The Black Door by Collin Wilcox Read Free Book Online Page B

I’d hardly heard of Bransten College, and had never been there. Seen from the outside, Bransten is a complete city block, bordered on all sides by thick-growing trees, and protected by a high iron fence. Seen from the inside, Bransten is typically the staid, conservative college—solid brick buildings, gracefully curving graveled drives, well-clipped shrubs and lawns. As I drove through the tall front gate, I wondered how many of my colleagues had preceded me. I didn’t have long to wonder. Ahead, a TV truck was pulling up, followed by a car from the same station. Reasoning that they would attract a crowd, to my advantage, I pulled in behind to await developments.
    I didn’t have long to wait. It was apparently the lunch hour, and curious knots of students immediately began to gather. Next a campus policeman appeared, and finally I saw what was undoubtedly a faculty member making his fretful way through the gathering crowd. He was, I discovered, assistant to the dean, Mr. Johnson.
    I talked with the TV camera crew, while the reporters were negotiating with the assistant dean. The cameramen told me they intended to take a few hundred feet of film on the general college scene, and, hopefully, the girls’ dormitory and Roberta Grinnel’s room.
    “Do you know where her dormitory is?” I asked.
    The cameraman pointed across the quadrangle. “That building there: Mary Friedman Hall.”
    I thanked him and moved away, deciding that I could accomplish more unassisted by the Bransten brass. As I walked, I looked around me. The campus was laid out in a huge square, undoubtedly to conform with the city block on which it was built. In the center of the square was a magnificent lawn, crisscrossed by flagstone walks and dotted with marble benches. The lawn was bordered by a broad promenade, forming the campus quadrangle. Around the quadrangle the buildings were arranged in a symmetrical pattern. What appeared to be administration and classroom buildings, three-storied, occupied the north and south sides of the quadrangle. Lower two-storied buildings, obviously dormitories, occupied the east and west sides. Back behind the dormitories I could see the miscellaneous structures: maintenance buildings, storage areas, garages and parking lots. All the buildings on the quadrangle were of identical Georgetown architecture—dark red brick, trimmed in sparkling white-painted wood. The effect was subdued, serene and well endowed.
    As I walked toward Mary Friedman Hall, I remembered Campion’s statement that Bransten College believed in neither housemothers for its dormitories nor check-in restrictions for its students. Thinking about it, I began to wonder how I would penetrate the girls’ dormitory without a housemother to run interference. Reporters were usually unwelcome enough, without surprising scantily clad young ladies in their private quarters.
    I decided to reconnoiter first, walking around the building. Apparently a single window went with a single room. Calculating, I figured the windows at a total of eighty for the entire building. Eighty girls lived in the Mary Friedman dormitory, then, give or take a few.
    By the time I’d completed my circuit of the dorm, I was feeling both conspicuous and faintly foolish. Many of the students, passing by, favored me with curious stares, but none seemed inclined to stop. And, remembering Campion’s estimate that a hundred millionaire’s families were represented in the student body, I somehow was reluctant to begin plucking at sleeves.
    So I was left standing on the promenade, staring at the broad steps of Mary Friedman Hall and speculating that, really, America wasn’t quite a classless society, at least not as far as I was concerned. I was about to return to my TV brethren when a familiar, incongruous figure emerged from the dormitory. It was Jim Campion, airily waving. His lanky form looked like a somewhat refined Ichabod Crane, all angles and limbs and joints, working at cross