“I had seventeen of Edna May,” continued the stricken Seymourite, monotonously. “In various attitudes. All destroyed.”
“On the first fifteen ground, of course,” said Trevor. “I'll get Aldridge to referee. That'll suit you, I suppose?”
“All right. Anything you like. Just by the fireplace I found the remains of Arthur Roberts in H.M.S. Irresponsible. And part of Seymour Hicks. Under the table—”
Trevor departed.
“Suppose,” said Shoeblossom to Barry, as they were walking over to school on the morning following the day on which Milton's study had passed through the hands of the League, “suppose you thought somebody had done something, but you weren't quite certain who, but you knew it was some one, what would you do?”
“What on earth do you mean?” inquired Barry.
“I was trying to make an A.B. case of it,” explained Shoeblossom.
“What's an A.B. case?”
“I don't know,” admitted Shoeblossom, frankly. “But it comes in a book of Stevenson's. I think it must mean a sort of case where you call everyone A. and B. and don't tell their names.”
“Well, go ahead.”
“It's about Milton's study.”
“What! what about it?”
“Well, you see, the night it was ragged I was sitting in my study with a dark lantern—”
“What!”
Shoeblossom proceeded to relate the moving narrative of his night-walking adventure. He dwelt movingly on his state of mind when standing behind the door, waiting for Mr Seymour to come in and find him. He related with appropriate force the hair-raising episode of the weird white figure. And then he came to the conclusions he had since drawn (in calmer moments) from that apparition's movements.
“You see,” he said, “I saw it coming out of Milton's study, and that must have been about the time the study was ragged. And it went into Rigby's dorm. So it must have been a chap in that dorm, who did it.”
Shoeblossom was quite clever at rare intervals. Even Barry, whose belief in his sanity was of the smallest, was compelled to admit that here, at any rate, he was talking sense.
“What would you do?” asked Shoeblossom.
“Tell Milton, of course,” said Barry.
“But he'd give me beans for being out of the dorm, after lights-out.”
This was a distinct point to be considered. The attitude of Barry towards Milton was different from that of Shoeblossom. Barry regarded him—through having played with him in important matches—as a good sort of fellow who had always behaved decently to him. Leather-Twigg, on the other hand, looked on him with undisguised apprehension, as one in authority who would give him lines the first time he came into contact with him, and cane him if he ever did it again. He had a decided disinclination to see Milton on any pretext whatever.
“Suppose I tell him?” suggested Barry.
“You'll keep my name dark?” said Shoeblossom, alarmed.
Barry said he would make an A.B. case of it.
After school he went to Milton's study, and found him still brooding over its departed glories.
“I say, Milton, can I speak to you for a second?”
“Hullo, Barry. Come in.”
Barry came in.
“I had forty-three photographs,” began Milton, without preamble. “All destroyed. And I've no money to buy any more. I had seventeen of Edna May.”
Barry, feeling that he was expected to say something, said, “By Jove! Really?”
“In various positions,” continued Milton. “All ruined.”
“Not really?” said Barry.
“There was one of Little Tich—”
But Barry felt unequal to playing the part of chorus any longer. It was all very thrilling, but, if Milton was going to run through the entire list of his destroyed photographs, life would be too short for conversation on any other topic.
“I say, Milton,” he said, “it was about that that I came. I'm sorry—”
Milton sat up.
“It wasn't you who did this, was it?”
“No, no,” said Barry, hastily.
“Oh, I thought from your saying you were sorry—”
“I was going to say I thought I could put you on the track of the chap who did do it—”
For the second time since the interview began Milton sat up.
“Go on,” he said.
“—But I'm sorry I can't give you the name of the fellow who told me about it.”
“That doesn't matter,” said Milton. “Tell me the name of the fellow who did it. That'll satisfy me.”
“I'm afraid I can't do that, either.”
“Have you any idea what you can do?” asked Milton, satirically.
“I can tell you something which may put you on the right track.”
“That'll do for a start. Well?”
“Well, the chap who told me—I'll call him A.; I'm going to make an A.B. case of it—was coming out of his study at about one o'clock in the morning—”
“What the deuce was he doing that for?”
“Because he wanted to go back to bed,” said Barry.
“About time, too. Well?”
“As he was going past your study, a white figure emerged—”
“I should strongly advise you, young Barry,” said Milton, gravely, “not to try and rot me in any way.  I'd slay the Old Man himself if he rotted me about this business.”
Barry was quite pained at this sceptical attitude in one whom he was going out of his way to assist.
“I'm not rotting,” he protested. “This is all quite true.”
“Well, go on. You were saying something about white figures emerging.”
“Not white figures. A white figure,” corrected Barry. “It came out of your study—”
“—And vanished through the wall?”
“It went into Rigby's dorm.,” said Barry, sulkily. It was maddening to have an exclusive bit of news treated in this way.
“Did it, by Jove!” said Milton, interested at last. “Are you sure the chap who told you wasn't pulling your leg? Who was it told you?”
“I promised him not to say.”
“Out with it, young Barry.”
“I won't,” said Barry.
“You aren't going to tell me?”
“No.”
Milton gave up the point with much cheerfulness. He liked Barry, and he realised that he had no right to try and make him break his promise.
“That's all right,” he said. “Thanks very much, Barry. This may be useful.”
“I'd tell you his name if I hadn't promised, you know, Milton.”
“It doesn't matter,” said Milton. “It's not important.”
“Oh, there was one thing I forgot. It was a biggish chap the fellow saw.”
“How big! My size?”
“Not quite so tall, I should think. He said he was about Seymour's size.”
“Thanks. That's worth knowing. Thanks very much, Barry.”
When his visitor had gone, Milton proceeded to unearth one of the printed lists of the house which were used for purposes of roll-call. He meant to find out who were in Rigby's dormitory. He put a tick against the names. There were eighteen of them. The next thing was to find out which of them was about the same height as Mr Seymour. It was a somewhat vague description, for the house-master stood about five feet nine or eight, and a good many of the dormitory were that height, or near it. At last, after much brain-work, he reduced the number of “possibles” to seven. These seven were Rigby himself, Linton, Rand-Brown, Griffith, Hunt, Kershaw, and Chapple. Rigby might be scratched off the list at once. He was one of Milton's greatest friends. Exeunt also Griffith, Hunt, and Kershaw. They were mild youths, quite incapable of any deed of devilry. There remained, therefore, Chapple, Linton, and Rand-Brown. Chapple was a boy who was invariably late for breakfast. The inference was that he was not likely to forego his sleep for the purpose of wrecking studies. Chapple might disappear from the list. Now there were only Linton and Rand-Brown to be considered. His suspicions fell on Rand-Brown. Linton was the last person, he thought, to do such a low thing. He was a cheerful, rollicking individual, who was popular with everyone and seemed to like everyone. He was not an orderly member of the house, certainly, and on several occasions Milton had found it necessary to drop on him heavily for creating disturbances. But he was not the sort that bears malice. He took it all in the way of business, and came up smiling after it was over. No, everything pointed to Rand-Brown. He and Milton had never got on well together, and quite recently they had quarrelled openly over the former's play in the Day's match. Rand-Brown must be the man. But Milton was sensible enough to feel that so far he had no real evidence whatever. He must wait.
On the following afternoon Seymour's turned out to play Donaldson's.
The game, like most house-matches, was played with the utmost keenness. Both teams had good three-quarters, and they attacked in turn. Seymour's had the best of it forward, where Milton was playing a great game, but Trevor in the centre was the best outside on the field, and pulled up rush after rush. By half-time neither side had scored.
After half-time Seymour's, playing downhill, came away with a rush to the Donaldsonites' half, and Rand-Brown, with one of the few decent runs he had made in good class football that term, ran in on the left. Milton took the kick, but failed, and Seymour's led by three points. For the next twenty minutes nothing more was scored. Then, when five minutes more of play remained, Trevor gave Clowes an easy opening, and Clowes sprinted between the posts. The kick was an easy one, and what sporting reporters term “the major points” were easily added.
When there are five more minutes to play in an important house-match, and one side has scored a goal and the other a try, play is apt to become spirited. Both teams were doing all they knew. The ball came out to Barry on the right. Barry's abilities as a three-quarter rested chiefly on the fact that he could dodge well. This eel-like attribute compensated for a certain lack of pace. He was past the Donaldson's three-quarters in an instant, and running for the line, with only the back to pass, and with Clowes in hot pursuit. Another wriggle took him past the back, but it also gave Clowes time to catch him up. Clowes was a far faster runner, and he got to him just as he reached the twenty-five line. They came down together with a crash, Clowes on top, and as they fell the whistle blew.
“No-side,” said Mr. Aldridge, the master who was refereeing.
Clowes got up.
“All over,” he said. “Jolly good game. Hullo, what's up?”
For Barry seemed to be in trouble.
“You might give us a hand up,” said the latter. “I believe I've twisted my beastly ankle or something.”
“I say,” said Clowes, helping him up, “I'm awfully sorry. Did I do it? How did it happen?”
Barry was engaged in making various attempts at standing on the injured leg. The process seemed to be painful.
“Shall I get a stretcher or anything? Can you walk?”
“If you'd help me over to the house, I could manage all right. What a beastly nuisance! It wasn't your fault a bit. Only you tackled me when I was just trying to swerve, and my ankle was all twisted.”
Drummond came up, carrying Barry's blazer and sweater.
“Hullo, Barry,” he said, “what's up? You aren't crocked?”
“Something gone wrong with my ankle. That my blazer? Thanks. Coming over to the house? Clowes was just going to help me over.”
Clowes asked a Donaldson's junior, who was lurking near at hand, to fetch his blazer and carry it over to the house, and then made his way with Drummond and the disabled Barry to Seymour's. Having arrived at the senior day-room, they deposited the injured three-quarter in a chair, and sent M'Todd, who came in at the moment, to fetch the doctor.
Dr Oakes was a big man with a breezy manner, the sort of doctor who hits you with the force of a sledge-hammer in the small ribs, and asks you if you felt anything then. It was on this principle that he acted with regard to Barry's ankle. He seized it in both hands and gave it a wrench.
“Did that hurt?” he inquired anxiously.
Barry turned white, and replied that it did.
Dr Oakes nodded wisely.
“Ah! H'm! Just so. 'Myes. Ah.”
“Is it bad?” asked Drummond, awed by these mystic utterances.
“My dear boy,” replied the doctor, breezily, “it is always bad when one twists one's ankle.”
“How long will it do me out of footer?” asked Barry.
“How long? How long? How long? Why, fortnight. Fortnight,” said the doctor.
“Then I shan't be able to play next Saturday?”
“Next Saturday? Next Saturday? My dear boy, if you can put your foot to the ground by next Saturday, you may take it as evidence that the age of miracles is not past. Next Saturday, indeed! Ha, ha.”
It was not altogether his fault that he treated the matter with such brutal levity. It was a long time since he had been at school, and he could not quite realise what it meant to Barry not to be able to play against Ripton. As for Barry, he felt that he had never loathed and detested any one so thoroughly as he loathed and detested Dr Oakes at that moment.
“I don't see where the joke comes in,” said Clowes, when he had gone. “I bar that man.”
“He's a beast,” said Drummond. “I can't understand why they let a tout like that be the school doctor.”
Barry said nothing. He was too sore for words.
