The Luck Runs Out (14 page)

As his first encounter was with his wife and his second with Iduna’s radiant smile, he began to perk up. The pair of them led him to the breakfast table and began to heap bounty upon him.

“How about some pancakes?” Iduna suggested.

“Oh, don’t bother for me.”

“It’s no bother. We mixed them up for Professor Stott, and there’s plenty of batter left over.”

“Stott was here and you have leftovers? Good Gad, the man must be falling apart!”

“Peter, he is,” said Helen. “It’s heartrending. He’s been out since before dawn hunting for Belinda. I don’t know what’s going to happen to that man if she doesn’t turn up soon.”

“Are the students out again?”

“In force. He’s got them organized into platoons and squadrons and I don’t know what all, armed with geodetic survey maps and under orders to leave no stone unturned. It simply doesn’t seem possible she could, be far away, considering the short span of time the pignappers had to work in. We know Miss Flackley couldn’t have been killed much before midnight because she was with us, and it was only about four hours later that Professor Stott showed up brandishing that jar of pigs’ feet.”

Shandy speared a piece of pancake. “And by then he’d spent a certain amount of time dithering about the doormat and been down to the pigpens and back up to Svenson’s house, and he doesn’t exactly move with the speed of light. They must have discovered the body just about the time he arrived here, and after that there were police all over the place.”

“I did wonder about the possibility of her having been transferred to another van and got out of town that way,” said Helen, “but that doesn’t seem likely because they’ve had all those roadblocks out for the men who held up the Carlovingian Crafters, and I can’t imagine a policeman’s not remembering a truck that had a great big pig in it. I expect they’d have given it a specially careful search, don’t you? It would seem like such a good dodge, hiding the gold and silver in with Belinda.”

“By George, it would, wouldn’t it?” her husband agreed. “Barring the minor details that they’d somehow or other have to get the bullion and the pig together, that both take up a good deal of space so it would have to be something in the nature of a moving van to fit them in, and that the ruse would be so clever that it would stick out a mile that somebody was being clever, so the police would be down on them like hawks on a hen. Anyway, the robbery took place about twenty-five miles from here, and we have no reason to suppose that the one had anything to do with the other. If those two thieves had ever had any dealings with the college, I’d have recognized them, or somebody would have, considering the careful descriptions we were able to give. If they hadn’t, how in Sam Hill would they know how to go about putting the snatch on Belinda?”

“Maybe they disguised themselves.”

“In what? False beards? Speaking of beards, how about that face fungus of Frank Flackley’s? Yea or nay? Iduna, he was sticking closer to you than bubble gum to a shoe sole last night: What do you think?”

“It’s real,” said their guest. “Don’t ask me what he’s wearing it for, unless maybe to save himself the price of a face-lift like my Uncle Elmer, who was vain as a peacock, cheap as dirt, and homely as a mud fence underneath, or so they claimed. I never saw him without his beard, myself. He used to put it up in kidskin curlers every night of his life. Anyhow, I’d be willing to bet my Sunday corset Mr. Flackley didn’t grow that bush overnight.”

“Too bad,” sighed Helen. “I had a beautiful vision of ripping it off his face and shrieking, ‘Thou art the man!’ like the heroine of a Victorian novel. Peter, were you planning to talk with Thorkjeld this morning?”

“If I can find him,” Shandy replied. “He’ll probably rip my face off because I haven’t hauled off a miracle and got this mess straightened out.”

“Before he does,” his wife reminded him gently, “do you think you might have a chance to do something about Birgit?”

Shandy groaned. “What, for instance?”

“Dearest, how do I know? Perhaps you could talk to Sieglinde. Sound her out.”

“I thought you were going to do that.”

“Very well, my love, if you don’t feel up to it. Shall I come with you?”

“No, that might look too obvious. You know what it’s like trying to get anything past that pair. I’ll dree my own weird. You keep the home fires burning.”

Shandy put on his veteran mackinaw and started up toward Valhalla, where the President reigned in a handsome white house of the Greek Revival period, as a New England college president should. He was hoping Birgit herself would open the door so he could get in a little sounding-out at the source of the difficulty, but it was Sieglinde, the President’s lady, who flung wide the portal.

