Read Scholar's Plot for Free Online Page B

warranted. And if he was here to talk me into taking on another debt to him, why was he trying so hard to look anywhere but at me?
    Even after I’d observed that, I was surprised when the guard opened the door of the cell next to mine, and politely gestured for Michael to go in.
    Though the way my luck was running, I shouldn’t have been.
    “Captain Chaldon will be back in a few hours,” the guard said, locking the door on my former employer. “He’s still on the campus, checking out the scene. 
After that he wanted to see if the healer could tell anything about his death from Master Hotchkiss’ body. But as soon as he’s back, we’ll get this settled. Because I don’t believe for one minute that Michael Sevenson 
did this.”
    Master Hotchkiss’ body ?
    Michael nodded absently, and went to sit on the far end of his own cot, putting as much distance between us as he could — which was about twelve feet. The sun cast small squares of light through the barred slit at the top of the opposite wall. In the time I’d been watching, they’d moved from halfway up the wall above my bed down to the floor. With only bars making up the cell wall between us, we might as well have been locked in the same small room.
    Alone in that room, once the guard had departed, I waited, somewhat apprehensively, for Michael to break the silence. After a while, it became clear he wasn’t going to. After an even longer time, the silence began to get on my nerves. A while after that, I gave up.
    “So, what are you in for, stranger? Nothing too violent, I hope.”
    He could have refused to reply, but he must have been as weary of sulking as I was of watching him sulk.
    “Murder. I’d tell them you were sneaking about the campus last night too, except they already caught you. You’re probably a suspect as well.”
    “Along with everyone else on campus last night,” 
I pointed out. “Which is only … what, eight hundred people? Maybe over a thousand, with that lecture go-ing on.”
    “Probably,” said Michael glumly. “It seems we weren’t the only ones to realize that lecture would be a perfect time for villainy.”
    “Who’s this Hotchkiss, and why do they think you killed him?” I’d become so interested — villainy and murder, after all — that the question came out quite naturally. But Michael gave me a sour look.
    “What do you care? As you pointed out, you’re no longer my squire. Are you going to tell me what you were doing, slinking around in the dark? No. So why should I—”
    “I was trying to see the jeweler.” I think my easy answer surprised me as much as Michael. But if I wanted his information, I was clearly going to have to trade. And if someone had committed murder on a campus where I’d just been arrested, I needed to know about it.
    I really didn’t want to have to tell them I was the Fisk.
    “The jeweler?” Michael’s stony expression relaxed in simple surprise. “Roseman’s madman? Whatever for?”
    I could think of no reason, except the truth.
    “When the guards hauled him off… You understand, he was terrified. I told him he’d be all right. And I didn’t know if he was. So I thought I’d check.”
    He was looking at me now, and I found that more uncomfortable than I’d expected.
    “I see.”
    The silence lengthened until I couldn’t take it anymore.
    “So why do they think you killed this guy? In fact, how did they know you were on the campus at all? I didn’t tell them.”
    For some reason his mouth tightened again, but at least he answered.
    “They’d no notion to suspect me at first. Or so the guards told me. But my brother Benton is the only one they know of who has reason to hate the man. Fortunately, Benton had the sense to find some friends to sit with in the lecture hall, so he couldn’t have done it. But when they went to ask the gatekeeper if Benton had arrived early, or departed late, the gatekeeper told them that someone he didn’t know had accompanied Benton