The Letter Killeth Read Online Free Page A

was only the pool in Rockne then.”
    â€œWhat is your great idea?”
    Quirk rubbed his head as if to verify that it was hairless. He had not stopped smiling since he came in. Now he grew serious. Roger was aware of the many countries in which Notre Dame students could spend a year abroad. St. Mary’s has a Rome program, and so does Architecture. What was needed was a place with associations with Notre Dame.
    â€œNotre Dame as it was. Notre Dame as it should be.”
    â€œIs the villa for sale?”
    â€œEverything is for sale.”
    â€œIsn’t it a convent?”
    Quirk tapped the tip of his nose. “I have reason to think that Notre Dame could buy the place.”
    â€œVilla Quirk?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œMost donors like their name given to the buildings they provide the university.”
    â€œOh no no no. Good Lord, I don’t have that kind of money.”
    â€œWhat kind of money would be involved?”
    â€œEuros.” His eyes widened and he laughed. “You mean, how much? Like everything, that is negotiable.”
    Roger was beginning to realize that Father Carmody had palmed this enthusiast off on him. Despite Quirk’s easy confidence that the villa Crawford had built in Sorrento on the princely proceeds of his fiction could be bought, Roger did not get the impression that Quirk was a practical man. The way he spoke of the purchasability of whatever one might covet and his vagueness as to what sum would be needed if his improbable scheme were adopted did not suggest a man at home in the rough-and-tumble world of buying and selling.
    By this time, he had got Quirk into a chair and was trying not to glance enviously to where Phil and Father Carmody were huddled in conversation. Roger’s curiosity had been aroused by the letter the old priest had brought, and he was almost as struck as Phil had been to hear that such a threat had been made to the football coach as well. Charlie Weis had taken Notre Dame football from the nadir to the peaks in a single year. Already, he was spoken of in the same breath as Knute Rockne, a comparison he of course dismissed. But he was indisputably a national figure, and the news that threats had been made on him, particularly after the Fiesta Bowl debacle, would be broadcast from coast to coast. Quirk, on the other hand, was completely absorbed in his quixotic project. Had he even understood the import of these threatening letters? Given the potential for bad publicity for the university, it was probably just as well Quirk seemed unaware of this.
    â€œSo you’re an alumnus.”
    â€œDo you know that Father Carmody actually remembered me? Incredible. I was not, I can tell you, a campus luminary during my time here.”
    â€œAnd what have you done since graduating?”
    â€œWondering how I could have been so little interested in Notre Dame during the years I was here. A student’s four years on campus are over almost as soon as they begin. You would be surprised how small a part of a student’s interest is engaged in the classes he takes, in learning. Before you know it, you graduate and get swept up in life. Gradually it dawns on you that you all but wasted the opportunity of a lifetime. I have resolved to make up for that.”
    â€œHence your interest in F. Marion Crawford?”
    â€œYes.” He paused. “I collect Notre Dame memorabilia. Books about the place. I have someone who keeps on the lookout for me. She came upon a mention of Notre Dame in a biography of Crawford. You know he lectured here?”
    â€œSo did Henry James and William Butler Yeats.”
    â€œBut they weren’t Catholics! Have you read the chapter on Crawford in Louis Auchincloss’s The Man Behind the Book ? I wonder how much of Crawford he actually read. And he doesn’t even mention his conversion to Catholicism.” Quirk might have pronounced that scandalous sentence in