One-Way Ride

It was about 1 a.m. when the car stopped at a deserted spot in Lincoln, Mass., and then sped away, leaving behind a youth of 18. For Freshman Thomas Clark of M.I.T., this was the last part of his initiation into the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Like nine other pledges who had been deposited about the countryside, he was left alone to get back to the M.I.T. campus, 14 miles away, as best he could, by 8 o'clock the next morning. But when morning came, Tom Clark had still not returned from what the Dekes call the "One-way ride."

After six hours, M.I.T. notified Tom's father, an official of the Illinois Bell Telephone Co., that his son must have met with some accident. Alfred R. Clark flew to Cambridge, broadcast a special appeal over TV for clues. Army and Navy helicopters flew over the area where Tom was last seen, and 100 M.I.T. fraternity men volunteered to join police in the search. But by the end of four days, only one lead had turned up. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Sheehan of Waltham, Mass, reported that near 2 a.m. on initiation night, a boy answering Tom's description knocked at their door and asked to be driven "down the road to pick up my luggage." He said he was an M.I.T. student, but because of initiation rules, would not give his name. Suspicious, the Sheehans turned him away.

Last week the police found one more clue--a shoe and scarf lying near a glazed-over hole in the ice and snow covering the Cambridge reservoir. The scarf was identical with the one father Clark was wearing: his wife had given one to him and one to Tom for Christmas. Next day, when divers found Tom's body under the ice, authorities concluded that in the darkness he must have mistaken the reservoir for a snow-covered meadow. "Another victim," said Tom's father wearily, "of a criminal fraternity prank." At week's end, Deke national headquarters told its 51 chapters to see to it that there should be no such victim again.

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