What Dr Oakes said to his wife that evening was: “Over at the school, my dear, this afternoon. This afternoon. Boy with a twisted ankle. Nice young fellow. Very much put out when I told him he could not play football for a fortnight. But I chaffed him, and cheered him up in no time. I cheered him up in no time, my dear.”
“I'm sure you did, dear,” said Mrs Oakes. Which shows how differently the same thing may strike different people. Barry certainly did not look as if he had been cheered up when Clowes left the study and went over to tell Trevor that he would have to find a substitute for his right wing three-quarter against Ripton.
Trevor had left the field without noticing Barry's accident, and he was tremendously pleased at the result of the game.
“Good man,” he said, when Clowes came in, “you saved the match.”
“And lost the Ripton match probably,” said Clowes, gloomily.
“What do you mean?”
“That last time I brought down Barry I crocked him. He's in his study now with a sprained ankle. I've just come from there. Oakes has seen him, and says he mustn't play for a fortnight.”
“Great Scott!” said Trevor, blankly. “What on earth shall we do?”
“Why not move Strachan up to the wing, and put somebody else back instead of him? Strachan is a good wing.”
Trevor shook his head.
“No. There's nobody good enough to play back for the first. We mustn't risk it.”
“Then I suppose it must be Rand-Brown?”
“I suppose so.”
“He may do better than we think. He played quite a decent game today. That try he got wasn't half a bad one.”
“He'd be all right if he didn't funk. But perhaps he wouldn't funk against Ripton. In a match like that anybody would play up. I'll ask Milton and Allardyce about it.”
“I shouldn't go to Milton today,” said Clowes. “I fancy he'll want a night's rest before he's fit to talk to. He must be a bit sick about this match. I know he expected Seymour's to win.”
He went out, but came back almost immediately.
“I say,” he said, “there's one thing that's just occurred to me. This'll please the League. I mean, this ankle business of Barry's.”
The same idea had struck Trevor. It was certainly a respite. But he regretted it for all that. What he wanted was to beat Ripton, and Barry's absence would weaken the team. However, it was good in its way, and cleared the atmosphere for the time. The League would hardly do anything with regard to the carrying out of their threat while Barry was on the sick-list.
Next day, having given him time to get over the bitterness of defeat in accordance with Clowes' thoughtful suggestion, Trevor called on Milton, and asked him what his opinion was on the subject of the inclusion of Rand-Brown in the first fifteen in place of Barry,
“He's the next best man,” he added, in defence of the proposal.
“I suppose so,” said Milton. “He'd better play, I suppose. There's no one else.”
“Clowes thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to shove Strachan on the wing, and put somebody else back.”
“Who is there to put?”
“Jervis?”
“Not good enough. No, it's better to be weakish on the wing than at back. Besides, Rand-Brown may do all right. He played well against you.”
“Yes,” said Trevor. “Study looks a bit better now,” he added, as he was going, having looked round the room. “Still a bit bare, though.”
Milton sighed. “It will never be what it was.”
“Forty-three theatrical photographs want some replacing, of course,” said Trevor. “But it isn't bad, considering.”
“How's yours?”
“Oh, mine's all right, except for the absence of photographs.”
“I say, Trevor.”
“Yes?” said Trevor, stopping at the door. Milton's voice had taken on the tone of one who is about to disclose dreadful secrets.
“Would you like to know what I think?”
“What?”
“Why, I'm pretty nearly sure who it was that ragged my study?”
“By Jove! What have you done to him?”
“Nothing as yet. I'm not quite sure of my man.”
“Who is the man?”
“Rand-Brown.”
“By Jove! Clowes once said he thought Rand-Brown must be the President of the League. But then, I don't see how you can account for my study being wrecked. He was out on the field when it was done.”
“Why, the League, of course. You don't suppose he's the only man in it? There must be a lot of them.”
“But what makes you think it was Rand-Brown?”
Milton told him the story of Shoeblossom, as Barry had told it to him. The only difference was that Trevor listened without any of the scepticism which Milton had displayed on hearing it. He was getting excited. It all fitted in so neatly. If ever there was circumstantial evidence against a man, here it was against Rand-Brown. Take the two cases. Milton had quarrelled with him. Milton's study was wrecked “with the compliments of the League”. Trevor had turned him out of the first fifteen. Trevor's study was wrecked “with the compliments of the League”. As Clowes had pointed out, the man with the most obvious motive for not wishing Barry to play for the school was Rand-Brown. It seemed a true bill.
“I shouldn't wonder if you're right,” he said, “but of course one can't do anything yet. You want a lot more evidence. Anyhow, we must play him against Ripton, I suppose. Which is his study? I'll go and tell him now.”
“Ten.”
Trevor knocked at the door of study Ten. Rand-Brown was sitting over the fire, reading. He jumped up when he saw that it was Trevor who had come in, and to his visitor it seemed that his face wore a guilty look.
“What do you want?” said Rand-Brown.
It was not the politest way of welcoming a visitor. It increased Trevor's suspicions. The man was afraid. A great idea darted into his mind. Why not go straight to the point and have it out with him here and now? He had the League's letter about the bat in his pocket. He would confront him with it and insist on searching the study there and then. If Rand-Brown were really, as he suspected, the writer of the letter, the bat must be in this room somewhere. Search it now, and he would have no time to hide it. He pulled out the letter.
“I believe you wrote that,” he said.
Trevor was always direct.
Rand-Brown seemed to turn a little pale, but his voice when he replied was quite steady.
“That's a lie,” he said.
“Then, perhaps,” said Trevor, “you wouldn't object to proving it.”
“How?”
“By letting me search your study?”
“You don't believe my word?”
“Why should I? You don't believe mine.”
Rand-Brown made no comment on this remark.
“Was that what you came here for?” he asked.
“No,” said Trevor; “as a matter of fact, I came to tell you to turn out for running and passing with the first tomorrow afternoon. You're playing against Ripton on Saturday.”
Rand-Brown's attitude underwent a complete transformation at the news. He became friendliness itself.
“All right,” he said. “I say, I'm sorry I said what I did about lying.  I hope you don't mind.”
“Not a bit. Do you mind my searching your study?”
For a moment Rand-Brown looked vicious. Then he sat down with a laugh.
“Go on,” he said; “I see you don't believe me. Here are the keys if you want them.”
Trevor thanked him, and took the keys. He opened every drawer and examined the writing-desk. The bat was in none of these places. He looked in the cupboards. No bat there.
“Like to take up the carpet?” inquired Rand-Brown.
“No, thanks.”
“Search me if you like. Shall I turn out my pockets?”
“Yes, please,” said Trevor, to his surprise. He had not expected to be taken literally.
Rand-Brown emptied them, but the bat was not there. Trevor turned to go.
“You've not looked inside the legs of the chairs yet,” said Rand-Brown. “They may be hollow. There's no knowing.”
“It doesn't matter, thanks,” said Trevor. “Sorry for troubling you. Don't forget tomorrow afternoon.”
And he went, with the very unpleasant feeling that he had been badly scored off.
It was a curious thing in connection with the matches between Ripton and Wrykyn, that Ripton always seemed to be the bigger team. They always had a gigantic pack of forwards, who looked capable of shoving a hole through one of the pyramids. Possibly they looked bigger to the Wrykinians than they really were. Strangers always look big on the football field. When you have grown accustomed to a person's appearance, he does not look nearly so large. Milton, for instance, never struck anybody at Wrykyn as being particularly big for a school forward, and yet today he was the heaviest man on the field by a quarter of a stone. But, taken in the mass, the Ripton pack were far heavier than their rivals. There was a legend current among the lower forms at Wrykyn that fellows were allowed to stop on at Ripton till they were twenty-five, simply to play football. This is scarcely likely to have been based on fact. Few lower form legends are.
Jevons, the Ripton captain, through having played opposite Trevor for three seasons—he was the Ripton left centre-three-quarter—had come to be quite an intimate of his. Trevor had gone down with Milton and Allardyce to meet the team at the station, and conduct them up to the school.
“How have you been getting on since Christmas?” asked Jevons.
“Pretty well. We've lost Paget, I suppose you know?”
“That was the fast man on the wing, wasn't it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we've lost a man, too.”
“Oh, yes, that red-haired forward. I remember him.”
“It ought to make us pretty even. What's the ground like?”
“Bit greasy, I should think. We had some rain late last night.”
The ground was a bit greasy. So was the ball. When Milton kicked off up the hill with what wind there was in his favour, the outsides of both teams found it difficult to hold the ball. Jevons caught it on his twenty-five line, and promptly handed it forward. The first scrum was formed in the heart of the enemy's country.
A deep, swelling roar from either touch-line greeted the school's advantage. A feature of a big match was always the shouting. It rarely ceased throughout the whole course of the game, the monotonous but impressive sound of five hundred voices all shouting the same word. It was worth hearing. Sometimes the evenness of the noise would change to an excited crescendo as a school three-quarter got off, or the school back pulled up the attack with a fine piece of defence. Sometimes the shouting would give place to clapping when the school was being pressed and somebody had found touch with a long kick. But mostly the man on the ropes roared steadily and without cessation, and with the full force of his lungs, the word “Wrykyn!“
The scrum was a long one. For two minutes the forwards heaved and strained, now one side, now the other, gaining a few inches. The Wrykyn pack were doing all they knew to heel, but their opponents' superior weight was telling. Ripton had got the ball, and were keeping it. Their game was to break through with it and rush. Then suddenly one of their forwards kicked it on, and just at that moment the opposition of the Wrykyn pack gave way, and the scrum broke up. The ball came out on the Wrykyn side, and Allardyce whipped it out to Deacon, who was playing half with him.
“Ball's out,” cried the Ripton half who was taking the scrum. “Break up. It's out.”
And his colleague on the left darted across to stop Trevor, who had taken Deacon's pass, and was running through on the right.
Trevor ran splendidly. He was a three-quarter who took a lot of stopping when he once got away. Jevons and the Ripton half met him almost simultaneously, and each slackened his pace for the fraction of a second, to allow the other to tackle. As they hesitated, Trevor passed them. He had long ago learned that to go hard when you have once started is the thing that pays.
He could see that Rand-Brown was racing up for the pass, and, as he reached the back, he sent the ball to him, waist-high. Then the back got to him, and he came down with a thud, with a vision, seen from the corner of his eye, of the ball bounding forward out of the wing three-quarter's hands into touch. Rand-Brown had bungled the pass in the old familiar way, and lost a certain try.
The touch-judge ran up with his flag waving in the air, but the referee had other views.
“Knocked on inside,” he said; “scrum here.”
“Here” was, Trevor saw with unspeakable disgust, some three yards from the goal-line. Rand-Brown had only had to take the pass, and he must have scored.
The Ripton forwards were beginning to find their feet better now, and they carried the scrum. A truculent-looking warrior in one of those ear-guards which are tied on by strings underneath the chin, and which add fifty per cent to the ferocity of a forward's appearance, broke away with the ball at his feet, and swept down the field with the rest of the pack at his heels. Trevor arrived too late to pull up the rush, which had gone straight down the right touch-line, and it was not till Strachan fell on the ball on the Wrykyn twenty-five line that the danger ceased to threaten.
Even now the school were in a bad way. The enemy were pressing keenly, and a real piece of combination among their three-quarters would only too probably end in a try. Fortunately for them, Allardyce and Deacon were a better pair of halves than the couple they were marking. Also, the Ripton forwards heeled slowly, and Allardyce had generally got his man safely buried in the mud before he could pass.
He was just getting round for the tenth time to bottle his opponent as before, when he slipped. When the ball came out he was on all fours, and the Ripton exponent, finding to his great satisfaction that he had not been tackled, whipped the ball out on the left, where a wing three-quarter hovered.
This was the man Rand-Brown was supposed to be marking, and once again did Barry's substitute prove of what stuff his tackling powers were made. After his customary moment of hesitation, he had at the Riptonian's neck. The Riptonian handed him off in a manner that recalled the palmy days of the old Prize Ring—handing off was always slightly vigorous in the Ripton v. Wrykyn match—and dashed over the line in the extreme corner.
There was anguish on the two touch-lines. Trevor looked savage, but made no comment. The team lined up in silence.
It takes a very good kick to convert a try from the touch-line. Jevons' kick was a long one, but it fell short. Ripton led by a try to nothing.
A few more scrums near the halfway line, and a fine attempt at a dropped goal by the Ripton back, and it was half-time, with the score unaltered.
During the interval there were lemons. An excellent thing is your lemon at half-time. It cools the mouth, quenches the thirst, stimulates the desire to be at them again, and improves the play.
Possibly the Wrykyn team had been happier in their choice of lemons on this occasion, for no sooner had the game been restarted than Clowes ran the whole length of the field, dodged through the three-quarters, punted over the back's head, and scored a really brilliant try, of the sort that Paget had been fond of scoring in the previous term. The man on the touch-line brightened up wonderfully, and began to try and calculate the probable score by the end of the game, on the assumption that, as a try had been scored in the first two minutes, ten would be scored in the first twenty, and so on.
But the calculations were based on false premises. After Strachan had failed to convert, and the game had been resumed with the score at one try all, play settled down in the centre, and neither side could pierce the other's defence. Once Jevons got off for Ripton, but Trevor brought him down safely, and once Rand-Brown let his man through, as before, but Strachan was there to meet him, and the effort came to nothing. For Wrykyn, no one did much except tackle. The forwards were beaten by the heavier pack, and seldom let the ball out. Allardyce intercepted a pass when about ten minutes of play remained, and ran through to the back. But the back, who was a capable man and in his third season in the team, laid him low scientifically before he could reach the line.
Altogether it looked as if the match were going to end in a draw. The Wrykyn defence, with the exception of Rand-Brown, was too good to be penetrated, while the Ripton forwards, by always getting the ball in the scrums, kept them from attacking. It was about five minutes from the end of the game when the Ripton right centre-three-quarter, in trying to punt across to the wing, miskicked and sent the ball straight into the hands of Trevor's colleague in the centre. Before his man could get round to him he had slipped through, with Trevor backing him up. The back, as a good back should, seeing two men coming at him, went for the man with the ball. But by the time he had brought him down, the ball was no longer where it had originally been. Trevor had got it, and was running in between the posts.
This time Strachan put on the extra two points without difficulty.
Ripton played their hardest for the remaining minutes, but without result. The game ended with Wrykyn a goal ahead—a goal and a try to a try. For the second time in one season the Ripton match had ended in a victory—a thing it was very rarely in the habit of doing.
* * * * *
The senior day-room at Seymour's rejoiced considerably that night. The air was dark with flying cushions, and darker still, occasionally, when the usual humorist turned the gas out. Milton was out, for he had gone to the dinner which followed the Ripton match, and the man in command of the house in his absence was Mill. And the senior day-room had no respect whatever for Mill.
Barry joined in the revels as well as his ankle would let him, but he was not feeling happy. The disappointment of being out of the first still weighed on him.
At about eight, when things were beginning to grow really lively, and the noise seemed likely to crack the window at any moment, the door was flung open and Milton stalked in.
“What's all this row?” he inquired. “Stop it at once.”
As a matter of fact, the row had stopped—directly he came in.
“Is Barry here?” he asked.
“Yes,” said that youth.
“Congratulate you on your first, Barry. We've just had a meeting and given you your colours. Trevor told me to tell you.”
For the next three seconds you could have heard a cannonball drop. And that was equivalent, in the senior day-room at Seymour's, to a dead silence. Barry stood in the middle of the room leaning on the stick on which he supported life, now that his ankle had been injured, and turned red and white in regular rotation, as the magnificence of the news came home to him.
Then the small voice of Linton was heard.
“That'll be six d. I'll trouble you for, young Sammy,” said Linton. For he had betted an even sixpence with Master Samuel Menzies that Barry would get his first fifteen cap this term, and Barry had got it.
A great shout went up from every corner of the room. Barry was one of the most popular members of the house, and every one had been sorry for him when his sprained ankle had apparently put him out of the running for the last cap.
“Good old Barry,” said Drummond, delightedly. Barry thanked him in a dazed way.
Every one crowded in to shake his hand. Barry thanked then all in a dazed way.
And then the senior day-room, in spite of the fact that Milton had returned, gave itself up to celebrating the occasion with one of the most deafening uproars that had ever been heard even in that factory of noise. A babel of voices discussed the match of the afternoon, each trying to outshout the other. In one corner Linton was beating wildly on a biscuit-tin with part of a broken chair. Shoeblossom was busy in the opposite corner executing an intricate step-dance on somebody else's box. M'Todd had got hold of the red-hot poker, and was burning his initials in huge letters on the seat of a chair. Every one, in short, was enjoying himself, and it was not until an advanced hour that comparative quiet was restored. It was a great evening for Barry, the best he had ever experienced.
Clowes did not learn the news till he saw it on the notice-board, on the following Monday. When he saw it he whistled softly.
“I see you've given Barry his first,” he said to Trevor, when they met. “Rather sensational.”
“Milton and Allardyce both thought he deserved it. If he'd been playing instead of Rand-Brown, they wouldn't have scored at all probably, and we should have got one more try.”
“That's all right,” said Clowes. “He deserves it right enough, and I'm jolly glad you've given it him. But things will begin to move now, don't you think? The League ought to have a word to say about the business. It'll be a facer for them.”
“Do you remember,” asked Trevor, “saying that you thought it must be Rand-Brown who wrote those letters?”
“Yes. Well?”
“Well, Milton had an idea that it was Rand-Brown who ragged his study.”
“What made him think that?”
Trevor related the Shoeblossom incident.
Clowes became quite excited.
“Then Rand-Brown must be the man,” he said. “Why don't you go and tackle him? Probably he's got the bat in his study.”
“It's not in his study,” said Trevor, “because I looked everywhere for it, and got him to turn out his pockets, too. And yet I'll swear he knows something about it. One thing struck me as a bit suspicious. I went straight into his study and showed him that last letter—about the bat, you know, and accused him of writing it. Now, if he hadn't been in the business somehow, he wouldn't have understood what was meant by their saying 'the bat you lost'. It might have been an ordinary cricket-bat for all he knew. But he offered to let me search the study. It didn't strike me as rum till afterwards. Then it seemed fishy. What do you think?”
Clowes thought so too, but admitted that he did not see of what use the suspicion was going to be. Whether Rand-Brown knew anything about the affair or not, it was quite certain that the bat was not with him.
O'Hara, meanwhile, had decided that the time had come for him to resume his detective duties. Moriarty agreed with him, and they resolved that that night they would patronise the vault instead of the gymnasium, and take a holiday as far as their boxing was concerned. There was plenty of time before the Aldershot competition.
Lock-up was still at six, so at a quarter to that hour they slipped down into the vault, and took up their position.
A quarter of an hour passed. The lock-up bell sounded faintly. Moriarty began to grow tired.
“Is it worth it?” he said, “an' wouldn't they have come before, if they meant to come?”
“We'll give them another quarter of an hour,” said O'Hara. “After that—”
“Sh!” whispered Moriarty.
The door had opened. They could see a figure dimly outlined in the semi-darkness. Footsteps passed down into the vault, and there came a sound as if the unknown had cannoned into a chair, followed by a sharp intake of breath, expressive of pain. A scraping sound, and a flash of light, and part of the vault was lit by a candle. O'Hara caught a glimpse of the unknown's face as he rose from lighting the candle, but it was not enough to enable him to recognise him. The candle was standing on a chair, and the light it gave was too feeble to reach the face of any one not on a level with it.
The unknown began to drag chairs out into the neighbourhood of the light. O'Hara counted six.
The sixth chair had scarcely been placed in position when the door opened again. Six other figures appeared in the opening one after the other, and bolted into the vault like rabbits into a burrow. The last of them closed the door after them.
O'Hara nudged Moriarty, and Moriarty nudged O'Hara; but neither made a sound. They were not likely to be seen—the blackness of the vault was too Egyptian for that—but they were so near to the chairs that the least whisper must have been heard. Not a word had proceeded from the occupants of the chairs so far. If O'Hara's suspicion was correct, and this was really the League holding a meeting, their methods were more secret than those of any other secret society in existence. Even the Nihilists probably exchanged a few remarks from time to time, when they met together to plot. But these men of mystery never opened their lips. It puzzled O'Hara.
The light of the candle was obscured for a moment, and a sound of puffing came from the darkness.
O'Hara nudged Moriarty again.
“Smoking!” said the nudge.
Moriarty nudged O'Hara.
“Smoking it is!” was the meaning of the movement.
A strong smell of tobacco showed that the diagnosis had been a true one. Each of the figures in turn lit his pipe at the candle, and sat back, still in silence. It could not have been very pleasant, smoking in almost pitch darkness, but it was breaking rules, which was probably the main consideration that swayed the smokers. They puffed away steadily, till the two Irishmen were wrapped about in invisible clouds.
Then a strange thing happened. I know that I am infringing copyright in making that statement, but it so exactly suits the occurrence, that perhaps Mr Rider Haggard will not object. It was a strange thing that happened.
A rasping voice shattered the silence.
“You boys down there,” said the voice, “come here immediately. Come here, I say.”
It was the well-known voice of Mr Robert Dexter, O'Hara and Moriarty's beloved house-master.
The two Irishmen simultaneously clutched one another, each afraid that the other would think—from force of long habit—that the house-master was speaking to him. Both stood where they were. It was the men of mystery and tobacco that Dexter was after, they thought.
But they were wrong. What had brought Dexter to the vault was the fact that he had seen two boys, who looked uncommonly like O'Hara and Moriarty, go down the steps of the vault at a quarter to six. He had been doing his usual after-lock-up prowl on the junior gravel, to intercept stragglers, and he had been a witness—from a distance of fifty yards, in a very bad light—of the descent into the vault. He had remained on the gravel ever since, in the hope of catching them as they came up; but as they had not come up, he had determined to make the first move himself. He had not seen the six unknowns go down, for, the evening being chilly, he had paced up and down, and they had by a lucky accident chosen a moment when his back was turned.
“Come up immediately,” he repeated.
Here a blast of tobacco-smoke rushed at him from the darkness. The candle had been extinguished at the first alarm, and he had not realised—though he had suspected it—that smoking had been going on.
A hurried whispering was in progress among the unknowns. Apparently they saw that the game was up, for they picked their way towards the door.
As each came up the steps and passed him, Mr Dexter observed “Ha!” and appeared to make a note of his name. The last of the six was just leaving him after this process had been completed, when Mr Dexter called him back.
“That is not all,” he said, suspiciously.
“Yes, sir,” said the last of the unknowns.
