The Burnaby Experiments Page 3

  (b) £5,200 in 7 years at 3 per cent.

  (4) In how many years will a sum of money double itself if invested at 5 per cent compound interest?

  (5) At what rate per cent will £5,240 amount to £6,430 in 5 years?

  Marcus went through them carefully. He didn’t know how to do compound interest sums and he wondered why these had come to him. Had his mind made them up all on its own, or had he seen them somewhere and remembered them unconsciously? Perhaps Mr. Butcher had set them for one of the higher forms and left them on his blackboard after the period had ended. Marcus might have come in in the interval and read them over before his own class began. This seemed the most likely explanation, but another idea occurred to Marcus, and though it could hardly be called an explanation, it appealed to him very much. It would be funny, he thought, if these were questions which had never yet been set—the questions for Mr. Butcher’s next test, for example.

  Marcus didn’t believe this—not really—but there had been cases where people had had dreams of the future—like Joseph in the Bible, for instance. Yet he hoped this wasn’t one of them. For if this were Mr. Butcher’s next test paper there was a catastrophe in store for him—unless of course someone would show him how to do the questions in the meantime. By an effort he again reproduced the scene. He fixed his eyes on the blackboard and began to learn the questions off by heart. Eventually he was sure of them, and then a curious thing happened. A hand, covered with black hair, came up and with a duster wiped out the writing. Marcus recognized the hand. It belonged to Mr. Butcher. The first bell began to ring. The hand and the blackboard vanished. Marcus realized that he had been asleep and had dreamed his dream a second time.

  At the first sound of the bell Lewis, the new boy, had jumped up, and before it stopped he was out of the room on his way along the passage to the bathroom. Marcus, by virtue of a year’s seniority, could lie on for another five minutes. He snuggled down and luxuriated in the cosiness and warmth of the bed.

  The five minutes passed quickly. Marcus got up and shuffled into his bedroom slippers. He wasn’t a fat little boy any more. His pyjama trousers didn’t reach his ankles. His face had got longer. He looked enviously at Williamson and Ramsay, the two senior boys in the room. Neither of them showed any sign of being awake yet: but he knew they were awake. Williamson would get up at ten past seven and Ramsay, the head of the room, at fourteen minutes past. Everyone had to be in the bathroom by a quarter past. That was a school rule which only prefects could disobey.

  Marcus went out and shut the door behind him. There were two steps leading down to a dimly lit passage. Coming along this passage towards him was Caldwell. Caldwell was good at maths: perhaps he would be able to do the sums. Marcus stood quite still and waited for him: but he didn’t look at him. He stared beyond him, seeing once more the blackboard and the questions in Mr. Butcher’s writing.

  “Hello, Screwey,” Caldwell said. “What’s happened to you? Have you got stuck there?”

  “No,” Marcus responded slowly, “I was just wondering something.”

  They went to the bathroom without further conversation and it was not till they were both together in the Upper Shell classroom after breakfast that Marcus spoke to Caldwell again. “Caldwell,” he began in a low voice, “I know what Gory’s next paper’s going to be.” Gory was Mr. Butcher.

  Caldwell was sitting on a bench at the back of the room reading the Daily Mail. No one else was near him. He looked up unbelievingly. “How do you know?” he demanded.

  But Marcus wouldn’t tell him. “Just I do,” was all he would say.

  Caldwell went on reading for a little, but presently he looked up.

  “Did you see the answers too?” he inquired.

  “I didn’t really see the questions,” Marcus replied.

  “You mean somebody told you.”

  Marcus hesitated. “No, I kind of saw them. Look, I’ll tell them to you. I haven’t got them written down,” and he repeated word for word what had been written on the blackboard in his dream.

  Caldwell was puzzled. “Are you sure those are right?” he asked. “How did you get seeing them, and how do you remember them so well?”

  But now Marcus felt doubts. “Promise you won’t laugh,” he demanded.

  Caldwell was a conscientious boy. “I’ll promise not to laugh on purpose.”

  “And promise you won’t tell anyone else—not unless I give you leave.”

  Caldwell promised.

  Marcus looked round hastily. “I dreamed them,” he confessed in a whisper. “I dreamed them all in Gory’s writing—on a blackboard.”

  “But people often dream things,” Caldwell objected. “It doesn’t always mean that what you dream is going to happen. In fact it hardly ever does. Lots of people have dreams. Some people say dreams go by opposites. It’s funny all the same that they’re about compound interest.”

  “Why?” Marcus said. “I can’t do compound interest.”

  “It’s the next chapter in the book. I read it the other night in prep. I’d like to try those sums. I think I might do them.”

  Marcus was not good at arithmetic. “You mean you taught yourself?” he asked, “—just by reading the book?”

  Caldwell ignored this question. “Go and get your writing pad and write them down,” he told Marcus. “I want to have a go at them.”

  The following morning he produced his results and insisted on explaining to Marcus exactly how he had got them. In so doing he taught Marcus almost against his will how to work out problems in compound interest.

  “Now,” he said when he had finished, “let’s put the questions and answers in an envelope and stick it and see what happens. I feel we are going to get that paper after all.”

  CHAPTER IV

  TEN days later Mr. Butcher announced that he was going to teach the Upper Shell “a method of calculating compound interest by means of logarithms.”

  Marcus would have liked to look round at Caldwell and catch his eye, but he didn’t dare. Like every other boy in the junior school he was terrified of Mr. Butcher. When Mr. Butcher said, as he just had said, in that soft, slow voice of his, “Pay attention”, he expected absolute concentration on every word that he spoke, on every figure he put on the blackboard. No one, not even the dreamiest of boys, ever failed to pay attention to Mr. Butcher. Mr. Butcher caned a great many boys. Most frequently he caned his favourites. His favourites were always boys who were clever at mathematics. He preferred to cane them in white shorts. White shorts were thin and sometimes, with only four strokes of his thin whippy cane, he could draw blood.

  He had been wounded in 1916 and when he was in a hurry walked with a thump, thump, thump, which you could hear a long way off. If he was not in a hurry he could move about quite silently. When he was taking “prep”, or when his class was doing written work he had a habit of walking between the desks and peering over the shoulder of each boy in turn. On these occasions it was impossible to tell, without looking up, whereabouts in the room he was; and no one ever dared to look up.

  He had an ear for prose rhythms and delighted in reading aloud. He could read beautifully. On the few occasions when he took evening prayers he nearly always read the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah.

  It was said that he hated women.

  Outside school his manner towards the boys was friendly, even affectionate. He was popular, and the Upper Shell, whose form-master he was, was devoted to him. It was in the Upper Shell too that most of his favourites were to be found.

  For three weeks they all hammered away at compound interest. Then, one Friday, Mr. Butcher announced that he would give a test the following Monday morning. As a rule, such knowledge would have been quite enough to spoil Marcus’s week-end, but on this occasion he was too interested to be frightened.

&nb
sp; Monday was a dark, gloomy day, with the rain pouring down. Maths was the second period—just after morning prayers—and the Upper Shell awaited Mr. Butcher’s arrival with some apprehension. This did not mean that they were idle. Mr. Butcher always set a certain amount of work in advance. Every boy had started to work the instant the period began.

  They had been working for perhaps fifteen seconds when the door swung open and Mr. Butcher stumped up the room. When he was half-way to his desk the door slammed behind him. No one looked up: no one said, “Good morning, sir”. To do either was against Mr. Butcher’s rules.

  For perhaps a minute there was no sound from inside the classroom. Marcus heard the rain splashing outside. Someone ran past the windows. Then there was a sudden sharp crack from the hot pipes as if they were going to burst. From the left came a slight rustle. The senior boy in the class was distributing sheets of blank paper. Mr. Butcher picked up the blackboard which had been propped against the wall and put it on the easel. Marcus didn’t see this, but he heard the easel rattle and knew what was going on. Mr. Butcher always wrote out his questions beforehand, and left the blackboard against the wall with the blank side outwards.

  “Shut all your books, except your log tables.

  “Answer the questions on the board using the paper provided.

  “Write your name on every piece of paper you use.

  “You may begin.”

  Mr. Butcher spoke very slowly, leaving a long deliberate pause between each sentence.

  Marcus glanced at the board with a little thrill of anticipation. They were his questions he saw immediately, and in spite of his fear of Mr. Butcher, he couldn’t help smiling. It was wonderful. Suddenly he noticed that Mr. Butcher was looking at him and his smile vanished.

  At any rate, he thought, he had forgotten how Caldwell had done them. So whatever happened his conscience could be clear. If he did get the sums right it would be by his own efforts. He looked at the first question: it seemed very difficult. It would be awful if he wasn’t able to do it after all. But in an instant he knew how to do it. Slowly he began to put down the figures. It was the same with the next question, and the next. He worked steadily and confidently. He hardly noticed the time passing, and the ringing of the bell took him by surprise. He was sorry to have to stop, for he was in the middle of the second last question and in another two or three minutes could have finished it. He had never got on so well in a maths paper before.

  Outside the rain was over and he found Caldwell waiting for him. “I say,” Caldwell exclaimed, “that was funny, wasn’t it? I suppose you got them all right.”

  Marcus felt slightly uncomfortable. “I didn’t remember how to do them,” he said.

  “You mean, you couldn’t do them?”

  “I couldn’t at first,” Marcus replied. “I mean I had to think. I mean I didn’t remember how you’d done them before. I worked out how to do them myself.”

  “Bilge,” Caldwell retorted. “You had to think before you remembered how I’d done them—that was all.”

  Marcus didn’t like this idea. He hadn’t felt as if he were remembering when he was doing the paper. He had felt as if he were working everything out himself. He had been; he was sure. “It wasn’t cribbing,” he declared defensively.

  “Oh no,” Caldwell responded immediately, “it wasn’t cribbing.”

  They looked at each other uneasily.

  “All the same,” Caldwell began again, “it gave us a sort of advantage. I could have done them all of course—after all I did them before—but I couldn’t have done them so quickly. I did them all and I’m sure I got them all right.”

  “I did four,” Marcus said. “I don’t know if I got them right or not. I began the fifth, but I hadn’t time to finish it.”

