Murder Is Served by Frances Lockridge Page A

went, her heels clicking on concrete. She came out on the other side and the young man at the information desk said, “Hey, you’re lost again. I told you—” and then stopped when Pam spoke, talking fast.
    She was back only minutes when a doctor came. Jerry had taken his own coat, rolled it, slipped it under Leonard’s head. Leonard did not seem in much pain, and his voice was quite strong. But he kept his eyes closed. “The blood,” he said. “I don’t want to pass out again.”
    It took the doctor only minutes. And the wound was nothing, almost nothing. A slash by a knife, not much below the skin, nicking the muscle in the upper part of the left side of Leonard’s chest. The bleeding was slow; gauze and adhesive tape covered it, seemed almost to stop it.
    â€œYou’re all right,” the doctor said. “You can get up, now. We’ll fix you up at the office.” He looked at Leonard, who sat up. “Not that you weren’t lucky,” he said. “What happened?”
    It did not become entirely clear, then or for some time later, what had happened. Re-bandaged, his left arm in a sling, Professor Leonard told the Norths, and the doctor, what he thought had happened.
    He had been at his desk, advising students, at about twenty minutes after four. A friend had telephoned him from the bookstore and suggested he take a breather and come over for coffee at the fountain. Leonard had agreed. He had finished with a student, told the next that he would be back in a quarter of an hour, and gone out of the office and down the stairs toward the street. When he had reached the double doors of the exit from the theater he had noticed that one of them was partly open and had decided to cut through the theater auditorium.
    He had opened the door further, stepped through and almost at once felt a slashing pain in his chest. It was dim inside the doors but there was enough light for him to see that his coat was cut and then, in an instant, to see blood coming out of a wound. He had more heard than seen someone starting to run across the auditorium and had started in pursuit. And then, apparently, he had fainted and fallen.
    He had seen the back only of the running figure, and that through the swirls of darkness which began to converge on his mind when he saw blood seeping through his shirt. He started to shrug his shoulders, winced with the pain, and said he couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman.
    â€œYou say you started after him,” Pam said. “But you were just inside the doors when we found you. Against them, almost. And they were closed.”
    Professor Leonard shook his head. He managed to smile faintly. He suggested he might have come to, partially, tried to reach the doors, fainted again against them. “I don’t know,” he said.
    â€œThis man who called you,” Pam said. “This friend—”
    â€œPaul,” Leonard said. “Paul Weinberg. In the philosophy department. My God, do you suppose he’s still waiting?”
    A telephone call answered that question. Professor Weinberg was not waiting in the bookstore. He was in his office. He had been in his office all afternoon. He had not been at any time at the bookstore. And he had not called his friend and colleague, Professor John Leonard. He had been too busy even to think of it.
    â€œWell,” Leonard said. “Well. Think of that. So it was—intentional. Planned.” He passed his free hand through his thin blond hair, in a gesture which made Pam North think of Jerry. He looked at Jerry North, then at Pam. “Who?” he said. “Why?”
    Neither of them could answer that.
    â€œMaybe Bill can,” Pam said. “Lieutenant Weigand. Eventually.”
    â€œTell me again,” Weldon Carey said. His voice was rough, he sounded angry. “Tell me again. Make it better if you can.”
    She told him again. She had got a telephone