Neither of the Irishmen recognised the voice. Its owner was a stranger to them.
“I tell you it is not,” snapped Mr Dexter. “You are concealing the truth from me. O'Hara and Moriarty are down there—two boys in my own house. I saw them go down there.”
“They had nothing to do with us, sir. We saw nothing of them.”
“I have no doubt,” said the house-master, “that you imagine that you are doing a very chivalrous thing by trying to hide them, but you will gain nothing by it. You may go.”
He came to the top of the steps, and it seemed as if he intended to plunge into the darkness in search of the suspects. But, probably realising the futility of such a course, he changed his mind, and delivered an ultimatum from the top step.
“O'Hara and Moriarty.”
No reply.
“O'Hara and Moriarty, I know perfectly well that you are down there. Come up immediately.”
Dignified silence from the vault.
“Well, I shall wait here till you do choose to come up. You would be well advised to do so immediately. I warn you you will not tire me out.”
He turned, and the door slammed behind him.
“What'll we do?” whispered Moriarty. It was at last safe to whisper.
“Wait,” said O'Hara, “I'm thinking.”
O'Hara thought. For many minutes he thought in vain. At last there came flooding back into his mind a memory of the days of his faghood. It was after that that he had been groping all the time. He remembered now. Once in those days there had been an unexpected function in the middle of term. There were needed for that function certain chairs. He could recall even now his furious disgust when he and a select body of fellow fags had been pounced upon by their form-master, and coerced into forming a line from the junior block to the cloisters, for the purpose of handing chairs. True, his form-master had stood ginger-beer after the event, with princely liberality, but the labour was of the sort that gallons of ginger-beer will not make pleasant. But he ceased to regret the episode now. He had been at the extreme end of the chair-handling chain. He had stood in a passage in the junior block, just by the door that led to the masters' garden, and which—he remembered—was never locked till late at night. And while he stood there, a pair of hands—apparently without a body—had heaved up chair after chair through a black opening in the floor. In other words, a trap-door connected with the vault in which he now was.
He imparted these reminiscences of childhood to Moriarty. They set off to search for the missing door, and, after wanderings and barkings of shins too painful to relate, they found it. Moriarty lit a match. The light fell on the trap-door, and their last doubts were at an end. The thing opened inwards. The bolt was on their side, not in the passage above them. To shoot the bolt took them one second, to climb into the passage one minute. They stood at the side of the opening, and dusted their clothes.
“Bedad!” said Moriarty, suddenly.
“What?”
“Why, how are we to shut it?”
This was a problem that wanted some solving. Eventually they managed it, O'Hara leaning over and fishing for it, while Moriarty held his legs.
As luck would have it—and luck had stood by them well all through—there was a bolt on top of the trap-door, as well as beneath it.
“Supposing that had been shot!” said O'Hara, as they fastened the door in its place.
Moriarty did not care to suppose anything so unpleasant.
Mr Dexter was still prowling about on the junior gravel, when the two Irishmen ran round and across the senior gravel to the gymnasium. Here they put in a few minutes' gentle sparring, and then marched boldly up to Mr Day (who happened to have looked in five minutes after their arrival) and got their paper.
“What time did O'Hara and Moriarty arrive at the gymnasium?” asked Mr Dexter of Mr Day next morning.
“O'Hara and Moriarty? Really, I can't remember. I know they left at about a quarter to seven.”
That profound thinker, Mr Tony Weller, was never so correct as in his views respecting the value of an alibi. There are few better things in an emergency.
It was Renford's turn next morning to get up and feed the ferrets. Harvey had done it the day before.
Renford was not a youth who enjoyed early rising, but in the cause of the ferrets he would have endured anything, so at six punctually he slid out of bed, dressed quietly, so as not to disturb the rest of the dormitory, and ran over to the vault. To his utter amazement he found it locked. Such a thing had never been done before in the whole course of his experience. He tugged at the handle, but not an inch or a fraction of an inch would the door yield. The policy of the Open Door had ceased to find favour in the eyes of the authorities.
A feeling of blank despair seized upon him. He thought of the dismay of the ferrets when they woke up and realised that there was no chance of breakfast for them. And then they would gradually waste away, and some day somebody would go down to the vault to fetch chairs, and would come upon two mouldering skeletons, and wonder what they had once been. He almost wept at the vision so conjured up.
There was nobody about. Perhaps he might break in somehow. But then there was nothing to get to work with. He could not kick the door down. No, he must give it up, and the ferrets' breakfast-hour must be postponed. Possibly Harvey might be able to think of something.
“Fed 'em?” inquired Harvey, when they met at breakfast.
“No, I couldn't.”
“Why on earth not? You didn't oversleep yourself?”
Renford poured his tale into his friend's shocked ears.
“My hat!” said Harvey, when he had finished, “what on earth are we to do? They'll starve.”
Renford nodded mournfully.
“Whatever made them go and lock the door?” he said.
He seemed to think the authorities should have given him due notice of such an action.
“You're sure they have locked it? It isn't only stuck or something?”
“I lugged at the handle for hours. But you can go and see for yourself if you like.”
Harvey went, and, waiting till the coast was clear, attached himself to the handle with a prehensile grasp, and put his back into one strenuous tug. It was even as Renford had said. The door was locked beyond possibility of doubt.
Renford and he went over to school that morning with long faces and a general air of acute depression. It was perhaps fortunate for their purpose that they did, for had their appearance been normal it might not have attracted O'Hara's attention. As it was, the Irishman, meeting them on the junior gravel, stopped and asked them what was wrong. Since the adventure in the vault, he had felt an interest in Renford and Harvey.
The two told their story in alternate sentences like the Strophe and Antistrophe of a Greek chorus. (“Steichomuthics,” your Greek scholar calls it, I fancy. Ha, yes! Just so.)
“So ye can't get in because they've locked the door, an' ye don't know what to do about it?” said O'Hara, at the conclusion of the narrative.
Renford and Harvey informed him in chorus that that was the state of the game up to present date.
“An' ye want me to get them out for you?”
Neither had dared to hope that he would go so far as this. What they had looked for had been at the most a few thoughtful words of advice. That such a master-strategist as O'Hara should take up their cause was an unexampled piece of good luck.
“If you only would,” said Harvey.
“We should be most awfully obliged,” said Renford.
“Very well,” said O'Hara.
They thanked him profusely.
O'Hara replied that it would be a privilege.
He should be sorry, he said, to have anything happen to the ferrets.
Renford and Harvey went on into school feeling more cheerful. If the ferrets could be extracted from their present tight corner, O'Hara was the man to do it.
O'Hara had not made his offer of assistance in any spirit of doubt. He was certain that he could do what he had promised. For it had not escaped his memory that this was a Tuesday—in other words, a mathematics morning up to the quarter to eleven interval. That meant, as has been explained previously, that, while the rest of the school were in the form-rooms, he would be out in the passage, if he cared to be. There would be no witnesses to what he was going to do.
But, by that curious perversity of fate which is so often noticeable, Mr Banks was in a peculiarly lamb-like and long-suffering mood this morning. Actions for which O'Hara would on other days have been expelled from the room without hope of return, today were greeted with a mild “Don't do that, please, O'Hara,” or even the ridiculously inadequate “O'Hara!” It was perfectly disheartening. O'Hara began to ask himself bitterly what was the use of ragging at all if this was how it was received. And the moments were flying, and his promise to Renford and Harvey still remained unfulfilled.
He prepared for fresh efforts.
So desperate was he, that he even resorted to crude methods like the throwing of paper balls and the dropping of books. And when your really scientific ragger sinks to this, he is nearing the end of his tether. O'Hara hated to be rude, but there seemed no help for it.
The striking of a quarter past ten improved his chances. It had been privily agreed upon beforehand amongst the members of the class that at a quarter past ten every one was to sneeze simultaneously. The noise startled Mr Banks considerably. The angelic mood began to wear off.
“Another exhibition like that,” he said, sharply, “and the class stays in after school, O'Hara!”
“Sir?”
“Silence.”
“I said nothing, sir, really.”
“Boy, you made a cat-like noise with your mouth.”
“What sort of noise, sir?”
The form waited breathlessly. This peculiarly insidious question had been invented for mathematical use by one Sandys, who had left at the end of the previous summer. It was but rarely that the master increased the gaiety of nations by answering the question in the manner desired.
Mr Banks, off his guard, fell into the trap.
“A noise like this,” he said curtly, and to the delighted audience came the melodious sound of a “Mi-aou", which put O'Hara's effort completely in the shade, and would have challenged comparison with the war-cry of the stoutest mouser that ever trod a tile.
A storm of imitations arose from all parts of the room. Mr Banks turned pink, and, going straight to the root of the disturbance, forthwith evicted O'Hara.
O'Hara left with the satisfying feeling that his duty had been done.
Mr Banks' room was at the top of the middle block. He ran softly down the stairs at his best pace. It was not likely that the master would come out into the passage to see if he was still there, but it might happen, and it would be best to run as few risks as possible.
He sprinted over to the junior block, raised the trap-door, and jumped down. He knew where the ferrets had been placed, and had no difficulty in finding them. In another minute he was in the passage again, with the trap-door bolted behind him.
He now asked himself—what should he do with them? He must find a safe place, or his labours would have been in vain.
Behind the fives-court, he thought, would be the spot. Nobody ever went there. It meant a run of three hundred yards there and the same distance back, and there was more than a chance that he might be seen by one of the Powers. In which case he might find it rather hard to explain what he was doing in the middle of the grounds with a couple of ferrets in his possession when the hands of the clock pointed to twenty minutes to eleven.
But the odds were against his being seen. He risked it.
When the bell rang for the quarter to eleven interval the ferrets were in their new home, happily discussing a piece of meat—Renford's contribution, held over from the morning's meal,—and O'Hara, looking as if he had never left the passage for an instant, was making his way through the departing mathematical class to apologise handsomely to Mr Banks—as was his invariable custom—for his disgraceful behaviour during the morning's lesson.
School prefects at Wrykyn did weekly essays for the headmaster. Those who had got their scholarships at the 'Varsity, or who were going up in the following year, used to take their essays to him after school and read them to him—an unpopular and nerve-destroying practice, akin to suicide. Trevor had got his scholarship in the previous November. He was due at the headmaster's private house at six o'clock on the present Tuesday. He was looking forward to the ordeal not without apprehension. The essay subject this week had been “One man's meat is another man's poison", and Clowes, whose idea of English Essay was that it should be a medium for intempestive frivolity, had insisted on his beginning with, “While I cannot conscientiously go so far as to say that one man's meat is another man's poison, yet I am certainly of opinion that what is highly beneficial to one man may, on the other hand, to another man, differently constituted, be extremely deleterious, and, indeed, absolutely fatal.”
Trevor was not at all sure how the headmaster would take it. But Clowes had seemed so cut up at his suggestion that it had better be omitted, that he had allowed it to stand.
He was putting the final polish on this gem of English literature at half-past five, when Milton came in.
“Busy?” said Milton.
Trevor said he would be through in a minute.
Milton took a chair, and waited.
Trevor scratched out two words and substituted two others, made a couple of picturesque blots, and, laying down his pen, announced that he had finished.
“What's up?” he said.
“It's about the League,” said Milton.
“Found out anything?”
“Not anything much. But I've been making inquiries. You remember I asked you to let me look at those letters of yours?”
