For the first time I heard how the fraud had been detected. When the negative had been “blown up”, the hole left by a drawing-pin which had held it up to dry had been expanded too. As soon as the result had been proved to be theoretically impossible, the Americans had enquired why the white blob at the top centre of the photograph seemed so singularly large. It was just as simple as that.
According to Howard, when at last he gave the Court of Seniors his explanation, that photograph had not been the first the old man had shown him. He had told me the same.
To credit his story, one had to assume that he was absolutely trusting. If it were feasible at all, it meant that he had been indoctrinated beforehand. However uncritical he was, he must have been ready to believe in the evidence, he must have taken for granted that the technique was “on”, before he put that final photograph into his paper.
“Even so,” said Martin, “he would have to be pretty wooden.”
“That’s as may be,” said Skeffington, who had until a few days before thought the whole account so preposterous as to be an insult. It was only out of mechanical duty, automatic conscientiousness, that when he heard that more of the old man’s manuscripts had reached the college, he went into the Bursary, borrowed the key of the Palairet box, and took them away.
“Had the Bursar told you they’d arrived?” asked Martin.
“The usual piece of formal bumf,” said Skeffington. As soon as any scientific document arrived from Palairet’s executors, Nightingale sent a reference number to Skeffington, so I gathered.
Without interest Skeffington had sat in his rooms, reading through the last notebooks.
“Have we got them all now?” asked Martin.
“So far as they know, we’ve got them all.”
Without interest, Skeffington had read on. “Old man’s stuff, most of it,” he said. Jottings about researches which Palairet would never do: occasional sets of data, corrections of earlier papers. But at last, on the Saturday afternoon before Christmas, something had turned up. “I don’t mind telling you, I didn’t take in what it meant. I was sitting in my rooms in the Fellows’ building, and I went out and walked in the garden, and I couldn’t see anything that made sense. I don’t mind telling you, I wasn’t very bright about it.”
He looked at Martin. “As a matter of fact, I’ve brought it along with me.”
“May I see it?” Even Martin’s politeness was wearing sharp.
Skeffington opened a briefcase which he had brought with him into the room, and produced a thick exercise book, such as I remembered using in the Oxford Senior class at school. Sticking out of it was a bookmarker. “Yes,” said Skeffington, “I’ve kept the place.” It sounded so matter-of-fact as to be absurd. Just as it did when he assured us that he had signed a receipt for the exercise book with the Bursar’s clerk.
“All right, Julian,” said Martin. Then Skeffington put his fingers, delicate, square-tipped, on the marker and said: “Here we are.”
I had gone across to glance at the book over Martin’s shoulder. My first impression was of an almost empty page. Then I read at the top, in a spiky, old-fashioned holograph, the date, July 20th, 1950. Underneath the date were several lines of handwriting, which began: Tried diffraction experiments using neutron source A and crystal grating B, encouraging results. Then a blank space in the middle of the page, with a rim of sticky paper, as though something had been removed. Underneath, at the bottom of the page, the handwriting went on: Above print gives strong support for view that diffraction of neutrons at higher speeds, corresponding to wavelengths shown above, follows precisely the same pattern as at low speeds (see CJBP, Proc. Roy. Soc. A…1942, 1947). Have always predicted this. Follow up.
“The photograph’s missing, is it?” said Martin.
“The point is,” Skeffington said loudly to me, “that what he says at the bottom can’t be true. This is where the Howard paper starts off.” He tapped the page. “It can’t be true.”
“If there ever was a print there,” Martin was reflecting, “either it couldn’t have shown anything at all—”
“Or else that had been blown up too.”
“Where is it?” said Martin.
Skeffington shrugged his shoulders.
“Something was there once, wasn’t it?”
“The point is,” he went on loudly again, “if Howard saw that print and that entry, then his story stands up as near as makes no matter. However you read that entry, the old man was fooling himself, if he wasn’t fooling anybody else. I don’t know what he was up to — he must have been crackers. But I do know that it gees with the Howard story, and I don’t believe that there’s any way out of it. Can you see one?”
“If the print were there,” said Martin in a soft, deliberate tone, “then I don’t think I could.”
“But still.”
Martin sat frowning. He asked me for a cigarette. After a time he said: “I can’t believe there isn’t a way out of it.”
“Do you think I want to believe it?” Skeffington’s tone, just as when he started to explain, was haughty and annoyed. “It isn’t exactly pleasant for me to stir up mud about the old man — and, if I had to stir up mud about someone connected with my family, I shouldn’t choose to do it on behalf of anyone like Howard. We never ought to have let in a chap like that. But the point is, we did let him in, and I believe he’s an innocent man—”
“Oh, yes, Julian,” Martin roused himself, and for once was speaking restlessly, sarcastically, and without civility. “We know that you believe that. It’s like G H Hardy’s old crack: If the Archbishop of Canterbury says he believes in God, that’s all in the way of business, but if he says he doesn’t, one can take it he means what he says. We don’t need persuading that you mean what you say. We know you believe it. But I don’t see that recognising your conviction gets us very far.”
At Martin’s tone, so untypically sharp, Skeffington showed no resentment. He just threw his head back and said: “It might get us a bit further when I’ve settled what to do next.”
Martin was composed and cautious again. He said: “I hope you won’t do anything until we’ve all thought it over.”
“I can’t wait long.”
“I’m not asking you to wait long.”
“I should like to see Nightingale tomorrow.”
“I hope you won’t do anything,” said Martin, “until we’ve thought it over.”
“I can’t put it off. That isn’t good enough—”
“No one’s asking you to put it off. Look, it’s Boxing Day tomorrow. I’d be grateful for another twenty-four hours after that. Then I’ll be ready to talk.”
Reluctantly, Skeffington acquiesced. He went on: “But there’s something I want your advice on now. Lewis, you’ve heard the state of the game. I want to know, shall I write to this chap Howard tonight? I mean, I don’t feel specially inclined to talk to him. But he hasn’t had a square deal, and I think he’s entitled to know that someone like me is going to make it his business to see that he gets one.”