The Best of L. Sprague de Camp

Frank Hodiak found his roommate packing his few simple belongings, and asked: "You going?"

"I am gettink retty to leave for the Christmas vacation," said Hithafea. "I got permission to leafe a few tays aheat of the rest." He shut his small suitcase with a snap and said: "Goot-pye, Frank. It is nice to have known you,"

"Good-bye? Are you going right now?"

"Yes."

"You sound as if you weren't coming back!"

"Perhaps. Some tav. Sahacikhthasèf, as we say on Osiris."

Hodiak said: "Say, what's that funny-looking package you put in ..."

But before he finished, Hithafea was gone.

When the next pledge meeting was called, Hithafea, hitherto the outstanding eager beaver among the pledges, was absent. They called the dormitory and got in touch with Frank Hodiak, who said that Hithafea had shoved off hours previously.

The other curious fact was that John Fitzgerald had his right wrist bandaged. When the brothers asked him why, he said:

"Damn'f I know. I just found myself in my room with a cut on mv wrist, and no idea how it got there."

The meeting was well underway and the paddles were descending, when the doorbell rang. Two men came in: one of the campus cops and a regular municipal policeman.

The former said: "Is John Fitzgerald here?"

"Yeah," said Fitzgerald. "I'm him."

"Get our hat and coat and come with us."

"Whaffer?"

"We wanna ask you a few questions about the disappearance of an exhibit from the museum."

"I don't know anything about it. Run along and peddle your papers."

That was the wrong line to take, because the city cop brought out a piece of paper with a lot of fancy printing on it and said: "Okay, here's a warrant. You're pinched. Come—" and he took Fitzgerald by the arm.

Fitzgerald cut loose with a swing that ended, splush, on the cop's face, so that the policeman fell down on his back and lay there, moving a little and moaning. The other brothers got excited and seized both cops and threw them out the front door and bumpety-bump down the stone steps of the fraternity house. Then they went back to their pledge meeting.

In five minutes four radio patrol cars stopped in front of the frathouse and a dozen cops rushed in.

The brothers, so belligerent a few minutes before, got out of the way at the sight of the clubs and blackjacks. Hands reached out of blue-clad sleeves toward Fitzgerald. He hit another cop and knocked him down, and then the hands fastened onto all his limbs and held him fast. When he persisted in struggling, a cop hit him on the head with a blackjack and he stopped.

When he came to and calmed down, on the way to the police station, he asked: "What the hell is this all about? I tell you, I never stole nothing from a museum in my whole life!"

"Oh yes you did," said a cop. "It was the false teeth of one of them things from another planet. O'Riley, I think they call it. You was seen going into the museum around closing time, and you left your fingerprints all.over the glass case when you busted it. Boy, this time we'll sure throw the book at you! Damn college kids, think they're better than other folks ...

Next day Herbert Lengyel got a letter: