A door upstairs opened and closed. Ridley appeared, visibly shaken, took out a handkerchief and wiped his face, then disappeared again. He had the air of a condemned man. It was silly to let this atmosphere get you, but George himself felt wildly nervous now. If Ridley failed, Cavan would be upset—especially if Goldberg had had his say. Rumor had it that he and Cavan were archenemies, but one never knew; the affairs of the faculty reached the students rather as the peccadilloes and fallings out of Greek gods, enlarged by gossip and wishful thinking, turning quickly into myth. At any rate, Goldberg with his icy passion for perfection would be a formidable examiner. They must be arguing about poor Ridley now, no easy decision evidently. George looked at his watch. Five minutes. You could damn a man to hell in five minutes, or you might just manage to tip the balance of judgment in his favor.

“Mr. Ridley, will you come in here, please?” It was Edward Cavan’s voice, dry, without emotion. No way of reading what it meant.

Why in heck am I putting myself through this? George asked himself. Ridley came down the stairs, his hands shaking as he took out a crumpled cigarette pack, dug around and found it empty.

“Here,” George offered his. “How was it?” he asked in a toneless voice. The poor guy was obviously in a state of shock. But you never knew. He himself had been near to tears when it was safely over.

“Lousy,” Ridley’s face grimaced into an attempt at a smile. “I lost my head.”

“Bad luck.” George’s instinct was to turn away, not to have to witness the shame or the bravado of a man facing failure, and, seeing Cavan at the top of the stairs, he slipped into the big empty office off the hall. It was no time to make a social engagement.

“What happened to you, Ridley?” he could hear Cavan asking with clinical concern. “You were doing all right, and then suddenly you went right off the track, spectacularly off the track.”

“I—I don’t know, sir,” Ridley’s voice cracked.

“This sort of thing happens all the time,” Cavan sounded thoughtful as if he were settling down to a philosophical question, treating the miserable Ridley as a peer. “The trouble is that we haven’t found a better way to find out how a man moves around in a lot of material. Maybe we ask the wrong questions. You got thrown off. I’m sorry.” There was a slight pause, in which perhaps Cavan was shaking Ridley’s hand. “But don’t go into a tailspin—you’ll do better on a second try.”

“Thank you, sir.”

As Goldberg and Beatley came down the stairs, Cavan turned into the room where George Hastings stood twiddling his thumbs. The front door slammed on Ridley’s exit.

“Hello, Hastings, what are you doing here?”