Tales of the Black Widowers Read online

  Henry interrupted, "More brandy for anyone, gentlemen?"

  Five delicate little glasses were raised in air. Avalon, who measured out his allowance with an eye dropper, kept his down.

  Drake said, "Well, then, Tom, you tell me. How did he do it? You're the code expert."

  "But there's no code involved. I don't know. Maybe he -he-managed to get someone else to do the test for him and handed in someone else's paper."

  "In someone else's handwriting?" said Drake scornfully. "Besides, I thought of it. We all thought of it. You don't suppose I was the only one who thought Lance cheated, do you? We all did. When that 96 went up on that bulletin board, after we got our breath back-and that took a while-we demanded to see his paper. He handed it over without trouble and we all went over it. It was a near-perfect job, but it was in his handwriting and with his turns of phrase. I wasn't impressed by the few errors he made. I thought at the time he threw them in just in order not to have a perfect paper."

  "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."

  There was a silence. Stacey looked thoughtful.

  Drake said, "Maybe he couldn't admit that he could be cheated from, if you know what I mean."

  Henry said, "You find excuses, sir. In any situation in which a professor asks questions and a student answers them, one always feels somehow that if there is dishonesty, it is always the student's dishonesty. Why? What if it were the professor who were dishonest?"

  Drake said, "What would he get out of that?"

  "What does one usually get? Money, I suspect, sir. The situation as you described it is that of a student who was quite well off financially, and a professor who had the kind of salary a professor had in those days before the government grants began to come. Suppose the student had offered a few thousand dollars-"

  "For what? To hand in a fake mark? We saw Lance's answer paper, and it was legitimate. To let Lance see the questions before having them mimeographed? It wouldn't have done Lance any good."

  "Look at it in reverse, sir. Suppose the student had offered those few thousand dollars to let him, the student, show the professor the questions."

  Again the invisible puppeteer worked and there was a chorus of "What?"s in various degrees of intonation.

  "Suppose, sir," Henry went on patiently, "that it was Mr. Lance Faron who wrote the questions, one by one in the course of the semester, polishing them as he went along. He polished them as the semester proceeded, working hard. As Mr. Avalon said, it is easier to get a few specific points straight than to learn the entire subject matter of a course. He included one question from the last week's lectures, inadvertently making you all sure the test had been created entirely in the last week. It also meant that he turned out a test that was quite different from St. George's usual variety. Previous tests in the course had not turned on students' difficulties. Nor did later ones, if I may judge from Dr. Stacey's surprise. Then at the end of the course, with the test paper completed, he would have mailed it to the professor."

  "Mailed it?" said Gonzalo.

  "I believe Dr. Drake said the young man visited the post office. He might have mailed it. Professor St. George would have received the questions with,, perhaps, part of the payment in reasonably small bills. He would then have written it over in his own handwriting, or typed it, and passed it on to his secretary. From then on all would be normal. And, of course, the professor would have had to back the student thereafter all the way."

  "Why not?" said Gonzalo enthusiastically. "Good God, it makes sense."

  Drake said slowly, "I've got to admit that's a possibility that never occurred to any of us. ... But, of course, we'll never know."

  Stacey broke in loudly. "I've hardly said a word all evening, though I was told I'd be grilled."

  "Sorry about that," said Trumbull. "This meathead, Drake, had a story to tell because you came from Berry."

  "Well, then, because I come from Berry, let me add something. Professor St. George died the year I came, as I said, and I didn't know him. But I know many people who did know him and I've heard many stories about him."

  "You mean he was known to be dishonest?" asked Drake.

  "No one said that. But he was known to be unscrupulous and I've heard some unsavory hints about how he maneuvered government grants into yielding him an income. When I heard your story about Lance, Jim, I must admit I didn't think St. George would be involved in quite that way. But now that Henry has taken the trouble to think the unthinkable from the mountain height of his own honesty-why, I believe he's right."

  Trumbull said, "Then that's that. Jim, after thirty years, you can forget the whole thing."

  "Except-except"-a half smile came over Drake's face and then he broke into a laugh-"I am dishonest because I can't help thinking that if Lance had the questions all along, the bastard might have passed on a hint or two to the rest of us."

  "After you had all laughed at him, sir?" asked Henry quietly, as he began to clear the table.

  Afterword

  This story first appeared in the July 1972 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, under the title "The Phony Ph.D."

  The reason for the title change was clear. EQMM runs a series of excellent stories by Lawrence Treat with titles such as "H as in Homicide," "C as in Cutthroat," and so on. Naturally, the magazine wanted to reserve such titles to Mr. Treat.

