ONE OF THE MISSING PAPERS.
Three or four minutes passed while the assistants were distributing some
papers. Then one of them approached the professor and said:
"I need two more for my section, sir."
"Well," said the professor, looking around the room, "if you're short
two, somebody must have two to spare."
Nobody said anything.
"Which of you," asked the professor of his assistants, "has two more
papers than necessary."
No one answered. Prof. Babbitt looked very savage.
"I counted that bundle of papers just as soon as it came from the
printers," he said, sharply, "and there was just the number called for.
The printers never make a mistake, and I'm sure they haven't this time."
Still there was silence in the room.
"Gentlemen," said the professor, this time addressing the students, "see
if any of you have an extra paper accidentally stuck to the one on your
desk; there must be two spare papers here somewhere in the room."
Every student took up his paper, felt of it, shook it, but without
result; the room was certainly two papers short, and two students sat,
therefore, with nothing to do.
The professor frowned.
"I'm certain," he exclaimed, "that I made no miscount. Mr. Jackson,"
turning to one of the assistants, "count the students here."
Mr. Jackson counted and found that there were one hundred and forty-six.
"That's it," said Prof. Babbitt, "and I had one hundred and forty-six
papers. This is very extraordinary."
He glared savagely about the room, his glance resting longest upon the
desk where Merriwell sat. Frank was already busily engaged in working
out the first problem.
Most of the other students had already gone to work, but some of them
were idly watching to see what the professor was going to do, and hoping
that he would postpone the whole examination.
This may have been in his mind; but if so, he thought better of it.
"We shall have to go on," he said, presently. "I will write out two
papers for those who are short."
He did so, and in the course of a few minutes all the students were at
work.
Frank could not help but smile when, after a rapid glance at the
problems on the paper, he saw that he had hit exactly the subject chosen
by the professor to floor him. The questions were all confined to the
one topic which he and his friends had been studying on.
"Now, unless they lose their heads," he thought, "they'll all write a
perfect paper."
He had previously warned them not to be in a hurry during the
examination.
According to the custom at Yale a written examination of this kind lasts
for three hours, that is, three hours is the longest time during which
any student is allowed to work at the problems.
If he has not finished in that time, he has to stop. If, however, he
should get through the paper in less time, he has the right to withdraw
from the room.
"Now boys," Frank had said, "if you find that you can work all the
problems take them slowly, so that you make sure that you get them
right, and then, if you get through before the time is up, hang around a
while.
"It might cause the professor to think queer things if he should see us
get up after an hour and a half or so and walk out; he would wonder how
we did it, and of course we don't want to let him suspect that we
crammed on one topic."
The boys understood the wisdom of this advice, and Frank's only anxiety
now was lest Rattleton or Page should get excited at the ease of the
paper and write too hurriedly.
The others he knew would be cool.
Believing that the professor would watch him more narrowly than anybody
else, he made a good deal of pretense at being puzzled over his
problems, and worked each one out separately on a piece of paper before
transferring the problem on the paper which was to be passed in as his
examination.
There was nothing very unusual in this method, for most of the other
students did much the same thing. The only point about it is that it was
unnecessary in this case for Frank to do it at all, because the problems
were so familiar that he could have worked each one out at the first
trial.
Early in the examination Ford, who had a seat in the back part of the
room, raised his hand.
Prof. Babbitt saw him and nodded.
The raising of the hand implied that Ford wanted to ask a question. He
was a favorite with Prof. Babbitt naturally, and so the professor gave
him leave to go up to the desk and make his inquiry.
Ford walked down the aisle with an examination paper in his hand, and as
he passed Frank's desk his hand struck a little pile of blank papers
that happened to be lying on the very edge, and knocked it to the floor.
He stooped quickly, saying: "Excuse me," in a low voice, and replaced
the papers.
Prof. Babbitt, of course, was looking that way at the moment.
"You would do your work just as well, Merriwell," he exclaimed, sharply,
"if you didn't spread it all over your desk. Your examples won't work
out any easier for taking up the whole room with them."
Frank colored; it was unusual and extremely unpleasant to be rebuked in
this way before the entire class. He had not realized that he had left
his blank papers so carelessly but even at that, he knew that the rebuke
was not deserved.
"The professor has just as good reason," he reflected angrily, "to scold
Ford for being careless."
There was nothing to say about it, but it made Frank bitter, and all the
more determined to make his paper so correct that the professor could
not help giving it a perfect mark.