  “I bet you got the third one wrong.”

  “Why? Did you have it wrong last time?”

  “Yes—oh goodness! There’ll be a row now all right.”

  “What?” Marcus demanded.

  Caldwell looked at him for a moment without replying. Then he smiled dismally. “I made the same mistake this time and corrected it.”

  “Maybe I got it right,” Marcus suggested hopefully.

  Caldwell laughed. “Maybe you did.”

  The bell started to ring once more. The break was over. The next period was Latin.

  They met again in the long interval at the end of the morning. During the last hour a breeze had got up and the ground seemed reasonably dry. They managed to get hold of a rugby ball and took it to one of the far-away pitches to practise place-kicking. They stood at opposite sides of a pair of goal posts and kicked the ball backwards and forwards. Every now and then however one would come towards the other and a little conference would take place.

  “Do you think Gory’ll notice?” Marcus inquired the first time.

  “Sure to. He always notices everything.”

  They separated.

  On the next occasion it was Caldwell who approached Marcus. “Bet you miss it,” he said.

  “Bet you I don’t.”

  Marcus placed the ball carefully. He walked back a few paces, turned round, took a short run and kicked. The ball rose nicely, and passed between the posts just scraping the cross-bar on the way. Marcus was pleased.

  “Fluke,” Caldwell shouted, but though it was now his turn he didn’t go after the ball.

  “It wasn’t a fluke,” Marcus retorted, “and the ball’s as heavy as lead.”

  Caldwell paid no attention. “I say, Screwey. What if we went to Gory and told him what had happened?”

  “Who’d tell him?”

  “We’d both go. You’d better do the telling as it was your dream.”

  Marcus thought it over. “I’d be funky,” he confessed.

  Caldwell began to go after the ball. “Maybe we’d better just see what happens,” he decided. “After all we can always tell him if he does ask us.”

  CHAPTER V

  SEVERAL days passed before Mr. Butcher made any announcement about the results of the test paper. Each morning the Upper Shell entered his classroom in a state of nervous expectation. Each morning he stumped up to his desk in exactly the same manner and sat staring straight in front of him for up to five minutes without uttering a word.

  But on the Friday morning he spoke as soon as he reached his desk. “Pay attention. I have now corrected the papers which you did for me on Monday last. The results are interesting, though not altogether satisfactory.” He paused and looked round slowly. There was dead silence. Even Wheezy Whitaker, who was asthmatic, seemed to have stopped breathing temporarily.

  “Some of you, I regret to say,” Mr. Butcher went on, “have failed to do yourselves justice. One or two have done very badly indeed. There are two exceptions. First comes Caldwell with ninety-five marks out of a hundred; and second we find our old friend Brownlow with sixty-three. Brownlow, I found your paper most interesting, so interesting that I would like to discuss it with you further. You will stay behind at the end of the period and we will talk it over together.”

  So he went on through the other boys in the class. Six were instructed to go to his study after dinner, four of them being ordered to change into white shorts for the interview. Only Marcus, however, was to stay behind at the end of the lesson.

  The rest of the period was spent in going over the questions and demonstrating how they should have been done. This did not give anyone a chance for dreaming or absent-mindedness. Mr. Butcher stood in front of the blackboard and made different boys tell him what to put down. Most of the questions were done by boys who had got those same questions wrong in the test. They were made to prove that they needn’t have got them wrong, that it was simply through carelessness that they had failed.

  There was one que
stion which only Caldwell and Marcus had got right. It was the fourth. When he came to this Mr. Butcher called Marcus to the front. “Do it,” he said, and handed Marcus the chalk.

  Marcus was scared. He wasn’t a bit sure that he could do it, with Mr. Butcher peering over his shoulder and everyone staring at him.

  Suddenly Mr. Butcher addressed the others. “Go on with the work I set you yesterday,” he told them. He turned to Marcus. “Well, Brownlow, I have never eaten a boy yet, though I have caned a good many. Let me see you work out this little problem.”

  Then Marcus was able to think. He remembered how he had done the question previously. He set to work and very soon had the right answer once again.

  “Thank you,” Mr. Butcher said when he had finished. “You may go to your place.”

  “Now,” he called to the rest of the class, “look at the board. This is how the fourth question should have been done. Yet only two boys succeeded in doing it—Caldwell and Brownlow. Macdonald, we will see if you can follow their example.” He rubbed out Marcus’s figures and began to go through the problem line by line.

  For once Marcus did not pay complete attention. He tried to look attentive, but all the time he was thinking about his coming interview with Mr. Butcher. What would Mr. Butcher ask him? Would he believe the truth if he heard it? But, Marcus reflected miserably, he couldn’t really tell the truth, not the whole truth, without implicating Caldwell also.

  At last the bell began to ring and a minute or so later Mr. Butcher let the class go. Marcus sat on at his desk. He listened to the others shuffling out. He even envied the six who were to be caned after dinner. Very likely he would be caned too—and he was afraid of being caned, but what frightened him even more was the thought of being cross-examined by Mr. Butcher. Could he conceal from Mr. Butcher that he had seen the questions over a month ago, and that Caldwell had worked them out then and shown him the results?