Читать книгу Frank Merriwell's Return to Yale - Standish Burt L. - Страница 5

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."