Soames, a university professor, had been checking a passage of ancient Greek text for unseen translation printed in an exam paper for a lucrative scholarship, when someone entered his office while he was out and copied part of it. The exam is the next day, and unless the culprit can be found it will have to be cancelled—to the embarrassment of the college. Once again, in his capacity as a private operator, and with a reputation for discretion, Holmes is ideally placed to investigate the delicate matter.

The perpetrator had accessed Soames’s office when his servant, Bannister, accidentally left his keys in the door. Suspicion then immediately falls on the three students who live in the same building as Soames’s office. All three students use the staircase next to it, and are all about to take the exam. There are reasons to suspect each of the three students: McLaren has had a previous brush with scandal, Ras is quiet and elusive, and Gilchrist is apparently honest but short of money, giving him the most obvious motive.

On inspecting the scene, Holmes’s first clue is suggested by some wooden shavings that allow him to discern the make and length of the miscreant’s pencil. He then deduces from the way that the papers are strewn around the room that the culprit was almost caught in the act. More mysterious, however, is the “small ball of black dough or clay, with specks of something which looks like sawdust in it.”

The key to the solution lies at the athletics track. Holmes turns up at the college early the next morning brandishing three little clay pyramids. He reveals them to be lumps of earth from the long-jump pit that had fallen from the spiked soles of track shoes. Faced with this evidence, the athlete, Gilchrist, owns up, claiming that he had already decided to do so prior to Holmes’s involvement.

Bannister, the servant, has also played a significant role. Upon first discovering Gilchrist’s crime, he hid a pair of gloves that he knew would implicate the young man. It then transpires that Bannister was once in the employ of Gilchrist’s father, and has been motivated by loyalty. It also appears that the trusty manservant has already had a chance to set his former young master on the straight and narrow. In the tradition of James Ryder in “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” and James Wilder in “The Adventure of the Priory School”, Gilchrist accepts exile rather than publicly disgracing himself and his college. Most top universities at this time still had strong religious backgrounds, and dishonorable behavior by one student would reflect on the whole institution.

Gilchrist announces that he intends to accept a commission with the Rhodesian police, an adventurous but respectable job, in what would at the time have been a rapidly changing part of Southern Africa, and one that would take him far away from the ivory towers of academia.

The culprit confesses to Holmes, as illustrated by Paget in The Strand Magazine. He had, however, already decided to admit his guilt to Soames.