The Paper Chase Read Online Free PDF Page A

little to one side as she did so.
    “Janine,” Pont said despairingly.
    “Perfectly well, thank you. We shall meet again, young men. I am always happy to greet disciples of the Master.” She turned and made her way slowly out of the room.
    Applegate and Montague left soon afterwards. “If I know anything about anything the old girl was potted,” Montague said.
    “Yes.”
    “Lovely head of hair that. Do you suppose any of it was her own?”
    “I don’t know.” Applegate felt suddenly depressed. Pupils and staff were housed in cubicles in the Gothic addition, pupils on the first floor, staff on the second. They reached Applegate’s cubicle. “I think I shall go to bed. Good night.”
    “Mind if I come in for a minute, old boy?” Montague was in before Applegate could say that he did not mind. He looked round at the iron bedstead, washbasin, utility wardrobe, deal chair and desk and skimpy rug, and shivered. “Just like mine. They don’t spoil us with luxury, do they?”
    “Plain living and high thinking,” Applegate said absently.
    “Cold enough in this spring weather, like an ice-box in the winter. But perhaps we shan’t be here in the winter, eh?” Montague sat down on the bed.
    “Why not?”
    “You’ve got a job to do here, and so have I. That’s true, isn’t it? And when we’ve done it we go.”
    Applegate sat on the chair. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    “Don’t you? I suppose you’ll tell me next that you’re schoolmastering for the love of it. Let’s face it, chum, let’s have a little frankness. You and I only got jobs here because staff won’t stay with Pont, and he’ll take anybody. That’s why we got jobs, but why did we take them, eh? Do I look the type to spend my life in a crackpot school?”
    “No,” Applegate said truthfully. Montague seemed to him like a Warren Street car salesman masquerading as a rugger tough.
    “I’m being frank with you, but are you being frank with me? Hand on heart, old boy, scout’s honour, are you?”
    Applegate began to feel annoyed. “I don’t see any reason why I should be frank with you, as you put it. What business is it of yours why I’m here?”
    “Because your business is my business.”
    “Is it? I very much doubt that.”
    “Or put it this way, we’re both here on Johnny’s business, and we ought to join forces. Quarrelling won’t do any good. Let’s be frank. You know something I don’t know, or you wouldn’t be here. But two heads are better than one, and four hands are better than two. We’re sensible men. We can come to an arrangement. There’s enough in this for all of us.”
    Applegate began to warm to the scene, which seemed intrinsically more mystifying than the lurid adventures of his dons. “You’re working on your own in this?”
    “You know very well I’m not.”
    “Supposing I don’t want to come to an arrangement.”
    “That will be just too bad. But you will. Think it over, old boy. Co-operation’s a great thing.” Montague got up.
    “Not between us, I think.” Applegate added politely: “I know you won’t believe me, but the fact is I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Chapter Seven
    Applegate stepped on to the balcony outside his window, and noted idly that it ran right along this part of the house with no intervening railing, so that all the rooms opened on to it. Out here were odd night noises. A cow mooed somewhere nearby. The wind had dropped, but it was rawly cold. From his room a yellow shaft struck out into darkness. Farther along the balcony there was the spurt of a match. Then Hedda Pont’s voice said by his side: “Have you got a light? The match blew out.”
    “In my room.” She followed him in and stood smiling by the window while he looked for the matches. Then she took his wrist and held it steady, still smiling, while he lighted the cigarette.
    “Come along now,” Applegate said patiently. “Be your age. You’re acting as badly as a