Trevor nodded. This had happened on the Sunday of that week.
“Well, I wanted to look at the post-marks.”
“By Jove, I never thought of that.”
Milton continued with the business-like air of the detective who explains in the last chapter of the book how he did it.
“I found, as I thought, that both letters came from the same place.”
Trevor pulled out the letters in question. “So they do,” he said, “Chesterton.”
“Do you know Chesterton?” asked Milton.
“Only by name.”
“It's a small hamlet about two miles from here across the downs. There's only one shop in the place, which acts as post-office and tobacconist and everything else. I thought that if I went there and asked about those letters, they might remember who it was that sent them, if I showed them a photograph.”
“By Jove,” said Trevor, “of course! Did you? What happened?”
“I went there yesterday afternoon. I took about half-a-dozen photographs of various chaps, including Rand-Brown.”
“But wait a bit. If Chesterton's two miles off, Rand-Brown couldn't have sent the letters. He wouldn't have the time after school. He was on the grounds both the afternoons before I got the letters.”
“I know,” said Milton; “I didn't think of that at the time.”
“Well?”
“One of the points about the Chesterton post-office is that there's no letter-box outside. You have to go into the shop and hand anything you want to post across the counter. I thought this was a tremendous score for me. I thought they would be bound to remember who handed in the letters. There can't be many at a place like that.”
“Did they remember?”
“They remembered the letters being given in distinctly, but as for knowing anything beyond that, they were simply futile. There was an old woman in the shop, aged about three hundred and ten, I should think. I shouldn't say she had ever been very intelligent, but now she simply gibbered. I started off by laying out a shilling on some poisonous-looking sweets. I gave the lot to a village kid when I got out. I hope they didn't kill him. Then, having scattered ground-bait in that way, I lugged out the photographs, mentioned the letters and the date they had been sent, and asked her to weigh in and identify the sender.”
“Did she?”
“My dear chap, she identified them all, one after the other. The first was one of Clowes. She was prepared to swear on oath that that was the chap who had sent the letters. Then I shot a photograph of you across the counter, and doubts began to creep in. She said she was certain it was one of those two 'la-ads', but couldn't quite say which. To keep her amused I fired in photograph number three—Allardyce's. She identified that, too. At the end of ten minutes she was pretty sure that it was one of the six—the other three were Paget, Clephane, and Rand-Brown—but she was not going to bind herself down to any particular one. As I had come to the end of my stock of photographs, and was getting a bit sick of the game, I got up to go, when in came another ornament of Chesterton from a room at the back of the shop. He was quite a kid, not more than a hundred and fifty at the outside, so, as a last chance, I tackled him on the subject. He looked at the photographs for about half an hour, mumbling something about it not being 'thiccy 'un' or 'that 'un', or 'that 'ere tother 'un', until I began to feel I'd had enough of it. Then it came out that the real chap who had sent the letters was a 'la-ad' with light hair, not so big as me—”
“That doesn't help us much,” said Trevor.
“—And a 'prarper little gennlemun'. So all we've got to do is to look for some young duke of polished manners and exterior, with a thatch of light hair.”
“There are three hundred and sixty-seven fellows with light hair in the school,” said Trevor, calmly.
“Thought it was three hundred and sixty-eight myself,” said Milton, “but I may be wrong. Anyhow, there you have the results of my investigations. If you can make anything out of them, you're welcome to it. Good-bye.”
“Half a second,” said Trevor, as he got up; “had the fellow a cap of any sort?”
“No. Bareheaded. You wouldn't expect him to give himself away by wearing a house-cap?”
Trevor went over to the headmaster's revolving this discovery in his mind. It was not much of a clue, but the smallest clue is better than nothing. To find out that the sender of the League letters had fair hair narrowed the search down a little. It cleared the more raven-locked members of the school, at any rate. Besides, by combining his information with Milton's, the search might be still further narrowed down. He knew that the polite letter-writer must be either in Seymour's or in Donaldson's. The number of fair-haired youths in the two houses was not excessive. Indeed, at the moment he could not recall any; which rather complicated matters.
He arrived at the headmaster's door, and knocked. He was shown into a room at the side of the hall, near the door. The butler informed him that the headmaster was engaged at present. Trevor, who knew the butler slightly through having constantly been to see the headmaster on business via the front door, asked who was there.
“Sir Eustace Briggs,” said the butler, and disappeared in the direction of his lair beyond the green baize partition at the end of the hall.
Trevor went into the room, which was a sort of spare study, and sat down, wondering what had brought the mayor of Wrykyn to see the headmaster at this advanced hour.
A quarter of an hour later the sound of voices broke in upon his peace. The headmaster was coming down the hall with the intention of showing his visitor out. The door of Trevor's room was ajar, and he could hear distinctly what was being said. He had no particular desire to play the eavesdropper, but the part was forced upon him.
Sir Eustace seemed excited.
“It is far from being my habit,” he was saying, “to make unnecessary complaints respecting the conduct of the lads under your care.” (Sir Eustace Briggs had a distaste for the shorter and more colloquial forms of speech. He would have perished sooner than have substituted “complain of your boys” for the majestic formula he had used. He spoke as if he enjoyed choosing his words. He seemed to pause and think before each word. Unkind people—who were jealous of his distinguished career—used to say that he did this because he was afraid of dropping an aitch if he relaxed his vigilance.)
“But,” continued he, “I am reluctantly forced to the unpleasant conclusion that the dastardly outrage to which both I and the Press of the town have called your attention is to be attributed to one of the lads to whom I 'ave—have (this with a jerk) referred.”
“I will make a thorough inquiry, Sir Eustace,” said the bass voice of the headmaster.
“I thank you,” said the mayor. “It would, under the circumstances, be nothing more, I think, than what is distinctly advisable. The man Samuel Wapshott, of whose narrative I have recently afforded you a brief synopsis, stated in no uncertain terms that he found at the foot of the statue on which the dastardly outrage was perpetrated a diminutive ornament, in shape like the bats that are used in the game of cricket. This ornament, he avers (with what truth I know not), was handed by him to a youth of an age coeval with that of the lads in the upper division of this school. The youth claimed it as his property, I was given to understand.”
“A thorough inquiry shall be made, Sir Eustace.”
“I thank you.”
And then the door shut, and the conversation ceased.
Trevor waited till the headmaster had gone back to his library, gave him five minutes to settle down, and then went in.
The headmaster looked up inquiringly.
“My essay, sir,” said Trevor.
“Ah, yes. I had forgotten.”
Trevor opened the notebook and began to read what he had written. He finished the paragraph which owed its insertion to Clowes, and raced hurriedly on to the next. To his surprise the flippancy passed unnoticed, at any rate, verbally. As a rule the headmaster preferred that quotations from back numbers of Punch should be kept out of the prefects' English Essays. And he generally said as much. But today he seemed strangely preoccupied. A split infinitive in paragraph five, which at other times would have made him sit up in his chair stiff with horror, elicited no remark. The same immunity was accorded to the insertion (inspired by Clowes, as usual) of a popular catch phrase in the last few lines. Trevor finished with the feeling that luck had favoured him nobly.
“Yes,” said the headmaster, seemingly roused by the silence following on the conclusion of the essay. “Yes.” Then, after a long pause, “Yes,” again.
Trevor said nothing, but waited for further comment.
“Yes,” said the headmaster once more, “I think that is a very fair essay. Very fair. It wants a little more—er—not quite so much—um—yes.”
Trevor made a note in his mind to effect these improvements in future essays, and was getting up, when the headmaster stopped him.
“Don't go, Trevor. I wish to speak to you.”
Trevor's first thought was, perhaps naturally, that the bat was going to be brought into discussion. He was wondering helplessly how he was going to keep O'Hara and his midnight exploit out of the conversation, when the headmaster resumed. “An unpleasant thing has happened, Trevor—”
“Now we're coming to it,” thought Trevor.
“It appears, Trevor, that a considerable amount of smoking has been going on in the school.”
Trevor breathed freely once more. It was only going to be a mere conventional smoking row after all. He listened with more enjoyment as the headmaster, having stopped to turn down the wick of the reading-lamp which stood on the table at his side, and which had begun, appropriately enough, to smoke, resumed his discourse.
“Mr Dexter—”
Of course, thought Trevor. If there ever was a row in the school, Dexter was bound to be at the bottom of it.
“Mr Dexter has just been in to see me. He reported six boys. He discovered them in the vault beneath the junior block. Two of them were boys in your house.”
Trevor murmured something wordless, to show that the story interested him.
“You knew nothing of this, of course—”
“No, sir.”
“No. Of course not. It is difficult for the head of a house to know all that goes on in that house.”
Was this his beastly sarcasm? Trevor asked himself. But he came to the conclusion that it was not. After all, the head of a house is only human. He cannot be expected to keep an eye on the private life of every member of his house.
“This must be stopped, Trevor. There is no saying how widespread the practice has become or may become.  It seemed too late for such amusement.
“Tonight. But before you go to your house, call at Mr Seymour's, and tell Milton I should like to see him.  I shall not require you to make any report to me. But if you should find tobacco in any boy's room, you must punish him well, Trevor. Punish him well.”
This meant that the culprit must be “touched up” before the house assembled in the dining-room. Such an event did not often occur. The last occasion had been in Paget's first term as head of Donaldson's, when two of the senior day-room had been discovered attempting to revive the ancient and dishonourable custom of bullying. This time, Trevor foresaw, would set up a record in all probability. There might be any number of devotees of the weed, and he meant to carry out his instructions to the full, and make the criminals more unhappy than they had been since the day of their first cigar. Trevor hated the habit of smoking at school. He was so intensely keen on the success of the house and the school at games, that anything which tended to damage the wind and eye filled him with loathing. That anybody should dare to smoke in a house which was going to play in the final for the House Football Cup made him rage internally, and he proposed to make things bad and unrestful for such.
To smoke at school is to insult the divine weed. When you are obliged to smoke in odd corners, fearing every moment that you will be discovered, the whole meaning, poetry, romance of a pipe vanishes, and you become like those lost beings who smoke when they are running to catch trains. The boy who smokes at school is bound to come to a bad end. He will degenerate gradually into a person that plays dominoes in the smoking-rooms of A.B.C. shops with friends who wear bowler hats and frock coats.
Much of this philosophy Trevor expounded to Clowes in energetic language when he returned to Donaldson's after calling at Seymour's to deliver the message for Milton.
Clowes became quite animated at the prospect of a real row.
“We shall be able to see the skeletons in their cupboards,” he observed. “Every man has a skeleton in his cupboard, which follows him about wherever he goes. Which study shall we go to first?”
“We?” said Trevor.
“We,” repeated Clowes firmly. “I am not going to be left out of this jaunt. I need bracing up—I'm not strong, you know—and this is just the thing to do it. Besides, you'll want a bodyguard of some sort, in case the infuriated occupant turns and rends you.”
“I don't see what there is to enjoy in the business,” said Trevor, gloomily. “Personally, I bar this kind of thing. By the time we've finished, there won't be a chap in the house I'm on speaking terms with.”
“Except me, dearest,” said Clowes. “I will never desert you. It's of no use asking me, for I will never do it. Mr Micawber has his faults, but I will never desert Mr Micawber.”
“You can come if you like,” said Trevor; “we'll take the studies in order. I suppose we needn't look up the prefects?”
