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!'

'Four, if Harry Keogh had taken it.'

'Oh?' Jamieson wasn't convinced. But he was impressed, at least. 'All right,' he said, 'let's assume you're right about the maths side of it. And in fact you are right that the test is a measure of basic intelligence rather than knowledge assimilated parrot-fashion. So what about the other subjects? According to these reports Keogh is a habitual failure in just about any subject you care to mention! Bottom of his class in many of them.'

Hannant sighed, nodded, said: 'Look, I'm sorry I've wasted your time on this one. Anyway, the question hardly arises since he didn't sit the exam in the first place. It's just that I feel it's a shame, that's all. I think the kid has potential.'

'Tell you what,' said Jamieson, coming round his desk and moving towards the door with his hand on Hannant's shoulder. 'Send him to see me during the afternoon. I'll have a word with him, see what I think. No, wait - maybe I can be a little more constructive than that. Instinctive or intuitive mathematician, is he? Very well - '

He returned to his desk, took a pen and quickly scribbled something on a blank sheet of A4. There you go,' he said. 'See what he makes of that. Let him work at it through the lunch break. If he comes up with an answer, then I'll see him and we'll see how we go from there.'

Hannant took the sheet of A4 and went out into the corridor, closing the door behind him. He looked at what the head had written, shook his head in disappointment. He folded the sheet and pocketed it, then took it out again, opened it and stared at it. On the other hand... maybe it was exactly the sort of thing Keogh could handle. Hannant was sure that he could do it - with a bit of thought and a spot of trial and error - but if Keogh could work it out, then they'd be on to something. His case for the boy would be proven. In the event Keogh failed, then Hannant would simply stop worrying about him. There were other kids who were equally deserving of his attention, he was sure...

At 1:30 p.m. sharp Hannant knocked on Jamieson's door, was through it on the instant the head called him in. Jamieson himself was just back from lunch, hardly settled down. He stood up as Hannant crossed the floor of his study, shook out the folds of the A4 and handed it to him.

'I did as you suggested,' Hannant told the head, breath­lessly. 'This is Keogh's solution.'

The headmaster quickly scanned the scribbled text of his original problem:

Magic Square: A square is divided into 16 equal, smaller squares. Each

small square contains a number, 1 to 16 inclusive. Arrange them so that the sum of each of the four lines and each of the four columns, and the diagonals, is one and the same number.