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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gold Bat, by P. G. WodehouseThis eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away orre-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.orgTitle: The Gold BatAuthor: P. G. WodehousePosting Date: August 26, 2012 [EBook #6879]Release Date: November, 2004First Posted: February 6, 2003Language: EnglishCharacter set encoding: ASCII*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD BAT ***Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team.

THE GOLD BAT

by P. G. Wodehouse

1904

[Dedication]
To
THAT PRINCE OF SLACKERS,
HERBERT WESTBROOK

CONTENTS

Chapter

I THE FIFTEENTH PLACE

II THE GOLD BAT

III THE MAYOR’S STATUE

IV THE LEAGUE’S WARNING

V MILL RECEIVES VISITORS

VI TREVOR REMAINS FIRM

VII “WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE LEAGUE”

VIII O’HARA ON THE TRACK

IX MAINLY ABOUT FERRETS

X BEING A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS

XI THE HOUSE-MATCHES

XII NEWS OF THE GOLD BAT

XIII VICTIM NUMBER THREE

XIV THE WHITE FIGURE

XV A SPRAIN AND A VACANT PLACE

XVI THE RIPTON MATCH

XVII THE WATCHERS IN THE VAULT

XVIII O’HARA EXCELS HIMSELF

XIX THE MAYOR’S VISIT

XX THE FINDING OF THE BAT

XXI THE LEAGUE REVEALED

XXII A DRESS REHEARSAL

XXIII WHAT RENFORD SAW

XXIV CONCLUSION

I

THE FIFTEENTH PLACE

“Outside!”

“Don’t be an idiot, man.  I baggedit first.”

“My dear chap, I’ve been waiting herea month.”

“When you fellows havequitefinished rotting about in front of that bath don’tletme detain you.”

“Anybody seen that sponge?”

“Well, look here”—­this in atone of compromise—­“let’s tossfor it.”

“All right.  Odd man out.”

All of which, being interpreted, meantthat the first match of the Easter term had just cometo an end, and that those of the team who, being dayboys, changed over at the pavilion, instead of performingthe operation at leisure and in comfort, as did themembers of houses, were discussing the vital question—­whowas to have first bath?

The Field Sports Committee at Wrykyn—­thatis, at the school which stood some half-mile outsidethat town and took its name from it—­werenot lavish in their expenditure as regarded the changingaccommodation in the pavilion.  Letters appearedin every second number of theWrykinian, someshort, others long, some from members of the school,others from Old Boys, all protesting against the conditionof the first, second, and third fifteen dressing-rooms. “Indignant” would inquire acidly, in halfa page of small type, if the editor happened to beaware that there was no hair-brush in the second room,and only half a comb.  “Disgusted O. W.”would remark that when he came down with the WanderingZephyrs to play against the third fifteen, thewater supply had suddenly and mysteriously failed,and the W.Z.’s had been obliged to go home asthey were, in a state of primeval grime, and he thoughtthat this was “a very bad thing in a school ofover six hundred boys”, though what the numberof boys had to do with the fact that there was nowater he omitted to explain.  The editor wouldexpress his regret in brackets, and things would goon as before.

There was only one bath in the firstfifteen room, and there were on the present occasionsix claimants to it.  And each claimant was ofthe fixed opinion that, whatever happened subsequently,he was going to have it first.  Finally, on thesuggestion of Otway, who had reduced tossing to afine art, a mystic game of Tommy Dodd was played. Otway having triumphantly obtained first innings,the conversation reverted to the subject of the match.

The Easter term always opened witha scratch game against a mixed team of masters andold boys, and the school usually won without any greatexertion.  On this occasion the match had beenrather more even than the average, and the team hadonly just pulled the thing off by a couple of triesto a goal.  Otway expressed an opinion that theschool had played badly.

“Why on earth don’t youforwards let the ball out occasionally?” heasked.  Otway was one of the first fifteen halves.

“They were so jolly heavy inthe scrum,” said Maurice, one of the forwards. “And when we did let it out, the outsides nearlyalways mucked it.”

“Well, it wasn’t the halves’fault.  We always got it out to the centres.”

“It wasn’t the centres,”put in Robinson.  “They played awfully well. Trevor was ripping.”

“Trevor always is,” saidOtway; “I should think he’s about the bestcaptain we’ve had here for a long time. He’s certainly one of the best centres.”

“Best there’s been since Rivers-Jones,”said Clephane.

Rivers-Jones was one of those playerswho mark an epoch.  He had been in the team fifteenyears ago, and had left Wrykyn to captain Cambridgeand play three years in succession for Wales. The school regarded the standard set by him as onethat did not admit of comparison.  However gooda Wrykyn centre three-quarter might be, the most hecould hope to be considered was “the bestsinceRivers-Jones”.  “Since” Rivers-Jones,however, covered fifteen years, and to be looked onas the best centre the school could boast of duringthat time, meant something.  For Wrykyn knew howto play football.

Since it had been decided thus thatthe faults in the school attack did not lie with thehalves, forwards, or centres, it was more or lessevident that they must be attributable to the wings. And the search for the weak spot was even furthernarrowed down by the general verdict that Clowes,on the left wing, had played well.  With a beautifulunanimity the six occupants of the first fifteen roomcame to the conclusion that the man who had let theteam down that day had been the man on the right—­Rand-Brown,to wit, of Seymour’s.

“I’ll bet he doesn’tstay in the first long,” said Clephane, who wasnow in the bath,vice Otway, retired.  “Isuppose they had to try him, as he was the seniorwing three-quarter of the second, but he’s noearthly good.”

“He only got into the secondbecause he’s big,” was Robinson’sopinion.  “A man who’s big and strongcan always get his second colours.”

“Even if he’s a funk,like Rand-Brown,” said Clephane.  “Didany of you chaps notice the way he let Paget throughthat time he scored for them?  He simply didn’tattempt to tackle him.  He could have brought himdown like a shot if he’d only gone for him. Paget was running straight along the touch-line, andhadn’t any room to dodge.  I know Trevorwas jolly sick about it.  And then he let himthrough once before in just the same way in the firsthalf, only Trevor got round and stopped him.  Hewas rank.”

“Missed every other pass, too,” said Otway.

Clephane summed up.

“He was rank,” he said again.  “Trevorwon’t keep him in the team long.”

“I wish Paget hadn’t left,”said Otway, referring to the wing three-quarter who,by leaving unexpectedly at the end of the Christmasterm, had let Rand-Brown into the team.  His losswas likely to be felt.  Up till Christmas Wrykynhad done well, and Paget had been their scoring man. Rand-Brown had occupied a similar position in the secondfifteen.  He was big and speedy, and in secondfifteen matches these qualities make up for a greatdeal.  If a man scores one or two tries in nearlyevery match, people are inclined to overlook in himsuch failings as timidity and clumsiness.  Itis only when he comes to be tried in football of ahigher class that he is seen through.  In the secondfifteen the fact that Rand-Brown was afraid to tacklehis man had almost escaped notice.  But the habitwould not do in first fifteen circles.

“All the same,” said Clephane,pursuing his subject, “if they don’t playhim, I don’t see who they’re going to get. He’s the best of the second three-quarters,as far as I can see.”

It was this very problem that waspuzzling Trevor, as he walked off the field with Pagetand Clowes, when they had got into their blazers afterthe match.  Clowes was in the same house as Trevor—­Donaldson’s—­andPaget was staying there, too.  He had been headof Donaldson’s up to Christmas.

“It strikes me,” saidPaget, “the school haven’t got over theholidays yet.  I never saw such a lot of slackers. You ought to have taken thirty points off the sortof team you had against you today.”

“Have you ever known the schoolplay well on the second day of term?” askedClowes.  “The forwards always play as ifthe whole thing bored them to death.”

“It wasn’t the forwardsthat mattered so much,” said Trevor.  “They’llshake down all right after a few matches.  A littlerunning and passing will put them right.”

“Let’s hope so,”Paget observed, “or we might as well scratchto Ripton at once.  There’s a jolly sighttoo much of the mince-pie and Christmas pudding abouttheir play at present.”  There was a pause. Then Paget brought out the question towards whichhe had been moving all the time.

“What do you think of Rand-Brown?” heasked.

It was pretty clear by the way hespoke what he thought of that player himself, butin discussing with a football captain the capabilitiesof the various members of his team, it is best toavoid a too positive statement one way or the otherbefore one has heard his views on the subject. And Paget was one of those people who like to knowthe opinions of others before committing themselves.

Clowes, on the other hand, was inthe habit of forming his views on his own account,and expressing them.  If people agreed with them,well and good:  it afforded strong presumptiveevidence of their sanity.  If they disagreed,it was unfortunate, but he was not going to alter hisopinions for that, unless convinced at great lengththat they were unsound.  He summed things up,and gave you the result.  You could take it orleave it, as you preferred.

“I thought he was bad,” said Clowes.

“Bad!” exclaimed Trevor,“he was a disgrace.  One can understand achap having his off-days at any game, but one doesn’texpect a man in the Wrykyn first to funk.  Hemucked five out of every six passes I gave him, too,and the ball wasn’t a bit slippery.  Still,I shouldn’t mind that so much if he had onlygone for his man properly.  It isn’t beingout of practice that makes you funk.  And evenwhen he did have a try at you, Paget, he always wenthigh.”

“That,” said Clowes thoughtfully,“would seem to show that he was game.”

Nobody so much as smiled.  Nobodyever did smile at Clowes’ essays in wit, perhapsbecause of the solemn, almost sad, tone of voice inwhich he delivered them.  He was tall and darkand thin, and had a pensive eye, which encouragedthe more soulful of his female relatives to entertainhopes that he would some day take orders.

“Well,” said Paget, relievedat finding that he did not stand alone in his viewson Rand-Brown’s performance, “I must sayI thought he was awfully bad myself.”

“I shall try somebody else nextmatch,” said Trevor.  “It’llbe rather hard, though.  The man one would naturallyput in, Bryce, left at Christmas, worse luck.”

Bryce was the other wing three-quarterof the second fifteen.

“Isn’t there anybody in the third?”asked Paget.

“Barry,” said Clowes briefly.

“Clowes thinks Barry’s good,” explainedTrevor.

“Heis good,” saidClowes.  “I admit he’s small, but hecan tackle.”

“The question is, would he beany good in the first?  A chap might do jollywell for the third, and still not be worth trying forthe first.”

“I don’t remember muchabout Barry,” said Paget, “except beingcollared by him when we played Seymour’s lastyear in the final.  I certainly came away witha sort of impression that he could tackle.  I thoughthe marked me jolly well.”

“There you are, then,”said Clowes.  “A year ago Barry could tacklePaget.  There’s no reason for supposing thathe’s fallen off since then.  We’veseen that Rand-Browncan’t tackle Paget. Ergo, Barry is better worth playing for the team thanRand-Brown.  Q.E.D.”

“All right, then,” repliedTrevor.  “There can’t be any harm intrying him.  We’ll have another scratchgame on Thursday.  Will you be here then, Paget?”

“Oh, yes.  I’m stopping till Saturday.”

“Good man.  Then we shallbe able to see how he does against you.  I wishyou hadn’t left, though, by Jove.  We shouldhave had Ripton on toast, the same as last term.”

Wrykyn played five schools, but sixschool matches.  The school that they played twicein the season was Ripton.  To win one Ripton matchmeant that, however many losses it might have sustainedin the other matches, the school had had, at any rate,a passable season.  To win two Ripton matchesin the same year was almost unheard of.  This yearthere had seemed every likelihood of it.  Thematch before Christmas on the Ripton ground had resultedin a win for Wrykyn by two goals and a try to a try. But the calculations of the school had been upset bythe sudden departure of Paget at the end of term,and also of Bryce, who had hitherto been regardedas his understudy.  And in the first Ripton matchthe two goals had both been scored by Paget, and bothhad been brilliant bits of individual play, whicha lesser man could not have carried through.

The conclusion, therefore, at whichthe school reluctantly arrived, was that their chancesof winning the second match could not be judged bytheir previous success.  They would have to approachthe Easter term fixture from another—­anon-Paget—­standpoint.  In these circumstancesit became a serious problem:  who was to get thefifteenth place?  Whoever played in Paget’sstead against Ripton would be certain, if the matchwere won, to receive his colours.  Who, then, wouldfill the vacancy?

“Rand-Brown, of course,” said the crowd.

But the experts, as we have shown, were of a differentopinion.

II

THE GOLD BAT

Trevor did not take long to resumea garb of civilisation.  He never wasted muchtime over anything.  He was gifted with a boundlessenergy, which might possibly have made him unpopularhad he not justified it by results.  The footballof the school had never been in such a flourishingcondition as it had attained to on his succeeding tothe captaincy.  It was not only that the firstfifteen was good.  The excellence of a first fifteendoes not always depend on the captain.  But thegames, even down to the very humblest junior game,had woken up one morning—­at the beginningof the previous term—­to find themselves,much to their surprise, organised going concerns. Like the immortal Captain Pott, Trevor was “aterror to the shirker and the lubber”.  Andthe resemblance was further increased by the fact thathe was “a toughish lot”, who was “little,but steel and india-rubber”.  At first sighthis appearance was not imposing.  Paterfamilias,who had heard his son’s eulogies on Trevor’sperformances during the holidays, and came down towatch the school play a match, was generally ratherdisappointed on seeing five feet six where he had lookedfor at least six foot one, and ten stone where hehad expected thirteen.  But then, what there wasof Trevor was, as previously remarked, steel and india-rubber,and he certainly played football like a miniatureStoddart.  It was characteristic of him that, thoughthis was the first match of the term, his conditionseemed to be as good as possible.  He had doneall his own work on the field and most of Rand-Brown’s,and apparently had not turned a hair.  He was oneof those conscientious people who train in the holidays.

When he had changed, he went downthe passage to Clowes’ study.  Clowes wasin the position he frequently took up when the weatherwas good—­wedged into his window in a sittingposition, one leg in the study, the other hangingoutside over space.  The indoor leg lacked a boot,so that it was evident that its owner had at leasthad the energy to begin to change.  That he hadgiven the thing up after that, exhausted with the effort,was what one naturally expected from Clowes. He would have made a splendid actor:  he was sogood at resting.

“Hurry up and dress,”said Trevor; “I want you to come over to thebaths.”

“What on earth do you want over at the baths?”

“I want to see O’Hara.”

“Oh, yes, I remember.  Dexter’sare camping out there, aren’t they?  I heardthey were.  Why is it?”

“One of the Dexter kids gotmeasles in the last week of the holidays, so theyshunted all the beds and things across, and the chapswent back there instead of to the house.”

In the winter term the baths werealways boarded over and converted into a sort of extragymnasium where you could go and box or fence whenthere was no room to do it in the real gymnasium. Socker and stump-cricket were also largely playedthere, the floor being admirably suited to such games,though the light was always rather tricky, and preventedheavy scoring.

“I should think,” saidClowes, “from what I’ve seen of Dexter’sbeauties, that Dexter would like them to camp out atthe bottom of the baths all the year round.  Itwould be a happy release for him if they were alldrowned.  And I suppose if he had to choose anyone of them for a violent death, he’d pick O’Hara. O’Hara must be a boon to a house-master. I’ve known chaps break rules when the spiritmoved them, but he’s the only one I’vemet who breaks them all day long and well into thenight simply for amusement.  I’ve often thoughtof writing to the S.P.C.A. about it.  I supposeyou could call Dexter an animal all right?”

“O’Hara’s rightenough, really.  A man like Dexter would make anyfellow run amuck.  And then O’Hara’san Irishman to start with, which makes a difference.”

There is usually one house in everyschool of the black sheep sort, and, if you go tothe root of the matter, you will generally find thatthe fault is with the master of that house.  Ahouse-master who enters into the life of his house,coaches them in games—­if an athlete—­or,if not an athlete, watches the games, umpiring at cricketand refereeing at football, never finds much difficultyin keeping order.  It may be accepted as factthat the juniors of a house will never be orderlyof their own free will, but disturbances in the juniorday-room do not make the house undisciplined. The prefects are the criterion.  If you find themjoining in the general “rags”, and evenstarting private ones on their own account, then youmay safely say that it is time the master of thathouse retired from the business, and took to chicken-farming. And that was the state of things in Dexter’s. It was the most lawless of the houses.  Mr Dexterbelonged to a type of master almost unknown at a publicschool—­the usher type.  In a privateschool he might have passed.  At Wrykyn he wasout of place.  To him the whole duty of a house-masterappeared to be to wage war against his house.

When Dexter’s won the finalfor the cricket cup in the summer term of two yearsback, the match lasted four afternoons—­foursolid afternoons of glorious, up-and-down cricket. Mr Dexter did not see a single ball of that matchbowled.  He was prowling in sequestered lanes andbroken-down barns out of bounds on the off-chancethat he might catch some member of his house smokingthere.  As if the whole of the house, from thehead to the smallest fag, were not on the field watchingDay’s best bats collapse before Henderson’sbowling, and Moriarty hit up that marvellous and unexpectedfifty-three at the end of the second innings!

That sort of thing definitely stamps a master.

“What do you want to see O’Hara about?”asked Clowes.

“He’s got my little gold bat.  I lentit him in the holidays.”

A remark which needs a footnote. The bat referred to was made of gold, and was aboutan inch long by an eighth broad.  It had come intoexistence some ten years previously, in the followingmanner.  The inter-house cricket cup at Wrykynhad originally been a rather tarnished and unimpressivevessel, whose only merit consisted in the fact thatit was of silver.  Ten years ago an Old Wrykinian,suddenly reflecting that it would not be a bad ideato do something for the school in a small way, hiedhim to the nearest jeweller’s and purchasedanother silver cup, vast withal and cunningly decoratedwith filigree work, and standing on a massive ebonyplinth, round which were little silver lozenges justbig enough to hold the name of the winning house andthe year of grace.  This he presented with hisblessing to be competed for by the dozen houses thatmade up the school of Wrykyn, and it was formallyestablished as the house cricket cup.  The questionnow arose:  what was to be done with the othercup?  The School House, who happened to be theholders at the time, suggested disinterestedly thatit should become the property of the house which hadwon it last.  “Not so,” replied theField Sports Committee, “but far otherwise. We will have it melted down in a fiery furnace, andthereafter fashioned into eleven little silver bats. And these little silver bats shall be the guerdonof the eleven members of the winning team, to haveand to hold for the space of one year, unless, bywinning the cup twice in succession, they gain theright of keeping the bat for yet another year. How is that, umpire?” And the authorities replied,“O men of infinite resource and sagacity, verilyis it a cold day whenyou get left behind. Forge ahead.”  But, when they had forgedahead, behold! it would not run to eleven little silverbats, but only to ten little silver bats.  Thereuponthe headmaster, a man liberal with his cash, causedan eleventh little bat to be fashioned—­forthe captain of the winning team to have and to holdin the manner aforesaid.  And, to single it outfrom the others, it was wrought, not of silver, butof gold.  And so it came to pass that at the timeof our story Trevor was in possession of the littlegold bat, because Donaldson’s had won the cupin the previous summer, and he had captained them—­and,incidentally, had scored seventy-five without a mistake.

