bruce had shared an office with four other assistants, but they were gone now. bare of people, it had a hollow quality.

kintyre went through the desk a final time. there was so little which was personally a man's. a few scrawls on the memo pad, a scratch sheet covered with intricate doodles, margery's picture, some reference books, and a fat folder of notes relating to his research: no more. it could all be carried away in a single trip.

kintyre attacked the remaining student papers. that was a mechanical task; few freshmen nowadays ever showed much originality, except in their spelling. most of his brain idled. it occurred to him that one common element bound together everyone who seemed to figure in this affair. the italian nation and culture.

angelo, maria, guido lombardi: all born in genoa.

bruce lombardi: born over here, but oriented toward the old country, writing his master's thesis as a critical exegesis of a medieval italian manuscript, corresponding with an uncle in the italian secret service.

corinna lombardi: well, bruce's sister; spoke the language too.

margery towne: bruce's girl. admittedly a weak connection.

himself, robert kintyre: postgraduate studies of the renaissance, on a fellowship which kept him in italy from 1949 to 1951; took his ph.d. at cal with a study of those lesser known sociological writings before machiavelli which had influenced the florentine realist; returned overseas for a year ending last summer, on another grant to continue his researches; now teaching and working on a book which only specialists would ever read.

jabez owens: visited europe, including italy, many times. claimed, as a semiamateur scholar, to have unearthed some lurid borgia correspondence, which he had turned to his own profit.

gerald clayton: officer in the army quartermaster corps in italy, during the latter part of the war. returned there immediately after his discharge, came back in a couple of years with the american franchise for a new line of italian motor scooters. since then he spent half his time abroad, pumping a steadily larger flow of european goods into the united states market, everything from automobiles to perfumes. also interested in manuscripts. had several tracked down for him by italian scholars, bought them, sent them home. he obtained the book of witches in sicily, and carried it along when business took him to san francisco last fall. found kintyre was the man to see, looked him up, asked him to examine the volume for whatever value it had. kintyre had turned the project over to bruce; it would make a good m.a. thesis. clayton had pungled up a couple of thousand dollars as a research grant: a graceful way of making it financially possible for bruce to give some time to the task. since then clayton had frequently seen both bruce and kintyre, and shown a real if not very deep interest in the boy's progress.

gene michaelis: served his navy hitch in the mediterranean theater. yes, bruce had mentioned that. what might have happened during gene's italian shore leaves was an intriguing question.

peter michaelis: gene's father, as embittered as he toward the lombardi tribe.

terry larkin: no connection demonstrated, but it was quite possible in this land of many races.

"holy hieronymus," muttered kintyre, "next thing i'll be looking for a black hand."

but melodramatic and implausible facts were still stubbornly facts.

he completed his task about noon, turned in the papers and reports, and got the book of witches from the department safe. he wanted a better acquaintance with this thing.

bruce's office was too empty. he took the manuscript and the folder of notes to his own room. it was just as bare and quiet between these walls, but more familiar. he could look out the window to lawns and blowing trees and sunlight spilling over them—without thinking that bruce lay frozen under a sheet.

he put the book on his desk with care. it was almost six hundred years old.

the phone rang. he jerked in surprise, swore at himself, and picked it up. "hello?"

"kintyre? jabez owens."

"oh. what is it?"

"i called your home and you weren't in, so i tried—how are you?"

"i'll live. what's the occasion?"

"i wondered—i'd like to talk to you. would you care to have lunch with me?"

"no, thanks." kintyre had better plans than to watch owens perform. "i'm busy."

"are you sure?" the voice was worried.

"quite. i'll be here for some hours. i'll just duck out for a sandwich." maliciously: "i've some work to do on bruce's project. afterward—"

what? well, he hadn't called margery today. he supposed, with a faintly suffocated feeling, that he ought to see her. "i have an engagement," he finished.

"oh." hesitantly: "do you think i could drop up to your office, then? it really is urgent, and it may be to your own advantage."

"sure," said kintyre, remembering his wish to play sleuth. "walk into my parlor." he gave owens the room number and hung up. then he returned to the book of witches.

it was a thick palimpsest, a little over quarto size. the binding, age-eaten leather with rusted iron straps, was perhaps a century newer than the volume itself. he opened it, heavy in his hands, and looked at the title page. liber veneficarum—

book of witches, their works and days, compiled from records and the accounts of trustworthy men, done at the sicilian abbey of st. john the divine at the command of the abbot rogero, for the attention and use of the authorities of our holy mother church.

when clayton first brought it around, kintyre had only skimmed through the black uncials in a hasty fashion. he knew there had been considerable satanism in the middle ages, partly pagan survivals and partly social protest, but that had not seemed to be in his immediate line. a man has only time to learn a few things before the darkness takes him back.

now he opened bruce's folder and began to read the notes. some were typewritten, some still in pothooks harder to decipher than the fourteenth century low latin. but they were in order, and their own references were clearly shown. bruce had been a good, careful scholar.