“Come in, Peter,” she said. “Do you bring good news?”

“That depends on what you mean by good news,” he hedged.

“Any news would be better news than we’ve been having,” she sighed.

Now that Shandy had quit committing outrages against public propriety and settled down in lawful wedlock with a woman of whom she thoroughly approved, Sieglinde had mellowed a great deal in her manner toward him. In fact, the Shandys and the Svensons were as close to being intimate personal friends as the delicate diplomatic balance within a close-knit academic community allowed.

“Well,” he began, “the good news is that Harry Goulson wants to give Miss Flackley a bang-up funeral on the house, for auld lang syne.”

“I am pleased to hear that. It has been a source of concern to me how the obsequies would be handled. All must be done, however, with dignity and grace.”

“I think you can rest easy on that point. Goulson plans to give her exactly the same kind of funeral as her father before her had. He even wants to use the old horse-drawn hearse in which the Goulsons have hauled the Flackleys to the family plot since God knows when.”

“How sensitive and understanding of him! That is what she herself would have chosen, no doubt. Miss Flackley must have had great respect for family tradition, else why would she have carried on her father’s business as she did? So also does Harry Goulson. I have always felt he is not sufficiently honored in the community. Please tell him the college chapel is available if he wishes, although he may well be planning to hold the service at the village church, where the previous funerals have been.”

“Well—er—I expect Goulson’s already arranging that part,” said Shandy, “but what he does want from the college is the loan of two horses to draw the hearse.”

“Two horses? Two of our Balaclava Blacks?” The serenity of Sieglinde’s exquisite countenance was marred for a fleeting second. “I do not know what Thorkjeld will say to that I expect it will be something loud and profane.”

“Goulson did mention something about borrowing a pair from somebody in Hoddersville or Lumpkin Corners if the President would prefer,” Shandy interjected slyly.

“Impossible! Ah, now I know what Thorkjeld will say.”

Sieglinde’s face was serene again. “You must tell him exactly that, and all will go as Mr. Goulson wishes. Only you must be careful not to ask for Odin or Thor.”

“Helen mentioned Loki. She’s got it into her head that Miss Flackley was especially fond of Loki, for some reason.”

“If Helen thinks so, she is right Helen is a woman of great wisdom. Besides, a funeral will exactly suit Loki’s melancholy temperament. Ask for Loki and Tyr. Tyr is nearest in size. Also Tyr is lazy and it will do him good to work a little extra. He is not entered for the plowing contest.”

Here was the opening Shandy had been praying for. “That’s right, young Olafssen is working with Hoenir and Heimdallr, isn’t he? How’s he making out? Birgit feeding him up on lots of wheat germ and carrot juice?”

For the second time in the space of two minutes, and this was highly unusual, Sieglinde evinced perturbation.

“I do not know what Birgit is doing with Hjalmar. Peter, Thorkjeld and I are troubled in mind.”

She drew out a chair and motioned him to sit. “I tell you this because you are a friend, because you are a man of discernment, and because if I do not tell somebody I shall blow my stack.”

His heart in his mouth, he asked the unavoidable question. “What seems to be the matter?”

“That is our problem, Peter, we do not know! We have discussed and agreed, we should like Hjalmar for a son-in-law. When Birgit started bringing that boy home for dinner, I did not even mind making soybean cutlets. Hjalmar is not only handsome and brilliant when he is not being stupid, he is good, Peter! He is good as Thorkjeld is good, only of course less handsome and less intelligent, and sometimes a little bit dull in comparison to my husband.”

“You find Olafssen dull?” Shandy asked in a somewhat stupefied tone.

“Compared to my husband I find anybody dull,” she replied fondly. “In any case, that would not matter because Birgit has temperament enough for two. For several. She will be a good farmer’s wife because there will be so much to do that she will have to stay out of agitations and never be bored, and he will be a great farmer because he has the calling! Hjalmar is poor, but we are not, and there is always the Endowment Fund.”

One of the many things that made Balaclava Agricultural College unique was its policies with regard to financial assistance for students. During their years at the school, students got nothing for nothing. Loans and scholarships were not handed out on a platter. Jobs, on the other hand, were plentiful. Any student who needed to earn his way through was given the opportunity; anybody who had the opportunity and didn’t make the most of it was dropped.