“Well, I’m hanged if Iwould trust O’Hara with my bat,” said Clowes,referring to the silver ornament on his own watch-chain;“he’s probably pawned yours in the holidays. Why did you lend it to him?”

“His people wanted to see it. I know him at home, you know.  They asked me tolunch the last day but one of the holidays, and wegot talking about the bat, because, of course, ifwe hadn’t beaten Dexter’s in the final,O’Hara would have had it himself.  So I sentit over next day with a note asking O’Hara tobring it back with him here.”

“Oh, well, there’s a chance,then, seeing he’s only had it so little time,that he hasn’t pawned it yet.  You’dbetter rush off and get it back as soon as possible. It’s no good waiting for me.  I shan’tbe ready for weeks.”

“Where’s Paget?”

“Teaing with Donaldson.  At least, he saidhe was going to.”

“Then I suppose I shall have to go alone. I hate walking alone.”

“If you hurry,” said Clowes,scanning the road from his post of vantage, “you’llbe able to go with your fascinating pal Ruthven. He’s just gone out.”

Trevor dashed downstairs in his energeticway, and overtook the youth referred to.

Clowes brooded over them from abovelike a sorrowful and rather disgusted Providence. Trevor’s liking for Ruthven, who was a Donaldsonitelike himself, was one of the few points on which thetwo had any real disagreement.  Clowes could notunderstand how any person in his senses could of hisown free will make an intimate friend of Ruthven.

“Hullo, Trevor,” said Ruthven.

“Come over to the baths,”said Trevor, “I want to see O’Hara aboutsomething.  Or were you going somewhere else.”

“I wasn’t going anywherein particular.  I never know what to do in term-time. It’s deadly dull.”

Trevor could never understand howany one could find term-time dull.  For his ownpart, there always seemed too much to do in the time.

“You aren’t allowed toplay games?” he said, remembering somethingabout a doctor’s certificate in the past.

“No,” said Ruthven.  “Thankgoodness,” he added.

Which remark silenced Trevor. To a person who thanked goodness that he was not allowedto play games he could find nothing to say.  Buthe ceased to wonder how it was that Ruthven was dull.

They proceeded to the baths togetherin silence.  O’Hara, they were informedby a Dexter’s fag who met them outside the door,was not about.

“When he comes back,”said Trevor, “tell him I want him to come totea tomorrow directly after school, and bring my bat. Don’t forget.”

The fag promised to make a point of it.

III

THE MAYOR’S STATUE

One of the rules that governed thelife of Donough O’Hara, the light-hearted descendantof the O’Haras of Castle Taterfields, Co. Clare, Ireland, was “Never refuse the offer ofa free tea”.  So, on receipt—­perthe Dexter’s fag referred to—­of Trevor’sinvitation, he scratched one engagement (with hismathematical master—­not wholly unconnectedwith the working-out of Examples 200 to 206 in Halland Knight’s Algebra), postponed another (withhis friend and ally Moriarty, of Dexter’s, whowished to box with him in the gymnasium), and madehis way at a leisurely pace towards Donaldson’s. He was feeling particularly pleased with himself today,for several reasons.  He had begun the day wellby scoring brilliantly off Mr Dexter across the matutinalrasher and coffee.  In morning school he had beenput on to translate the one passage which he happenedto have prepared—­the first ten lines, infact, of the hundred which formed the morning’slesson.  And in the final hour of afternoon school,which was devoted to French, he had discovered andexploited with great success an entirely new and originalform of ragging.  This, he felt, was the strenuouslife; this was living one’s life as one’slife should be lived.

He met Trevor at the gate.  Asthey were going in, a carriage and pair dashed past. Its cargo consisted of two people, the headmaster,looking bored, and a small, dapper man, with a veryred face, who looked excited, and was talking volubly. Trevor and O’Hara raised their caps as the chariotswept by, but the salute passed unnoticed.  TheHead appeared to be wrapped in thought.

“What’s the Old Man doingin a carriage, I wonder,” said Trevor, lookingafter them.  “Who’s that with him?”

“That,” said O’Hara, “is SirEustace Briggs.”

“Who’s Sir Eustace Briggs?”

O’Hara explained, in a richbrogue, that Sir Eustace was Mayor of Wrykyn, a keenpolitician, and a hater of the Irish nation, judgingby his letters and speeches.

They went into Trevor’s study. Clowes was occupying the window in his usual manner.

“Hullo, O’Hara,”he said, “there is an air of quiet satisfactionabout you that seems to show that you’ve beenragging Dexter.  Have you?”

“Oh, that was only this morningat breakfast.  The best rag was in French,”replied O’Hara, who then proceeded to explainin detail the methods he had employed to embitterthe existence of the hapless Gallic exile with whomhe had come in contact.  It was that gentleman’scustom to sit on a certain desk while conducting thelesson.  This desk chanced to be O’Hara’s. On the principle that a man may do what he likes withhis own, he had entered the room privily in the dinner-hour,and removed the screws from his desk, with the resultthat for the first half-hour of the lesson the classhad been occupied in excavating M. Gandinois fromthe ruins.  That gentleman’s first act onregaining his equilibrium had been to send O’Haraout of the room, and O’Hara, who had foreseenthis emergency, had spent a very pleasant half-hourin the passage with some mixed chocolates and a copyof Mr Hornung’sAmateur Cracksman. It was his notion of a cheerful and instructive Frenchlesson.

“What were you talking aboutwhen you came in?” asked Clowes.  “Who’sbeen slanging Ireland, O’Hara?”

“The man Briggs.”

“What are you going to do aboutit?  Aren’t you going to take any steps?”

“Is it steps?” said O’Hara, warmly,“and haven’t we——­”

He stopped.

“Well?”

“Ye know,” he said, seriously,“ye mustn’t let it go any further. I shall get sacked if it’s found out.  An’so will Moriarty, too.”

“Why?” asked Trevor, lookingup from the tea-pot he was filling, “what onearth have you been doing?”

“Wouldn’t it be rathera cheery idea,” suggested Clowes, “if youbegan at the beginning.”

“Well, ye see,” O’Harabegan, “it was this way.  The first I heardof it was from Dexter.  He was trying to scoreoff me as usual, an’ he said, ‘Have yeseen the paper this morning, O’Hara?’ Isaid, no, I had not.  Then he said, ‘Ah,’he said, ’ye should look at it.  There’ssomething there that ye’ll find interesting.’ I said, ‘Yes, sir?’ in me respectful way. ‘Yes,’ said he, ’the Irish membershave been making their customary disturbances in theHouse.  Why is it, O’Hara,’ he said,’that Irishmen are always thrusting themselvesforward and making disturbances for purposes of self-advertisement?’‘Why, indeed, sir?’ said I, not knowingwhat else to say, and after that the conversationceased.”

“Go on,” said Clowes.

“After breakfast Moriarty cameto me with a paper, and showed me what they had beensaying about the Irish.  There was a letter fromthe man Briggs on the subject.  ’A verysensible and temperate letter from Sir Eustace Briggs’,they called it, but bedad! if that was a temperateletter, I should like to know what an intemperate oneis.  Well, we read it through, and Moriarty saidto me, ‘Can we let this stay as it is?’And I said, ‘No.  We can’t.’ ‘Well,’ said Moriarty to me, ’whatare we to do about it?  I should like to tar andfeather the man,’ he said.  ’We can’tdo that,’ I said, ‘but why not tar andfeather his statue?’ I said.  So we thoughtwe would.  Ye know where the statue is, I suppose? It’s in the recreation ground just across theriver.”

“I know the place,” saidClowes.  “Go on.  This is ripping. I always knew you were pretty mad, but this soundsas if it were going to beat all previous records.”

“Have ye seen the baths thisterm,” continued O’Hara, “since theyshifted Dexter’s house into them?  The bedsare in two long rows along each wall.  Moriarty’sand mine are the last two at the end farthest fromthe door.”

“Just under the gallery,” said Trevor. “I see.”

“That’s it.  Well,at half-past ten sharp every night Dexter sees thatwe’re all in, locks the door, and goes off tosleep at the Old Man’s, and we don’t seehim again till breakfast.  He turns the gas offfrom outside.  At half-past seven the next morning,Smith”—­Smith was one of the schoolporters—­“unlocks the door and callsus, and we go over to the Hall to breakfast.”

“Well?”

“Well, directly everybody wasasleep last night—­it wasn’t till afterone, as there was a rag on—­Moriarty andI got up, dressed, and climbed up into the gallery. Ye know the gallery windows?  They open at thetop, an’ it’s rather hard to get out ofthem.  But we managed it, and dropped on to thegravel outside.”

“Long drop,” said Clowes.

“Yes.  I hurt myself rather. But it was in a good cause.  I dropped first,and while I was on the ground, Moriarty came on topof me.  That’s how I got hurt.  Butit wasn’t much, and we cut across the grounds,and over the fence, and down to the river.  Itwas a fine night, and not very dark, and everythingsmelt ripping down by the river.”

“Don’t get poetical,” said Clowes. “Stick to the point.”

“We got into the boat-house—­”

“How?” asked the practicalTrevor, for the boat-house was wont to be locked atone in the morning.  “Moriarty had a keythat fitted,” explained O’Hara, briefly. “We got in, and launched a boat—­abig tub—­put in the tar and a couple ofbrushes—­there’s always tar in theboat-house—­and rowed across.”

“Wait a bit,” interruptedTrevor, “you said tar and feathers.  Wheredid you get the feathers?”

“We used leaves.  They dojust as well, and there were heaps on the bank. Well, when we landed, we tied up the boat, and buckedacross to the Recreation Ground.  We got overthe railings—­beastly, spiky railings—­andwent over to the statue.  Ye know where the statuestands?  It’s right in the middle of theplace, where everybody can see it.  Moriarty gotup first, and I handed him the tar and a brush. Then I went up with the other brush, and we began. We did his face first.  It was too dark to seereally well, but I think we made a good job of it. When we had put about as much tar on as we thoughtwould do, we took out the leaves—­whichwe were carrying in our pockets—­and spreadthem on.  Then we did the rest of him, and afterabout half an hour, when we thought we’d doneabout enough, we got into our boat again, and cameback.”

“And what did you do till half-past seven?”

“We couldn’t get back the way we’dcome, so we slept in the boat-house.”

“Well—­I’m—­hanged,”was Trevor’s comment on the story.

Clowes roared with laughter.  O’Hara wasa perpetual joy to him.

As O’Hara was going, Trevor asked him for hisgold bat.

“You haven’t lost it, I hope?” hesaid.

O’Hara felt in his pocket, butbrought his hand out at once and transferred it toanother pocket.  A look of anxiety came over hisface, and was reflected in Trevor’s.

“I could have sworn it was in that pocket,”he said.

“Youhaven’t lost it?” queriedTrevor again.

“He has,” said Clowes,confidently.  “If you want to know wherethat bat is, I should say you’d find it somewherebetween the baths and the statue.  At the footof the statue, for choice.  It seems to me—­correctme if I am wrong—­that you have been andgone and done it, me brothav a bhoy.”

O’Hara gave up the search.

“It’s gone,” hesaid.  “Man, I’m most awfully sorry. I’d sooner have lost a ten-pound note.”

“I don’t see why you shouldlose either,” snapped Trevor.  “Whythe blazes can’t you be more careful.”

O’Hara was too penitent forwords.  Clowes took it on himself to point outthe bright side.

“There’s nothing to getsick about, really,” he said.  “Ifthe thing doesn’t turn up, though it probablywill, you’ll simply have to tell the Old Manthat it’s lost.  He’ll have anothermade.  You won’t be asked for it till justbefore Sports Day either, so you will have plenty oftime to find it.”

The challenge cups, and also the bats,had to be given to the authorities before the sports,to be formally presented on Sports Day.

“Oh, I suppose it’ll beall right,” said Trevor, “but I hope itwon’t be found anywhere near the statue.”

O’Hara said he hoped so too.

IV

THE LEAGUE’S WARNING

The team to play in any match wasalways put upon the notice-board at the foot of thestairs in the senior block a day before the date ofthe fixture.  Both first and second fifteens hadmatches on the Thursday of this week.  The secondwere playing a team brought down by an old Wrykinian. The first had a scratch game.

When Barry, accompanied by M’Todd,who shared his study at Seymour’s and rarelyleft him for two minutes on end, passed by the notice-boardat the quarter to eleven interval, it was to the secondfifteen list that he turned his attention.  Nowthat Bryce had left, he thought he might have a chanceof getting into the second.  His only real rival,he considered, was Crawford, of the School House,who was the other wing three-quarter of the thirdfifteen.  The first name he saw on the list wasCrawford’s.  It seemed to be written twiceas large as any of the others, and his own was nowhereto be seen.  The fact that he had half expectedthe calamity made things no better.  He had sethis heart on playing for the second this term.

Then suddenly he noticed a remarkablephenomenon.  The other wing three-quarter wasRand-Brown.  If Rand-Brown was playing for thesecond, who was playing for the first?

He looked at the list.

“Come on,” he saidhastily to M’Todd.  He wanted to get awaysomewhere where his agitated condition would not benoticed.  He felt quite faint at the shock ofseeing his name on the list of the first fifteen. There it was, however, as large as life.  “M. Barry.”  Separated from the rest by a thinred line, but still there.  In his most optimisticmoments he had never dreamed of this.  M’Toddwas reading slowly through the list of the second. He did everything slowly, except eating.

“Come on,” said Barry again.

M’Todd had, after much deliberation,arrived at a profound truth.  He turned to Barry,and imparted his discovery to him in the weighty mannerof one who realises the importance of his words.

“Look here,” he said, “your name’snot down here.”

“I know.Come on.”

“But that means you’re not playing forthe second.”

“Of course it does.  Well, if you aren’tcoming, I’m off.”

“But, look here——­”

Barry disappeared through the door. After a moment’s pause, M’Todd followedhim.  He came up with him on the senior gravel.

“What’s up?” he inquired.

“Nothing,” said Barry.

“Are you sick about not playing for the second?”

“No.”

“You are, really.  Come and have a bun.”

In the philosophy of M’Toddit was indeed a deep-rooted sorrow that could notbe cured by the internal application of a new, hotbun.  It had never failed in his own case.

“Bun!” Barry was quiteshocked at the suggestion.  “I can’tafford to get myself out of condition with beastlybuns.”

“But if you aren’t playing——­”

“You ass.  I’m playing for the first. Now, do you see?”

M’Todd gaped.  His mindnever worked very rapidly.  “What aboutRand-Brown, then?” he said.

“Rand-Brown’s been chuckedout.  Can’t you understand?  Youarean idiot.  Rand-Brown’s playing for thesecond, and I’m playing for the first.”

“But you’re——­”

He stopped.  He had been goingto point out that Barry’s tender years—­hewas only sixteen—­and smallness would makeit impossible for him to play with success for thefirst fifteen.  He refrained owing to a convictionthat the remark would not be wholly judicious. Barry was touchy on the subject of his size, and M’Toddhad suffered before now for commenting on it in adisparaging spirit.

“I tell you what we’lldo after school,” said Barry, “we’llhave some running and passing.  It’ll doyou a lot of good, and I want to practise taking passesat full speed.  You can trot along at your ordinarypace, and I’ll sprint up from behind.”

M’Todd saw no objection to that. Trotting along at his ordinary pace—­fivemiles an hour—­would just suit him.

“Then after that,” continuedBarry, with a look of enthusiasm, “I want topractise passing back to my centre.  Paget usedto do it awfully well last term, and I know Trevorexpects his wing to.  So I’ll buck along,and you race up to take my pass.  See?”

This was not in M’Todd’sline at all.  He proposed a slight alterationin the scheme.

“Hadn’t you better get somebody else—?”he began.

“Don’t be a slack beast,”said Barry.  “You want exercise awfullybadly.”

And, as M’Todd always did exactlyas Barry wished, he gave in, and spent from four-thirtyto five that afternoon in the prescribed manner. A suggestion on his part at five sharp that it wouldn’tbe a bad idea to go and have some tea was not favourablyreceived by the enthusiastic three-quarter, who proposedto devote what time remained before lock-up to practisingdrop-kicking.  It was a painful alternative thatfaced M’Todd.  His allegiance to Barry demandedthat he should consent to the scheme.  On theother hand, his allegiance to afternoon tea—­equallystrong—­called him back to the house, wherethere was cake, and also muffins.  In the endthe question was solved by the appearance of Drummond,of Seymour’s, garbed in football things, andalso anxious to practise drop-kicking.  So M’Toddwas dismissed to his tea with opprobrious epithets,and Barry and Drummond settled down to a little seriousand scientific work.

Making allowances for the inevitableattack of nerves that attends a first appearance inhigher football circles than one is accustomed to,Barry did well against the scratch team—­certainlyfar better than Rand-Brown had done.  His smallnesswas, of course, against him, and, on the only occasionon which he really got away, Paget overtook him andbrought him down.  But then Paget was exceptionallyfast.  In the two most important branches of thegame, the taking of passes and tackling, Barry didwell.  As far as pluck went he had enough for two,and when the whistle blew for no-side he had not letPaget through once, and Trevor felt that his inclusionin the team had been justified.  There was anotherscratch game on the Saturday.  Barry played init, and did much better.  Paget had gone awayby an early train, and the man he had to mark nowwas one of the masters, who had been good in his time,but was getting a trifle old for football.  Barryscored twice, and on one occasion, by passing backto Trevor after the manner of Paget, enabled the captainto run in.  And Trevor, like the captain inBillyTaylor, “werry much approved of what he’ddone.”  Barry began to be regarded in theschool as a regular member of the fifteen.  Thefirst of the fixture-card matches, versus the Town,was due on the following Saturday, and it was generallyexpected that he would play.  M’Todd’sdevotion increased every day.  He even went tothe length of taking long runs with him.  Andif there was one thing in the world that M’Toddloathed, it was a long run.

On the Thursday before the match againstthe Town, Clowes came chuckling to Trevor’sstudy after preparation, and asked him if he had heardthe latest.

“Have you ever heard of the League?” hesaid.

Trevor pondered.

“I don’t think so,” he replied.

“How long have you been at the school?”

“Let’s see.  It’ll be five yearsat the end of the summer term.”

