Hannant stared at the boy's expressionless, almost vacant face. He stared at the diagram in the book. His mind whirled and it seemed that a cold wind blew on his spine, causing him to shiver. What the hell — ? For Christ's sake, he was the maths teacher, wasn't he? But there was no fighting Keogh's logic. The question hadn't needed formulae, hadn't needed maths at all! It was mental arithmetic — to someone who understood circles. To someone who could see past the trees to the wood. And of course his answer was, must be, right! If Hannant threw his formulae away, he would have been able to do it too — with a little thought. But Keogh's application had been instantaneous. His scorn had been real!
And now Hannant knew that if he didn't play this right, he'd probably lose this boy right here and now. He also knew that if that happened, he wasn't the only one who would lose. There was a mind in there, and it had… hell, potential! Whatever Hannant's confusion, h e forced a grin, said: 'Very good! Except I wasn't just checking out your IQ, Harry Keogh. It was to see whether or not you knew your formulae. But now you've really puzzled me. Seeing as how you're so smart, how come your classwork has always been so lousy?'
Harry stood up. His movements were stiff, automatic almost. 'Can I go now, sir?'
Hannant stood up too, shrugged and stepped aside. 'Your free time's your own,' he said. 'But when you get five minutes, you might still bone up on your formulae.'
Harry walked off, his back straight, movements stiff. A few paces away he turned and looked back. A beam of sunlight striking through the trees caught his glasses, turning his eyes to stars. 'Formulae?' he said in that new, strange voice. 'I could give you formulae you haven't even dreamed of.'
And as the cold chill struck at his spine once more, Hannant somehow knew for a certainty that Keogh wasn't just bragging.
Then… the maths master wanted to shout at the boy, run at him, even strike him. But his feet seemed rooted to the spot. All of the energy had gone out of him. He'd lost this round — completely. Trembling, he sat down again on the slab, leaning back weakly against the headstone as Harry Keogh walked away. He leaned there for a moment — then jerked forward, started upright, threw himself away from the grave. He tripped and sprawled on the close-cropped grass. Keogh was disappearing, lost among the markers.
The evening was warm — no, it was damned hot, even now — but George Hannant felt cold as death. It was in the air, in his heart, freezing him. Here, in this place, of all places. And it came to him now just exactly where and when he had heard someone speak like Harry Keogh before, with his authority, his precision and logic. Thirty long years ago, almost, when Hannant had been little more than a lad himself. And the man had been more than his peer. He had been his hero, almost his god.
Still trembling he got to his feet, picked up Keogh's books and put them in his briefcase, then backed carefully away from the grave.
Cut into the headstone, lichened over in parts, the legend was simple and George knew it by heart: JAMES GORDON HANNANT
13 June 1875 — 11 Sept. 1944
Master at Harden Boys' School
for Thirty Years, Headmaster
for Ten, now he Numbers
among the Hosts
of Heaven.
The epitaph had been the Old Man's idea of a joke. His principal subject, like that of his son after him, had been maths. But he had been far better at it than George would ever be.
Chapter Three
There was one short maths lesson first thing on the following morning, but before then George Hannant had done some soul-searching, a little rationalising; so that by the time all the kids were working away and the room was quiet bar the scratching of pens and rustling of papers, he was satisfied that he had the right answer to what had seemed the night before an incident or occurrence of some moment. Keogh was obviously one of those special people who could get right down to the roots of things, a thinker as opposed to a doer. And a thinker whose thoughts, while they invariably ran contrary to the general stream, nevertheless ran true.
If you could get him interested in a subject deeply enough to make him want to do something with it, then he'd doubtless do something quite extraordinary. Oh, he would still make errors in simple addition and subtraction — two plus two could still on occasion come out five — but solutions which were invisible to others would be instantly obvious to him. That was why Hannant had seen in the lad a likeness to his own father; James G. Hannant, too, had had that same sort of intuitive knack, had been a natural mathematician. And he too had had little time for formulae.
And equally obvious to Hannant was the fact that he had indeed fanned some spark into flame in Keogh's brain, for it was his pleasure to note that the boy seemed to be working quite hard — or at least he had been, for the first fifteen minutes or so of the period. After that — well, of course, he was daydreaming again. But when Hannant crept up behind him — lo and behold! — the questions he'd set were all answered, and correctly, however insubstantial the working. It would be interesting later in the week, when they got onto basic trigonometry, to see what Keogh would do with that. Now that the circle held little of mystery for him, perhaps he'd take an interest in the triangle.
But there was still something which puzzled George Hannant, and for the answer to that he must now go to Jamieson, the headmaster. Leaving the boys to work alone for a few minutes — with the customary warning about their behaviour in his absence — he went to the head's study.
'Harry Keogh?' Howard Jamieson seemed a little taken aback. 'How did he do in the Technical College examin ation?' He took out a slim file from one of his desk drawers, flipped through it, looked up. 'I'm afraid Keogh didn't take the examination,' he said. 'Apparently he was down with hay fever or some such. Yes, here it is: hay fever, three weeks ago; he had two days off school. Unfortunately the exams took place in Hartlepool on the second day of Keogh's absence. But why do you ask, George? Do you think he'd have stood a chance?'
'I think he'd have sailed it,' Hannant answered, frank to the point of being blunt.
Jamieson seemed surprised. 'Bit late in the day, isn't it'
'To worry about it? I suppose it is.'
'No, I meant this interest in Harry Keogh. I didn't know you much approved of him. Wait — ' He took out another file, a thicker one, this time from a cabinet. 'Last year's reports,' he said, checking through the file. And this time he wasn't at all surprised. 'Thought so. According to this none of your colleagues here give Keogh a cat in hell's chance at anything — and that includes you, George!'
'Yes,' Hannant's neck reddened a little, 'but that was last year. Also, the Technical College exams are aimed more at basic intelligence than academic knowledge. If you were to give our Harry Keogh an IQ test I think you'd be in for a surprise. Where maths is concerned, anyway. It's all instinct, all intuition — but it's there, sure enough.'
Jamieson nodded. 'Well, it's something when a master takes more than a grudging interest in a Harden boy,' he said. 'And that's not to put anyone down, not even the kids themselves — but they do have a hell of a handicap here, in background and environment, I mean. Do you know how many of our boys got through that exam, by the way? Three! Three out of that age group — which is to say one in sixty-five!'