Victory Scholar

In his rooms at King's College, Cambridge, last week Dr. Alexander Frederick Richmond Wollaston, erudite explorer-naturalist, member of the Mount Everest Expedition of 1921, prepared to do an unpleasant tutorial duty.

He had just come in with "young Potts"--Douglas Newton Potts, 19, a promising, first-year man, holder of an -L-80 scholarship, leader of a Cambridge dance orchestra. As tutor and pupil entered, they were faced by Detective Sergeant Willis of the Cambridge Police, standing with his large feet well spaced on the hearthrug, as in all proper British crime dramas.

Minutes later the head porter at King's College Gate heard muffled sounds which might or might not have been shots. Shambling into the hoary building he heard a hoarse scream, quickened his pace to a bound. At the top of the stairs he stumbled over a man from whose leg and chest blood gushed--Detective Sergeant Willis.

The porter did not retreat. On tiptoe he approached Dr. Wollaston's door, listened, heard not a sound, then took heart to peek round the jamb at a dreadful scene. Shot through the heart, the tutor lay crumpled in a chair. Shot through the head, Pupil Potts sprawled dying on the carpet, a pistol near his right hand.

Mystery. A whole day passed with the authorities completely baffled. They did not know even the reason why Tutor, Detective and Pupil had assembled in one room. Dean Eric Milner-White of King's College repeated bleatingly to one newspaperman after another:

"I should like to make it clear that Potts was in every way well and generously treated here. Generously treated-- he was a 'victory scholar'--with a scholarship of -L-80! [$388]."

When interest in the "Triple Cambridge Murder" had reached national proportions, one Madge Miller went up to Cambridge from London. "She dances in night clubs," revealed the shocked local paper, "and is said to have an American husband."

Miss Miller said that she had given Pupil Potts "refuge from the police" at her London flat for several days. He told her of obtaining from Cambridge shops $3,000 worth of haberdashery on credit which he pawned "for money to live like a gentleman." When she last saw him, said Madge Miller, "poor Mr. Potts was on his way to make a clean breast of everything at Cambridge," and she understood that he intended to commit suicide.

While the police were wondering whether all this was mere publicity for "Madge Miller," Detective Sergeant Willis, who had been carried senseless to a nearby hospital, roused from his state of coma. In a few gasping sentences he sufficiently confirmed the dancer's story, then coughed, choked, died.

Distinguished Dr. Alexander Frederick Richmond Wollaston leaves a wife, three children and Mount Wollaston in Africa, which he was first to scale.

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