“Ah, then you wouldn’tremember.  I’ve been here a couple of termslonger than you, and the row about the League was inmy first term.”

“What was the row?”

“Oh, only some chaps formeda sort of secret society in the place.  Kind ofVehmgericht, you know.  If they got their knifeinto any one, he usually got beans, and could neverfind out where they came from.  At first, as amatter of fact, the thing was quite a philanthropicalconcern.  There used to be a good deal of bullyingin the place then—­at least, in some ofthe houses—­and, as the prefects couldn’tor wouldn’t stop it, some fellows started thisLeague.”

“Did it work?”

“Work!  By Jove, I shouldthink it did.  Chaps who previously couldn’tget through the day without making some wretched kid’slife not worth living used to go about as nervousas cats, looking over their shoulders every othersecond.  There was one man in particular, a chapcalled Leigh.  He was hauled out of bed one night,blindfolded, and ducked in a cold bath.  He wasin the School House.”

“Why did the League bust up?”

“Well, partly because the fellowsleft, but chiefly because they didn’t stickto the philanthropist idea.  If anybody did anythingthey didn’t like, they used to go for him. At last they put their foot into it badly.  Achap called Robinson—­in this house by theway—­offended them in some way, and onemorning he was found tied up in the bath, up to hisneck in cold water.  Apparently he’d beenthere about an hour.  He got pneumonia, and almostdied, and then the authorities began to get going. Robinson thought he had recognised the voice of oneof the chaps—­I forget his name.  Thechap was had up by the Old Man, and gave the showaway entirely.  About a dozen fellows were sacked,clean off the reel.  Since then the thing hasbeen dropped.”

“But what about it?  What were you goingto say when you came in?”

“Why, it’s been revived!”

“Rot!”

“It’s a fact.  Do you know Mill, aprefect, in Seymour’s?”

“Only by sight.”

“I met him just now.  He’sin a raving condition.  His study’s beenwrecked.  You never saw such a sight.  Everythingupside down or smashed.  He has been showing methe ruins.”

“I believe Mill is awfully barredin Seymour’s,” said Trevor.  “Anybodymight have ragged his study.”

“That’s just what I thought. He’s just the sort of man the League used togo for.”

“That doesn’t prove thatit’s been revived, all the same,” objectedTrevor.

“No, friend; but this does. Mill found it tied to a chair.”

It was a small card.  It lookedlike an ordinary visiting card.  On it, in neatprint, were the words, “With the complimentsof the League”.

“That’s exactly the samesort of card as they used to use,” said Clowes. “I’ve seen some of them.  What do youthink of that?”

“I think whoever has startedthe thing is a pretty average-sized idiot.  He’sbound to get caught some time or other, and then outhe goes.  The Old Man wouldn’t think twiceabout sacking a chap of that sort.”

“A chap of that sort,”said Clowes, “will take jolly good care he isn’tcaught.  But it’s rather sport, isn’tit?”

And he went off to his study.

Next day there was further evidencethat the League was an actual going concern. When Trevor came down to breakfast, he found a letterby his plate.  It was printed, as the card hadbeen.  It was signed “The President of theLeague.”  And the purport of it was thatthe League did not wish Barry to continue to playfor the first fifteen.

V

MILL RECEIVES VISITORS

Trevor’s first idea was thatsomebody had sent the letter for a joke,—­Clowesfor choice.

He sounded him on the subject after breakfast.

“Did you send me that letter?”he inquired, when Clowes came into his study to borrowaSportsman.

“What letter?  Did you sendthe team for tomorrow up to the sporter?  I wonderwhat sort of a lot the Town are bringing.”

“About not giving Barry his footer colours?”

Clowes was reading the paper.

“Giving whom?” he asked.

“Barry.  Can’t you listen?”

“Giving him what?”

“Footer colours.”

“What about them?”

Trevor sprang at the paper, and toreit away from him.  After which he sat on the fragments.

“Did you send me a letter about not giving Barryhis footer colours?”

Clowes surveyed him with the air ofa nurse to whom the family baby has just said somemore than usually good thing.

“Don’t stop,” he said, “Icould listen all day.”

Trevor felt in his pocket for thenote, and flung it at him.  Clowes picked it up,and read it gravely.

“Whatare footer colours?” he asked.

“Well,” said Trevor, “it’sa pretty rotten sort of joke, whoever sent it. You haven’t said yet whether you did or not.”

“What earthly reason shouldI have for sending it?  And I think you’remaking a mistake if you think this is meant as a joke.”

“You don’t really believe this Leaguerot?”

“You didn’t see Mill’sstudy ‘after treatment’.  I did. Anyhow, how do you account for the card I showed you?”

“But that sort of thing doesn’t happenat school.”

“Well, ithas happened, you see.”

“Who do you think did send the letter, then?”

“The President of the League.”

“And who the dickens is the President of theLeague when he’s at home?”

“If I knew that, I should tellMill, and earn his blessing.  Not that I wantit.”

“Then, I suppose,” snortedTrevor, “you’d suggest that on the strengthof this letter I’d better leave Barry out ofthe team?”

“Satirically in brackets,” commented Clowes.

“It’s no good your jumpingonme,” he added.  “I’vedone nothing.  All I suggest is that you’dbetter keep more or less of a look-out.  If thisLeague’s anything like the old one, you’llfind they’ve all sorts of ways of getting atpeople they don’t love.  I shouldn’tlike to come down for a bath some morning, and findyou already in possession, tied up like Robinson. When they found Robinson, he was quite blue both asto the face and speech.  He didn’t speakvery clearly, but what one could catch was well worthhearing.  I should advise you to sleep with aloaded revolver under your pillow.”

“The first thing I shall do is find out whowrote this letter.”

“I should,” said Clowes, encouragingly. “Keep moving.”

In Seymour’s house the Mill’sstudy incident formed the only theme of conversationthat morning.  Previously the sudden elevationto the first fifteen of Barry, who was popular inthe house, at the expense of Rand-Brown, who was unpopular,had given Seymour’s something to talk about. But the ragging of the study put this topic entirelyin the shade.  The study was still on view inalmost its original condition of disorder, and allday comparative strangers flocked to see Mill in hisden, in order to inspect things.  Mill was a youthwith few friends, and it is probable that more ofhis fellow-Seymourites crossed the threshold of hisstudy on the day after the occurrence than had visitedhim in the entire course of his school career. Brown would come in to borrow a knife, would sweepthe room with one comprehensive glance, and depart,to be followed at brief intervals by Smith, Robinson,and Jones, who came respectively to learn the righttime, to borrow a book, and to ask him if he had seena pencil anywhere.  Towards the end of the day,Mill would seem to have wearied somewhat of the proceedings,as was proved when Master Thomas Renford, aged fourteen(who fagged for Milton, the head of the house), burstin on the thin pretence that he had mistaken the studyfor that of his rightful master, and gave vent to aprolonged whistle of surprise and satisfaction atthe sight of the ruins.  On that occasion, theincensed owner of the dismantled study, taking a meanadvantage of the fact that he was a prefect, and soentitled to wield the rod, produced a handy swagger-stickfrom an adjacent corner, and, inviting Master Renfordto bend over, gave him six of the best to rememberhim by.  Which ceremony being concluded, he kickedhim out into the passage, and Renford went down tothe junior day-room to tell his friend Harvey aboutit.

“Gave me six, the cad,”said he, “just because I had a look at his beastlystudy.  Why shouldn’t I look at his studyif I like?  I’ve a jolly good mind to goup and have another squint.”

Harvey warmly approved the scheme.

“No, I don’t think I will,”said Renford with a yawn.  “It’s sucha fag going upstairs.”

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Harvey.

“And he’s such a beast, too.”

“Yes, isn’t he?” said Harvey.

“I’m jolly glad his studyhas been ragged,” continued the vindictiveRenford.

“It’s jolly exciting,isn’t it?” added Harvey.  “AndI thought this term was going to be slow.  TheEaster term generally is.”

This remark seemed to suggest a trainof thought to Renford, who made the following crypticobservation.  “Have you seen them today?”

To the ordinary person the words wouldhave conveyed little meaning.  To Harvey theyappeared to teem with import.

“Yes,” he said, “I saw them earlythis morning.”

“Were they all right?”

“Yes.  Splendid.”

“Good,” said Renford.

Barry’s friend Drummond wasone of those who had visited the scene of the disasterearly, before Mill’s energetic hand had repairedthe damage done, and his narrative was consequentlyin some demand.

“The place was in a frightfulmuck,” he said.  “Everything smashedexcept the table; and ink all over the place. Whoever did it must have been fairly sick with him,or he’d never have taken the trouble to do itso thoroughly.  Made a fair old hash of things,didn’t he, Bertie?”

“Bertie” was the formin which the school elected to serve up the name ofDe Bertini.  Raoul de Bertini was a French boywho had come to Wrykyn in the previous term. Drummond’s father had met his father in Paris,and Drummond was supposed to be looking after Bertie. They shared a study together.  Bertie could notspeak much English, and what he did speak was, likeMill’s furniture, badly broken.

“Pardon?” he said.

“Doesn’t matter,”said Drummond, “it wasn’t anything important. I was only appealing to you for corroborative detailto give artistic verisimilitude to a bald and unconvincingnarrative.”

Bertie grinned politely.  He alwaysgrinned when he was not quite equal to the intellectualpressure of the conversation.  As a consequenceof which, he was generally, like Mrs Fezziwig, onevast, substantial smile.

“I never liked Mill much,”said Barry, “but I think it’s rather badluck on the man.”

“Once,” announced M’Todd,solemnly, “he kicked me—­for makinga row in the passage.”  It was plain thatthe recollection rankled.

Barry would probably have pointedout what an excellent and praiseworthy act on Mill’spart that had been, when Rand-Brown came in.

“Prefects’ meeting?”he inquired.  “Or haven’t they madeyou a prefect yet, M’Todd?”

M’Todd said they had not.

Nobody present liked Rand-Brown, andthey looked at him rather inquiringly, as if to askwhat he had come for.  A friend may drop in fora chat.  An acquaintance must justify his intrusion.

Rand-Brown ignored the silent inquiry. He seated himself on the table, and dragged up a chairto rest his legs on.

“Talking about Mill, of course?” he said.

“Yes,” said Drummond.  “Haveyou seen his study since it happened?”

“Yes.”

Rand-Brown smiled, as if the recollectionamused him.  He was one of those people who donot look their best when they smile.

“Playing for the first tomorrow, Barry?”

“I don’t know,” said Barry, shortly. “I haven’t seen the list.”

He objected to the introduction ofthe topic.  It is never pleasant to have to discussgames with the very man one has ousted from the team.

Drummond, too, seemed to feel thatthe situation was an embarrassing one, for a few minuteslater he got up to go over to the gymnasium.

“Any of you chaps coming?” he asked.

Barry and M’Todd thought they would, and thethree left the room.

“Nothing like showing a manyou don’t want him, eh, Bertie?  What doyou think?” said Rand-Brown.

Bertie grinned politely.

VI

TREVOR REMAINS FIRM

The most immediate effect of tellinganybody not to do a thing is to make him do it, inorder to assert his independence.  Trevor’sfirst act on receipt of the letter was to includeBarry in the team against the Town.  It was whathe would have done in any case, but, under the circumstances,he felt a peculiar pleasure in doing it.  The incidentalso had the effect of recalling to his mind the factthat he had tried Barry in the first instance on hisown responsibility, without consulting the committee. The committee of the first fifteen consisted of thetwo old colours who came immediately after the captainon the list.  The powers of a committee variedaccording to the determination and truculence of themembers of it.  On any definite and importantstep, affecting the welfare of the fifteen, the captaintheoretically could not move without their approval. But if the captain happened to be strong-minded andthe committee weak, they were apt to be slightly outof it, and the captain would develop a habit of consultingthem a day or so after he had done a thing.  Hewould give a man his colours, and inform the committeeof it on the following afternoon, when the thing wasdone and could not be repealed.

Trevor was accustomed to ask the adviceof his lieutenants fairly frequently.  He nevergave colours, for instance, off his own bat.  Itseemed to him that it might be as well to learn whatviews Milton and Allardyce had on the subject of Barry,and, after the Town team had gone back across theriver, defeated by a goal and a try to nil, he changedand went over to Seymour’s to interview Milton.

Milton was in an arm-chair, watchingRenford brew tea.  His was one of the few studiesin the school in which there was an arm-chair. With the majority of his contemporaries, it wouldonly run to the portable kind that fold up.

“Come and have some tea, Trevor,” saidMilton.

“Thanks.  If there’s any going.”

“Heaps.  Is there anything to eat, Renford?”

The fag, appealed to on this importantpoint, pondered darkly for a moment.

“Therewas some cake,” he said.

“That’s all right,”interrupted Milton, cheerfully.  “Scratchthe cake.  I ate it before the match.  Isn’tthere anything else?”

Milton had a healthy appetite.

“Then there used to be some biscuits.”

“Biscuits are off.  I finished’em yesterday.  Look here, young Renford,what you’d better do is cut across to the shopand get some more cake and some more biscuits, andtell ’em to put it down to me.  And don’tbe long.”

“A miles better idea would beto send him over to Donaldson’s to fetch somethingfrom my study,” suggested Trevor.  “Itisn’t nearly so far, and I’ve got heapsof stuff.”

“Ripping.  Cut over to Donaldson’s,young Renford.  As a matter of fact,” headded, confidentially, when the emissary had vanished,“I’m not half sure that the other dodgewould have worked.  They seem to think at theshop that I’ve had about enough things on ticklately.  I haven’t settled up for last termyet.  I’ve spent all I’ve got on thisstudy.  What do you think of those photographs?”

Trevor got up and inspected them. They filled the mantelpiece and most of the wall aboveit.  They were exclusively theatrical photographs,and of a variety to suit all tastes.  For theearnest student of the drama there was Sir Henry IrvinginThe Bells, and Mr Martin Harvey inTheOnly Way. For the admirers of the merely beautifulthere were Messrs Dan Leno and Herbert Campbell.

“Not bad,” said Trevor.  “Beastlywaste of money.”

“Waste of money!” Miltonwas surprised and pained at the criticism.  “Why,you must spend your money onsomething."

“Rot, I call it,” saidTrevor.  “If you want to collect something,why don’t you collect something worth having?”

Just then Renford came back with the supplies.

“Thanks,” said Milton,“put ’em down.  Does the billy boil,young Renford?”

Renford asked for explanatory notes.

“You’re a bit of an assat times, aren’t you?” said Milton, kindly. “What I meant was, is the tea ready?  Ifit is, you can scoot.  If it isn’t, buckup with it.”

A sound of bubbling and a rush ofsteam from the spout of the kettle proclaimed thatthe billy did boil.  Renford extinguished the Etna,and left the room, while Milton, murmuring vague formulaeabout “one spoonful for each person and onefor the pot”, got out of his chair with a groan—­forthe Town match had been an energetic one—­andbegan to prepare tea.

“What I really came round about—­”began Trevor.

“Half a second.  I can’t find themilk.”

He went to the door, and shouted forRenford.  On that overworked youth’s appearance,the following dialogue took place.

“Where’s the milk?”

“What milk?”

“My milk.”

“There isn’t any.” This in a tone not untinged with triumph, as if thespeaker realised that here was a distinct score tohim.

“No milk?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“You never had any.”

“Well, just cut across—­no,half a second.  What are you doing downstairs?”

“Having tea.”

“Then you’ve got milk.”

“Only a little.”  This apprehensively.

“Bring it up.  You can have what we leave.”

Disgusted retirement of Master Renford.

“What I really came about,” said Trevoragain, “was business.”

“Colours?” inquired Milton,rummaging in the tin for biscuits with sugar on them. “Good brand of biscuit you keep, Trevor.”

“Yes.  I think we might give Alexander andParker their third.”

“All right.  Any others?”

“Barry his second, do you think?”

“Rather.  He played a goodgame today.  He’s an improvement on Rand-Brown.”

“Glad you think so.  I waswondering whether it was the right thing to do, chuckingRand-Brown out after one trial like that.  Butstill, if you think Barry’s better—­”

“Streets better.  I’vehad heaps of chances of watching them and comparingthem, when they’ve been playing for the house. It isn’t only that Rand-Brown can’t tackle,and Barry can.  Barry takes his passes much better,and doesn’t lose his head when he’s pressed.”

“Just what I thought,”said Trevor.  “Then you’d go on playinghim for the first?”

“Rather.  He’ll getbetter every game, you’ll see, as he gets moreused to playing in the first three-quarter line. And he’s as keen as anything on getting intothe team.  Practises taking passes and that sortof thing every day.”

“Well, he’ll get his colours if we lickRipton.”

“We ought to lick them. They’ve lost one of their forwards, Clifford,a red-haired chap, who was good out of touch. I don’t know if you remember him.”

“I suppose I ought to go andsee Allardyce about these colours, now.  Good-bye.”

There was running and passing on theMonday for every one in the three teams.  Trevorand Clowes met Mr Seymour as they were returning. Mr Seymour was the football master at Wrykyn.

“I see you’ve given Barry his second,Trevor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think you’re wise toplay him for the first.  He knows the game, whichis the great thing, and he will improve with practice,”said Mr Seymour, thus corroborating Milton’swords of the previous Saturday.

“I’m glad Seymour thinksBarry good,” said Trevor, as they walked on. “I shall go on playing him now.”

“Found out who wrote that letter yet?”

Trevor laughed.

“Not yet,” he said.

“Probably Rand-Brown,”suggested Clowes.  “He’s the man whowould gain most by Barry’s not playing. I hear he had a row with Mill just before his studywas ragged.”

“Everybody in Seymour’shas had rows with Mill some time or other,”said Trevor.

Clowes stopped at the door of thejunior day-room to find his fag.  Trevor wenton upstairs.  In the passage he met Ruthven.

Ruthven seemed excited.

“I say.  Trevor,” he exclaimed, “haveyou seen your study?”

“Why, what’s the matter with it?”

“You’d better go and look.”

VII

“WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE LEAGUE”

Trevor went and looked.