“A prefect is above suspicion. Scratch the prefects.”
“That brings us to Dixon.”
Dixon was a stout youth with spectacles, who was popularly supposed to do twenty-two hours' work a day. It was believed that he put in two hours sleep from eleven to one, and then got up and worked in his study till breakfast.
He was working when Clowes and Trevor came in. He dived head foremost into a huge Liddell and Scott as the door opened. On hearing Trevor's voice he slowly emerged, and a pair of round and spectacled eyes gazed blankly at the visitors. Trevor briefly explained his errand, but the interview lost in solemnity owing to the fact that the bare notion of Dixon storing tobacco in his room made Clowes roar with laughter. Also, Dixon stolidly refused to understand what Trevor was talking about, and at the end of ten minutes, finding it hopeless to try and explain, the two went. Dixon, with a hazy impression that he had been asked to join in some sort of round game, and had refused the offer, returned again to his Liddell and Scott, and continued to wrestle with the somewhat obscure utterances of the chorus in AEschylus' Agamemnon. The results of this fiasco on Trevor and Clowes were widely different. Trevor it depressed horribly. It made him feel savage. Clowes, on the other hand, regarded the whole affair in a spirit of rollicking farce, and refused to see that this was a serious matter, in which the honour of the house was involved.
The next study was Ruthven's. This fact somewhat toned down the exuberances of Clowes's demeanour. When one particularly dislikes a person, one has a curious objection to seeming in good spirits in his presence. One feels that he may take it as a sort of compliment to himself, or, at any rate, contribute grins of his own, which would be hateful. Clowes was as grave as Trevor when they entered the study.
Ruthven's study was like himself, overdressed and rather futile. It ran to little china ornaments in a good deal of profusion. It was more like a drawing-room than a school study.
“Sorry to disturb you, Ruthven,” said Trevor.
“Oh, come in,” said Ruthven, in a tired voice.  Do you want anything?”
“We've got to have a look round,” said Clowes.
“Can't you see everything there is?”
Ruthven hated Clowes as much as Clowes hated him.
Trevor cut into the conversation again.
“It's like this, Ruthven,” he said. “I'm awfully sorry, but the Old Man's just told me to search the studies in case any of the fellows have got baccy.”
Ruthven jumped up, pale with consternation.
“You can't. I won't have you disturbing my study.”
“This is rot,” said Trevor, shortly, “I've got to. It's no good making it more unpleasant for me than it is.”
“But I've no tobacco. I swear I haven't.”
“Then why mind us searching?” said Clowes affably.
“Come on, Ruthven,” said Trevor, “chuck us over the keys.  He stooped, as he spoke, to pick it up.
“Leave that poker alone,” cried Ruthven.
Clowes straightened himself.
“I'll swop it for your keys,” he said.
“Don't be a fool.”
“Very well, then. We will now crack our first crib.”
Ruthven sprang forward, but Clowes, handing him off in football fashion with his left hand, with his right dashed the poker against the lock of the drawer of the table by which he stood.
The lock broke with a sharp crack. It was not built with an eye to such onslaught.
“Neat for a first shot,” said Clowes, complacently. “Now for the Umustaphas and shag.”
But as he looked into the drawer he uttered a sudden cry of excitement. He drew something out, and tossed it over to Trevor.
“Catch, Trevor,” he said quietly. “Something that'll interest you.”
Trevor caught it neatly in one hand, and stood staring at it as if he had never seen anything like it before. And yet he had—often. For what he had caught was a little golden bat, about an inch long by an eighth of an inch wide.
“What do you think of that?” said Clowes.
Trevor said nothing. He could not quite grasp the situation. It was not only that he had got the idea so firmly into his head that it was Rand-Brown who had sent the letters and appropriated the bat. Even supposing he had not suspected Rand-Brown, he would never have dreamed of suspecting Ruthven. They had been friends. Not very close friends—Trevor's keenness for games and Ruthven's dislike of them prevented that—but a good deal more than acquaintances. He was so constituted that he could not grasp the frame of mind required for such an action as Ruthven's. It was something absolutely abnormal.
Clowes was equally surprised, but for a different reason. It was not so much the enormity of Ruthven's proceedings that took him aback. He believed him, with that cheerful intolerance which a certain type of mind affects, capable of anything. What surprised him was the fact that Ruthven had had the ingenuity and even the daring to conduct a campaign of this description. Cribbing in examinations he would have thought the limit of his crimes. Something backboneless and underhand of that kind would not have surprised him in the least. He would have said that it was just about what he had expected all along. But that Ruthven should blossom out suddenly as quite an ingenious and capable criminal in this way, was a complete surprise.
“Well, perhaps you'll make a remark?” he said, turning to Ruthven.
Ruthven, looking very much like a passenger on a Channel steamer who has just discovered that the motion of the vessel is affecting him unpleasantly, had fallen into a chair when Clowes handed him off. He sat there with a look on his pasty face which was not good to see, as silent as Trevor. It seemed that whatever conversation there was going to be would have to take the form of a soliloquy from Clowes.
Clowes took a seat on the corner of the table.
“It seems to me, Ruthven,” he said, “that you'd better say something. At present there's a lot that wants explaining. As this bat has been found lying in your drawer, I suppose we may take it that you're the impolite letter-writer?”
Ruthven found his voice at last.
“I'm not,” he cried; “I never wrote a line.”
“Now we're getting at it,” said Clowes. “I thought you couldn't have had it in you to carry this business through on your own. Apparently you've only been the sleeping partner in this show, though I suppose it was you who ragged Trevor's study? Not much sleeping about that. You took over the acting branch of the concern for that day only, I expect. Was it you who ragged the study?”
Ruthven stared into the fire, but said nothing.
“Must be polite, you know, Ruthven, and answer when you're spoken to. Was it you who ragged Trevor's study?”
“Yes,” said Ruthven.
“Thought so.”
“Why, of course, I met you just outside,” said Trevor, speaking for the first time. “You were the chap who told me what had happened.”
Ruthven said nothing.
“The ragging of the study seems to have been all the active work he did,” remarked Clowes.
“No,” said Trevor, “he posted the letters, whether he wrote them or not. Milton was telling me—you remember? I told you. No, I didn't. Milton found out that the letters were posted by a small, light-haired fellow.”
“That's him,” said Clowes, as regardless of grammar as the monks of Rheims, pointing with the poker at Ruthven's immaculate locks. “Well, you ragged the study and posted the letters. That was all your share. Am I right in thinking Rand-Brown was the other partner?”
Silence from Ruthven.
“Am I?” persisted Clowes.
“You may think what you like. I don't care.”
“Now we're getting rude again,” complained Clowes. “Was Rand-Brown in this?”
“Yes,” said Ruthven.
“Thought so. And who else?”
“No one.”
“Try again.”
“I tell you there was no one else. Can't you believe a word a chap says?”
“A word here and there, perhaps,” said Clowes, as one making a concession, “but not many, and this isn't one of them. Have another shot.”
Ruthven relapsed into silence.
“All right, then,” said Clowes, “we'll accept that statement. There's just a chance that it may be true. And that's about all, I think. This isn't my affair at all, really. It's yours, Trevor. I'm only a spectator and camp-follower. It's your business. You'll find me in my study.” And putting the poker carefully in its place, Clowes left the room. He went into his study, and tried to begin some work. But the beauties of the second book of Thucydides failed to appeal to him. His mind was elsewhere. He felt too excited with what had just happened to translate Greek. He pulled up a chair in front of the fire, and gave himself up to speculating how Trevor was getting on in the neighbouring study. He was glad he had left him to finish the business. If he had been in Trevor's place, there was nothing he would so greatly have disliked as to have some one—however familiar a friend—interfering in his wars and settling them for him. Left to himself, Clowes would probably have ended the interview by kicking Ruthven into the nearest approach to pulp compatible with the laws relating to manslaughter. He had an uneasy suspicion that Trevor would let him down far too easily.
The handle turned. Trevor came in, and pulled up another chair in silence. His face wore a look of disgust. But there were no signs of combat upon him. The toe of his boot was not worn and battered, as Clowes would have liked to have seen it. Evidently he had not chosen to adopt active and physical measures for the improvement of Ruthven's moral well-being.
“Well?” said Clowes.
“My word, what a hound!” breathed Trevor, half to himself.
“My sentiments to a hair,” said Clowes, approvingly. “But what have you done?”
“I didn't do anything.”
“I was afraid you wouldn't. Did he give any explanation? What made him go in for the thing at all? What earthly motive could he have for not wanting Barry to get his colours, bar the fact that Rand-Brown didn't want him to? And why should he do what Rand-Brown told him? I never even knew they were pals, before today.”
“He told me a good deal,” said Trevor. “It's one of the beastliest things I ever heard. They neither of them come particularly well out of the business, but Rand-Brown comes worse out of it even than Ruthven. My word, that man wants killing.”
“That'll keep,” said Clowes, nodding. “What's the yarn?”
“Do you remember about a year ago a chap named Patterson getting sacked?”
Clowes nodded again. He remembered the case well. Patterson had had gambling transactions with a Wrykyn tradesman, had been found out, and had gone.
“You remember what a surprise it was to everybody. It wasn't one of those cases where half the school suspects what's going on. Those cases always come out sooner or later. But Patterson nobody knew about.”
“Yes. Well?”
“Nobody,” said Trevor, “except Ruthven, that is. Ruthven got to know somehow. I believe he was a bit of a pal of Patterson's at the time. Anyhow,—they had a row, and Ruthven went to Dexter—Patterson was in Dexter's—and sneaked. Dexter promised to keep his name out of the business, and went straight to the Old Man, and Patterson got turfed out on the spot. Then somehow or other Rand-Brown got to know about it—I believe Ruthven must have told him by accident some time or other. After that he simply had to do everything Rand-Brown wanted him to. Otherwise he said that he would tell the chaps about the Patterson affair. That put Ruthven in a dead funk.”
“Of course,” said Clowes; “I should imagine friend Ruthven would have got rather a bad time of it. But what made them think of starting the League? It was a jolly smart idea. Rand-Brown's, of course?”
“Yes. I suppose he'd heard about it, and thought something might be made out of it if it were revived.”
“And were Ruthven and he the only two in it?”
“Ruthven swears they were, and I shouldn't wonder if he wasn't telling the truth, for once in his life. You see, everything the League's done so far could have been done by him and Rand-Brown, without anybody else's help. The only other studies that were ragged were Mill's and Milton's—both in Seymour's.
“Yes,” said Clowes.
There was a pause. Clowes put another shovelful of coal on the fire.
“What are you going to do to Ruthven?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Hang it, he doesn't deserve to get off like that. He isn't as bad as Rand-Brown—quite—but he's pretty nearly as finished a little beast as you could find.”
“Finished is just the word,” said Trevor. “He's going at the end of the week.”
“Going? What! sacked?”
“Yes. The Old Man's been finding out things about him, apparently, and this smoking row has just added the finishing-touch to his discoveries. He's particularly keen against smoking just now for some reason.”
“But was Ruthven in it?”
“Yes. Didn't I tell you? He was one of the fellows Dexter caught in the vault. There were two in this house, you remember?”
“Who was the other?”
“That man Dashwood. Has the study next to Paget's old one. He's going, too.”
“Scarcely knew him. What sort of a chap was he?”
“Outsider. No good to the house in any way. He won't be missed.”
