And then Henry the waiter coughed. “If I may offer a suggestion, gentlemen?”
“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 Doctor Drake is annoyed only because the cheating was clever enough to escape detection, not because it existed, and perhaps all of you agree with 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 therefore 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 the one glaring improbability in Doctor 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, who never has anyone get above the 80’s on the final examination. And then a student who is known to be thoroughly mediocre — and I gather that everyone in the department, both faculty and students, knew of that mediocrity — gets a 96 and the professor accepts that and even backs him before the qualifying committee. Surely he would have been the first one to suspect dishonesty. And most indignantly, too.”
Drake said, “Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to admit that he could be cheated on.”
Henry said, “You keep finding excuses, sir. In any situation in which a professor asks questions and a student answers them, one always feels that if there is dishonesty, it is always the student’s dishonesty. Why? What if it were the professor who was 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 very well off financially and a professor who had the kind of salary a professor used to get in those days before government grants. 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 absolutely legitimate. To let Lance see the questions before having them mimeographed? It wouldn’t have done Lance any good — he wouldn’t have had the time to memorize the answers.”
“Look at it in reverse, sir. Suppose the student offered a few thousand dollars to let him, the student, give the professor the questions.”
“Suppose, sir,” Henry went on patiently, “that it was Mr. Lance Faron who made up the questions, one by one, in the course of the semester. He picked on interesting errors that came up in class, never talking during the discussions so that he could listen more closely. He polished the questions as the semester proceeded. As Mr. Avalon said, it is easier to get a few specific points straight than to learn the entire subject matter. Then he deliberately and cleverly included one question from the last week’s lectures, making you all sure the test had been entirely created in that last week. It also meant he turned out a test quite different from St. George’s usual tests. Previous tests in the course had not turned on students’ errors. Nor did later ones, if I may judge from Doctor Stacey’s surprise. Then at the end of the course, with the test paper completed, he simply mailed it to the professor.”
“Mailed it?” said Gonzalo.
“Doctor Drake said the young man visited the post office. So he could have mailed it. Professor St. George would have received the questions with, perhaps, part of the payment in small bills. He would then have written it over in his own handwriting, or typing, 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. “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 to the story. Professor St. George died the year I came to Berry, as I said, and I didn’t really know him. But I know many people who did know him and I’ve heard many things 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 a personal 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 creep might have passed on a hint or two to the rest of us.”
“After you had all laughed at him, sir?” asked Henry quietly, and he began to clear the table.
The Thing on the Beach
by Florence V. Mayberry{© 1972 by Florence V. Mayberry.}
Here is Florence V. Mayberry, again doing her particular thing. But this time she gives it something new, something different — what might be called “a piecemeal technique.” Piecemeal in more ways than one... Is the tiny community of Sea Mount a microcosmic mirror of the world? (Aren’t we all?)
Mrs. Cecilia Pigazzi’s black button eyes twinkled with pleasure when she hopped out of bed, pulled up the blinds of her window, and saw bright sunshine. No fog this morning! Oh, lolly-da, a good day to watch what went on in Sea Mount. Must hurry. Else she might be in her nightgown when Angelo the fish man drove round in his truck and all the neighbors would be at their windows spying on everything a widow did.
She hurried into the bathroom, splashed her face, rinsed her mouth, and carefully slipped in her dentures, moving her lower jaw back and forth to adjust them. Tony used to laugh at her, started calling her an old woman when she was only 30 and her teeth went bad. Ah well, poor old Tony, God rest his soul!
Racing against the sound of Angelo’s fish-truck horn, she pulled a pair of stretch bluejeans over her lush round bottom, zipped them, and slipped her arms into a plaid flannel shirt. The shirt had belonged to Tony, her husband, a large man whose demise before he reached 50 was surely encouraged by gargantuan helpings of ravioli, spaghetti, chili, deviled crab, chili and more chili; he had been crazy for spicy foods, that man.
Hastily she measured the coffee and plugged in the percolator. Then, her lips swelling and fluttering almost as in passion, she went to the bay window of her living room where, in the place of honor, stood her beloved spyglass. A beautiful instrument, it had been auctioned off by an old sea captain’s estate. Cost her a pretty penny, too, with every family in Sea Mount wild to get their hands on it. But a treasure. Not another telescope in the valley to match it. Now, with a sigh of satisfaction, she put her eye to its sight and swung it in slow reconnoiter over the valley.