Tales of the Black Widowers - Asimov Isaac (бесплатные серии книг txt) 📗

"All right," said Gonzalo, "someone else did the test and your friend copied it over in his own words."

"Impossible. There was no one in the class but the students and St. George's assistant. The assistant opened the sealed test papers just before the test started. No one could have written a paper for Lance and another for himself, even if you could imagine no one else seeing it done. Besides, there wasn't anyone in the class capable of turning out a 96-level paper."

Avalon said, "If you were doing it right there, it would be impossible. But suppose someone managed to get a copy of the questions well before the test and then swatted away at the textbooks till he worked out perfect answers. Couldn't Lance have done that somehow?"

"No, he couldn't," said Drake flatly. "You're not suggesting anything we didn't think of then, take my word for it. The university had had a cheating scandal ten years before or so and the whole procedure had been tightened up. St. George followed standard procedure. He worked out the questions and turned it in to his secretary the day before the test. She mimeographed the necessary number of copies in St. George's presence. He proofread them, then destroyed the mimeograph and the original. The question papers were packaged and sealed and placed in the school safe. The safe was opened just before the test and the papers handed to St. George's assistant. There was no chance of Lance seeing the questions."

"Maybe not just then," said Avalon. "But even if the professor had the questions mimeographed the day before the test, how long might he have had the questions in his possession? He might have used a set of questions used on a previous-"

"No," interrupted Drake. "We carefully studied all previous test papers prepared by St. George as a matter of course before the final exam. Do you think we were fools? There were no duplications."

"All right. But even if he prepared an entirely new test, he might have prepared it at the beginning of the semester for all you know. Lance might somehow have seen the questions early in the semester. It would be a lot easier to work out answers to a fixed number of questions in the course of the semester than to try to learn the entire subject matter."

"I think you've got something there, Jeff," said Gonzalo.

"He's got crud there," said Drake, "because that's not the way St. George worked it. Every question in that final exam turned on some particular point that some particular student goofed up on in class. One of them, and the most subtle, covered a point that I had missed in the last week of lectures. I pointed out what I thought was a mistake in a derivation, and St. George-well, never mind. The point is that the tests had to be prepared after the last lectures."

Arnold Stacey broke in, "Did St. George always do that? If he did, he would have been handing a hell of a lot to the kids."

"You mean the students would have been waiting for questions covering errors made in the discussion periods?"

"More than that. The students would have deliberately pulled boners on those parts of the subject they actually knew well in order to lure St. George into placing twenty points' worth on it."

Drake said, "I can't answer that. We weren't in his previous classes, so we don't know whether his previous tests followed the same line."

"Previous classes would have passed on the news, wouldn't they? At least if classes in the forties were anything like classes now."

"They would have," admitted Drake, "and they didn't. He did it that way that year, anyway."

"Say, Jim," said Gonzalo, "how did Lance do in the dicsussion periods?"

"He kept quiet; played it safe. We all took it for granted he'd do that. We weren't surprised."

Gonzalo said, "What about the department secretary? Couldn't Lance have wheedled her into telling him the questions?"

Drake said grimly, "You don't know the secretary. Besides, he couldn't have. He couldn't have suborned the secretary, or broken into the safe, or pulled any trick at all. From the nature of the questions, we could tell the exam had been constructed in the last week before it had been taken, and during that last week he couldn't have done a thing."

"Are you sure?" asked Trumbull.

"Oh, you bet! It bugged us all that he was so confident. The rest of us were sea green with the fear of flunking and he smiled. He kept smiling. On the day of the last lecture, someone said, 'He's going to steal the question sheet.' Actually, / said it, but the others agreed and we decided to-to-well, we kept an eye on him."

"You mean you never let him out of your sight?" demanded Avalon. "Did you watch at night in shifts? Did you follow him into the John?"

"Damn near. He was Burroughs' roommate and Burroughs was a light sleeper and swore he knew every time Lance turned over."

"Burroughs might have been dragged one night," said Rubin.

"He might have, but he didn't think so, and no one else thought so. Lance just didn't act suspicious in any way; he didn't even act annoyed at being watched."

"Did he know he was being watched?" said Rubin.

"He probably did. Every time he went somewhere he would grin and say, 'Who's coming along?' "

"Where did he go?"

"Just the normal places. He ate, drank, slept, eliminated. He went to the school library to study, or sat in his room. He went to the post office, the bank, a shoestore. We followed him on every errand all up and down Berry's main street. Besides-"

"Besides, what?" said Trumbull.

"Besides, even if he had gotten hold of the question paper, it could only have been in those few days before the test, maybe only the night before. He would have had to sweat out the answers, being Lance. It would have taken him days of solid work over the books. If he could have answered them just by getting a look at them, he wouldn't have had to cheat; he would have gotten a look at them in the opening minutes of the test period."

Rubin said sardonically, "It seems to me, Jim, that you've painted yourself into a corner. Your man couldn't possibly have cheated."

"That's the whole point," cried Drake. "He must have cheated and he did it so cleverly no one could catch him. No one could even figure out how. Tom's right. That's what gripes me."

And then Henry coughed and said, "If I may offer a word, gentlemen?"

Every face went up as though some invisible puppeteer had pulled the strings.

"Yes, Henry?" said Trumbull.

"It seems to me, gentlemen, that you are too much at home with petty dishonesty to understand it very well."

"Why, Henry, you hurt me cruelly," said Avalon with a smile, but his dark eyebrows curled down over his eyes.

"I mean no disrespect, gentlemen, but Mr. Rubin maintained that dishonesty has value. Mr. Trumbull thinks that Dr. Drake is only annoyed because the cheating was clever enough to escape detection and not because it existed at all, and perhaps all of you agree to that."

Gonzalo said, "I think you're hinting, Henry, that you're so honest that you're more sensitive to dishonesty than we are and can understand it better."

Henry said, "I would almost think so, sir, in view of

the fact that not one of you has commented on a glaring improbability in Dr. Drake's story that seems to me to explain everything."

"What's that?" asked Drake.

"Why, Professor St. George's attitude, sir. Here is a professor who takes pride in flunking many of his students, and who never has anyone get above the 80's on the final examination. And then a student who is thoroughly mediocre-and I gather that everyone in the department, both faculty and students, knew of the mediocrity-gets a 96 and the professor accepts that and even backs him before the qualifying committee. Surely he would have been the first to suspect dishonesty. And most indignantly, too."