Free Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber

relief.
    “I’m sure glad they agreed about asking for his commitment to the asylum,” he said. “It was awfully good of you, Norman, not to insist on the police. Things like that give a college a bad name.”
    Norman smiled wearily. “Almost anything gives a college a bad name. But that kid was obviously as crazy as a loon. And of course I understand how much the Jennings, with their political connections and influence, mean to Pollard.”
    Gunnison nodded. They lit up and smoked for a while in silence. Norman thought how different real life was from a detective story, where an attempted murder was generally considered a most serious thing, an occasion for much turmoil and telephoning and the gathering of flocks of official and unofficial detectives. Whereas here, because it occurred in an area of life governed by respectability rather than sensation, it was easily hushed up and forgotten.
    Gunnison looked at his watch. “I’ll have to hustle. It’s almost seven, and we’re due at your place at eight.”
    But he lingered, ambling over to the window to inspect the bullet hole.
    “I wonder if you’d mind not mentioning this to Tansy?” Norman asked. “I don’t want to worry her.”
    Gunnison nodded. “Good thing if we kept it to ourselves.” Then he pointed out the window. “That’s one of my wife’s pets,” he remarked in a jocular tone.
    Norman saw that his finger was trained on the cement dragon, now coldly revealed by the upward glare from the street lights.
    “I mean,” Gunnison went on, “she must have a dozen photographs of it. Hempnell’s her specialty. I believe she’s got a photograph of every architectural oddity on campus. That one is her favorite.” He chuckled. “Usually it’s the husband who keeps ducking down into the darkroom, but not in our family. And me a chemist, at that.”
    Norman’s taut mind had unaccountably jumped to the thought of a bull-roarer. Abruptly he realized the analogy between the recording of a bull-roarer and the photograph of a dragon.
    He clamped a lid on the fantastic questions he wanted to ask Gunnison.
    “Come on!” he said. “We’d better get along.”
    Gunnison started a little at the harshness of his voice.
    “Can you drop me off?” asked Norman in quieter tones. “My car’s at home.”
    “Sure thing,” said Gunnison.
    After he had switched out the lights, Norman paused for a moment, staring at the window. The words came back.
    “Eppur si muove.”

6
    They had hardly cleared away the remains of a hasty supper, when there came the first clang from the front-door chimes. To Norman’s relief, Tansy had accepted without questioning his rather clumsy explanation of why he had gotten home so late. There was something puzzling, though, about her serenity these last two days. She was usually much sharper and more curious. But of course he had been careful to hide disturbing events from her, and he ought only to’ be glad her nerves were in such good shape.
    “Dearest! It’s been ages since we’ve seen you!” Mrs. Carr embraced Tansy cuddlingly. “How are you? How are you?” The question sounded peculiarly eager and incisive. Norman put it down to typical Hempnell gush. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid I’ve got a cinder in my eye,” Mrs. Carr continued. “The wind’s getting quite fierce.”
    “Gusty,” said Professor Carr of the mathematics department, showing harmless delight at finding the right word. He was a little man with red cheeks and a white Vandyke, as innocent and absent-minded as college professors are supposed to be. He gave the impression of residing permanently in a special paradise of transcendental and transfinite numbers and of the hieroglyphs of symbolic logic, for whose manipulations he had a nationally recognized fame among mathematicians. Russell and Whitehead may have invented those hieroglyphs, but when it came to handling, cherishing, arid coaxing the exasperating, riddlesome things, Carr was the champion