“And what are you going to do about Rand-Brown?”
“Fight him, of course. What else could I do?”
“But you're no match for him.”
“We'll see.”
“But you aren't,” persisted Clowes. “He can give you a stone easily, and he's not a bad boxer either. Moriarty didn't beat him so very cheaply in the middle-weight this year. You wouldn't have a chance.”
Trevor flared up.
“Heavens, man,” he cried, “do you think I don't know all that myself? But what on earth would you have me do? Besides, he may be a good boxer, but he's got no pluck at all. I might outstay him.”
“Hope so,” said Clowes.
But his tone was not hopeful.
Some people in Trevor's place might have taken the earliest opportunity of confronting Rand-Brown, so as to settle the matter in hand without delay. Trevor thought of doing this, but finally decided to let the matter rest for a day, until he should have found out with some accuracy what chance he stood.
After four o'clock, therefore, on the next day, having had tea in his study, he went across to the baths, in search of O'Hara. He intended that before the evening was over the Irishman should have imparted to him some of his skill with the hands. He did not know that for a man absolutely unscientific with his fists there is nothing so fatal as to take a boxing lesson on the eve of battle. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. He is apt to lose his recklessness—which might have stood by him well—in exchange for a little quite useless science. He is neither one thing nor the other, neither a natural fighter nor a skilful boxer.

The Irishman was in the gymnasium, punching the ball, when Trevor found him. He generally put in a quarter of an hour with the punching-ball every evening, before Moriarty turned up for the customary six rounds.
“Want me to teach ye a few tricks?” he said. “What's that for?”
“I've got a mill coming on soon,” explained Trevor, trying to make the statement as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for a school prefect, who was also captain of football, head of a house, and in the cricket eleven, to be engaged for a fight in the near future.
“Mill!” exclaimed O'Hara. “You! An' why?”
“Never mind why,” said Trevor. “I'll tell you afterwards, perhaps. Shall I put on the gloves now?”
“Wait,” said O'Hara, “I must do my quarter of an hour with the ball before I begin teaching other people how to box. Have ye a watch?”
“Yes.”
“Then time me. I'll do four rounds of three minutes each, with a minute's rest in between. That's more than I'll do at Aldershot, but it'll get me fit. Ready?”
“Time,” said Trevor.
He watched O'Hara assailing the swinging ball with considerable envy. Why, he wondered, had he not gone in for boxing? Everybody ought to learn to box. It was bound to come in useful some time or other. Take his own case. He was very much afraid—no, afraid was not the right word, for he was not that. He was very much of opinion that Rand-Brown was going to have a most enjoyable time when they met. And the final house-match was to be played next Monday. If events turned out as he could not help feeling they were likely to turn out, he would be too battered to play in that match. Donaldson's would probably win whether he played or not, but it would be bitter to be laid up on such an occasion. On the other hand, he must go through with it. He did not believe in letting other people take a hand in settling his private quarrels.
But he wished he had learned to box. If only he could hit that dancing, jumping ball with a fifth of the skill that O'Hara was displaying, his wiriness and pluck might see him through. O'Hara finished his fourth round with his leathern opponent, and sat down, panting.
“Pretty useful, that,” commented Trevor, admiringly.
“Ye should see Moriarty,” gasped O'Hara.
“Now, will ye tell me why it is you're going to fight, and with whom you're going to fight?”
“Very well. It's with Rand-Brown.”
“Rand-Brown!” exclaimed O'Hara. “But, me dearr man, he'll ate you.”
Trevor gave a rather annoyed laugh. “I must say I've got a nice, cheery, comforting lot of friends,” he said. “That's just what Clowes has been trying to explain to me.”
“Clowes is quite right,” said O'Hara, seriously. “Has the thing gone too far for ye to back out? Without climbing down, of course,” he added.
“Yes,” said Trevor, “there's no question of my getting out of it. I daresay I could. In fact, I know I could. But I'm not going to.”
“But, me dearr man, ye haven't an earthly chance. I assure ye ye haven't. I've seen Rand-Brown with the gloves on. That was last term. He's not put them on since Moriarty bate him in the middles, so he may be out of practice. But even then he'd be a bad man to tackle. He's big an' he's strong, an' if he'd only had the heart in him he'd have been going up to Aldershot instead of Moriarty. That's what he'd be doing. An' you can't box at all. Never even had the gloves on.”
“Never. I used to scrap when I was a kid, though.”
“That's no use,” said O'Hara, decidedly. “But you haven't said what it is that ye've got against Rand-Brown. What is it?”
“I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. You're in it as well. In fact, if it hadn't been for the bat turning up, you'd have been considerably more in it than I am.”
“What!” cried O'Hara. “Where did you find it? Was it in the grounds? When was it you found it?”
Whereupon Trevor gave him a very full and exact account of what had happened. He showed him the two letters from the League, touched on Milton's connection with the affair, traced the gradual development of his suspicions, and described with some approach to excitement the scene in Ruthven's study, and the explanations that had followed it.
“Now do you wonder,” he concluded, “that I feel as if a few rounds with Rand-Brown would do me good.”
O'Hara breathed hard.
“My word!” he said, “I'd like to see ye kill him.”
“But,” said Trevor, “as you and Clowes have been pointing out to me, if there's going to be a corpse, it'll be me. However, I mean to try. Now perhaps you wouldn't mind showing me a few tricks.”
“Take my advice,” said O'Hara, “and don't try any of that foolery.”
“Why, I thought you were such a believer in science,” said Trevor in surprise.
“So I am, if you've enough of it. But it's the worst thing ye can do to learn a trick or two just before a fight, if you don't know anything about the game already. A tough, rushing fighter is ten times as good as a man who's just begun to learn what he oughtn't to do.”
“Well, what do you advise me to do, then?” asked Trevor, impressed by the unwonted earnestness with which the Irishman delivered this pugilistic homily, which was a paraphrase of the views dinned into the ears of every novice by the school instructor.
“I must do something.”
“The best thing ye can do,” said O'Hara, thinking for a moment, “is to put on the gloves and have a round or two with me. Here's Moriarty at last. We'll get him to time us.”
As much explanation as was thought good for him having been given to the newcomer, to account for Trevor's newly-acquired taste for things pugilistic, Moriarty took the watch, with instructions to give them two minutes for the first round.
“Go as hard as you can,” said O'Hara to Trevor, as they faced one another, “and hit as hard as you like. It won't be any practice if you don't. I sha'n't mind being hit. It'll do me good for Aldershot. See?”
Trevor said he saw.
“Time,” said Moriarty.
Trevor went in with a will. He was a little shy at first of putting all his weight into his blows. It was hard to forget that he felt friendly towards O'Hara. But he speedily awoke to the fact that the Irishman took his boxing very seriously, and was quite a different person when he had the gloves on. When he was so equipped, the man opposite him ceased to be either friend or foe in a private way. He was simply an opponent, and every time he hit him was one point. And, when he entered the ring, his only object in life for the next three minutes was to score points. Consequently Trevor, sparring lightly and in rather a futile manner at first, was woken up by a stinging flush hit between the eyes. After that he, too, forgot that he liked the man before him, and rushed him in all directions. There was no doubt as to who would have won if it had been a competition. Trevor's guard was of the most rudimentary order, and O'Hara got through when and how he liked. But though he took a good deal, he also gave a good deal, and O'Hara confessed himself not altogether sorry when Moriarty called “Time”.
“Man,” he said regretfully, “why ever did ye not take up boxing before? Ye'd have made a splendid middle-weight.”
“Well, have I a chance, do you think?” inquired Trevor.
“Ye might do it with luck,” said O'Hara, very doubtfully. “But,” he added, “I'm afraid ye've not much chance.”
And with this poor encouragement from his trainer and sparring-partner, Trevor was forced to be content.
The health of Master Harvey of Seymour's was so delicately constituted that it was an absolute necessity that he should consume one or more hot buns during the quarter of an hour's interval which split up morning school. He was tearing across the junior gravel towards the shop on the morning following Trevor's sparring practice with O'Hara, when a melodious treble voice called his name. It was Renford. He stopped, to allow his friend to come up with him, and then made as if to resume his way to the shop. But Renford proposed an amendment. “Don't go to the shop,” he said, “I want to talk.”
“Well, can't you talk in the shop?”
“Not what I want to tell you. It's private. Come for a stroll.”
Harvey hesitated. There were few things he enjoyed so much as exclusive items of school gossip (scandal preferably), but hot new buns were among those few things. However, he decided on this occasion to feed the mind at the expense of the body. He accepted Renford's invitation.
“What is it?” he asked, as they made for the football field. “What's been happening?”
“It's frightfully exciting,” said Renford.
“What's up?”
“You mustn't tell any one.”
“All right. Of course not.”
“Well, then, there's been a big fight, and I'm one of the only chaps who know about it so far.”
“A fight?” Harvey became excited. “Who between?”
Renford paused before delivering his news, to emphasise the importance of it.
“It was between O'Hara and Rand-Brown,” he said at length.
“By Jove!” said Harvey. Then a suspicion crept into his mind.
“Look here, Renford,” he said, “if you're trying to green me—”
“I'm not, you ass,” replied Renford indignantly. “It's perfectly true. I saw it myself.”
“By Jove, did you really? Where was it? When did it come off? Was it a good one? Who won?”
“It was the best one I've ever seen.”
“Did O'Hara beat him? I hope he did. O'Hara's a jolly good sort.”
“Yes. They had six rounds. Rand-Brown got knocked out in the middle of the sixth.”
“What, do you mean really knocked out, or did he just chuck it?”
“No. He was really knocked out. He was on the floor for quite a time. By Jove, you should have seen it. O'Hara was ripping in the sixth round. He was all over him.”
“Tell us about it,” said Harvey, and Renford told.
“I'd got up early,” he said, “to feed the ferrets, and I was just cutting over to the fives-courts with their grub, when, just as I got across the senior gravel, I saw O'Hara and Moriarty standing waiting near the second court. O'Hara knows all about the ferrets, so I didn't try and cut or anything. I went up and began talking to him. I noticed he didn't look particularly keen on seeing me at first. I asked him if he was going to play fives. Then he said no, and told me what he'd really come for. He said he and Rand-Brown had had a row, and they'd agreed to have it out that morning in one of the fives-courts. Of course, when I heard that, I was all on to see it, so I said I'd wait, if he didn't mind. He said he didn't care, so long as I didn't tell everybody, so I said I wouldn't tell anybody except you, so he said all right, then, I could stop if I wanted to. So that was how I saw it. Well, after we'd been waiting a few minutes, Rand-Brown came in sight, with that beast Merrett in our house, who'd come to second him. It was just like one of those duels you read about, you know. Then O'Hara said that as I was the only one there with a watch—he and Rand-Brown were in footer clothes, and Merrett and Moriarty hadn't got their tickers on them—I'd better act as timekeeper. So I said all right, I would, and we went to the second fives-court. It's the biggest of them, you know. I stood outside on the bench, looking through the wire netting over the door, so as not to be in the way when they started scrapping. O'Hara and Rand-Brown took off their blazers and sweaters, and chucked them to Moriarty and Merrett, and then Moriarty and Merrett went and stood in two corners, and O'Hara and Rand-Brown walked into the middle and stood up to one another. Rand-Brown was miles the heaviest—by a stone, I should think—and he was taller and had a longer reach. But O'Hara looked much fitter. Rand-Brown looked rather flabby.