It was rather an interesting sight. An earthquake or a cyclone might have made it a littlemore picturesque, but not much more.  The generaleffect was not unlike that of an American saloon, aftera visit from Mrs Carrie Nation (with hatchet). As in the case of Mill’s study, the only thingthat did not seem to have suffered any great damagewas the table.  Everything else looked ratheroff colour.  The mantelpiece had been swept asbare as a bone, and its contents littered the floor. Trevor dived among the debris and retrieved the latestaddition to his art gallery, the photograph of thisyear’s first fifteen.  It was a wreck. The glass was broken and the photograph itself slashedwith a knife till most of the faces were unrecognisable. He picked up another treasure, last year’s firsteleven.  Smashed glass again.  Faces cut aboutwith knife as before.  His collection of snapshotswas torn into a thousand fragments, though, as MrJerome said of thepapier-mâche trout, theremay only have been nine hundred.  He did not countthem.  His bookshelf was empty.  The bookshad gone to swell the contents of the floor. There was a Shakespeare with its cover off.  Pagestwenty-two to thirty-one ofVice Versa had partedfrom the parent establishment, and were lying by themselvesnear the door.The Rogues’ March layjust beyond them, and the look of the cover suggestedthat somebody had either been biting it or jumpingon it with heavy boots.

There was other damage.  Overthe mantelpiece in happier days had hung a dozen seagulls’ eggs, threaded on a string.  The stringwas still there, as good as new, but of the eggs nothingwas to be seen, save a fine parti-coloured powder—­onthe floor, like everything else in the study. And a good deal of ink had been upset in one placeand another.

Trevor had been staring at the ruinsfor some time, when he looked up to see Clowes standingin the doorway.

“Hullo,” said Clowes, “been tidyingup?”

Trevor made a few hasty comments onthe situation.  Clowes listened approvingly.

“Don’t you think,”he went on, eyeing the study with a critical air,“that you’ve got too many things on thefloor, and too few anywhere else?  And I shouldmove some of those books on to the shelf, if I wereyou.”

Trevor breathed very hard.

“I should like to find the chap who did this,”he said softly.

Clowes advanced into the room andproceeded to pick up various misplaced articles offurniture in a helpful way.

“I thought so,” he said presently, “comeand look here.”

Tied to a chair, exactly as it hadbeen in the case of Mill, was a neat white card, andon it were the words,"With the Compliments of theLeague".

“What are you going to do aboutthis?” asked Clowes.  “Come into myroom and talk it over.”

“I’ll tidy this placeup first,” said Trevor.  He felt that thework would be a relief.  “I don’twant people to see this.  It mustn’t getabout.  I’m not going to have my study turnedinto a sort of side-show, like Mill’s. You go and change.  I shan’t be long.”

“I will never desert Mr Micawber,”said Clowes.  “Friend, my place is by yourside.  Shut the door and let’s get to work.”

Ten minutes later the room had resumeda more or less—­though principally less—­normalappearance.  The books and chairs were back intheir places.  The ink was sopped up.  Thebroken photographs were stacked in a neat pile inone corner, with a rug over them.  The mantelpiecewas still empty, but, as Clowes pointed out, it nowmerely looked as if Trevor had been pawning some ofhis household gods.  There was no sign that adevastating secret society had raged through the study.

Then they adjourned to Clowes’study, where Trevor sank into Clowes’ second-bestchair—­Clowes, by an adroit movement, havingappropriated the best one—­with a sigh ofenjoyment.  Running and passing, followed by thetoil of furniture-shifting, had made him feel quitetired.

“It doesn’t look so badnow,” he said, thinking of the room they hadleft.  “By the way, what did you do withthat card?”

“Here it is.  Want it?”

“You can keep it.  I don’t want it.”

“Thanks.  If this sort ofthings goes on, I shall get quite a nice collectionof these cards.  Start an album some day.”

“You know,” said Trevor, “this isgetting serious.”

“It always does get seriouswhen anything bad happens to one’s self. It always strikes one as rather funny when thingshappen to other people.  When Mill’s studywas wrecked, I bet you regarded it as an amusing andoriginal ‘turn’.  What do you thinkof the present effort?”

“Who on earth can have done it?”

“The Pres—­”

“Oh, dry up.  Of course it was.  Butwho the blazes is he?”

“Nay, children, you have methere,” quoted Clowes.  “I’lltell you one thing, though.  You remember whatI said about it’s probably being Rand-Brown. He can’t have done this, that’s certain,because he was out in the fields the whole time. Though I don’t see who else could have anythingto gain by Barry not getting his colours.”

“There’s no reason tosuspect him at all, as far as I can see.  I don’tknow much about him, bar the fact that he can’tplay footer for nuts, but I’ve never heard anythingagainst him.  Have you?”

“I scarcely know him myself.  He isn’tliked in Seymour’s, I believe.”

“Well, anyhow, this can’t be his work.”

“That’s what I said.”

“For all we know, the Leaguemay have got their knife into Barry for some reason. You said they used to get their knife into fellowsin that way.  Anyhow, I mean to find out who raggedmy room.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” saidClowes.

       *     *     *     *     *

O’Hara came round to Donaldson’sbefore morning school next day to tell Trevor thathe had not yet succeeded in finding the lost bat. He found Trevor and Clowes in the former’s den,trying to put a few finishing touches to the same.

“Hullo, an’ what’sup with your study?” he inquired.  He wasquick at noticing things.  Trevor looked annoyed. Clowes asked the visitor if he did not think the studypresented a neat and gentlemanly appearance.

“Where are all your photographs,Trevor?” persisted the descendant of Irish kings.

“It’s no good trying toconceal anything from the bhoy,” said Clowes. “Sit down, O’Hara—­mind thatchair; it’s rather wobbly—­and I willtell ye the story.”

“Can you keep a thing dark?” inquiredTrevor.

O’Hara protested that tombs were not in it.

“Well, then, do you rememberwhat happened to Mill’s study?  That’swhat’s been going on here.”

O’Hara nearly fell off his chairwith surprise.  That some philanthropist shouldrag Mill’s study was only to be expected. Mill was one of the worst.  A worm without a savinggrace.  But Trevor!  Captain of football! In the first eleven!  The thing was unthinkable.

“But who—?” he began.

“That’s just what I wantto know,” said Trevor, shortly.  He did notenjoy discussing the affair.

“How long have you been at Wrykyn, O’Hara?”said Clowes.

O’Hara made a rapid calculation. His fingers twiddled in the air as he worked out theproblem.

“Six years,” he said atlast, leaning back exhausted with brain work.

“Then you must remember the League?”

“Remember the League?  Rather.”

“Well, it’s been revived.”

O’Hara whistled.

“This’ll liven the oldplace up,” he said.  “I’ve oftenthought of reviving it meself.  An’ so hasMoriarty.  If it’s anything like the OldLeague, there’s going to be a sort of Donnybrookbefore it’s done with.  I wonder who’srunning it this time.”

“We should like to know that.  If you findout, you might tell us.”

“I will.”

“And don’t tell anybodyelse,” said Trevor.  “This businesshas got to be kept quiet.  Keep it dark aboutmy study having been ragged.”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“Not even Moriarty.”

“Oh, hang it, man,” putin Clowes, “you don’t want to kill thepoor bhoy, surely?  You must let him tell oneperson.”

“All right,” said Trevor,“you can tell Moriarty.  But nobody else,mind.”

O’Hara promised that Moriarty should receivethe news exclusively.

“But why did the League go for ye?”

“They happen to be down on me.  It doesn’tmatter why.  They are.”

“I see,” said O’Hara. “Oh,” he added, “about that bat. The search is being ’vigorously prosecuted’—­that’sa newspaper quotation—­”

“Times?” inquired Clowes.

“Wrykyn Patriot,”said O’Hara, pulling out a bundle of letters. He inspected each envelope in turn, and from the fifthextracted a newspaper cutting.

“Read that,” he said.

It was from the local paper, and ran as follows:—­

“Hooligan Outrage—­Apainful sensation has been caused in the town by adeplorable ebullition of local Hooliganism, which hasresulted in the wanton disfigurement of the splendidstatue of Sir Eustace Briggs which stands in the NewRecreation Grounds.  Our readers will recollectthat the statue was erected to commemorate the returnof Sir Eustace as member for the borough of Wrykyn,by an overwhelming majority, at the last election. Last Tuesday some youths of the town, passing throughthe Recreation Grounds early in the morning, noticedthat the face and body of the statue were completelycovered with leaves and some black substance, whichon examination proved to be tar.  They speedilylodged information at the police station.  Everythingseems to point to party spite as the motive for theoutrage.  In view of the forth-coming election,such an act is highly significant, and will servesufficiently to indicate the tactics employed by ouropponents.  The search for the perpetrator (orperpetrators) of the dastardly act is being vigorouslyprosecuted, and we learn with satisfaction that thepolice have already several clues.”

“Clues!” said Clowes,handing back the paper, “that meansthe bat. That gas about ‘our opponents’ is all ablind to put you off your guard.  You wait. There’ll be more painful sensations before you’vefinished with this business.”

“They can’t have foundthe bat, or why did they not say so?” observedO’Hara.

“Guile,” said Clowes,“pure guile.  If I were you, I should escapewhile I could.  Try Callao.  There’sno extradition there.

    ’On no petition
     Is extradition
     Allowed in Callao.’

Either of you chaps coming over to school?”

VIII

O’HARA ON THE TRACK

Tuesday mornings at Wrykyn were devoted—­upto the quarter to eleven interval—­to thestudy of mathematics.  That is to say, insteadof going to their form-rooms, the various forms visitedthe out-of-the-way nooks and dens at the top of thebuildings where the mathematical masters were wontto lurk, and spent a pleasant two hours there playinground games or reading fiction under the desk. Mathematics being one of the few branches of schoollearning which are of any use in after life, nobodyever dreamed of doing any work in that direction, leastof all O’Hara.  It was a theory of O’Hara’sthat he came to school to enjoy himself.  To havedone any work during a mathematics lesson would havestruck him as a positive waste of time, especiallyas he was in Mr Banks’ class.  Mr Bankswas a master who simply cried out to be ragged. Everything he did and said seemed to invite the membersof his class to amuse themselves, and they amusedthemselves accordingly.  One of the advantagesof being under him was that it was possible to predictto a nicety the moment when one would be sent outof the room.  This was found very convenient.

O’Hara’s ally, Moriarty,was accustomed to take his mathematics with Mr Morgan,whose room was directly opposite Mr Banks’. With Mr Morgan it was not quite so easy to date one’sexpulsion from the room under ordinary circumstances,and in the normal wear and tear of the morning’swork, but there was one particular action which couldalways be relied upon to produce the desired result.

In one corner of the room stood agigantic globe.  The problem—­how didit get into the room?—­was one that had exercisedthe minds of many generations of Wrykinians. It was much too big to have come through the door. Some thought that the block had been built round it,others that it had been placed in the room in infancy,and had since grown.  To refer the question toMr Morgan would, in six cases out of ten, mean instantdeparture from the room.  But to make the eventcertain, it was necessary to grasp the globe firmlyand spin it round on its axis.  That always provedsuccessful.  Mr Morgan would dash down from hisdais, address the offender in spirited terms, andgive him his marching orders at once and without furthertrouble.

Moriarty had arranged with O’Harato set the globe rolling at ten sharp on this particularmorning.  O’Hara would then so arrange matterswith Mr Banks that they could meet in the passageat that hour, when O’Hara wished to impart tohis friend his information concerning the League.

O’Hara promised to be at thetrysting-place at the hour mentioned.

He did not think there would be anydifficulty about it.  The news that the Leaguehad been revived meant that there would be troublein the very near future, and the prospect of troublewas meat and drink to the Irishman in O’Hara. Consequently he felt in particularly good form formathematics (as he interpreted the word).  He thoughtthat he would have no difficulty whatever in keepingMr Banks bright and amused.  The first step hadto be to arouse in him an interest in life, to bringhim into a frame of mind which would induce him tolook severely rather than leniently on the next offender. This was effected as follows:—­

It was Mr Banks’ practice toset his class sums to work out, and, after some three-quartersof an hour had elapsed, to pass round the form whathe called “solutions”.  These werelarge sheets of paper, on which he had worked outeach sum in his neat handwriting to a happy ending. When the head of the form, to whom they were passedfirst, had finished with them, he would make a slighttear in one corner, and, having done so, hand themon to his neighbour.  The neighbour, before givingthem tohis neighbour, would also tear themslightly.  In time they would return to theirpatentee and proprietor, and it was then that thingsbecame exciting.

“Who tore these solutions likethis?” asked Mr Banks, in the repressed voiceof one who is determined that hewill be calm.

No answer.  The tattered solutions waved in theair.

He turned to Harringay, the head of the form.

“Harringay, did you tear these solutions likethis?”

Indignant negative from Harringay. What he had done had been to make the small tear inthe top left-hand corner.  If Mr Banks had asked,“Did you make this small tear in the top left-handcorner of these solutions?” Harringay wouldhave scorned to deny the impeachment.  But toclaim the credit for the whole work would, he felt,be an act of flat dishonesty, and an injustice tohis giftedcollaborateurs.

“No, sir,” said Harringay.

“Browne!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did you tear these solutions in this manner?”

“No, sir.”

And so on through the form.

Then Harringay rose after the mannerof the debater who is conscious that he is going tosay the popular thing.

“Sir—­” he began.

“Sit down, Harringay.”

Harringay gracefully waved aside the absurd command.

“Sir,” he said, “Ithink I am expressing the general consensus of opinionamong my—­ahem—­fellow-students,when I say that this class sincerely regrets the unfortunatestate the solutions have managed to get themselvesinto.”

“Hear, hear!” from a back bench.

“It is with—­”

“Sitdown, Harringay.”

“It is with heartfelt—­”

“Harringay, if you do not sit down—­”

“As your ludship pleases.”  Thissottovoce.

And Harringay resumed his seat amidst applause. O’Hara got up.

“As me frind who has just sat down was aboutto observe—­”

“Sit down, O’Hara.  The whole formwill remain after the class.”

“—­the unfortunatestate the solutions have managed to get thimsilvesinto is sincerely regretted by this class.  Sir,I think I am ixprissing the general consensus of opinionamong my fellow-students whin I say that it is withheart-felt sorrow—­”

“O’Hara!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Leave the room instantly.”

“Yes, sir.”

From the tower across the gravel camethe melodious sound of chimes.  The college clockwas beginning to strike ten.  He had scarcely gotinto the passage, and closed the door after him, whena roar as of a bereaved spirit rang through the roomopposite, followed by a string of words, the onlyintelligible one being the noun-substantive “globe”,and the next moment the door opened and Moriarty cameout.  The last stroke of ten was just boomingfrom the clock.

There was a large cupboard in thepassage, the top of which made a very comfortableseat.  They climbed on to this, and began to talkbusiness.

“An’ what was it ye wanted to tell me?”inquired Moriarty.

O’Hara related what he had learned from Trevorthat morning.

“An’ do ye know,”said Moriarty, when he had finished, “I halfsuspected, when I heard that Mill’s study hadbeen ragged, that it might be the League that haddone it.  If ye remember, it was what they enjoyeddoing, breaking up a man’s happy home.  Theydid it frequently.”

“But I can’t understand them doing itto Trevor at all.”

“They’ll do it to anybody they choosetill they’re caught at it.”

“If they are caught, there’ll be a row.”

“We must catch ’em,”said Moriarty.  Like O’Hara, he revelledin the prospect of a disturbance.  O’Haraand he were going up to Aldershot at the end of theterm, to try and bring back the light and middle-weightmedals respectively.  Moriarty had won the light-weightin the previous year, but, by reason of putting ona stone since the competition, was now no longer eligiblefor that class.  O’Hara had not been up before,but the Wrykyn instructor, a good judge of pugilisticform, was of opinion that he ought to stand an excellentchance.  As the prize-fighter inRodney Stonesays, “When you get a good Irishman, you can’tbetter ’em, but they’re dreadful ’asty.” O’Hara was attending the gymnasium every night,in order to learn to curb his “dreadful ’astiness”,and acquire skill in its place.

“I wonder if Trevor would be any good in a row,”said Moriarty.

“He can’t box,”said O’Hara, “but he’d go on tillhe was killed entirely.  I say, I’m gettingrather tired of sitting here, aren’t you? Let’s go to the other end of the passage andhave some cricket.”

So, having unearthed a piece of woodfrom the debris at the top of the cupboard, and rolleda handkerchief into a ball, they adjourned.

Recalling the stirring events of sixyears back, when the League had first been started,O’Hara remembered that the members of that enterprisingsociety had been wont to hold meetings in a secludedspot, where it was unlikely that they would be disturbed. It seemed to him that the first thing he ought todo, if he wanted to make their nearer acquaintancenow, was to find their present rendezvous.  Theymust have one.  They would never run the riskinvolved in holding mass-meetings in one another’sstudies.  On the last occasion, it had been anold quarry away out on the downs.  This had beenproved by the not-to-be-shaken testimony of threeschool-house fags, who had wandered out one half-holidaywith the unconcealed intention of finding the League’splace of meeting.  Unfortunately for them, theyhad found it.  They were going down thepath that led to the quarry before-mentioned, whenthey were unexpectedly seized, blindfolded, and carriedoff.  An impromptu court-martial was held—­inwhispers—­and the three explorers forthwithreceived the most spirited “touching-up”they had ever experienced.  Afterwards they werereleased, and returned to their house with their zealfor detection quite quenched.  The episode hadcreated a good deal of excitement in the school atthe time.

On three successive afternoons, O’Haraand Moriarty scoured the downs, and on each occasionthey drew blank.  On the fourth day, just beforelock-up, O’Hara, who had been to tea with Gregson,of Day’s, was going over to the gymnasium tokeep a pugilistic appointment with Moriarty, whensomebody ran swiftly past him in the direction of theboarding-houses.  It was almost dark, for the dayswere still short, and he did not recognise the runner. But it puzzled him a little to think where he hadsprung from.  O’Hara was walking quite closeto the wall of the College buildings, and the runnerhad passed between it and him.  And he had notheard his footsteps.  Then he understood, and hispulse quickened as he felt that he was on the track. Beneath the block was a large sort of cellar-basement. It was used as a store-room for chairs, and was neveropened except when prize-day or some similar eventoccurred, when the chairs were needed.  It wassupposed to be locked at other times, but never was. The door was just by the spot where he was standing. As he stood there, half-a-dozen other vague forms dashedpast him in a knot.  One of them almost brushedagainst him.  For a moment he thought of stoppinghim, but decided not to.  He could wait.

On the following afternoon he slippeddown into the basement soon after school.  Itwas as black as pitch in the cellar.  He took upa position near the door.

It seemed hours before anything happened. He was, indeed, almost giving up the thing as a badjob, when a ray of light cut through the blacknessin front of him, and somebody slipped through the door. The next moment, a second form appeared dimly, andthen the light was shut off again.

O’Hara could hear them gropingtheir way past him.  He waited no longer. It is difficult to tell where sound comes from in thedark.  He plunged forward at a venture.  Hishand, swinging round in a semicircle, met somethingwhich felt like a shoulder.  He slipped his graspdown to the arm, and clutched it with all the forceat his disposal.

