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By Root 2659 0

’s characteristic errors, which fortunately couldn’t have meant much to Julian, as Bunny was such a poor writer that he usually had someone else go over his work before he handed it in. Even I might have had doubts about the authorship, the thing was so garbled and paranoid, if not for the reference to the Battenkill murder: “He”—(Henry, that is, or so the letter ran approximately at one point)—“is a fucking Monster. He has killed a man and he wants to kill Me, too. Everybody is in on it. The man they killed in October, in Battenkill county. His name was McRee. I think they beat him to death I am not sure.” There were other accusations—some of them true (the twins’ sexual practices), some not; all of which were so wild that they only served to discredit the whole. There was no mention of my name. The whole thing had a desperate, drunken tone that was not unfamiliar. Though this didn’t occur to me until later, I now believe he must have gone to the all-night study room and written it on the same night that he came drunk to my room—either directly before or after, probably after—in which case it was a pure stroke of luck we didn’t run into each other when I was on my way to the Science Building to telephone Henry. I remember only one other thing, which was its closing line, and the only thing I saw which struck a pang at me: “Please Help me, this is why I wrote you, you are the only person that can.”

“Well, I don’t know who wrote this,” said Francis at last, his tone offhand and perfectly casual, “but whoever they were, they certainly couldn’t spell.”

Julian laughed. I knew he didn’t have the slightest idea that the letter was real.

Francis took the letter and shuffled ruminatively through the pages. He stopped at the next-to-last sheet—which was of a slightly different color than the rest—and idly turned it over. “It seems that—” he said, and then stopped.

“Seems that what?” said Julian pleasantly.

There was a slight pause before Francis continued. “Seems that whoever wrote this needed a new typewriter ribbon,” he said; but that was not what he was thinking, or I was thinking, or what he had been about to say. That had been struck from his mind when, turning the irregular sheet over, the two of us saw, with horror, what was on the back of it. It was a sheet of hotel stationery, engraved, at the top, with the address and letterhead of the Excelsior: the hotel where Bunny and Henry had stayed in Rome.

Henry told us, later, head in hands, that Bunny had asked him to buy him another box of stationery the day before he died. It was expensive stuff, white cream laid, imported from England; the best they had at the store in town. “If only I’d bought it for him,” he said. “He asked me half a dozen times. But I figured, there wasn’t much point, you see.…” The sheet from the Excelsior wasn’t quite so heavy, or fine. Henry speculated—probably correctly—that Bunny had got to the bottom of the box, so he rooted around in his desk and found that piece, roughly the same size, and turned it over to use the back.

I tried not to look at it, but it kept obtruding at the corners of my vision. A palace, drawn in blue ink, with flowing script like the script on an Italian menu. Blue edges on the paper. Unmistakable.

“To tell you the truth,” said Julian, “I didn’t even finish reading it. Obviously the perpetrator of this is quite disturbed. One can’t say, of course, but I think it must have been written by another student, don’t you?”

“I can’t imagine that a member of the faculty would write something like this, if that’s what you mean,” said Francis, turning the letterhead back over. We didn’t look at each other. I knew exactly what he was thinking: how can we steal this page? how can we get it away?

To distract Julian’s attention, I walked to the window. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” I said, my back to both of them. “It’s hard to believe there was snow on the ground hardly a month ago.…” I babbled on, hardly aware of what I was saying, and afraid to look around.

“Yes,” said Julian politely, “yes, it is lovely out,” but his voice