"Dr. Boomer," he announced in a tone of solemnity suited to the occasion.
Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands in silence and sat down.
"You have heard our sad news, I suppose?" he said. He used the word "our" as between the university president and his honorary treasurer.
"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Furlong.
"Most distressing," said the president. "Dr. McTeague, it seems, had just entered his ten o'clock class (the hour was about ten-twenty) and was about to open his lecture, when one of his students rose in his seat and asked a question. It is a practice," continued Dr. Boomer, "which, I need hardly say, we do not encourage; the young man, I believe, was a newcomer in the philosophy class. At any rate, he asked Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly it appears; how he could reconcile his theory of transcendental immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral determinism. Dr. McTeague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class assert, painfully open. The student repeated the question, and poor McTeague fell forward over his desk, paralysed."
"Is he dead?" gasped Mr. Furlong.
"No," said the president. "But we expect his death at any moment. Dr. Slyder, I may say, is with him now and is doing all he can."
"In any case, I suppose, he could hardly recover enough to continue his college duties," said the young rector.
"Out of the question," said the president. "I should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is incompatible with professorial work."
"Then, I suppose," said Mr. Furlong senior, "we shall have to think of the question of a successor."