I need not tell you again how I always have made my angers serviceable
to me. Five minutes later--though my will was well-nigh deracinated in
the process--I was its master again. It still struggled like a beast in
my hold, nor did I know whence the help could come without which it
would presently have me in its power again, but I still retained my
throttling hold on it. One last wild struggle the beast made; this was
when beyond the end of my screen-enclosed compartment, I saw them issue,
with an interval of half-a-minute between their coming out of the
library doorway. He was pink and triumphant; at her I forbore to look. A
minute later Mackie passed and gave an infinitesimally small jerk of his
head and a wink; but by that time I was holding my savage beast down
again.
Then a bell rang; there was a buzz and movement the candidates were
making ready again. Once more attendants read the caution, and then the
second paper was distributed. Mechanically I turned over the
gelatine-copied leaves that had been handed to me.
But I pushed them away again. A man who is engaged as I still was--a
luckless hunter who has missed his shot and is struggling desperately
body to body with his intended prey--has little time for anything but
the business in hand. True, I did draw the paper to me again and tick
off the questions that would be productive of the highest marks, but it
was long before I got any further. There would come between me and my
page Archie Merridew's pink and boastful face as I had seen him issue
from the library door.
I do not know how long I sat thus.
Draggingly at last I settled to work. But it was well-nigh hopeless. I
came to myself after a long interval to find that I was staring blankly
before me and muttering softly to myself. I had not written more than
half-a-page. Wearily I tried again.
The next external thing that I was fully awake to was that from the
typewriting-room there came the single "Ting" of the small clock on the
mantelpiece. I started. That single "Ting" always meant one of two
things--one o'clock or a half-hour. I had no watch.
I tried for a moment to persuade myself that the clock had just struck
half-past two.
Then I heard the attendant's voice: "You have one hour left."
"Good heavens!" I groaned.
I drew my paper to me again.
For a time I was not conscious of anything but the questions that must
be answered by half-past four. Indeed, so feverishly did I work that I
did not hear the attendants announce that we had only half-an-hour
longer. The next announcement I heard was that fifteen minutes only
remained.
Swiftly and flurriedly I turned over what I had written. I was just
half-way through the paper.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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