The Professor's Assassin by Matthew Pearl

Author:Matthew Pearl [Pearl, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780345530141
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Rogers, leaving his sentence unfinished and its implication clear, had stormed out of the pavilion. When Dabney caught up with him, Rogers demanded to know the location of Joseph Semmes’s dormitory.

“Why, number fifty-six, I think.”

Rogers moved ahead when they reached the building and found the door blocked by a large young man he recognized from the meeting in the student hotel.

“Stand clear!” Rogers ordered, and pushed him aside when the brute made no move to comply.

Entering Semmes’s room, Rogers discovered half a dozen familiar-looking students there. Each of them had been at the meeting. Semmes was not among them.

“Where is he? Where is Joseph Semmes?” Rogers asked.

“We don’t know,” said a smaller, freckled student, whom Rogers recognized as the fellow he had unmasked on Gessner Harrison’s doorstep. Dabney had previously identified him as Kincaid.

“Where is Jack, the Davis’s serving boy?” Rogers asked.

“We don’t know!” Kincaid repeated.

“You will tell me,” Rogers said. “I will suffer no more lies!”

“How dare you accuse a University Volunteer of a lie!” came a coarse voice from behind him. Rogers froze, then turned around to face the burly student who had been blocking the door. His face was craggy, with a prehistoric look, jutting ledges at the brow, nose, and chin, all counterbalanced by a thick black beard. But it was the voice that caught Rogers. That growl. How dare you speak to a University Volunteer in such a tone? It was he: the man who had followed him across the dark lawn. The stalker who had stowed away inside his nightmares.

Rogers took his walking stick in both hands like a lance and pinned his adversary against the wall.

“Who in the land do you think you are? Are you cracked in the head?” the student protested.

“It was you with Semmes that night with your pistols outside Davis’s house when he was shot, wasn’t it? ‘Goddamn Professor Davis,’ that’s what you said to me!” Rogers pressed the walking stick tight against his neck, deaf to the protests of the other students and the sheriff, who had entered alongside Dabney.

“Stop it!” Kincaid, the freckled one, shouted, inserting himself between Rogers and his target. “Washington wasn’t out with Semmes that night, it was me!”

“You?” Rogers asked, taking down his walking stick.

Kincaid continued with his story. “I told Semmes that night he best return to his room. He was bound to be caught by a professor—things were growing out of hand. Semmes put on his mask and said, ‘If anyone dare to try and stop me, I’ll shoot him.’ That’s when we heard Davis come out of his home. Semmes said he just wanted to scare Davis and told me to go with him. In my heart, I thought things had gone far enough that day, but I agreed.”

“You saw the shooting happen?” Sheriff Helms asked.

“No. When Davis came out, I saw him reach for Semmes’s mask, and I ran off. I didn’t see anything. I heard the gunshot and was terrified.”

“There was firing all day,” Rogers said. “Why

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