He pushed his loose papers together in a pile squarely in the middle of
the desk and resumed his work.
No one heard what Ford asked the professor; it was some question
concerning the paper, and when the professor answered it, it was in a
tone of surprise.
"I should hardly think that the question was necessary," he said,
"though of course I don't blame you for wanting to be careful about it."
Ford muttered that he wanted to be sure that the problem was correctly
printed on the paper, and when the professor told him that it was, he
bowed and returned to his desk.
Few of the students paid any attention to this matter, and those who did
promptly concluded that Ford was so anxious to lead the class that he
got nervous and had therefore asked some question that any child could
have understood.
The incident was soon forgotten, and for an hour or two the students
worked away at their papers in silence.
The only thing that troubled Frank was that he could have completed the
entire paper within an hour if he had tried.
As it was, he had worked out every problem except the last on his loose
sheets of paper, and transferred most of them to his regular examination
paper by the end of two hours.
He was greatly relieved to notice that none of his best friends had left
the room. A few students had gone out, probably because they were
utterly unable to answer the questions.
For the sake of killing time, Frank had already written out the last
problem on loose paper twice, and he was now at the bottom of his pile
with one sheet of blank paper left.
He glanced at the clock; almost an hour to spare. He finished his
regular paper up to the last problem, and then, drawing the one
remaining blank sheet toward him, began again to work that out.
Again and again he had seen Prof. Babbitt looking sharply at him, and
more than once the professor had walked by his desk in the course of his
strolling around the room.
Twenty minutes passed, and Frank believed that it could be of no use to
waste time longer, so he crumpled up the loose sheet on which he had
been working in his left hand, and started to work out the problem on
his regular examination paper.
Just then Prof. Babbitt turned up from around the corner of another
desk, brought his hand down upon Frank's left hand, and held it there.
"Now, then, Merriwell," he exclaimed in a thundering voice, "I've got
you. This will mean your expulsion from Yale, sir, and nothing short of
it."
Frank had looked up with a start of surprise at first; now he drew back
and looked the professor in the eye, defiantly.
"Don't you say anything to me, sir," exclaimed the professor, sharply.
"I hadn't thought of saying anything," responded Frank, in a dignified
way.
"Keep quiet, sir! what have you got in your hand?"
"My pencils."
"You're impudent, sir; I mean, of course, your other hand."
Frank's face turned first pale, and then red, and then pale again; all
the students and assistants in the room were looking at him. He knew
that the professor suspected him of some low trick, and it cut him deep
to think that he should be accused in this public way.
"I've got a piece of blank paper there," he said, slowly, "on which I
have been working out the last problem."
"Oh, indeed," returned the professor, sarcastically. "A piece of blank
paper, eh? You're quite sure it was a piece of blank paper?"
"It was until I began to figure on it."
"Oh, you're quite sure of that?"
"I am, sir."
"And I can tell you, and I'll make an example of you to the whole class
in so doing, that when you thought to conceal that paper by crumpling it
up in your hand, I caught sight of the under side of it."
Frank made no response. He had not the slightest idea what the professor
was driving at.
"I tell you, I saw what it was in an instant," added the professor.
"Very well, sir," said Frank, rather sharply, "I've nothing to say."
"Oh, you haven't! Very well, then, what's that?"
The professor pointed to the printed examination paper which lay on the
desk in plain sight.
"I don't intend to be treated like a schoolboy, sir," exclaimed Frank,
starting to rise, and making an effort to draw his hand away from the
professor's. "If you have any accusation to make against me, you can lay
it before the faculty, but I will not sit here to be browbeaten and
insulted in this fashion."
He drew his hand away, but in so doing made no effort to keep his grip
on the paper that he had used for figuring.
The professor snatched the paper as it was falling, smoothed it out, and
held it up before the entire class.
"You see, young gentlemen," he cried, "Merriwell has been doing his
examples on the back of one of the stolen examination papers."
Frank fairly gasped when he saw that this was the fact.
When the professor had announced that the two papers were missing, he
had looked with the utmost care all through his desk to see whether one
of the missing papers had somehow got laid down there, and was certain
that only one had been given to him; yet here was one of the papers, and
he had been unconsciously working out an example on the back of it.
"We shall lay this matter before the faculty at once," said Prof.
Babbitt, sternly; "and meantime, Merriwell, you may leave the room."