpeted, but the first floor retained its original hardwood covering.
 

Rose was at the other end of the front hall, jamming a yellow-handled mop up and down in a green plastic bucket and talking to herself, no doubt muttering about how she would deal with anyone who walked on her newly-mopped floor.
 
Burns thought she could do whatever she wanted to; she had broader shoulders than any member of the HGC football team.

He decided that he could evade her if he was careful and quiet.
 
He tiptoed across the damp boards and
catfooted
it up the worn carpeting of the stairs without looking back.

He was out of breath when he reached the third floor, but that was only to be expected.
 
The sixteen foot ceilings of Main meant that there was quite a distance to cover between floors.
 
Even the members of the track team were winded by their climb to their English classes, a fact that bothered Dr. Partridge.