"Theodore Jennings' parents live right near the college, don't they? You know, the chap who flunked out last semester." "I believe they do. What's the matter?" "Better get them over here quick. And have them bring his doctor. He
just tried to shoot me." There was a pause. Norman visualized Gunnison's startled reaction! Then, "Right away!" Norman put down the phone. Jennings continued to sob agonizingly. Norman looked at him with disgust. *       *       *       *       *

An hour later Gunnison sat down in the same chair, and let off a sigh
of relief. "I'm sure glad they're gone," he said. "It was awfully good of you,
Norman, not to insist on the police. Things like that give a college a
bad name." Norman smiled wearily. "Almost anything gives a college a bad name. But
that kid was obviously crazy as a loon." They lit up and smoked for a while in silence. Then Gunnison looked at
his watch. "I'll have to hustle. It's almost seven, and we're due at your place at
eight." But he lingered, ambling over to the window to inspect the bullet hole. "I wonder if you'd mind not mentioning this to Tansy?" Norman asked. "I
don't want to worry her." Gunnison nodded. "Good thing if we kept it to ourselves." Then he
pointed out the window. "That's one of my wife's pets," he remarked in
a jocular tone. Norman saw that his finger was trained on the cement dragon, now coldly
revealed by the upward glare from the street lights. "I mean," Gunnison went on, "she must have a dozen photographs of it. Hempnell's her specialty. I believe she's got a photograph of every
architectural oddity on campus. That one's her favorite." He chuckled. "Usually it's the husband who keeps ducking down into the darkroom, but
not in our family. And me a chemist, at that." Norman's taut mind had unaccountably jumped to the thought of a
bull-roarer. Abruptly he realized the analogy between the recording of
a bull-roarer and the photograph of a dragon. He clamped a lid on the fantastic questions he wanted to ask Gunnison. "Come on!" he said. "We'd better get along!" Gunnison started a little at the harshness of his voice. "Can you drop me off?" asked Norman, more quietly. "My car's at home." "Sure thing," said Gunnison. After he had switched out the light, Norman paused for a moment,
staring back at the window. The words came back. "_Eppur si muove._"




                                  IV. They had hardly cleared away the remains of a hasty supper, when there
came the first clang from the front-door chimes. To Norman's relief,
Tansy had accepted without questioning his rather clumsy explanation of
why he had gotten home so late. There was something puzzling, though,
about her serenity these last two days. She was usually much sharper,
and more curious. But of course he had been careful to hide disturbing
events from her, and he ought only to be glad her nerves were in such
good shape. "Dearest! It's been ages since we've seen you!" Mrs. Carr embraced
Tansy in a matronly fashion. "How are you? How are you?" The question
sounded peculiarly eager and incisive. Norman put it down to typical
Hempnell gush. "Oh, dear, I'm afraid I've got a cinder in my eye," Mrs.
Carr continued. "The wind's getting quite fierce." "Gusty," said Professor Carr of the mathematics department, showing
obvious but harmless delight at finding the right word. He was a little
man with red cheeks and a white Vandyke, as innocent and absent-minded
as college professors are supposed to be, who gave the impression
of residing permanently in a special paradise of transcendental and
transfinite numbers. "It seems to have gone away now," said Mrs. Carr, waving aside Tansy's
handkerchief and experimentally blinking her eyes, which looked
unpleasantly naked and birdlike until she replaced her thick glasses. "Oh, that must be the others," she added, as the chimes sounded. "Isn't
it marvelous that everyone at Hempnell is so punctual?" As Norman started for the front door he imagined for one crazy moment
that someone must be whirling a bull-roarer outside, until he realized
it could only be the rising wind living up to Professor Carr's
description of it. He was confronted by Evelyn Sawtelle's angular form, wind whipping
her black coat against her legs. Her equally angular face, with its
shoe-button eyes, was thrust toward his own. "Let us in, or it'll blow us in," she said. Like most of her attempts
at coy or facetious humor, it did not come off, perhaps because she
made it sound so stupidly grim. She entered, with Hervey in tow, and made for Tansy. "My dear, how are you? Whatever have you been doing with yourself?" Again he was struck by the eager and meaningful tone of the question. For a moment he wondered whether the women had somehow gotten an
inkling of Tansy's eccentricity, and the recent crisis. But Mrs.
Sawtelle was so voice-conscious that she was always emphasizing things
the wrong way. *       *       *       *       *

There was a noisy flurry of greetings. Totem made a squeaky noise and
darted out of the way of the crowd of human beings. Mrs. Carr's silvery
voice rose above the rest. "Oh, Professor Sawtelle, I want to tell you how _much_
we all appreciated your talk on city planning. It was truly
_significant_!" Sawtelle writhed, grinning in a flustered way. Norman thought: "So now _he's_ the favorite for the chairmanship." Professor Carr had made a beeline for the bridge tables, and was
wistfully fingering the cards. "I've been studying the mathematics of the shuffle," he began with a
bright-eyed air, as soon as Norman drifted into range. "The shuffle
is supposed to make it a matter of chance what hands are dealt. But
that is not true at all." He broke open a new pack of cards, and
spread the deck. "The manufacturers arrange these by suits--thirteen
spades, thirteen hearts, and so on. Now suppose I make a perfect
shuffle--divide the pack into equal parts and interleaf the cards one
by one." He tried to demonstrate, but the cards got away from him. "It's really not as hard as it looks," he continued amiably. "Some
players can do it every time, quick as a wink. But that's not the
point. Suppose I make two perfect shuffles with a new pack. Then,
no matter how the cards are cut, each player will get thirteen of a
suit--an event that, if you went purely by the laws of chance would
only happen once in about one hundred and fifty-eight billion times as
regards a _single_ hand, let alone all four." Norman nodded, and Carr smiled delightedly. "That's only one example. What is loosely termed chance is really the
resultant of several perfectly definite factors--chiefly the play of
the cards on each hand, and the shuffle habits of the players." He
made it sound as important as the Theory of Relativity. "Some evenings
the hands are very ordinary. Other evenings they keep getting wilder
and wilder--long suits, voids, and so on. Sometimes the high cards
persistently run north and south. Other times, east and west. Luck? Chance? Not at all!