Frank Merriwell's Return to Yale Part 9

The students found their places by means of slips of paper on the top of each desk. Merriwell was a little amused to notice that he was placed far from the friends with whom he usually a.s.sociated.

"I wonder if Babbitt thinks I would cheat?" he thought.

There was a bundle neatly done up in brown paper on the professor's desk at the head of the room. He stood near it until all the students were in their places, each with a pad of blank paper before him, and a number of sharpened pencils.

Then the professor broke the string with which the bundle was tied, and calling up his a.s.sistants, handed them several papers each to distribute.

They were the papers from the printer containing the fatal questions.

CHAPTER V.

ONE OF THE MISSING PAPERS.

Three or four minutes pa.s.sed while the a.s.sistants 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."

n.o.body said anything.

"Which of you," asked the professor of his a.s.sistants, "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 a.s.sistants, "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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 cla.s.s. 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.