Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 1. Whole No. 344, July 1972

“In return we were willing to help him. Gus Blue tutored him in physical organic — for a fee. And I must admit Lance wasn’t always scrupulous. There was one preparation he was supposed to have synthesized in lab and we all knew he bought a sample at a chemical supply house and turned it in as his own. At least, we were pretty sure he did, but it didn’t bother us.”

Rubin said, “Why not? That was dishonest, wasn’t it?”

“Because it didn’t do him any good,” said Drake, in annoyance. “It just meant another C. But the reason I bring it up is that we all knew he was not only capable of cheating but actually did cheat.”

“You mean the rest of you wouldn’t have?” interposed Stacey. There was a touch of cynicism in his voice.

Drake lifted his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t guarantee any of us if we had really been pushed. The point is, we weren’t. We all had a fighting chance to get through without the risk of cheating, so none of us did. Certainly, I didn’t.

“But then there came a time when Lance made up his mind to go on for his Ph.D. It was at a smoker. The war jobs were just beginning to open up and there were a few recruiters on campus. It meant complete security from the draft, but getting our Ph.D.’s meant a lot to us and there was always some question as to whether we’d come back to school once we got away from class for any reason.

“Someone — not I — said he wished he were in Lance’s shoes. Lance had no choice to make. We were sure he would take a job.

“ ‘I don’t know,’ Lance said, maybe just to be contrary. ‘I think I’ll stay right here and go on for the Ph.D.’

“He may have been joking. Anyway, we all thought he was, and we laughed. But we were all a little high at the smoker and it became one of those laughs without reason, you know? If one of us started to die down, he would catch someone else’s eyes and start off again. Really it wasn’t that funny. In fact, it wasn’t funny at all. But we laughed till we were half suffocated. And Lance turned red, and then white.

“I remember I tried to say, ‘Lance, we’re not laughing at you. ’ But I just couldn’t. I was choking and sputtering. So Lance walked out on us.

“After that he did go on for his Ph.D. He wouldn’t talk about it but he signed all the necessary forms and that seemed to satisfy him. After a while the situation became as before. He was friendly again.

“I said to him, ‘Listen, Lance, you’ll be disappointed. You can’t get faculty approval for doctoral research with a straight-C record. You just can’t.’

“He said, ‘Why not? I’ve talked to the committee. I told them I’d take chemical kinetics under Professor St. George, and that I’d do better than C in that. I said I’d show them what I could do.’

“That made less than no sense to me. That was much funnier than the remark we had all laughed at. You’d have to know St. George. You ought to know what I mean, Arnold.”

Stacey nodded. “He gave a stiff course in kinetics. One or two of the brightest would make a B; otherwise, all C’s and F’s.”

Drake nodded. “There are some professors who take pride in that sort of thing. It’s a kind of professorial version of Captain Bligh. But St. George was a good chemist, probably the best Berry ever had. He was the only member of the faculty to achieve national prominence after the war. If Lance could take his course and get a high mark, that was bound to be impressive. Even with C’s in everything else, the argument would be: ‘Well, he hasn’t worked much because he hasn’t had to, but when he finally decided to buckle down he showed fire-cracking ability.’

“He and I took chemical kinetics together and I was running and sweating every day of that course. But Lance sat in the seat next to me and never stopped smiling. He took notes casually, and sometimes he even studied them.

“Well, it went down to the wire like that. St. George didn’t give quizzes. He let everything hang on the discussion periods and on the final examination, which lasted three hours — a full three hours.

“In the final week of the course there were no lectures and the students had their last chance to pull themselves together before exams week. Lance was still smiling. His work in the other courses had been usual Lance-quality, but that didn’t seem to bother him. We would say, ‘How are you doing in kinetics, Lance?’ and he would say, ‘No sweat,’ and sound cheerful , damn it.

“Then came the day of the final exam—” Drake paused, and his lips tightened.

“Well?” said Trumbull.

Drake said, his voice a little lower, “Lance Faron passed. He did more than pass. He got a 96. No one had ever gotten over 90 in one of St. George’s finals and I doubt anyone ever has since.”

“I never heard of anyone getting in the 90’s in recent times,” said Stacey.

“What did you get?” asked Gonzalo.

“I got 82,” said Drake. “And except for Lance’s mark it was the best in the class.”

“What happened to the fellow?” asked Avalon.

“He went on for his Ph.D., of course. The faculty qualified him without hesitation and the story was that St. George himself went to bat for him.

“I left after that,” Drake continued. “I worked on isotope separation during the war and eventually shifted to Wisconsin for my doctoral research. But I would hear about Lance sometimes from old friends. The last I heard he was in Maryland somewhere, running a private lab of his own. About ten years ago I remember looking up his name in Chemical Abstracts and finding the record of a few papers he had turned out. Run-of-the-mill stuff. Typical Lance.”

“He’s still independently wealthy?” asked Trumbull.

“I suppose so.”

Trumbull leaned back. “If that’s your story, Jim, then what the hell is biting you?”

Drake looked about the table, first at one and then at another. Then he brought his fist down so that the coffee cups jumped and clattered. “Because he cheated, damn his hide! And as long as he got his Ph.D. by fraud, mine is cheapened by that much — and yours, too,” he said to Stacey.

Stacey murmured, “Phony doctor.”

“What?” said Drake.

“Nothing,” said Stacey, “I was just thinking of a colleague of mine who did a stint at a medical school where the students regarded the M.D. as the only legitimate doctor’s degree in the universe. To them a Ph.D. stood for ‘phony doctor.’ ”

Drake snorted.

“Actually,” began Rubin argumentatively, “if you—”

Avalon cut in from his impressive height. “Well, see here, Jim, if he cheated, how did he get his Ph.D.?”

“Because there was never anything to prove he cheated.”

“Did it ever occur to you,” said Gonzalo, “that maybe he didn’t cheat? Maybe it was really true that when he buckled down he had — what did you call it? — fire-cracking ability.”

“No,” said Drake, with another coffee-cup-rattling fist on the table. “That’s impossible. He never showed that kind of ability before and he never showed it afterward. Besides, he had that confidence all through the course. He had the confidence that could only mean he had worked out a foolproof plan to get his A.”

Trumbull said, shrugging, “All right, say he did. He got his Ph.D. but he didn’t do so well later on. From what you say he’s just off in a comer somewhere, poking along. You know damn well, Jim, that lots of guys achieve high professional rank, even without cheating, who have all their brains in their elbows. So what? Why get mad at one particular guy who got away with it? You know why I think you’re off your rocker on the subject, Jim? What gripes you is that you don’t know how he did it. If you could figure it out you’d forget the whole thing.”