The Treasurer coughed.

“Fees paid to a Detective Agency,” she observed, “will have an odd appearance in the Annual Audit.”

“I think that might be arranged,” said Harriet. “I know the organization personally. A fee might not be necessary.”

“That,” said the Warden, “would not be right. The fees would, of course, have to be paid. I would gladly be personally responsible.”

“That would not be right either,” said Miss Lydgate. “We certainly should not like that.”

“Perhaps,” suggested Harriet, “I could find out what the fees were likely to be.” She had, in fact, no idea how this part of the business was worked.

“There would be no harm in inquiring,” said the Warden. “In the meantime-”

“If I may make the suggestion,” said the Dean, “I should propose, Warden, that the evidence should be handed over to Miss Vane, as she is the only person in this room who cannot possibly come under suspicion. Perhaps she would like to sleep upon the matter and make a report to you in the morning. At least, not in the morning, because of Lord Oakapple and the Opening; but at some time during tomorrow.”

“Very well,” said Harriet in response to an inquiring look from the Warden. “I will do that. And if I can think of any way in which I can be helpful, I’ll do my best.”

The Warden thanked her. “We all appreciate,” she added, “the extreme awkwardness of the situation, and I am sure we shall all do what we can to co-operate in getting the matter cleared up. And I should like to say this: Whatever any of us may think or feel, it is of the very greatest importance that we should dismiss, as far as possible, all vague suspicions from our minds, and be particularly careful how we may say anything that might be construed as an accusation against anybody at all. In a close community of this kind, nothing can be more harmful than an atmosphere of mutual distrust. I repeat that I have the very greatest confidence in every Senior Member of the College. I shall endeavour to keep an entirely open mind, and I shall look to all my colleagues to do the same.”

The dons assented; and the meeting broke up.

“Well!” said the Dean, as she and Harriet turned into the New Quad, “that is the most uncomfortable meeting I have ever had to sit through. My dear, you have thrown a bombshell into our midst!”

“I’m afraid so. But what could I do?”

“You couldn’t possibly have done anything else. Oh, dear! It’s all very well for the Warden to talk about an open mind, but we shall all feel perfectly ghastly wondering what other people are thinking about us, and whether our own conversation doesn’t sound a little potty. It’s the pottiness, you know, that’s so awful.”

“I know. By the way, Dean, I do absolutely refuse to suspect you. You’re quite the sanest person I ever met.”

“I don’t think that’s keeping an open mind, but thank you all the same for those few kind words. And one can’t possibly suspect the Warden or Miss Lydgate, can one? But I’d better not say even that, I suppose. Otherwise by process of elimination-oh, lord! For Heaven’s sake can’t we find some handy outsider with a cast-iron alibi ready for busting?”

“We’ll hope so. And of course there are those two students and the scouts to be disposed of.” They turned in at the Dean’s door. Miss Martin savagely poked up the fire in the sitting-room, sat down in an armchair and stared at the leaping flames. Harriet coiled herself on a couch and contemplated Miss Martin.

“Look here,” said the Dean; “you had better not tell me too much about what you think, but there’s no reason why any of us shouldn’t tell you what we think, is there? No. Well. Here’s the point. What is the object of all this persecution? It doesn’t look like a personal grudge against anybody in particular. It’s a kind of blind malevolence, directed against everybody in College. What’s at the back of it?”

“Well, it might be somebody who thought the College as a body had injured her. Or it might be a personal grudge masking itself under a general attack. Or it might be just somebody with a mania for creating disturbance in order to enjoy the fun; that’s the usual reason for this kind of outbreak, if you can call it a reason.”

“That’s sheer pottiness, in that case. Like those tiresome children who throw furniture about and the servants who pretend to be ghosts. And, talking of servants, do you think there’s anything in that idea that it’s more likely to be somebody of that class? Of course, Miss Barton wouldn’t agree; but after all, some of the words used are very coarse.”

“Yes,” said Harriet; “but actually there isn’t one that I, for example, don’t know the meaning of. I believe, when you get even the primmest people under an anaesthetic, they are liable to bring the strangest vocabulary out of the subconscious-in fact, the primmer the coarser.”

“True. Did you notice that there wasn’t a single spelling mistake in the whole bunch of messages?”

“I noticed that. It probably points to a fairly well educated person; though the converse isn’t necessarily true. I mean, educated people often put in mistakes on purpose, so that spelling mistakes don’t prove much. But an absence of mistakes is a more difficult thing to manage, if it doesn’t come natural. I’m not putting this very clearly.”

“Yes, you are. A good speller could pretend to be a bad one; but a bad speller can’t pretend to be a good one, any more than I could pretend to be a mathematician.”

“She could use a dictionary.”

“But then she would have to know enough to be dictionary-conscious-as the new slang would call it. Isn’t our poison-pen rather silly to get all her spelling right?”

“I don’t know. The educated person often fakes bad spelling rather badly, misspells easy words and gets quite difficult ones right. It’s not so hard to tell when people are putting it on. I think it’s probably cleverer to make no pretence about it.”

“I see. Does this tend to exclude the scouts?… But probably they spell better than we do. They so often are better educated. And I’m sure they dress better. But that’s rather off the point. Stop me when I dither.”

“You’re not dithering,” said Harriet. “Everything you say is perfectly true. At present I don’t see how anybody is to be excluded.”

“And what,” demanded the Dean, “becomes of the mutilated newspapers.”

“This won’t do,” said Harriet; “you’re being a great deal too sharp about this. That’s just one of the things I was wondering about.”

“Well, we’ve been into that,” said the Dean, in a tone of satisfaction. “We’ve checked up on all the S.C.R. and J.C.R. papers ever since this business came to our notice-that is, more or less, since the beginning of this term. Before anything goes to be pulped, the whole lot are checked up with the list and examined to see that nothing has been cut out.”

“Who has been doing that?”

“My secretary, Mrs. Goodwin. I don’t think you’ve met her yet. She lives in College during term. Such a nice girl-or woman, rather. She was left a widow, you know, very hard up, and she’s got a little boy of ten at a prep. school. When her husband died-he was a schoolmaster-she set to work to train as a secretary and really did splendidly. She’s simply invaluable to me, and most careful and reliable.”

“Was she here at Gaudy?”

“Of course she was. She-good gracious! You surely don’t think-my dear, that’s absurd! The most straightforward and sane person. And she’s very grateful to the College for having found her the job, and she certainly wouldn’t want to run the risk of losing it.”

“All the same, she’s got to go on the list of possibles. How long has she been here?”

“Let me see. Nearly two years. Nothing at all happened till the Gaudy, you know, and she’d been here a year before that.”

“But the S.C.R. and the scouts who live in College have been here still longer, most of them. We can’t make exceptions along those lines. How about the other secretaries?”