IX

MAINLY ABOUT FERRETS

“Ow!” exclaimed the captive,with no uncertain voice.  “Let go, you ass,you’re hurting.”

The voice was a treble voice. This surprised O’Hara.  It looked very muchas if he had put up the wrong bird.  From the dimensionsof the arm which he was holding, his prisoner seemedto be of tender years.

“Let go, Harvey, you idiot.  I shall kick.”

Before the threat could be put intoexecution, O’Hara, who had been fumbling allthis while in his pocket for a match, found one loose,and struck a light.  The features of the ownerof the arm—­he was still holding it—­werelit up for a moment.

“Why, it’s young Renford!”he exclaimed.  “What are you doing downhere?”

Renford, however, continued to pursuethe topic of his arm, and the effect that the vice-likegrip of the Irishman had had upon it.

“You’ve nearly broken it,” he said,complainingly.

“I’m sorry.  I mistook you for somebodyelse.  Who’s that with you?”

“It’s me,” said an ungrammaticalvoice.

“Who’s me?”

“Harvey.”

At this point a soft yellow lightlit up the more immediate neighbourhood.  Harveyhad brought a bicycle lamp into action.

“That’s more like it,”said Renford.  “Look here, O’Hara,you won’t split, will you?”

“I’m not an informer by profession, thanks,”said O’Hara.

“Oh, I know it’s all right,really, but you can’t be too careful, becauseone isn’t allowed down here, and there’dbe a beastly row if it got out about our being downhere.”

“Andthey would be cobbed,” putin Harvey.

“Who are they?” asked O’Hara.

“Ferrets.  Like to have a look at them?”

“Ferrets!”

“Yes.  Harvey brought backa couple at the beginning of term.  Ripping littlebeasts.  We couldn’t keep them in the house,as they’d have got dropped on in a second, sowe had to think of somewhere else, and thought whynot keep them down here?”

“Why, indeed?” said O’Hara. “Do ye find they like it?”

“Oh,they don’tmind,” said Harvey.  “We feed ’emtwice a day.  Once before breakfast—­wetake it in turns to get up early—­and oncedirectly after school.  And on half-holidays andSundays we take them out on to the downs.”

“What for?”

“Why, rabbits, of course. Renford brought back a saloon-pistol with him. We keep it locked up in a box—­don’ttell any one.”

“And what do ye do with the rabbits?”

“We pot at them as they come out of the holes.”

“Yes, but when ye hit ’em?”

“Oh,” said Renford, withsome reluctance, “we haven’t exactly hitany yet.”

“We’ve got jolly near,though, lots of times,” said Harvey.  “LastSaturday I swear I wasn’t more than a quarterof an inch off one of them.  If it had been adecent-sized rabbit, I should have plugged it middlestump; only it was a small one, so I missed.  Butcome and see them.  We keep ’em right atthe other end of the place, in case anybody comesin.”

“Have you ever seen anybody down here?”asked O’Hara.

“Once,” said Renford. “Half-a-dozen chaps came down here once whilewe were feeding the ferrets.  We waited till they’dgot well in, then we nipped out quietly.  Theydidn’t see us.”

“Did you see who they were?”

“No.  It was too dark. Here they are.  Rummy old crib this, isn’tit?  Look out for your shins on the chairs. Switch on the light, Harvey.  There, aren’ttheyrippers?  Quite tame, too.  Theyknow us quite well.  They know they’re goingto be fed, too.  Hullo, Sir Nigel!  This isSir Nigel.  Out of the ‘White Company’,you know.  Don’t let him nip your fingers. This other one’s Sherlock Holmes.”

“Cats-s-s—­s!!”said O’Hara.  He had a sort of idea thatthat was the right thing to say to any animal thatcould chase and bite.

Renford was delighted to be able toshow his ferrets off to so distinguished a visitor.

“What were you down here about?”inquired Harvey, when the little animals had had theirmeal, and had retired once more into private life.

O’Hara had expected this question,but he did not quite know what answer to give. Perhaps, on the whole, he thought, it would be bestto tell them the real reason.  If he refused toexplain, their curiosity would be roused, which wouldbe fatal.  And to give any reason except the trueone called for a display of impromptu invention ofwhich he was not capable.  Besides, they wouldnot be likely to give away his secret while he heldthis one of theirs connected with the ferrets. He explained the situation briefly, and swore themto silence on the subject.

Renford’s comment was brief.

“By Jove!” he observed.

Harvey went more deeply into the question.

“What makes you think they meet down here?”he asked.

“I saw some fellows cuttingout of here last night.  And you say ye’veseen them here, too.  I don’t see what objectthey could have down here if they weren’t theLeague holding a meeting.  I don’t see whatelse a chap would be after.”

“He might be keeping ferrets,” hazardedRenford.

“The whole school doesn’tkeep ferrets,” said O’Hara.  “You’reunique in that way.  No, it must be the League,an’ I mean to wait here till they come.”

“Not all night?” askedHarvey.  He had a great respect for O’Hara,whose reputation in the school for out-of-the-waydoings was considerable.  In the bright lexiconof O’Hara he believed there to be no such wordas “impossible.”

“No,” said O’Hara,“but till lock-up.  You two had better cutnow.”

“Yes, I think we’d better,” saidHarvey.

“And don’t ye breathea word about this to a soul”—­a warningwhich extracted fervent promises of silence from bothyouths.

“This,” said Harvey, asthey emerged on to the gravel, “is somethinglike.  I’m jolly glad we’re in it.”

“Rather.  Do you think O’Hara willcatch them?”

“He must if he waits down therelong enough.  They’re certain to come again. Don’t you wish you’d been here when theLeague was on before?”

“I should think I did. Race you over to the shop.  I want to get somethingbefore it shuts.”

“Right ho!” And they disappeared.

O’Hara waited where he was tillsix struck from the clock-tower, followed by the soundof the bell as it rang for lock-up.  Then he pickedhis way carefully through the groves of chairs, barkinghis shins now and then on their out-turned legs, and,pushing open the door, went out into the open air. It felt very fresh and pleasant after the brand ofatmosphere supplied in the vault.  He then ranover to the gymnasium to meet Moriarty, feeling alittle disgusted at the lack of success that had attendedhis detective efforts up to the present.  So farhe had nothing to show for his trouble except a gooddeal of dust on his clothes, and a dirty collar, buthe was full of determination.  He could play awaiting game.

It was a pity, as it happened, thatO’Hara left the vault when he did.  Fiveminutes after he had gone, six shadowy forms made theirway silently and in single file through the doorwayof the vault, which they closed carefully behind them. The fact that it was after lock-up was of small consequence. A good deal of latitude in that way was allowed atWrykyn.  It was the custom to go out, after thebell had sounded, to visit the gymnasium.  Inthe winter and Easter terms, the gymnasium becamea sort of social club.  People went there witha very small intention of doing gymnastics.  Theywent to lounge about, talking to cronies, in frontof the two huge stoves which warmed the place. Occasionally, as a concession to the look of the thing,they would do an easy exercise or two on the horseor parallels, but, for the most part, they preferredtherôle of spectator.  There was plentyto see.  In one corner O’Hara and Moriartywould be sparring their nightly six rounds (in twobatches of three rounds each).  In another, Drummond,who was going up to Aldershot as a feather-weight,would be putting in a little practice with the instructor. On the apparatus, the members of the gymnastic six,including the two experts who were to carry the schoolcolours to Aldershot in the spring, would be performingtheir usual marvels.  It was worth dropping intothe gymnasium of an evening.  In no other placein the school were so many sights to be seen.

When you were surfeited with sightseeing,you went off to your house.  And this was wherethe peculiar beauty of the gymnasium system came in. You went up to any master who happened to be there—­therewas always one at least—­and observed insuave accents, “Please, sir, can I have a paper?”Whereupon, he, taking a scrap of paper, would writeupon it, “J.  O. Jones (or A. B. Smith orC. D. Robinson) left gymnasium at such-and-such atime”.  And, by presenting this to the menialwho opened the door to you at your house, you wentin rejoicing, and all was peace.

Now, there was no mention on the paperof the hour at which you came to the gymnasium—­onlyof the hour at which you left.  Consequently, certainlawless spirits would range the neighbourhood afterlock-up, and, by putting in a quarter of an hour atthe gymnasium before returning to their houses, escapecomment.  To this class belonged the shadowy formspreviously mentioned.

O’Hara had forgotten this custom,with the result that he was not at the vault whenthey arrived.  Moriarty, to whom he confided betweenthe rounds the substance of his evening’s discoveries,reminded him of it.  “It’s no goodwatching before lock-up,” he said.  “Aftersix is the time they’ll come, if they come atall.”

“Bedad, ye’re right,”said O’Hara.  “One of these nightswe’ll take a night off from boxing, and go andwatch.”

“Right,” said Moriarty.  “Areye ready to go on?”

“Yes.  I’m going topractise that left swing at the body this round. The one Fitzsimmons does.”  And they “put’em up” once more.

X

BEING A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS

On the evening following O’Hara’sadventure in the vaults, Barry and M’Todd werein their study, getting out the tea-things.  MostWrykinians brewed in the winter and Easter terms,when the days were short and lock-up early.  Inthe summer term there were other things to do—­nets,which lasted till a quarter to seven (when lock-upwas), and the baths—­and brewing practicallyceased.  But just now it was at its height, andevery evening, at a quarter past five, there mightbe heard in the houses the sizzling of the succulentsausage and other rare delicacies.  As a rule,one or two studies would club together to brew, insteadof preparing solitary banquets.  This was foundboth more convivial and more economical.  At Seymour’s,studies numbers five, six, and seven had always combinedfrom time immemorial, and Barry, on obtaining studysix, had carried on the tradition.  In study fivewere Drummond and his friend De Bertini.  In studyseven, which was a smaller room and only capable ofholding one person with any comfort, one James RupertLeather-Twigg (that was his singular name, as Mr Gilberthas it) had taken up his abode.  The name of Leather-Twigghaving proved, at an early date in his career, toogreat a mouthful for Wrykyn, he was known to his friendsand acquaintances by the euphonious title of Shoeblossom. The charm about the genial Shoeblossom was that youcould never tell what he was going to do next. All that you could rely on with any certainty wasthat it would be something which would have been betterleft undone.

It was just five o’clock whenBarry and M’Todd started to get things ready. They were not high enough up in the school to havefags, so that they had to do this for themselves.

Barry was still in football clothes. He had been out running and passing with the firstfifteen.  M’Todd, whose idea of exercisewas winding up a watch, had been spending his timesince school ceased in the study with a book. He was in his ordinary clothes.  It was thereforefortunate that, when he upset the kettle (he nearlyalways did at some period of the evening’s business),the contents spread themselves over Barry, and notover himself.  Football clothes will stand anyamount of water, whereas M’Todd’s “Youth’swinter suiting at forty-two shillings and sixpence”might have been injured.  Barry, however, did notlook upon the episode in this philosophical light. He spoke to him eloquently for a while, and then senthim downstairs to fetch more water.  While hewas away, Drummond and De Bertini came in.

“Hullo,” said Drummond, “tea ready?”

“Not much,” replied Barry,bitterly, “not likely to be, either, at thisrate.  We’d just got the kettle going whenthat ass M’Todd plunged against the table andupset the lot over my bags.  Lucky the beastlystuff wasn’t boiling.  I’m soaked.”

“While we wait—­thesausages—­Yes?—­a good idea—­M’Todd,he is downstairs—­but to wait?  No,no.  Let us.  Shall we?  Is it not so? Yes?” observed Bertie, lucidly.

“Now construe,” said Barry,looking at the linguist with a bewildered expression. It was a source of no little inconvenience to his friendsthat De Bertini was so very fixed in his determinationto speak English.  He was a trier all the way,was De Bertini.  You rarely caught him helpingout his remarks with the language of his native land. It was English or nothing with him.  To most ofhis circle it might as well have been Zulu.

Drummond, either through natural geniusor because he spent more time with him, was generallyable to act as interpreter.  Occasionally therewould come a linguistic effort by which even he freelyconfessed himself baffled, and then they would passon unsatisfied.  But, as a rule, he was equalto the emergency.  He was so now.

“What Bertie means,” heexplained, “is that it’s no good us waitingfor M’Todd to come back.  He never couldfill a kettle in less than ten minutes, and even thenhe’s certain to spill it coming upstairs andhave to go back again.  Let’s get on withthe sausages.”

The pan had just been placed on thefire when M’Todd returned with the water. He tripped over the mat as he entered, and spilt abouthalf a pint into one of his football boots, whichstood inside the door, but the accident was comparativelytrivial, and excited no remark.

“I wonder where that slackerShoeblossom has got to,” said Barry.  “Henever turns up in time to do any work.  He seemsto regard himself as a beastly guest.  I wishwe could finish the sausages before he comes. It would be a sell for him.”

“Not much chance of that,”said Drummond, who was kneeling before the fire andkeeping an excited eye on the spluttering pan, “yousee.  He’ll come just as we’ve finishedcooking them.  I believe the man waits outsidewith his ear to the keyhole.  Hullo!  Standby with the plate.  They’ll be done in halfa jiffy.”

Just as the last sausage was depositedin safety on the plate, the door opened, and Shoeblossom,looking as if he had not brushed his hair since earlychildhood, sidled in with an attempt at an easy nonchalancewhich was rendered quite impossible by the hopelessstate of his conscience.

“Ah,” he said, “brewing, I see. Can I be of any use?”

“We’ve finished years ago,” saidBarry.

“Ages ago,” said M’Todd.

A look of intense alarm appeared on Shoeblossom’sclassical features.

“You’ve not finished, really?”

“We’ve finished cookingeverything,” said Drummond.  “We haven’tbegun tea yet.  Now, are you happy?”

Shoeblossom was.  So happy thathe felt he must do something to celebrate the occasion. He felt like a successful general.  There mustbesomething he could do to show that he regardedthe situation with approval.  He looked roundthe study.  Ha!  Happy thought—­thefrying-pan.  That useful culinary instrument waslying in the fender, still bearing its cargo of fat,and beside it—­a sight to stir the bloodand make the heart beat faster—­were thesausages, piled up on their plate.

Shoeblossom stooped.  He seizedthe frying-pan.  He gave it one twirl in the air. Then, before any one could stop him, he had turnedit upside down over the fire.  As has been alreadyremarked, you could never predict exactly what JamesRupert Leather-Twigg would be up to next.

When anything goes out of the frying-paninto the fire, it is usually productive of interestingby-products.  The maxim applies to fat.  Thefat was in the fire with a vengeance.  A greatsheet of flame rushed out and up.  Shoeblossomleaped back with a readiness highly creditable inone who was not a professional acrobat.  The coveringof the mantelpiece caught fire.  The flames wentroaring up the chimney.

Drummond, cool while everything elsewas so hot, without a word moved to the mantelpieceto beat out the fire with a football shirt.  Bertiewas talking rapidly to himself in French.  Nobodycould understand what he was saying, which was possiblyfortunate.

By the time Drummond had extinguishedthe mantelpiece, Barry had also done good work byknocking the fire into the grate with the poker. M’Todd, who had been standing up till now inthe far corner of the room, gaping vaguely at thingsin general, now came into action.  Probably itwas force of habit that suggested to him that the timehad come to upset the kettle.  At any rate, upsetit he did—­most of it over the glowing,blazing mass in the grate, the rest over Barry. One of the largest and most detestable smells thestudy had ever had to endure instantly assailed theirnostrils.  The fire in the study was out now,but in the chimney it still blazed merrily.

“Go up on to the roof and heavewater down,” said Drummond, the strategist. “You can get out from Milton’s dormitorywindow.  And take care not to chuck it down thewrong chimney.”

Barry was starting for the door tocarry out these excellent instructions, when it flewopen.

“Pah!  What have you boysbeen doing?  What an abominable smell.  Pah!”said a muffled voice.  It was Mr Seymour. Most of his face was concealed in a large handkerchief,but by the look of his eyes, which appeared above,he did not seem pleased.  He took in the situationat a glance.  Fires in the house were not rarities. One facetious sportsman had once made a rule of settingthe senior day-room chimney on fire every term. He had since left (by request), but fires still occurred.

“Is the chimney on fire?”

“Yes, sir,” said Drummond.

“Go and find Herbert, and tellhim to take some water on to the roof and throw itdown.”  Herbert was the boot and knife cleanerat Seymour’s.

Barry went.  Soon afterwards asplash of water in the grate announced that the intrepidHerbert was hard at it.  Another followed, andanother.  Then there was a pause.  Mr Seymourthought he would look up to see if the fire was out. He stooped and peered into the darkness, and, evenas he gazed, splash came the contents of the fourthpail, together with some soot with which they hadformed a travelling acquaintance on the way down. Mr Seymour staggered back, grimy and dripping. There was dead silence in the study.  Shoeblossom’sface might have been seen working convulsively.

The silence was broken by a hollow,sepulchral voice with a strong Cockney accent.

“Did yer see any water comedown then, sir?” said the voice.

Shoeblossom collapsed into a chair,and began to sob feebly.

       *     *     *     *     *

“—­disgraceful …scandalous … getup, Leather-Twigg … notto be trusted …babies … three hundredlines, Leather-Twigg … abominable … surprised… ought to be ashamed of yourselves …double,Leather-Twigg … not fit to have studies … atrocious…—­”

Such were the main heads of Mr Seymour’sspeech on the situation as he dabbed desperately atthe soot on his face with his handkerchief.  Shoeblossomstood and gurgled throughout.  Not even the thoughtof six hundred lines could quench that dauntless spirit.

“Finally,” perorated MrSeymour, as he was leaving the room, “as youare evidently not to be trusted with rooms of yourown, I forbid you to enter them till further notice. It is disgraceful that such a thing should happen. Do you hear, Barry?  And you, Drummond?  Youare not to enter your studies again till I give youleave.  Move your books down to the senior day-roomtonight.”

And Mr Seymour stalked off to clean himself.

“Anyhow,” said Shoeblossom,as his footsteps died away, “we saved the sausages.”

It is this indomitable gift of lookingon the bright side that makes us Englishmen what weare.

XI

THE HOUSE-MATCHES

It was something of a consolationto Barry and his friends—­at any rate, toBarry and Drummond—­that directly after theyhad been evicted from their study, the house-matchesbegan.  Except for the Ripton match, the house-matcheswere the most important event of the Easter term. Even the sports at the beginning of April were productiveof less excitement.  There were twelve housesat Wrykyn, and they played on the “knocking-out”system.  To be beaten once meant that a house wasno longer eligible for the competition.  It couldplay “friendlies” as much as it liked,but, play it never so wisely, it could not lift thecup.  Thus it often happened that a weak house,by fluking a victory over a strong rival, found itself,much to its surprise, in the semi-final, or sometimeseven in the final.  This was rarer at footballthan at cricket, for at football the better team generallywins.