The rationale was simple: farmers were going to have to work hard all their lives anyway. If they couldn’t hack it when they were young and strong, why encourage them to hope they’d be able to manage later?

Once a student was graduated, however, the situation changed. Cash was handed out generously to those who could show need, merit, and concrete proposals for making the most of what was given. Through these grants, many farms and small family businesses had been rescued from the developers and the conglomerates. Balaclava students could face the future with confidence, knowing the school would make sure they had a future to face.

The money was always in the form of an outright gift. However, it was understood that as the ex-student throve and prospered, he or she would return what had been taken from the Endowment Fund. Few had ever failed to do so; many had returned it threefold and more. There was plenty of cash on hand, there was no earthly reason why a chap like Hjalmar would not qualify for a grant, and there’d be no false qualms about nepotism if the Svensons couldn’t get him and Birgit settled without one. Shandy still had no inkling as to why Sieglinde was so upset.

“Then what’s the problem?” he repeated.

“Peter, you are dense today. Already, I have told you I do not know. Birgit will not say, she only shuts herself in her room and cries. That is not my Birgit. To yell, to stamp her feet, to throw things, to organize a mob and start a riot, all this is normal behavior and I know how to handle it, but to mope around with a white face and red eyes like the Easter bunny and not eat so much as one alfalfa sprout, what am I to do?”

“You don’t suppose by any chance she’s—er—”

“Been up to some hanky-panky and got herself pregnant?” Sieglinde finished for him. “Naturally, I thought that. It is the first thing any mother would think. But what great tragedy if she did? She knows I would not approve of her setting a bad example to the other young women in the college, but she knows also that her father and I would support her and Hjalmar in their picklement. We would give a little wedding, no fanfare of trumpets and beating of drums but nice with flowers, here in our own parlor with family and perhaps you and Helen and a few old friends, and a smorgasbord after. Then she and Hjalmar would finish school and we would do what we would do anyway, only sooner than expected. It is not that. Believe me, Peter, I should know. I have had seven of my own. Anyway, Birgit says not and Birgit does not lie. If she cannot tell the truth she says nothing. Seldom has she ever said nothing, except not to snitch on her sisters. Among the sisters is great love, but even to them she says nothing.”

“Have you asked Hjalmar? Perhaps it’s just a lovers’ quarrel or something of that sort.”

“There has been no quarrel. I have asked Hjalmar, and he says he does not know. He says he loves Birgit and has no wish to quarrel. Then I wonder if Birgit has perhaps changed her mind about Hjalmar, but she cries even harder and says no, she still loves him, and, Peter, I believe both.”

“Does young Olafssen seem—er—concerned about the situation?”

“Concerned is not the word! He is frantic. He says to me, ‘Mrs. Svenson, what the heck is wrong with her? Why won’t she talk to me?’ And all I can say to him is why won’t she talk to her father, why won’t she talk to her sisters, why won’t she talk to her own mother? I tell you frankly, Peter, today Hjalmar is in no condition to plow a straight furrow two feet long, much less win the Juniors’ competition. And Thorkjeld has worked so hard with him! He has shown such great promise. Last week we were all joking about drinking toasts at Birgit’s wedding from the two cups our noble plowmen were going to win, and now this!”

Incredibly, Sieglinde Svenson, the Admirable Snowlady, broke down. “And Miss Flackley murdered in the college pigpens and our adorable Belinda of Balaclava missing and our beloved Professor Stott facing the ruin of thirty years’ work and the Competition only a few days away and not even anybody left to shoe the horses!”

“Oh, come,” said Shandy. “It’s not quite that bad. The horses have already been shod, and anyway, we do have a new farrier. Didn’t your husband tell you that another Flackley’s taking over? His name is Frank and he’s a nephew of the—er—former incumbent.”

“As Birgit would say, if she would say anything,” sniffed Mrs. Svenson, “big deal! How do we know if he can even choose which side of a horseshoe is up? Peter, do you realize all these terrible things have happened since those horseshoes on the stable doors were turned upside down? Your dear Helen kidnapped by those horrible robbers, Belinda gone, Miss Flackley gone, my Birgit changed from a proud young lioness to a weeping little mousess. Oh, where will it end?”