“I sang out 'Time' through the wire netting, and they started off at once. O'Hara offered to shake hands, but Rand-Brown wouldn't. So they began without it.
“The first round was awfully fast. They kept having long rallies all over the place. O'Hara was a jolly sight quicker, and Rand-Brown didn't seem able to guard his hits at all. But he hit frightfully hard himself, great, heavy slogs, and O'Hara kept getting them in the face. At last he got one bang in the mouth which knocked him down flat. He was up again in a second, and was starting to rush, when I looked at the watch, and found that I'd given them nearly half a minute too much already. So I shouted 'Time', and made up my mind I'd keep more of an eye on the watch next round. I'd got so jolly excited, watching them, that I'd forgot I was supposed to be keeping time for them. They had only asked for a minute between the rounds, but as I'd given them half a minute too long in the first round, I chucked in a bit extra in the rest, so that they were both pretty fit by the time I started them again.
“The second round was just like the first, and so was the third. O'Hara kept getting the worst of it. He was knocked down three or four times more, and once, when he'd rushed Rand-Brown against one of the walls, he hit out and missed, and barked his knuckles jolly badly against the wall. That was in the middle of the third round, and Rand-Brown had it all his own way for the rest of the round—for about two minutes, that is to say. He hit O'Hara about all over the shop. I was so jolly keen on O'Hara's winning, that I had half a mind to call time early, so as to give him time to recover. But I thought it would be a low thing to do, so I gave them their full three minutes.
“Directly they began the fourth round, I noticed that things were going to change a bit. O'Hara had given up his rushing game, and was waiting for his man, and when he came at him he'd put in a hot counter, nearly always at the body. After a bit Rand-Brown began to get cautious, and wouldn't rush, so the fourth round was the quietest there had been. In the last minute they didn't hit each other at all. They simply sparred for openings. It was in the fifth round that O'Hara began to forge ahead. About half way through he got in a ripper, right in the wind, which almost doubled Rand-Brown up, and then he started rushing again. Rand-Brown looked awfully bad at the end of the round. Round six was ripping. I never saw two chaps go for each other so. It was one long rally. Then—how it happened I couldn't see, they were so quick—just as they had been at it a minute and a half, there was a crack, and the next thing I saw was Rand-Brown on the ground, looking beastly. He went down absolutely flat; his heels and head touched the ground at the same time.
“I counted ten out loud in the professional way like they do at the National Sporting Club, you know, and then said 'O'Hara wins'. I felt an awful swell. After about another half-minute, Rand-Brown was all right again, and he got up and went back to the house with Merrett, and O'Hara and Moriarty went off to Dexter's, and I gave the ferrets their grub, and cut back to breakfast.”
“Rand-Brown wasn't at breakfast,” said Harvey.
“No. He went to bed. I wonder what'll happen. Think there'll be a row about it?”
“Shouldn't think so,” said Harvey. “They never do make rows about fights, and neither of them is a prefect, so I don't see what it matters if they do fight. But, I say—”
“What's up?”
“I wish,” said Harvey, his voice full of acute regret, “that it had been my turn to feed those ferrets.”
“I don't,” said Renford cheerfully. “I wouldn't have missed that mill for something. Hullo, there's the bell. We'd better run.”
When Trevor called at Seymour's that afternoon to see Rand-Brown, with a view to challenging him to deadly combat, and found that O'Hara had been before him, he ought to have felt relieved. His actual feeling was one of acute annoyance. It seemed to him that O'Hara had exceeded the limits of friendship. It was all very well for him to take over the Rand-Brown contract, and settle it himself, in order to save Trevor from a very bad quarter of an hour, but Trevor was one of those people who object strongly to the interference of other people in their private business. He sought out O'Hara and complained. Within two minutes O'Hara's golden eloquence had soothed him and made him view the matter in quite a different light. What O'Hara pointed out was that it was not Trevor's affair at all, but his own. Who, he asked, had been likely to be damaged most by Rand-Brown's manoeuvres in connection with the lost bat? Trevor was bound to admit that O'Hara was that person. Very well, then, said O'Hara, then who had a better right to fight Rand-Brown? And Trevor confessed that no one else had a better.
“Then I suppose,” he said, “that I shall have to do nothing about it?”
“That's it,” said O'Hara.
“It'll be rather beastly meeting the man after this,” said Trevor, presently. “Do you think he might possibly leave at the end of term?”
“He's leaving at the end of the week,” said O'Hara. “He was one of the fellows Dexter caught in the vault that evening. You won't see much more of Rand-Brown.”
“I'll try and put up with that,” said Trevor.
“And so will I,” replied O'Hara. “And I shouldn't think Milton would be so very grieved.”
“No,” said Trevor.  It's a job he'd have liked to have taken on himself.”
Into the story at this point comes the narrative of Charles Mereweather Cook, aged fourteen, a day-boy.
Cook arrived at the school on the tenth of March, at precisely nine o'clock, in a state of excitement.
He said there was a row on in the town.
Cross-examined, he said there was no end of a row on in the town.
During morning school he explained further, whispering his tale into the attentive ear of Knight of the School House, who sat next to him.
What sort of a row, Knight wanted to know.
Cook deposed that he had been riding on his bicycle past the entrance to the Recreation Grounds on his way to school, when his eye was attracted by the movements of a mass of men just inside the gate. They appeared to be fighting. Witness did not stop to watch, much as he would have liked to do so. Why not? Why, because he was late already, and would have had to scorch anyhow, in order to get to school in time. And he had been late the day before, and was afraid that old Appleby (the master of the form) would give him beans if he were late again. Wherefore he had no notion of what the men were fighting about, but he betted that more would be heard about it. Why? Because, from what he saw of it, it seemed a jolly big thing. There must have been quite three hundred men fighting. (Knight, satirically, “Pile it on!”) Well, quite a hundred, anyhow. Fifty a side. And fighting like anything. He betted there would be something about it in the Wrykyn Patriot tomorrow. He shouldn't wonder if somebody had been killed. What were they scrapping about? How should he know!
Here Mr Appleby, who had been trying for the last five minutes to find out where the whispering noise came from, at length traced it to its source, and forthwith requested Messrs Cook and Knight to do him two hundred lines, adding that, if he heard them talking again, he would put them into the extra lesson. Silence reigned from that moment.
Next day, while the form was wrestling with the moderately exciting account of Caesar's doings in Gaul, Master Cook produced from his pocket a newspaper cutting. This, having previously planted a forcible blow in his friend's ribs with an elbow to attract the latter's attention, he handed to Knight, and in dumb show requested him to peruse the same. Which Knight, feeling no interest whatever in Caesar's doings in Gaul, and having, in consequence, a good deal of time on his hands, proceeded to do. The cutting was headed “Disgraceful Fracas", and was written in the elegant style that was always so marked a feature of the Wrykyn Patriot.
“We are sorry to have to report,” it ran, “another of those deplorable ebullitions of local Hooliganism, to which it has before now been our painful duty to refer. Yesterday the Recreation Grounds were made the scene of as brutal an exhibition of savagery as has ever marred the fair fame of this town. Our readers will remember how on a previous occasion, when the fine statue of Sir Eustace Briggs was found covered with tar, we attributed the act to the malevolence of the Radical section of the community. Events have proved that we were right. Yesterday a body of youths, belonging to the rival party, was discovered in the very act of repeating the offence. A thick coating of tar had already been administered, when several members of the rival faction appeared. A free fight of a peculiarly violent nature immediately ensued, with the result that, before the police could interfere, several of the combatants had received severe bruises. Fortunately the police then arrived on the scene, and with great difficulty succeeded in putting a stop to the fracas. Several arrests were made.
“We have no desire to discourage legitimate party rivalry, but we feel justified in strongly protesting against such dastardly tricks as those to which we have referred. We can assure our opponents that they can gain nothing by such conduct.”
There was a good deal more to the effect that now was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, and that the constituents of Sir Eustace Briggs must look to it that they failed not in the hour of need, and so on. That was what the Wrykyn Patriot had to say on the subject.
O'Hara managed to get hold of a copy of the paper, and showed it to Clowes and Trevor.
“So now,” he said, “it's all right, ye see. They'll never suspect it wasn't the same people that tarred the statue both times.
O'Hara intimated that he would try and put up with that.
“But isn't it a stroke of luck,” he said, “that they should have gone and tarred Sir Eustace again so soon after Moriarty and I did it?”
Clowes said gravely that it only showed the force of good example.
“Yes. They wouldn't have thought of it, if it hadn't been for us,” chortled O'Hara. “I wonder, now, if there's anything else we could do to that statue!” he added, meditatively.
“My good lunatic,” said Clowes, “don't you think you've done almost enough for one term?”
“Well, 'myes,” replied O'Hara thoughtfully, “perhaps we have, I suppose.”
* * * * *
The term wore on. Donaldson's won the final house-match by a matter of twenty-six points. It was, as they had expected, one of the easiest games they had had to play in the competition. Bryant's, who were their opponents, were not strong, and had only managed to get into the final owing to their luck in drawing weak opponents for the trial heats. The real final, that had decided the ownership of the cup, had been Donaldson's v. Seymour's.
Aldershot arrived, and the sports. Drummond and O'Hara covered themselves with glory, and brought home silver medals. But Moriarty, to the disappointment of the school, which had counted on his pulling off the middles, met a strenuous gentleman from St Paul's in the final, and was prematurely outed in the first minute of the third round. To him, therefore, there fell but a medal of bronze.
It was on the Sunday after the sports that Trevor's connection with the bat ceased—as far, that is to say, as concerned its unpleasant character (as a piece of evidence that might be used to his disadvantage). He had gone to supper with the headmaster, accompanied by Clowes and Milton. The headmaster nearly always invited a few of the house prefects to Sunday supper during the term. Sir Eustace Briggs happened to be there. He had withdrawn his insinuations concerning the part supposedly played by a member of the school in the matter of the tarred statue, and the headmaster had sealed the entente cordiale by asking him to supper.
An ordinary man might have considered it best to keep off the delicate subject. Not so Sir Eustace Briggs. He was on to it like glue. He talked of little else throughout the whole course of the meal.
“My suspicions,” he boomed, towards the conclusion of the feast, “which have, I am rejoiced to say, proved so entirely void of foundation and significance, were aroused in the first instance, as I mentioned before, by the narrative of the man Samuel Wapshott.”
Nobody present showed the slightest desire to learn what the man Samuel Wapshott had had to say for himself, but Sir Eustace, undismayed, continued as if the whole table were hanging on his words.
“The man Samuel Wapshott,” he said, “distinctly asserted that a small gold ornament, shaped like a bat, was handed by him to a lad of age coeval with these lads here.”
The headmaster interposed. He had evidently heard more than enough of the man Samuel Wapshott.
“He must have been mistaken,” he said briefly. “The bat which Trevor is wearing on his watch-chain at this moment is the only one of its kind that I know of. You have never lost it, Trevor?”
Trevor thought for a moment. He had never lost it. He replied diplomatically, “It has been in a drawer nearly all the term, sir,” he said.
“A drawer, hey?” remarked Sir Eustace Briggs. “Ah! A very sensible place to keep it in, my boy. You could have no better place, in my opinion.”
And Trevor agreed with him, with the mental reservation that it rather depended on whom the drawer belonged to.