The favourites this year were Donaldson’s,though some fancied Seymour’s.  Donaldson’shad Trevor, whose leadership was worth almost morethan his play.  In no other house was trainingso rigid.  You could tell a Donaldson’sman, if he was in his house-team, at a glance. If you saw a man eating oatmeal biscuits in the shop,and eyeing wistfully the while the stacks of bunsand pastry, you could put him down as a Donaldsonitewithout further evidence.  The captains of theother houses used to prescribe a certain amount ofself-abnegation in the matter of food, but Trevorleft his men barely enough to support life—­enough,that is, of the things that are really worth eating. The consequence was that Donaldson’s would turnout for an important match all muscle and bone, andon such occasions it was bad for those of their opponentswho had been taking life more easily.  BesidesTrevor they had Clowes, and had had bad luck in nothaving Paget.  Had Paget stopped, no other housecould have looked at them.  But by his departure,the strength of the team had become more nearly ona level with that of Seymour’s.

Some even thought that Seymour’swere the stronger.  Milton was as good a forwardas the school possessed.  Besides him there wereBarry and Rand-Brown on the wings.  Drummond wasa useful half, and five of the pack had either firstor second fifteen colours.  It was a team thatwould take some beating.

Trevor came to that conclusion early. “If we can beat Seymour’s, we’lllift the cup,” he said to Clowes.

“We’ll have to do all we know,”was Clowes’ reply.

They were watching Seymour’spile up an immense score against a scratch team gotup by one of the masters.  The first round of thecompetition was over.  Donaldson’s had beatenTemplar’s, Seymour’s the School House. Templar’s were rather stronger than the SchoolHouse, and Donaldson’s had beaten them by arather larger score than that which Seymour’shad run up in their match.  But neither Trevornor Clowes was inclined to draw any augury from this. Seymour’s had taken things easily after half-time;Donaldson’s had kept going hard all through.

“That makes Rand-Brown’sfourth try,” said Clowes, as the wing three-quarterof the second fifteen raced round and scored in thecorner.

“Yes.  This is the sortof game he’s all right in.  The man who’smarking him is no good.  Barry’s scoredtwice, and both good tries, too.”

“Oh, there’s no doubtwhich is the best man,” said Clowes.  “Ionly mentioned that it was Rand-Brown’s fourthas an item of interest.”

The game continued.  Barry scored a third try.

“We’re drawn against Appleby’snext round,” said Trevor.  “We canmanage them all right.”

“When is it?”

“Next Thursday.  Nomads’ match onSaturday.  Then Ripton, Saturday week.”

“Who’ve Seymour’s drawn?”

“Day’s.  It’llbe a good game, too.  Seymour’s ought towin, but they’ll have to play their best. Day’s have got some good men.”

“Fine scrum,” said Clowes. “Yes.  Quick in the open, too, which isalways good business.  I wish they’d beatSeymour’s.”

“Oh, we ought to be all right, whichever wins.”

Appleby’s did not offer anyvery serious resistance to the Donaldson attack. They were outplayed at every point of the game, and,before half-time, Donaldson’s had scored theirthirty points.  It was a rule in all in-schoolmatches—­and a good rule, too—­that,when one side led by thirty points, the match stopped. This prevented those massacres which do so much towardscrushing all the football out of the members of thebeaten team; and it kept the winning team from gettingslack, by urging them on to score their thirty pointsbefore half-time.  There were some houses—­notoriouslyslack—­which would go for a couple of seasonswithout ever playing the second half of a match.

Having polished off the men of Appleby,the Donaldson team trooped off to the other game tosee how Seymour’s were getting on with Day’s. It was evidently an exciting match.  The firsthalf had been played to the accompaniment of muchshouting from the ropes.  Though coming so earlyin the competition, it was really the semi-final, forwhichever team won would be almost certain to getinto the final.  The school had turned up in largenumbers to watch.

“Seymour’s looking tiredof life,” said Clowes.  “That wouldseem as if his fellows weren’t doing well.”

“What’s been happeninghere?” asked Trevor of an enthusiast in a Seymour’shouse cap whose face was crimson with yelling.

“One goal all,” repliedthe enthusiast huskily.  “Did you beat Appleby’s?”

“Yes.  Thirty points beforehalf-time.  Who’s been doing the scoringhere?”

“Milton got in for us. He barged through out of touch.  We’ve beenpressing the whole time.  Barry got over once,but he was held up.  Hullo, they’re beginningagain.  Buck up, Sey-mour’s.”

His voice cracking on the high note,he took an immense slab of vanilla chocolate as aremedy for hoarseness.

“Who scored for Day’s?” asked Clowes.

“Strachan.  Rand-Brown lethim through from their twenty-five.  You neversaw anything so rotten as Rand-Brown.  He doesn’ttake his passes, and Strachan gets past him everytime.”

“Is Strachan playing on the wing?”

Strachan was the first fifteen full-back.

“Yes.  They’ve putyoung Bassett back instead of him.  Sey-mour’s. Buck up, Seymour’s.  We-ell played! There, did you ever see anything like it?” hebroke off disgustedly.

The Seymourite playing centre nextto Rand-Brown had run through to the back and passedout to his wing, as a good centre should.  It wasa perfect pass, except that it came at his head insteadof his chest.  Nobody with any pretensions todecent play should have missed it.  Rand-Brown,however, achieved that feat.  The ball struck hishands and bounded forward.  The referee blew hiswhistle for a scrum, and a certain try was lost.

From the scrum the Seymour’sforwards broke away to the goal-line, where they werepulled up by Bassett.  The next minute the defencehad been pierced, and Drummond was lying on the balla yard across the line.  The enthusiast standingby Clowes expended the last relics of his voice incommemorating the fact that his side had the lead.

“Drummond’ll be good nextyear,” said Trevor.  And he made a mentalnote to tell Allardyce, who would succeed him in thecommand of the school football, to keep an eye onthe player in question.

The triumph of the Seymourites wasnot long lived.  Milton failed to convert Drummond’stry.  From the drop-out from the twenty-five lineBarry got the ball, and punted into touch.  Thethrow-out was not straight, and a scrum was formed. The ball came out to the Day’s halves, and wentacross to Strachan.  Rand-Brown hesitated, andthen made a futile spring at the first fifteen man’sneck.  Strachan handed him off easily, and ran. The Seymour’s full-back, who was a poor player,failed to get across in time.  Strachan ran roundbehind the posts, the kick succeeded, and Day’snow led by two points.

After this the game continued in Day’shalf.  Five minutes before time was up, Drummondgot the ball from a scrum nearly on the line, passedit to Barry on the wing instead of opening up the gameby passing to his centres, and Barry slipped throughin the corner.  This put Seymour’s justone point ahead, and there they stayed till the whistleblew for no-side.

Milton walked over to the boarding-houseswith Clowes and Trevor.  He was full of the match,particularly of the iniquity of Rand-Brown.  “Islanged him on the field,” he said.  “It’sa thing I don’t often do, but what elsecanyou do when a man plays like that?  He lost usthree certain tries.”

“When did you administer your rebuke?”inquired Clowes.

“When he had let Strachan throughthat second time, in the second half.  I askedhim why on earth he tried to play footer at all. I told him a good kiss-in-the-ring club was abouthis form.  It was rather cheap, but I felt sofrightfully sick about it.  It’s sickeningto be let down like that when you’ve been pressingthe whole time, and ought to be scoring every otherminute.”

“What had he to say on the subject?” askedClowes.

“Oh, he gassed a bit until Itold him I’d kick him if he said another word. That shut him up.”

“You ought to have kicked him. You want all the kicking practice you can get. I never saw anything feebler than that shot of yoursafter Drummond’s try.”

“I’d like to seeyoutake a kick like that.  It was nearly on the touch-line. Still, when we play you, we shan’t need to convertany of our tries.  We’ll get our thirtypoints without that.  Perhaps you’d liketo scratch?”

“As a matter of fact,”said Clowes confidentially, “I am going to scoreseven tries against you off my own bat.  You’llbe sorry you ever turned out when we’ve finishedwith you.”

XII

NEWS OF THE GOLD BAT

Shoeblossom sat disconsolately onthe table in the senior day-room.  He was nothappy in exile.  Brewing in the senior day-roomwas a mere vulgar brawl, lacking all the refininginfluences of the study.  You had to fight fora place at the fire, and when you had got it ’twasnot always easy to keep it, and there was no privacy,and the fellows were always bear-fighting, so thatit was impossible to read a book quietly for ten consecutiveminutes without some ass heaving a cushion at youor turning out the gas.  Altogether Shoeblossomyearned for the peace of his study, and wished earnestlythat Mr Seymour would withdraw the order of banishment. It was the not being able to read that he objectedto chiefly.  In place of brewing, the ex-proprietorsof studies five, six, and seven now made a practiceof going to the school shop.  It was more expensiveand not nearly so comfortable—­there is aromance about a study brew which you can never getanywhere else—­but it served, and it wasnot on this score that he grumbled most.  Whathe hated was having to live in a bear-garden. For Shoeblossom was a man of moods.  Give himtwo or three congenial spirits to back him up, andhe would lead the revels with theabandon ofa Mr Bultitude (after his return to his original form). But he liked to choose his accomplices, and the gaysparks of the senior day-room did not appeal to him. They were not intellectual enough.  In his lucidintervals, he was accustomed to be almost abnormallysolemn and respectable.  When not promoting someunholy rag, Shoeblossom resembled an elderly gentlemanof studious habits.  He liked to sit in a comfortablechair and read a book.  It was the impossibilityof doing this in the senior day-room that led him totry and think of some other haven where he might rest. Had it been summer, he would have taken some literatureout on to the cricket-field or the downs, and putin a little steady reading there, with the aid ofa bag of cherries.  But with the thermometer low,that was impossible.

He felt very lonely and dismal. He was not a man with many friends.  In fact,Barry and the other three were almost the only membersof the house with whom he was on speaking-terms. And of these four he saw very little.  Drummondand Barry were always out of doors or over at thegymnasium, and as for M’Todd and De Bertini,it was not worth while talking to the one, and impossibleto talk to the other.  No wonder Shoeblossom feltdull.  Once Barry and Drummond had taken him overto the gymnasium with them, but this had bored himworse than ever.  They had been hard at it allthe time—­for, unlike a good many of theschool, they went to the gymnasium for business, notto lounge—­and he had had to sit about watchingthem.  And watching gymnastics was one of thethings he most loathed.  Since then he had refusedto go.

That night matters came to a head. Just as he had settled down to read, somebody, inflinging a cushion across the room, brought down thegas apparatus with a run, and before light was oncemore restored it was tea-time.  After that therewas preparation, which lasted for two hours, and bythe time he had to go to bed he had not been able toread a single page of the enthralling work with whichhe was at present occupied.

He had just got into bed when he wasstruck with a brilliant idea.  Why waste the precioushours in sleep?  What was that saying of somebody’s,“Five hours for a wise man, six for somebodyelse—­he forgot whom—­eight fora fool, nine for an idiot,” or words to thateffect?  Five hours sleep would mean that he neednot go to bed till half past two.  In the meanwhilehe could be finding out exactly what the herodiddo when he found out (to his horror) that it was hiscousin Jasper who had really killed the old gentlemanin the wood.  The only question was—­howwas he to do his reading?  Prefects were allowedto work on after lights out in their dormitories bythe aid of a candle, but to the ordinary mortal thiswas forbidden.

Then he was struck with another brilliantidea.  It is a curious thing about ideas. You do not get one for over a month, and then therecomes a rush of them, all brilliant.  Why, hethought, should he not go and read in his study witha dark lantern?  He had a dark lantern.  Itwas one of the things he had found lying about athome on the last day of the holidays, and had broughtwith him to school.  It was his custom to go aboutthe house just before the holidays ended, snappingup unconsidered trifles, which might or might notcome in useful.  This term he had brought backa curious metal vase (which looked Indian, but whichhad probably been made in Birmingham the year beforelast), two old coins (of no mortal use to anybodyin the world, including himself), and the dark lantern. It was reposing now in the cupboard in his study nearestthe window.

He had brought his book up with himon coming to bed, on the chance that he might havetime to read a page or two if he woke up early. (Hehad always been doubtful about that man Jasper. For one thing, he had been seen pawning the old gentleman’swatch on the afternoon of the murder, which was asuspicious circumstance, and then he was not a nicecharacter at all, and just the sort of man who wouldbe likely to murder old gentlemen in woods.) He waitedtill Mr Seymour had paid his nightly visit—­hewent the round of the dormitories at about eleven—­andthen he chuckled gently.  If Mill, the dormitoryprefect, was awake, the chuckle would make him speak,for Mill was of a suspicious nature, and believedthat it was only his unintermitted vigilance whichprevented the dormitory ragging all night.

Millwas awake.

“Be quiet, there,” he growled.  “Shutup that noise.”

Shoeblossom felt that the time wasnot yet ripe for his departure.  Half an hourlater he tried again.  There was no rebuke. To make certain he emitted a second chuckle, repletewith sinister meaning.  A slight snore came fromthe direction of Mill’s bed.  Shoeblossomcrept out of the room, and hurried to his study. The door was not locked, for Mr Seymour had reliedon his commands being sufficient to keep the ownerout of it.  He slipped in, found and lit the darklantern, and settled down to read.  He read withfeverish excitement.  The thing was, you see, thatthough Claud Trevelyan (that was the hero) knew jollywell that it was Jasper who had done the murder, thepolice didn’t, and, as he (Claud) was too nobleto tell them, he had himself been arrested on suspicion. Shoeblossom was skimming through the pages with startingeyes, when suddenly his attention was taken from hisbook by a sound.  It was a footstep.  Somebodywas coming down the passage, and under the door filtereda thin stream of light.  To snap the dark slideover the lantern and dart to the door, so that ifit opened he would be behind it, was with him, asMr Claud Trevelyan might have remarked, the work ofa moment.  He heard the door of study number fiveflung open, and then the footsteps passed on, andstopped opposite his own den.  The handle turned,and the light of a candle flashed into the room, tobe extinguished instantly as the draught of the movingdoor caught it.

Shoeblossom heard his visitor utteran exclamation of annoyance, and fumble in his pocketfor matches.  He recognised the voice.  Itwas Mr Seymour’s.  The fact was that MrSeymour had had the same experience as General StanleyinThe Pirates of Penzance: 

    The man who finds his conscienceache,
      No peace at allenjoys;
    And, as I lay in bed awake,
      I thought I hearda noise.

Whether Mr Seymour’s conscienceached or not, cannot, of course, be discovered. But he had certainly thought he heard a noise, andhe had come to investigate.

The search for matches had so farproved fruitless.  Shoeblossom stood and quakedbehind the door.  The reek of hot tin from thedark lantern grew worse momentarily.  Mr Seymoursniffed several times, until Shoeblossom thought thathe must be discovered.  Then, to his immense relief,the master walked away.  Shoeblossom’s chancehad come.  Mr Seymour had probably gone to getsome matches to relight his candle.  It was farfrom likely that the episode was closed.  He wouldbe back again presently.  If Shoeblossom was goingto escape, he must do it now, so he waited till thefootsteps had passed away, and then darted out in thedirection of his dormitory.

As he was passing Milton’s study,a white figure glided out of it.  All that hehad ever read or heard of spectres rushed into Shoeblossom’spetrified brain.  He wished he was safely in bed. He wished he had never come out of it.  He wishedhe had led a better and nobler life.  He wishedhe had never been born.

The figure passed quite close to himas he stood glued against the wall, and he saw itdisappear into the dormitory opposite his own, ofwhich Rigby was prefect.  He blushed hotly at thethought of the fright he had been in.  It wasonly somebody playing the same game as himself.

He jumped into bed and lay down, havingfirst plunged the lantern bodily into his jug to extinguishit.  Its indignant hiss had scarcely died awaywhen Mr Seymour appeared at the door.  It had occurredto Mr Seymour that he had smelt something very muchout of the ordinary in Shoeblossom’s study,a smell uncommonly like that of hot tin.  And asuspicion dawned on him that Shoeblossom had been inthere with a dark lantern.  He had come to thedormitory to confirm his suspicions.  But a glanceshowed him how unjust they had been.  There wasShoeblossom fast asleep.  Mr Seymour thereforefollowed the excellent example of my Lord Tomnoddyon a celebrated occasion, and went off to bed.

       *     *     *     *     *

It was the custom for the captainof football at Wrykyn to select and publish the teamfor the Ripton match a week before the day on whichit was to be played.  On the evening after theNomads’ match, Trevor was sitting in his studywriting out the names, when there came a knock atthe door, and his fag entered with a letter.

“This has just come, Trevor,” he said.

“All right.  Put it down.”

The fag left the room.  Trevorpicked up the letter.  The handwriting was strangeto him.  The words had been printed.  Thenit flashed upon him that he had received a letteronce before addressed in the same way—­theletter from the League about Barry.  Was this,too, from that address?  He opened it.

It was.

He read it, and gasped.  The worsthad happened.  The gold bat was in the hands ofthe enemy.

XIII

VICTIM NUMBER THREE

“With reference to our lastcommunication,” ran the letter—­thewriter evidently believed in the commercial style—­“itmay interest you to know that the bat you lost bythe statue on the night of the 26th of January hascome into our possession.We observe that Barryis still playing for the first fifteen.”

“And will jolly well continueto,” muttered Trevor, crumpling the paper viciouslyinto a ball.

He went on writing the names for theRipton match.  The last name on the list was Barry’s.

Then he sat back in his chair, andbegan to wrestle with this new development.  Barrymust play.  That was certain.  All the bluffin the world was not going to keep him from playingthe best man at his disposal in the Ripton match. He himself did not count.  It was the school hehad to think of.  This being so, what was likelyto happen?  Though nothing was said on the point,he felt certain that if he persisted in ignoring theLeague, that bat would find its way somehow—­bydevious routes, possibly—­to the headmasteror some one else in authority.  And then therewould be questions—­awkward questions—­andthings would begin to come out.  Then a freshpoint struck him, which was, that whatever might happenwould affect, not himself, but O’Hara.  Thismade it rather more of a problem how to act. Personally, he was one of those dogged characterswho can put up with almost anything themselves. If this had been his affair, he would have gone onhis way without hesitating.  Evidently the writerof the letter was under the impression that he hadbeen the hero (or villain) of the statue escapade.

