Tales of the Black Widowers - By Isaac Asimov Page 0,13
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."