CLASS DAY

Professor Fordney picked up a typewritten sheet from his desk and read the following to his class in criminology:

“I never expected to get back alive. The weather was cold and clear when Frank Hayes and I left for our base camp on the Arctic Circle on the morning of September 8, 1932. Three days later, on the 11th, an icy, howling wind came up as we set out…the worst I’ve ever seen. We had gone not more than two miles when Hayes took a terrific fall and was blown along the jagged ice for some distance. I managed to get him on the sled, but he knew he was fatally injured and hadn’t long to live. Knowing how much in sympathy I am with his scientific theories, he said he wanted to make a will, leaving his fortune to me so I might carry on his work. I tried to dissuade him but, taking some paper and a fountain pen from his kit, he insisted I write at his dictation. He signed it and in less than an hour he was dead.

“I had to shoot two of the dogs that had been injured. All the others, but one, got away so it was impossible for me to get the body back. The wind died down shortly after Frank passed on.

“(signed) Joseph Dennis.”

Fordney put down the letter and said, “I want you to tell me whether you accept this story as true…and why. Quickly now!”

Do you? Why? Turn page for solution.