If everything came out it did notrequire any great effort of prophecy to predict whatthe result would be.  O’Hara would go. Promptly.  He would receive his marching orderswithin ten minutes of the discovery of what he haddone.  He would be expelled twice over, so to speak,once for breaking out at night—­one of themost heinous offences in the school code—­andonce for tarring the statue.  Anything that gavethe school a bad name in the town was a crime in theeyes of the powers, and this was such a particularlyflagrant case.  Yes, there was no doubt of that. O’Hara would take the first train home withoutwaiting to pack up.  Trevor knew his people well,and he could imagine their feelings when the prodigalstrolled into their midst—­an old Wrykinianmalgré lui.  As the philosopher said offalling off a ladder, it is not the falling that matters: it is the sudden stopping at the other end.  Itis not the being expelled that is so peculiarly objectionable: it is the sudden homecoming.  With this gloomyvision before him, Trevor almost wavered.  Butthe thought that the selection of the team had nothingwhatever to do with his personal feelings strengthenedhim.  He was simply a machine, devised to selectthe fifteen best men in the school to meet Ripton. In his official capacity of football captain he wasnot supposed to have any feelings.  However, heyielded in so far that he went to Clowes to ask hisopinion.

Clowes, having heard everything andseen the letter, unhesitatingly voted for the rightcourse.  If fifty mad Irishmen were to be expelled,Barry must play against Ripton.  He was the bestman, and in he must go.

“That’s what I thought,”said Trevor.  “It’s bad for O’Hara,though.”

Clowes remarked somewhat tritely thatbusiness was business.

“Besides,” he went on,“you’re assuming that the thing this letterhints at will really come off.  I don’t thinkit will.  A man would have to be such an awfulblackguard to go as low as that.  The least grainof decency in him would stop him.  I can imaginea man threatening to do it as a piece of bluff—­bythe way, the letter doesn’t actually say anythingof the sort, though I suppose it hints at it—­butI can’t imagine anybody out of a melodrama doingit.”

“You can never tell,”said Trevor.  He felt that this was but an outsidechance.  The forbearance of one’s antagonistis but a poor thing to trust to at the best of times.

“Are you going to tell O’Hara?”asked Clowes.

“I don’t see the good.  Would you?”

“No.  He can’t doanything, and it would only give him a bad time. There are pleasanter things, I should think, thangoing on from day to day not knowing whether you’regoing to be sacked or not within the next twelve hours. Don’t tell him.”

“I won’t.  And Barry plays againstRipton.”

“Certainly.  He’s the best man.”

“I’m going over to Seymour’snow,” said Trevor, after a pause, “to seeMilton.  We’ve drawn Seymour’s in thenext round of the house-matches.  I suppose youknew.  I want to get it over before the Riptonmatch, for several reasons.  About half the fifteenare playing on one side or the other, and it’llgive them a good chance of getting fit.  Runningand passing is all right, but a good, hard game’sthe thing for putting you into form.  And thenI was thinking that, as the side that loses, whicheverit is—­”

“Seymour’s, of course.”

“Hope so.  Well, they’rebound to be a bit sick at losing, so they’llplay up all the harder on Saturday to console themselvesfor losing the cup.”

“My word, what strategy!”said Clowes.  “You think of everything. When do you think of playing it, then?”

“Wednesday struck me as a good day.  Don’tyou think so?”

“It would do splendidly. It’ll be a good match.  For all practicalpurposes, of course, it’s the final.  Ifwe beat Seymour’s, I don’t think the otherswill trouble us much.”

There was just time to see Miltonbefore lock-up.  Trevor ran across to Seymour’s,and went up to his study.

“Come in,” said Milton, in answer to hisknock.

Trevor went in, and stood surprisedat the difference in the look of the place since thelast time he had visited it.  The walls, oncecovered with photographs, were bare.  Milton, seatedbefore the fire, was ruefully contemplating what lookedlike a heap of waste cardboard.

Trevor recognised the symptoms.  He had had experience.

“You don’t mean to say they’ve beenat you, too!” he cried.

Milton’s normally cheerful face was thunderousand gloomy.

“Yes.  I was thinking what I’d liketo do to the man who ragged it.”

“It’s the League again, I suppose?”

Milton looked surprised.

“Again?” he said,“where didyou hear of the League? This is the first time I’ve heard of its existence,whatever it is.  What is the confounded thing,and why on earth have they played the fool here? What’s the meaning of this bally rot?”

He exhibited one of the variety ofcards of which Trevor had already seen two specimens. Trevor explained briefly the style and nature of theLeague, and mentioned that his study also had beenwrecked.

“Your study?  Why, what have they got againstyou?”

“I don’t know,”said Trevor.  Nothing was to be gained by speakingof the letters he had received.

“Did they cut up your photographs?”

“Every one.”

“I tell you what it is, Trevor,old chap,” said Milton, with great solemnity,“there’s a lunatic in the school. That’s what I make of it.  A lunatic whoseform of madness is wrecking studies.”

“But the same chap couldn’thave done yours and mine.  It must have been aDonaldson’s fellow who did mine, and one of yourchaps who did yours and Mill’s.”

“Mill’s?  By Jove,of course.  I never thought of that.  Thatwas the League, too, I suppose?”

“Yes.  One of those cardswas tied to a chair, but Clowes took it away beforeanybody saw it.”

Milton returned to the details of the disaster.

“Was there any ink spilt in your room?”

“Pints,” said Trevor, shortly.  Thesubject was painful.

“So there was here,” said Milton, mournfully. “Gallons.”

There was silence for a while, each pondering overhis wrongs.

“Gallons,” said Miltonagain.  “I was ass enough to keep a largepot full of it here, and they used it all, every drop. You never saw such a sight.”

Trevor said he had seen one similar spectacle.

“And my photographs!  Youremember those photographs I showed you?  Allruined.  Slit across with a knife.  Some tornin half.  I wish I knew who did that.”

Trevor said he wished so, too.

“There was one of Mrs PatrickCampbell,” Milton continued in heartrendingtones, “which was torn into sixteen pieces. I counted them.  There they are on the mantelpiece. And there was one of Little Tich” (here he almostbroke down), “which was so covered with ink thatfor half an hour I couldn’t recognise it. Fact.”

Trevor nodded sympathetically.

“Yes,” said Milton.  “Soaked.”

There was another silence.  Trevorfelt it would be almost an outrage to discuss so prosaica topic as the date of a house-match with one so brokenup.  Yet time was flying, and lock-up was drawingnear.

“Are you willing to play—­”he began.

“I feel as if I could neverplay again,” interrupted Milton.  “You’dhardly believe the amount of blotting-paper I’veused today.  It must have been a lunatic, Dick,old man.”

When Milton called Trevor “Dick”,it was a sign that he was moved.  When he calledhim “Dick, old man”, it gave evidence ofan internal upheaval without parallel.

“Why, who else but a lunaticwould get up in the night to wreck another chap’sstudy?  All this was done between eleven last nightand seven this morning.  I turned in at eleven,and when I came down here again at seven the placewas a wreck.  It must have been a lunatic.”

“How do you account for theprinted card from the League?”

Milton murmured something about madmen’scunning and diverting suspicion, and relapsed intosilence.  Trevor seized the opportunity to makethe proposal he had come to make, that Donaldson’sv. Seymour’s should be played on thefollowing Wednesday.

Milton agreed listlessly.

“Just where you’re standing,”he said, “I found a photograph of Sir HenryIrving so slashed about that I thought at first itwas Huntley Wright inSan Toy.”

“Start at two-thirty sharp,” said Trevor.

“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’llget Aldridge to referee.  That’ll suit you,I suppose?”

“All right.  Anything youlike.  Just by the fireplace I found the remainsof Arthur Roberts inH.M.S.  Irresponsible. And part of Seymour Hicks.  Under the table—­”

Trevor departed.

XIV

THE WHITE FIGURE

“Suppose,” said Shoeblossomto Barry, as they were walking over to school on themorning following the day on which Milton’s studyhad passed through the hands of the League, “supposeyou thought somebody had done something, but you weren’tquite certain who, but you knew it was some one, whatwould you do?”

“What onearth do you mean?” inquiredBarry.

“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 comesin a book of Stevenson’s.  I think it mustmean a sort of case where you call everyone A. andB. and don’t tell their names.”

“Well, go ahead.”

“It’s about Milton’s study.”

“What! what about it?”

“Well, you see, the night itwas ragged I was sitting in my study with a dark lantern—­”

“What!”

Shoeblossom proceeded to relate themoving narrative of his night-walking adventure. He dwelt movingly on his state of mind when standingbehind the door, waiting for Mr Seymour to come inand find him.  He related with appropriate forcethe 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, “Isaw it coming out of Milton’s study, and thatmust have been about the time the study was ragged. And it went into Rigby’s dorm.  So it musthave been a chap in that dorm, who did it.”

Shoeblossom was quite clever at rareintervals.  Even Barry, whose belief in his sanitywas 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 outof the dorm, after lights-out.”

This was a distinct point to be considered. The attitude of Barry towards Milton was differentfrom that of Shoeblossom.  Barry regarded him—­throughhaving played with him in important matches—­asa good sort of fellow who had always behaved decentlyto him.  Leather-Twigg, on the other hand, lookedon him with undisguised apprehension, as one in authoritywho would give him lines the first time he came intocontact with him, and cane him if he ever did it again. He had a decided disinclination to see Milton on anypretext whatever.

“Suppose I tell him?” suggested Barry.

“You’ll keep my name dark?” saidShoeblossom, alarmed.

Barry said he would make an A.B. case of it.

After school he went to Milton’sstudy, and found him still brooding over its departedglories.

“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 hadseventeen of Edna May.”

Barry, feeling that he was expectedto 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 playingthe part of chorus any longer.  It was all verythrilling, but, if Milton was going to run throughthe entire list of his destroyed photographs, lifewould be too short for conversation on any other topic.

“I say, Milton,” he said, “it wasabout 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 thoughtI could put you on the track of the chap who did doit—­”

For the second time since the interview began Miltonsat up.

“Go on,” he said.

“—­But I’m sorryI can’t give you the name of the fellow who toldme about it.”

“That doesn’t matter,”said Milton.  “Tell me the name of the fellowwho did it.  That’ll satisfy me.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, either.”

“Have you any idea what youcan do?”asked Milton, satirically.

“I can tell you something which may put youon the right track.”

“That’ll do for a start.  Well?”

“Well, the chap who told me—­I’llcall him A.; I’m going to make an A.B. caseof it—­was coming out of his study at aboutone 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 figureemerged—­”

“I should strongly advise you,young Barry,” said Milton, gravely, “notto try and rot me in any way.  You’re a jollygood wing three-quarters, but you shouldn’tpresume on it.  I’d slay the Old Man himselfif he rotted me about this business.”

Barry was quite pained at this scepticalattitude in one whom he was going out of his way toassist.

“I’m not rotting,” he protested. “This is all quite true.”

“Well, go on.  You were saying somethingabout white figures emerging.”

“Not white figures.  A whitefigure,” corrected Barry.  “It cameout of your study—­”

“—­And vanished through the wall?”

“It went into Rigby’sdorm.,” said Barry, sulkily.  It was maddeningto have an exclusive bit of news treated in this way.

“Did it, by Jove!” saidMilton, interested at last.  “Are you surethe 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 muchcheerfulness.  He liked Barry, and he realisedthat he had no right to try and make him break hispromise.

“That’s all right,”he said.  “Thanks very much, Barry. This may be useful.”

“I’d tell you his name if I hadn’tpromised, 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 shouldthink.  He said he was about Seymour’s size.”

“Thanks.  That’s worth knowing. Thanks very much, Barry.”

When his visitor had gone, Miltonproceeded to unearth one of the printed lists of thehouse 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 eighteenof them.  The next thing was to find out whichof them was about the same height as Mr Seymour. It was a somewhat vague description, for the house-masterstood about five feet nine or eight, and a good manyof the dormitory were that height, or near it. At last, after much brain-work, he reduced the numberof “possibles” to seven.  These sevenwere Rigby himself, Linton, Rand-Brown, Griffith,Hunt, Kershaw, and Chapple.  Rigby might be scratchedoff the list at once.  He was one of Milton’sgreatest friends.  Exeunt also Griffith, Hunt,and Kershaw.  They were mild youths, quite incapableof any deed of devilry.  There remained, therefore,Chapple, Linton, and Rand-Brown.  Chapple wasa boy who was invariably late for breakfast.  Theinference was that he was not likely to forego hissleep for the purpose of wrecking studies.  Chapplemight disappear from the list.  Now there wereonly Linton and Rand-Brown to be considered.  Hissuspicions fell on Rand-Brown.  Linton was thelast person, he thought, to do such a low thing. He was a cheerful, rollicking individual, who was popularwith everyone and seemed to like everyone.  Hewas not an orderly member of the house, certainly,and on several occasions Milton had found it necessaryto drop on him heavily for creating disturbances. But he was not the sort that bears malice.  Hetook it all in the way of business, and came up smilingafter it was over.  No, everything pointed toRand-Brown.  He and Milton had never got on welltogether, and quite recently they had quarrelled openlyover the former’s play in the Day’s match. Rand-Brown must be the man.  But Milton was sensibleenough to feel that so far he had no real evidencewhatever.  He must wait.

On the following afternoon Seymour’s turnedout to play Donaldson’s.

The game, like most house-matches,was played with the utmost keenness.  Both teamshad good three-quarters, and they attacked in turn. Seymour’s had the best of it forward, where Miltonwas playing a great game, but Trevor in the centrewas the best outside on the field, and pulled up rushafter rush.  By half-time neither side had scored.

After half-time Seymour’s, playingdownhill, came away with a rush to the Donaldsonites’half, and Rand-Brown, with one of the few decent runshe had made in good class football that term, ran inon the left.  Milton took the kick, but failed,and Seymour’s led by three points.  Forthe next twenty minutes nothing more was scored. Then, when five minutes more of play remained, Trevorgave Clowes an easy opening, and Clowes sprinted betweenthe posts.  The kick was an easy one, and whatsporting reporters term “the major points”were easily added.

When there are five more minutes toplay in an important house-match, and one side hasscored a goal and the other a try, play is apt tobecome spirited.  Both teams were doing all theyknew.  The ball came out to Barry on the right. Barry’s abilities as a three-quarter restedchiefly on the fact that he could dodge well. This eel-like attribute compensated for a certainlack of pace.  He was past the Donaldson’sthree-quarters in an instant, and running for the line,with only the back to pass, and with Clowes in hotpursuit.  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 himjust as he reached the twenty-five line.  Theycame down together with a crash, Clowes on top, andas they fell the whistle blew.

“No-side,” said Mr. Aldridge,the master who was refereeing.

Clowes got up.

“All over,” he said.  “Jollygood 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 twistedmy beastly ankle or something.”

XV

A SPRAIN AND A VACANT PLACE

“I say,” said Clowes,helping him up, “I’m awfully sorry. Did I do it?  How did it happen?”

Barry was engaged in making variousattempts at standing on the injured leg.  Theprocess seemed to be painful.

“Shall I get a stretcher or anything?  Canyou walk?”

“If you’d help me overto the house, I could manage all right.  What abeastly nuisance!  It wasn’t your fault abit.  Only you tackled me when I was just tryingto swerve, and my ankle was all twisted.”

Drummond came up, carrying Barry’s blazer andsweater.

“Hullo, Barry,” he said, “what’sup?  You aren’t crocked?”

“Something gone wrong with myankle.  That my blazer?  Thanks.  Comingover to the house?  Clowes was just going to helpme over.”

Clowes asked a Donaldson’s junior,who was lurking near at hand, to fetch his blazerand carry it over to the house, and then made his waywith Drummond and the disabled Barry to Seymour’s. Having arrived at the senior day-room, they depositedthe 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 breezymanner, the sort of doctor who hits you with the forceof a sledge-hammer in the small ribs, and asks youif you felt anythingthen.  It was on thisprinciple that he acted with regard to Barry’sankle.  He seized it in both hands and gave ita 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 thesemystic utterances.

“My dear boy,” repliedthe doctor, breezily, “it is always bad whenone 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 groundby next Saturday, you may take it as evidence thatthe age of miracles is not past.  Next Saturday,indeed!  Ha, ha.”

It was not altogether his fault thathe treated the matter with such brutal levity. It was a long time since he had been at school, andhe could not quite realise what it meant to Barrynot to be able to play against Ripton.  As forBarry, he felt that he had never loathed and detestedany one so thoroughly as he loathed and detested DrOakes at that moment.

“I don’t see where thejoke comes in,” said Clowes, when he had gone. “I bar that man.”

“He’s a beast,”said Drummond.  “I can’t understandwhy 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 thatevening was:  “Over at the school, my dear,this afternoon.  This afternoon.  Boy witha twisted ankle.  Nice young fellow.  Verymuch put out when I told him he could not play footballfor a fortnight.  But I chaffed him, and cheeredhim 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 thesame thing may strike different people.  Barrycertainly did not look as if he had been cheered upwhen Clowes left the study and went over to tell Trevorthat he would have to find a substitute for his rightwing three-quarter against Ripton.

Trevor had left the field withoutnoticing Barry’s accident, and he was tremendouslypleased at the result of the game.

“Good man,” he said, whenClowes came in, “you saved the match.”

“And lost the Ripton match probably,”said Clowes, gloomily.

“What do you mean?”

“That last time I brought downBarry I crocked him.  He’s in his studynow with a sprained ankle.  I’ve just comefrom there.  Oakes has seen him, and says he mustn’tplay for a fortnight.”

“Great Scott!” said Trevor,blankly.  “What on earth shall we do?”

“Why not move Strachan up tothe wing, and put somebody else back instead of him? Strachan is a good wing.”

Trevor shook his head.

“No.  There’s nobodygood enough to play back for the first.  We mustn’trisk 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 tryhe got wasn’t half a bad one.”

“He’d be all right ifhe didn’t funk.  But perhaps he wouldn’tfunk against Ripton.  In a match like that anybodywould play up.  I’ll ask Milton and Allardyceabout it.”

“I shouldn’t go to Miltontoday,” said Clowes.  “I fancy he’llwant a night’s rest before he’s fit totalk 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’sone thing that’s just occurred to me.  This’llplease the League.  I mean, this ankle businessof Barry’s.”

The same idea had struck Trevor. It was certainly a respite.  But he regrettedit 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 atmospherefor the time.  The League would hardly do anythingwith regard to the carrying out of their threat whileBarry was on the sick-list.

Next day, having given him time toget over the bitterness of defeat in accordance withClowes’ thoughtful suggestion, Trevor calledon Milton, and asked him what his opinion was on thesubject of the inclusion of Rand-Brown in the firstfifteen 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’sno one else.”

“Clowes thought it wouldn’tbe a bad idea to shove Strachan on the wing, and putsomebody else back.”

