inning to look very tired.

The 'suspect SmurFFs' were introduced and Lyle identified them. "Yes,"
he intoned, "When I spoke to Trenchant and told her she had the option
to resign and nothing further would be said or done to her, I gave her
all of the handwriting evidence, all of these SmurFFs, at that time."

Now, Henry allowed questions from the rest of the committee who started
to slowly wake up after enduring Lyle's long and repetitious testimony.
Nearly 20 minutes was spent answering their inane questions regarding
how many courses were involved and who found the 'suspect' critiques.
Most of their questions had been answered previously in the material
given them--the dean's letter and Lyle's memo.

Esther, however, alertly noticed that some of the SmurFFs in question
had no dates and inquired how these could be said to come from a
certain year.

The answer given was a model of obfuscation. Lyle replied, "The
critiques from those two years came in a packet to me from Randy and
Ian. Those were the years that Trenchant was indeed involved in
teaching this course."

Satisfied with the answer apparently, Esther questioned why one of the
suspect SmurFFs had a note stapled to it.

Diana sat up in her chair. This was a question she wanted answered.

Lyle replied that it was a note from Trenchant and that he had stapled
it to the evaluation prior to sending it off to the handwriting analyst.

None of them questioned why a note in Trenchant's handwriting was made
a part of the document that the analysts were to analyze for authorship.

Annette wondered if she understood correctly. Did Lyle say that he
kept all of the critiques in his office?

When Lyle answered yes, she asked how it would be possible for Diana to
submit falsified ones.

The silence in the room was deafening. Janet, lifting her hands from
the keys, massaged her fingers, the suggestion of a smile floated
mischievously over her face.

Panel member Anuse finally came to the rescue with a cuing question and
a long discussion ensued as to how SmurFFs were handled in the
department and what happened to them.

Many of the answers give by Lyle were false. Diana made a note of
these.

The chair now looked expectantly at Professor Jane Astori. So far
things had gone very well. Everyone had been on cue and except for
those two surprise questions....well, they were fielded quite adeptly.
His chest expanded with pride in his ability to bring this