The chalk began to click again, and the pens and pencils scratched on to the accompaniment of murmurs and whispers and occasional grunts and snorts of incredulity. By a master-stroke of strategy Franklin Marmion had, in placing the three demonstrations of the long-supposed impossible before them in quick succession, kept the learned, but now utterly bewildered mathematicians so busy that they literally had not time to begin "the trouble" which Brenda was now actually dreading. Her father's face, bent down over his note-book, was getting more terrible to look upon every moment. The mere fact that he had not uttered a sound since the demonstrations had begun was sufficiently ominous, for it meant that he was puzzled—perhaps even beaten—and if that was so, she dreaded to even imagine what might happen. On the other hand, Nitocris felt her spirits rising as she looked round and saw the many learned heads bending and shaking over the note-books, each owner of them working at high pressure to win the honour of first finding the error which all firmly believed must exist, and which none of them could detect.
When he had finished his third demonstration, Franklin Marmion, without interrupting the hard thinking that was going on, took a chair by the side of the President, poured out a glass of water, and waited for results.
"Marmion, what is this white magic that you have been springing upon us?" whispered the presiding genius of the learned assembly, looking up from several sheets of paper which he had been rapidly covering with formulæ. "These things are impossible, you know—unless, of course, you have got a good deal farther than any of us. And yet the calculations are correct as far as I can follow them, and no one else seems to have hit on any error yet. I must confess, though, that these progressives of yours are too deep for me. I can follow them, and yet I can't. At a certain point they seem to elude me, and yet the calculations are rigidly right. It's almost enough to make one think you had done what Cayley once told us in this room some one might do some day."
"My Lord," replied Franklin Marmion, almost inaudibly, "I began my address by remarking, as you will remember, that perhaps, after all, the word 'impossible' might not be scientific."
Their eyes met, and the President, than whose there was no greater name in the higher realm of learning, saw something in Marmion's which sent a little chill through him, and that something told him that he was in the presence of a superior being.
"Dear me!" he murmured, looking down at his papers again, "the age of miracles is not past, after all—in fact, it is only just beginning."
"It is re-beginning, my Lord—for us," came the reply, in a voice which seemed to come from very far away.
The President did not reply. As a matter of fact, he had no reply ready, and he had something else to do. He rose, and said in a somewhat constrained voice:
"Ladies and gentlemen, Professor Marmion has shown us some very strange demonstrations which have certainly amply justified the title which he selected. A good many gentlemen, and some ladies as well, I am glad to see, have followed his calculations very carefully. I have done the same myself, but I am bound to confess that I have not been able to find any error. I think I shall be right in saying that no one will be more pleased than the learned and—er—gifted lecturer to hear that some one else has been able to do so."
Franklin Marmion bowed his assent, and a faint smile flickered across his clean-shaven lips. The next instant Professor van Huysman was on his legs, note-book in one hand and stylo in the other. All the fresh colour had gone out of his face; his eyes were burning, and his lips were twitching with uncontrollable excitement.