well—kintyre turned to the first page. it was very plain work, unilluminated. the opening sentences described the purpose: to set forth exactly what the witchcraft movement was, how widespread and how dangerous to the faith and the state. sources were given, with some commentary on their trustworthiness. the middle ages did not lack critical sense. the monk wrote soberly of witchcraft as a set of real activities in the real world; he wasted very little time on the demons presumed to be the object of worship.

kintyre struggled with his memory, brought back an approximate recollection of a later passage, and hunted for it again. yes, here, near the middle: an account of a thirteenth century witch hunt in northern italy, a follow-up to the albigensian crusade. the author said that since then there had been no covens worth mentioning north of abruzzi, and cited proof—statements by church and secular investigators, a couple of confessions extracted by torture.

bruce's notes at this point gave confirming cross references. a penciled afterthought occurred: "if there were no organized satanists in the romagna in 1398, it hardly seems reasonable that cesare borgia could have joined them a century later!" evidence was marshaled to show there had been no revival in the meantime. rather, the cults had been on the wane throughout the fifteenth century, as prosperity and enlightenment spread.

well, thought kintyre, that does pretty well sink owens' boat.

something caught his eye. he leaned over the sheet. a fifteenth century "discourse," an official report, in the state archives of milan was quoted to support the claim that there was no contemporary local black mass. in the margin was scribbled "l.l."

private abbreviations could be weird and wonderful, but kintyre found himself obscurely irritated. so much was unknown about bruce's final destiny, even an initial might tell something.

he found the letters several times more in the next hour, as he worked his way through the volume and the notes. they seemed to mark findings which could only be made in italy: by going out and looking at a site, or by reading in ancient libraries.

the telephone interrupted him again. he glanced at his watch. two o'clock already! he grew aware that he was hungry.

"hello. robert kintyre speaking."

the voice in his ear was low. it stumbled the barest bit. "professor kintyre. this is corinna lombardi."

"oh." he sat gaping into the mouthpiece like a schoolboy, feeling his heartbeat pick up. "oh, yes," he said stupidly.

"i wanted to apologize to you."

"hm?" with an effort, he pulled himself toward sense. "what the dev—what in the world is there to apologize for?"

"last night. i was horrible."

habit took over, the smoothness of having known many women; but his tone was burred. "oh, now, please don't be silly. if you won't mind my saying so at a time like this, i thought you were quite extraordinarily pleasant to meet."

did he catch the unsubstantial wisp of a chuckle? "thank you. you're very kind. but i did pull a regular lady macbeth. it was nerves. i was tired and miserable. i hope you'll believe how sorry i've been all day. i've spent the past half hour at the phone, trying to track you down."

"if i'd known that, i'd have laid a paper trail—blast!" kintyre checked himself. "now it's my turn to ask your pardon. i wasn't thinking."

"it's all right," she said gently.

"no, but—"

"really it is. now that the requiem mass has been held, the solemn one mother wanted—it was almost like a real funeral. everything looks different now."

"yes, i saw the announcement. i couldn't come, i had to finish his work."

"i could envy you that," she said. then, with a lifting in her tone: "i came back and slept. i woke up only an hour ago. it's like a curtain falling. bruce is dead, and that will always hurt, but we can go on now with our own lives."

he hovered on the edge of decision, wondering what to do, afraid of the ghoul she might think him. a line from the prince came: "... it is better to be impetuous than cautious, for fortune is a woman—" all right, he told himself.

"there's one thing, miss lombardi."

"yes?" she waited patiently for him to sort out his words.

"i haven't forgotten what you did say last night. i went ahead and looked into it, your ideas, i mean."

"oh?" a noncommittal noise, not openly skeptical.

"i can tell you something you may feel better for."

"what?" caution, now, not of him but of the thing he might say.

"the phone is hardly suitable. could we get together in person?"

"well—" it stretched into seconds, which he found unnaturally long. then, clearly, almost gaily: "of course. whenever you like."

"this evening? you're at your parents' home still, aren't you?"

"i'm going back to my own place today. but this evening will be fine."

he said with careful dryness: "bearing in mind that i am a somewhat respectable assistant professor of history and more than a decade your senior, may i suggest dinner?"

she did actually chuckle that time. "thank you, you may. no references needed; bruce told me enough about you. and it's a good deal better than sitting alone brooding, isn't it?"

he had gotten the address and a six-thirty date before he wholly realized what was going on. when the phone was back in its cradle, he sat for some indefinite time. oh, no! he thought at last. impossible. i'm too old to be romantic and too young to be tired.

he decided to eat before going back to the manuscript.

while he went out for a sandwich and milkshake, while he walked back again, he twisted his attention to the problem of the book. it could have wrought a man's death, or it could only be a stack of inked parchment. most likely the latter; but then who or what was l. l?

the building was gloomy when he re-entered it from sunlight. even his office seemed dark. it took his eyes a few seconds to register the fact that the book was gone.