یادداشت

Chapter three

The Note

That evening, in his small room near the campus, the young man made the arsenic pills. Each empty gelatin capsule had two pieces - a smaller one and a larger one. The young man carefully opened two of the capsules. He carefully filled the two smaller pieces of gelatin with arsenic powder. Then he carefully pushed the larger pieces of gelatin over the smaller ones.

He had read about white arsenic in the toxicology books. He knew that the amount of arsenic in the two capsules was about ten times the lethal dose. They contained ten times the amount of arsenic which was necessary to kill someone.

Now he had the pills! But he hadn’t started to think about the next part of his plan. He had to make Dorothy take the pills. Well, that wouldn’t be too difficult. But unless the police believed that Dorothy had killed herself, they would start asking questions on the campus. They would ask where the poison had come from. Then perhaps the pretty young Pharmacy student might remember seeing a stranger in the storeroom. The police would show her photos of all the students in Dorothy’s classes. That mustn’t happen! He had to make Dorothy write a suicide note. That was the difficult problem.

When he went to bed that night, the young man still didn’t have a solution to his problem. And he didn’t have much time to find one. He had told Dorothy that he’d marry her on Friday. If he didn’t marry her by Friday afternoon, she would become suspicious. She would write to her sister Ellen and tell her about the baby. Then he’d have to leave college and move to another state. And that wasn’t the future that he’d planned for himself. But he wasn’t going to live in a trailer with a wife that he didn’t love, and a noisy, smelly baby! Dorothy would have to die before Friday afternoon!

The next day was Wednesday. All morning, the handsome young man worried about his problem. He found the solution during the last class of the afternoon.

The last class was Spanish. The students were studying a romantic novel called La Casa de las Flores Negras. The young man hated the book. But while he was trying to translate a passage from the novel, he found the solution to his problem. And as soon as he found it, he was very happy.

When the Spanish class ended, he met Dorothy by the Pharmacy Laboratory and he took her to a movie. After that, they went to a restaurant. They had coffee and cheeseburgers.

“Dorothy,” the young man said, as she finished her coffee. “Will you lend me the photo that I gave you? I want to get a copy of it for my mother.”

Dorothy opened her purse and took out a small photograph of the handsome young man. The words “To Dorothy, with all my love” were written across the bottom of it. She gave it to him.

“I’ll give it back to you next week,” he said.

“OK. But please take care of it,” she replied. “I want to keep it forever!”

When they left the restaurant, the young man took her back to his room and made love with her. He felt sorry for her. This was only the second time that they had made love, but it would be the last time too.

As soon as she had gone back to her dormitory, the young man burned the photo. He didn’t want the police to find anything that connected him with Dorothy.

The young man’s first class on Thursday was Economics. Dorothy was a student in this class too. She came into the room as the lecturer was starting to speak. She sat next to the young man, and she smiled at him happily.

The young man wrote some words on a page of his notebook. He showed them to Dorothy.

Please take notes for me. I have to finish some Spanish translation for my class this afternoon.

Then for twenty minutes, he pretended to write a translation of a passage from La Casa de las Flores Negras in his notebook. At the end of that time, he stopped writing and he looked very puzzled for a minute. Then the young man tore a small piece of paper from his notebook. He quickly drew a picture of Dorothy on one side of it. Then he turned it over. On the other side, he wrote some words.

Can you help me? I don’t understand this. Querido, Espero que me perdonares por la infelicidad que causare. No hay ninguna otra cosa que puedo hacer.

He passed the piece of paper to Dorothy. She read the words quickly. Then she turned the paper over. She was going to write the translation on the back. But she saw the drawing, and she smiled.

She turned to a new page in her own notebook and wrote the translation on that. She tore the page from the book and passed it to the young man. And as he read it, he knew that everything was going to be OK.

Darling,

I hope that you will forgive me for the unhappiness that I will bring to you. There is nothing else that I can do.

Now he had Dorothy’s suicide note!

During the afternoon, the young man went to a room on the campus where there were several typewriters. Any Stoddard student could use these. He typed an address on one of his white envelopes.

Miss Ellen Kingship North Dormitory Caldwell College Caldwell, Wisconsin

The young man met Dorothy after her last class of the afternoon.

“I’ve just talked to my friend - - the friend whose uncle owns the drugstore,” he began. “He told me that he gave me the wrong pills on Monday.” The young man took an envelope from his pocket. “These are the right ones,” he said. “You must take them tonight.”

“But I don’t want to take any more pills,” Dorothy said nervously. “I want to get married tomorrow.”

“Dorothy, listen to me!” the young man said. “If we have this baby now, it will grow up in a trailer. It will have a bad start in life because its parents will be poor. Please, take the pills, Dorothy. We’ll get married soon anyway. But I want to meet your father first. Then we’ll have some money. We won’t have to live in a trailer. We can live in a real house. We’ll be so happy. And we can have a baby next year, darling.”

“No,” Dorothy said miserably. She started to cry. “No, no!”

“Dorothy, please do this for me,” the young man said, putting his arms around her. “I know that you want the baby. But you’re only thinking about yourself. You aren’t thinking about me or the child. Don’t give our first child a bad start in life.” Suddenly, his voice was cold. “If you won’t take the pills Dorothy, I won’t marry you. You’ll have to ask your father for help. What will he say?”

They talked for half an hour. Finally, Dorothy took the envelope from him.

“Take the pills at about ten o’clock this evening,” the young man said. “If these pills don’t work, I’ll marry you tomorrow afternoon. I promise you that!”

Then he held her hand for a moment and he left her. Slowly and sadly, she walked towards her dormitory.

At a quarter after ten that night, the handsome young man went to a telephone booth in the street near his room. He phoned Dorothy’s room at the dormitory.

“Did you take the pills?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said. “I took them at ten o’clock.”

“Thank you, darling,” he said. “My friend said that you will probably feel some pain half an hour after you’ve taken them. You mustn’t worry about it. Don’t tell anybody. The pain will soon go. You’ll be OK in the morning. Goodnight, darling. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Goodnight,” she replied. “I love you.”

The young man put Dorothy’s translation from La Casa de las Flores Negras into the envelope with her sister Ellen’s address on the front. Then he dropped the envelope into a mailbox. He smiled as he walked back to his room.