Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_03 Read Free Page B

office in Old Central. A photograph taken the previous fall at a faculty softball game showed a handsome, smiling man in his mid-thirties. A big blond with a broad grin, Nugent was rounding the bases in a victory jog, vital, vigorous, virile.
    I jotted down some facts on my legal pad. As a young reporter, I’d started off with small steno notebooks, but in later years I switched to the short-size legal pads, lots of paper and a firm back.
    Three cases, three sheets.
    I made swift, neat notes.
    Then I set out to respond to the imperial summons.
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    Caleb Thorndyke, a Methodist minister, founded Thorndyke University twenty years before the Civil War. For many years, the school was housed in one small Tudor-style redbrick building. That building was twice destroyed by fire, but the 1870 building, Old Central, still stands. It has three Gothic stories crowned by a square bell tower. The campus grew in spurts, sprouting two-to-three-story limestone buildings. More redbrick structures blossomed in the fifties and sixties. The President’s Office is in Old Central in the middle of the original campus.
    Broad, shallow stone stairs, marked by a century of eager footsteps, lead to enormous double wooden doors. Inside, there is a hushed air, the mixture of dignity and reverence you find in capitols and cathedrals.
    It’s interesting to speculate how architecture affects lives. The grandeur of this building, with its marbled floors and magnificent paneling, is in unmistakable contrast to today’s glass-sheathed towerswith their low ceilings and flammable polyurethane moldings.
    The anteroom to the president’s office is at the end of the west corridor. The brass doorknob felt like iced silk, it was worn so smooth by generations of hands.
    I stepped inside a narrow room. Tucker’s secretary looked up in polite inquiry. She was an indeterminate age, somewhere between thirty and fifty, a slender, graying woman with precise features and huge gold-rimmed glasses. “May I help you?” Her voice was as muted as her beige sweater and high-necked white cotton blouse.
    â€œYes. I’m Henrietta Collins. President Tucker is expecting me.” I glanced at the nameplate on her desk: Bernice Baker.
    â€œIf you’ll take a seat, please.” She offered a brief smile and pushed back her chair.
    I sat in one of a line of curved-back, black wooden chairs embossed with the University seal as the secretary walked the length of the narrow anteroom to a golden oak door, knocked once, then entered.
    Above the chair rail, running the length of the room, hung portraits of all eleven Thorndyke presidents, beginning with the bearded Reverend Caleb Thorndyke and ending with round-cheeked David Tucker.
    The portrait was of Tucker as a much younger man.
    I rose and walked closer to the painting. Hair as pale and fine as corn silk fringed a domed forehead. The pale blue eyes glittered with vigor, intelligence, acuity, their bold stare as sharp-edged and dangerous as a Prussian saber. The thin lips were slightlycurved, an iceman’s version of a smile.
    The shiny metal plaque at the bottom of the ornate frame read:
    D AVID L OOMIS T UCKER P RESIDENT FROM 1974—
    The door clicked open.
    I turned.
    â€œPresident Tucker will see you now.” Bernice’s voice was as tepid and colorless as aquarium water.
    I stepped into his office. The door clicked shut behind me.
    Soft-hued Oriental rugs were islands of delicate color against the glossy parquet floor. The walls were paneled in walnut, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two sides. Deep rose damask hangings framed the enormous windows behind David Tucker. Sun blazed through the southern exposure.
    He stood to greet me. Instead of a desk, Thorndyke’s president worked at a massive Georgian marble-topped table. The marble sparkled in the sun. An issue of The Clarion lay next to an antique silver pen set. It was the only material on the table.
    I glanced at the