  Here in the book, however, I hope Mr. Treat won't mind if I go back to "Ph as in Phony," since that seems to me to be perfect. I promise I won't use that type of title again.

  This story, incidentally, betrayed me into a bit of vanity of a type unusual for me. (Certain other types are usual.) A Professor Porter of the University of Oregon wrote to point out certain infelicities in the story in connection with qualifying for research toward the doctorate. He signed it with a "Ph.D." after his signature to indicate that he was qualified to discuss the matter.

  And he was, for he was entirely right and I have adjusted the version of the story as presented here to meethis objections. However, in answering the letter, I was so anxious not to have him think I was myself unqualified that I placed a "Ph.D." after my signature, too. The initials were legitimate, for I obtained it in chemistry at Columbia in 1948, but I think it's the only time I used it in anything but official scholarly communications.

  3

  Truth to Tell

  When Roger Halsted made his appearance at the head of the stairs on the day of the monthly meeting of the Black Widowers, the only others yet present were Avalon and Rubin. They greeted him with jubilation.

  Emmanuel Rubin said, "Well, you've finally managed to stir yourself up to the point of meeting your old friends, have you?" He trotted over and held out his hands, his straggly beard stretching to match his broad grin. "Where've you been the last two meetings?"

  "Hello, Roger," said Geoffrey Avalon, smiling from his stiff height. "Pleased to see you."

  Halsted shucked his coat. "Damned cold outside. Henry, bring-"

  But Henry, the only waiter the Black Widowers ever had or ever would have, had the drink waiting. "I'm glad to see you again, sir."

  Halsted took it with a nod of thanks. "Twice running something came up. . . . Say, you know what I've decided to do?"

  "Give up mathematics and make an honest living?" asked Rubin.

  Halsted sighed. "Teaching math at a junior high school is about as honest a living as one can find. That's why it pays so little."

  "In that case," said Avalon, swirling his drink gently, "why is free-lance writina; so dishonest a racket?"

  "Free-lance writing is not dishonest," said free-lance Rubin, rising to the bait at once, "as long as you make no use of an agent-"

  "What have you decided to do, Roger?" interrupted Avalon blandly.

  "It's just this project I dreamed up," said Halsted. His forehead rose white and high, showing no signs of the hairline that had been there perhaps ten years ago, though the hair was still copious enough at the top and around the sides. "I'm going to rewrite the Iliad and the Odyssey in limericks, one for each of the forty-eight books they contain."

  Avalon nodded. "Any of it written?"

  "I've got the first book of the Iliad taken care of. It goes like this:

  "Agamemnon, the top-ranking Greek,

  To Achilles in anger did speak.

  They argued a lot,

  Then Achilles grew hot,

  And went stamping away i
n a pique."

  "Not bad," said Avalon. "In fact, quite good. It gets across the essence of the first book in full. Of course, the proper name of the hero of the Iliad is Achilleus, with the 'ch' sound as in-"

  "That would throw off the meter," said Halsted.

  "Besides," said Rubin, "everyone would think the extra ‘u’ was a mistake and that's all they'll see in the limerick."

  Mario Gonzalo came racing up the stairs. He was host for that session and he said, "Anyone else here?"

  "Nobody here but us old folks," said Avalon agreeably.

  "My guest is on his way up. Real interesting guy. Henry will like him because he never tells a lie."

  Henry lifted his eyebrows as he produced Mario's drink.

  "Don't tell me you're bringing George Washington!" said Halsted.

  "Roger! A pleasure to see you again. ... By the way, Jim Drake won't be here with us today. He sent back the card saying there was some family shindig he had to attend. The guest I'm bringing is a fellow named Sand- John Sand. I've known him on and off for years. Crazy guy. Horse-race buff who never tells a lie. I've heard him not telling lies. It's about the only virtue he has." And Gonzalo winked.

  Avalon nodded portentously. "Good for those who can. As one grows older, however-"

  "And I think it will be an interesting session," added Gonzalo hurriedly, visibly avoiding Avalon's non-libidinous confidences. "I was telling him about the club, and that for the last two times we had mysteries on our hands-"

  "Mysteries?" said Halsted with sudden interest.

  Gonzalo said, "You're a member of the club in good standing, so we can tell you. But get Henry to do it. He was a principal both times."

  "Henry?" Halsted looked over his shoulder in mild surprise. "Are they getting you involved in our idiocies?"