“Who is there to put?”

“Jervis?”

“Not good enough.  No, it’sbetter to be weakish on the wing than at back. Besides, Rand-Brown may do all right.  He playedwell 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 itwas.”

“Forty-three theatrical photographswant some replacing, of course,” said Trevor. “But it isn’t bad, considering.”

“How’s yours?”

“Oh, mine’s all right, except for theabsence of photographs.”

“I say, Trevor.”

“Yes?” said Trevor, stoppingat the door.  Milton’s voice had taken onthe 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 wasthat ragged my study?”

“By Jove!  What have you done to him?”

“Nothing as yet.  I’m not quite sureof my man.”

“Who is the man?”

“Rand-Brown.”

“By Jove!  Clowes once saidhe thought Rand-Brown must be the President of theLeague.  But then, I don’t see how you canaccount formy study being wrecked.  Hewas out on the field when it was done.”

“Why, the League, of course. You don’t suppose he’s the only man init?  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 differencewas that Trevor listened without any of the scepticismwhich Milton had displayed on hearing it.  He wasgetting excited.  It all fitted in so neatly. If ever there was circumstantial evidence againsta man, here it was against Rand-Brown.  Take thetwo cases.  Milton had quarrelled with him. Milton’s study was wrecked “with the complimentsof the League”.  Trevor had turned him outof the first fifteen.  Trevor’s study waswrecked “with the compliments of the League”. As Clowes had pointed out, the man with the most obviousmotive for not wishing Barry to play for the schoolwas Rand-Brown.  It seemed a true bill.

“I shouldn’t wonder ifyou’re right,” he said, “but of courseone can’t do anything yet.  You want a lotmore evidence.  Anyhow, we must play him againstRipton, I suppose.  Which is his study?  I’llgo and tell him now.”

“Ten.”

Trevor knocked at the door of studyTen.  Rand-Brown was sitting over the fire, reading. He jumped up when he saw that it was Trevor who hadcome in, and to his visitor it seemed that his facewore a guilty look.

“What do you want?” said Rand-Brown.

It was not the politest way of welcominga visitor.  It increased Trevor’s suspicions. The man was afraid.  A great idea darted into hismind.  Why not go straight to the point and haveit out with him here and now?  He had the League’sletter about the bat in his pocket.  He wouldconfront him with it and insist on searching the studythere and then.  If Rand-Brown were really, ashe suspected, the writer of the letter, the bat mustbe in this room somewhere.  Search it now, andhe would have no time to hide it.  He pulled outthe letter.

“I believe you wrote that,” he said.

Trevor was always direct.

Rand-Brown seemed to turn a littlepale, but his voice when he replied was quite steady.

“That’s a lie,” he said.

“Then, perhaps,” said Trevor, “youwouldn’t object to proving it.”

“How?”

“By letting me search your study?”

“You don’t believe my word?”

“Why should I?  You don’t believemine.”

Rand-Brown made no comment on this remark.

“Was that what you came here for?” heasked.

“No,” said Trevor; “asa matter of fact, I came to tell you to turn out forrunning and passing with the first tomorrow afternoon. You’re playing against Ripton on Saturday.”

Rand-Brown’s attitude underwenta complete transformation at the news.  He becamefriendliness itself.

“All right,” he said. “I say, I’m sorry I said what I did aboutlying.  I was rather sick that you should thinkI wrote that rot you showed me.  I hope you don’tmind.”

“Not a bit.  Do you mind my searching yourstudy?”

For a moment Rand-Brown looked vicious.  Thenhe sat down with a laugh.

“Go on,” he said; “Isee you don’t believe me.  Here are the keysif 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 lookedin the cupboards.  No bat there.

“Like to take up the carpet?” inquiredRand-Brown.

“No, thanks.”

“Search me if you like.  Shall I turn outmy pockets?”

“Yes, please,” said Trevor,to his surprise.  He had not expected to be takenliterally.

Rand-Brown emptied them, but the batwas not there.  Trevor turned to go.

“You’ve not looked insidethe 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 unpleasantfeeling that he had been badly scored off.

XVI

THE RIPTON MATCH

It was a curious thing in connectionwith the matches between Ripton and Wrykyn, that Riptonalways seemed to be the bigger team.  They alwayshad a gigantic pack of forwards, who looked capableof shoving a hole through one of the pyramids. Possibly they looked bigger to the Wrykinians thanthey really were.  Strangers always look big onthe football field.  When you have grown accustomedto a person’s appearance, he does not look nearlyso large.  Milton, for instance, never struckanybody at Wrykyn as being particularly big for a schoolforward, and yet today he was the heaviest man on thefield by a quarter of a stone.  But, taken inthe mass, the Ripton pack were far heavier than theirrivals.  There was a legend current among the lowerforms at Wrykyn that fellows were allowed to stop onat Ripton till they were twenty-five, simply to playfootball.  This is scarcely likely to have beenbased on fact.  Few lower form legends are.

Jevons, the Ripton captain, throughhaving played opposite Trevor for three seasons—­hewas the Ripton left centre-three-quarter—­hadcome to be quite an intimate of his.  Trevor hadgone down with Milton and Allardyce to meet the teamat the station, and conduct them up to the school.

“How have you been getting onsince Christmas?” asked Jevons.

“Pretty well.  We’ve lost Paget, Isuppose you know?”

“That was the fast man on the wing, wasn’tit?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we’ve lost a man, too.”

“Oh, yes, that red-haired forward.  I rememberhim.”

“It ought to make us pretty even.  What’sthe ground like?”

“Bit greasy, I should think.  We had somerain late last night.”

The groundwas a bit greasy. So was the ball.  When Milton kicked off up thehill with what wind there was in his favour, the outsidesof both teams found it difficult to hold the ball. Jevons caught it on his twenty-five line, and promptlyhanded it forward.  The first scrum was formedin the heart of the enemy’s country.

A deep, swelling roar from eithertouch-line greeted the school’s advantage. A feature of a big match was always the shouting. It rarely ceased throughout the whole course of thegame, the monotonous but impressive sound of fivehundred voices all shouting the same word.  Itwas worth hearing.  Sometimes the evenness of thenoise would change to an excitedcrescendoas a school three-quarter got off, or the school backpulled up the attack with a fine piece of defence. Sometimes the shouting would give place to clappingwhen the school was being pressed and somebody hadfound touch with a long kick.  But mostly theman 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.  Fortwo minutes the forwards heaved and strained, nowone 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 Wrykynpack gave way, and the scrum broke up.  The ballcame out on the Wrykyn side, and Allardyce whippedit out to Deacon, who was playing half with him.

“Ball’s out,” criedthe Ripton half who was taking the scrum.  “Breakup.  It’s out.”

And his colleague on the left dartedacross to stop Trevor, who had taken Deacon’spass, and was running through on the right.

Trevor ran splendidly.  He wasa three-quarter who took a lot of stopping when heonce got away.  Jevons and the Ripton half methim almost simultaneously, and each slackened hispace for the fraction of a second, to allow the otherto tackle.  As they hesitated, Trevor passed them. He had long ago learned that to go hard when you haveonce started is the thing that pays.

He could see that Rand-Brown was racingup for the pass, and, as he reached the back, he sentthe ball to him, waist-high.  Then the back gotto him, and he came down with a thud, with a vision,seen from the corner of his eye, of the ball boundingforward out of the wing three-quarter’s handsinto touch.  Rand-Brown had bungled the pass inthe old familiar way, and lost a certain try.

The touch-judge ran up with his flagwaving in the air, but the referee had other views.

“Knocked on inside,” he said; “scrumhere.”

“Here” was, Trevor sawwith unspeakable disgust, some three yards from thegoal-line.  Rand-Brown had only had to take thepass, and he must have scored.

The Ripton forwards were beginningto find their feet better now, and they carried thescrum.  A truculent-looking warrior in one of thoseear-guards which are tied on by strings underneaththe chin, and which add fifty per cent to the ferocityof a forward’s appearance, broke away with theball at his feet, and swept down the field with therest of the pack at his heels.  Trevor arrivedtoo late to pull up the rush, which had gone straightdown the right touch-line, and it was not till Strachanfell on the ball on the Wrykyn twenty-five line thatthe danger ceased to threaten.

Even now the school were in a badway.  The enemy were pressing keenly, and a realpiece of combination among their three-quarters wouldonly too probably end in a try.  Fortunately forthem, Allardyce and Deacon were a better pair of halvesthan the couple they were marking.  Also, theRipton forwards heeled slowly, and Allardyce had generallygot his man safely buried in the mud before he couldpass.

He was just getting round for thetenth time to bottle his opponent as before, whenhe slipped.  When the ball came out he was on allfours, and the Ripton exponent, finding to his greatsatisfaction that he had not been tackled, whippedthe ball out on the left, where a wing three-quarterhovered.

This was the man Rand-Brown was supposedto be marking, and once again did Barry’s substituteprove of what stuff his tackling powers were made. After his customary moment of hesitation, he had atthe Riptonian’s neck.  The Riptonian handedhim off in a manner that recalled the palmy days ofthe old Prize Ring—­handing off was alwaysslightly vigorous in the Riptonv. Wrykyn match—­anddashed over the line in the extreme corner.

There was anguish on the two touch-lines. Trevor looked savage, but made no comment.  Theteam lined up in silence.

It takes a very good kick to converta try from the touch-line.  Jevons’ kickwas a long one, but it fell short.  Ripton ledby a try to nothing.

A few more scrums near the halfwayline, and a fine attempt at a dropped goal by theRipton back, and it was half-time, with the scoreunaltered.

During the interval there were lemons. An excellent thing is your lemon at half-time. It cools the mouth, quenches the thirst, stimulatesthe desire to be at them again, and improves the play.

Possibly the Wrykyn team had beenhappier in their choice of lemons on this occasion,for no sooner had the game been restarted than Clowesran the whole length of the field, dodged through thethree-quarters, punted over the back’s head,and scored a really brilliant try, of the sort thatPaget 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 scoreby the end of the game, on the assumption that, asa try had been scored in the first two minutes, tenwould be scored in the first twenty, and so on.

But the calculations were based onfalse premises.  After Strachan had failed toconvert, and the game had been resumed with the scoreat one try all, play settled down in the centre, andneither side could pierce the other’s defence. Once Jevons got off for Ripton, but Trevor broughthim down safely, and once Rand-Brown let his man through,as before, but Strachan was there to meet him, andthe effort came to nothing.  For Wrykyn, no onedid much except tackle.  The forwards were beatenby the heavier pack, and seldom let the ball out. Allardyce intercepted a pass when about ten minutesof play remained, and ran through to the back. But the back, who was a capable man and in his thirdseason in the team, laid him low scientifically beforehe could reach the line.

Altogether it looked as if the matchwere going to end in a draw.  The Wrykyn defence,with the exception of Rand-Brown, was too good to bepenetrated, while the Ripton forwards, by always gettingthe ball in the scrums, kept them from attacking. It was about five minutes from the end of the gamewhen the Ripton right centre-three-quarter, in tryingto punt across to the wing, miskicked and sent theball straight into the hands of Trevor’s colleaguein the centre.  Before his man could get roundto him he had slipped through, with Trevor backinghim up.  The back, as a good back should, seeingtwo men coming at him, went for the man with the ball. But by the time he had brought him down, the ballwas no longer where it had originally been.  Trevorhad got it, and was running in between the posts.

This time Strachan put on the extratwo points without difficulty.

Ripton played their hardest for theremaining minutes, but without result.  The gameended with Wrykyn a goal ahead—­a goal anda try to a try.  For the second time in one seasonthe Ripton match had ended in a victory—­athing it was very rarely in the habit of doing.

       *     *     *     *     *

The senior day-room at Seymour’srejoiced considerably that night.  The air wasdark with flying cushions, and darker still, occasionally,when the usual humorist turned the gas out.  Miltonwas out, for he had gone to the dinner which followedthe Ripton match, and the man in command of the housein his absence was Mill.  And the senior day-roomhad no respect whatever for Mill.

Barry joined in the revels as wellas his ankle would let him, but he was not feelinghappy.  The disappointment of being out of thefirst still weighed on him.

At about eight, when things were beginningto grow really lively, and the noise seemed likelyto crack the window at any moment, the door was flungopen and Milton stalked in.

“What’s all this row?” he inquired. “Stop it at once.”

As a matter of fact, the rowhad stopped—­directlyhe came in.

“Is Barry here?” he asked.

“Yes,” said that youth.

“Congratulate you on your first,Barry.  We’ve just had a meeting and givenyou your colours.  Trevor told me to tell you.”

XVII

THE WATCHERS IN THE VAULT

For the next three seconds you couldhave heard a cannonball drop.  And that was equivalent,in the senior day-room at Seymour’s, to a deadsilence.  Barry stood in the middle of the roomleaning on the stick on which he supported life, nowthat his ankle had been injured, and turned red andwhite in regular rotation, as the magnificence of thenews came home to him.

Then the small voice of Linton was heard.

“That’ll be six d. I’ll trouble you for, young Sammy,” saidLinton.  For he had betted an even sixpence withMaster Samuel Menzies that Barry would get his firstfifteen cap this term, and Barry had got it.

A great shout went up from every cornerof the room.  Barry was one of the most popularmembers of the house, and every one had been sorryfor him when his sprained ankle had apparently puthim out of the running for the last cap.

“Good old Barry,” saidDrummond, delightedly.  Barry thanked him in adazed way.

Every one crowded in to shake hishand.  Barry thanked then all in a dazed way.

And then the senior day-room, in spiteof the fact that Milton had returned, gave itselfup to celebrating the occasion with one of the mostdeafening uproars that had ever been heard even inthat factory of noise.  A babel of voices discussedthe match of the afternoon, each trying to outshoutthe other.  In one corner Linton was beating wildlyon a biscuit-tin with part of a broken chair. Shoeblossom was busy in the opposite corner executingan intricate step-dance on somebody else’s box. M’Todd had got hold of the red-hot poker, andwas burning his initials in huge letters on the seatof a chair.  Every one, in short, was enjoyinghimself, and it was not until an advanced hour thatcomparative quiet was restored.  It was a greatevening for Barry, the best he had ever experienced.

Clowes did not learn the news tillhe saw it on the notice-board, on the following Monday. When he saw it he whistled softly.

“I see you’ve given Barryhis first,” he said to Trevor, when they met. “Rather sensational.”

“Milton and Allardyce both thoughthe deserved it.  If he’d been playing insteadof Rand-Brown, they wouldn’t have scored at allprobably, 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 youthink?  The League ought to have a word to sayabout the business.  It’ll be a facer forthem.”

“Do you remember,” askedTrevor, “saying that you thought it must beRand-Brown who wrote those letters?”

“Yes.  Well?”

“Well, Milton had an idea that it was Rand-Brownwho ragged his study.”

“What made him think that?”

Trevor related the Shoeblossom incident.

Clowes became quite excited.

“Then Rand-Brown must be theman,” he said.  “Why don’t yougo and tackle him?  Probably he’s got thebat in his study.”

“It’s not in his study,”said Trevor, “because I looked everywhere forit, and got him to turn out his pockets, too. And yet I’ll swear he knows something aboutit.  One thing struck me as a bit suspicious. I went straight into his study and showed him thatlast letter—­about the bat, you know, andaccused him of writing it.  Now, if he hadn’tbeen in the business somehow, he wouldn’t haveunderstood what was meant by their saying ‘thebat you lost’.  It might have been an ordinarycricket-bat for all he knew.  But he offered tolet me search the study.  It didn’t strikeme as rum till afterwards.  Then it seemed fishy. What do you think?”

Clowes thought so too, but admittedthat he did not see of what use the suspicion wasgoing to be.  Whether Rand-Brown knew anythingabout the affair or not, it was quite certain thatthe bat was not with him.

O’Hara, meanwhile, had decidedthat the time had come for him to resume his detectiveduties.  Moriarty agreed with him, and they resolvedthat that night they would patronise the vault insteadof the gymnasium, and take a holiday as far as theirboxing was concerned.  There was plenty of timebefore the Aldershot competition.

Lock-up was still at six, so at aquarter 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 beganto grow tired.

“Is it worth it?” he said,“an’ wouldn’t they have come before,if they meant to come?”

“We’ll give them anotherquarter of an hour,” said O’Hara. “After that—­”

“Sh!” whispered Moriarty.

The door had opened.  They couldsee a figure dimly outlined in the semi-darkness. Footsteps passed down into the vault, and there camea sound as if the unknown had cannoned into a chair,followed by a sharp intake of breath, expressive ofpain.  A scraping sound, and a flash of light,and part of the vault was lit by a candle.  O’Haracaught a glimpse of the unknown’s face as herose from lighting the candle, but it was not enoughto enable him to recognise him.  The candle wasstanding on a chair, and the light it gave was toofeeble to reach the face of any one not on a levelwith it.

The unknown began to drag chairs outinto the neighbourhood of the light.  O’Haracounted six.

The sixth chair had scarcely beenplaced in position when the door opened again. Six other figures appeared in the opening one afterthe other, and bolted into the vault like rabbitsinto a burrow.  The last of them closed the doorafter them.

O’Hara nudged Moriarty, andMoriarty nudged O’Hara; but neither made a sound. They were not likely to be seen—­the blacknessof the vault was too Egyptian for that—­butthey were so near to the chairs that the least whispermust have been heard.  Not a word had proceededfrom the occupants of the chairs so far.  If O’Hara’ssuspicion was correct, and this was really the Leagueholding a meeting, their methods were more secretthan those of any other secret society in existence. Even the Nihilists probably exchanged a few remarksfrom 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 obscuredfor a moment, and a sound of puffing came from thedarkness.

O’Hara nudged Moriarty again.

“Smoking!” said the nudge.

Moriarty nudged O’Hara.

“Smoking it is!” was the meaning of themovement.

A strong smell of tobacco showed thatthe diagnosis had been a true one.  Each of thefigures in turn lit his pipe at the candle, and satback, still in silence.  It could not have beenvery pleasant, smoking in almost pitch darkness, butit was breaking rules, which was probably the mainconsideration that swayed the smokers.  They puffedaway steadily, till the two Irishmen were wrappedabout in invisible clouds.

Then a strange thing happened. I know that I am infringing copyright in making thatstatement, but it so exactly suits the occurrence,that perhaps Mr Rider Haggard will not object. Itwas 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 MrRobert Dexter, O’Hara and Moriarty’s belovedhouse-master.

The two Irishmen simultaneously clutchedone another, each afraid that the other would think—­fromforce of long habit—­that the house-masterwas speaking to him.  Both stood where they were. It was the men of mystery and tobacco that Dexterwas after, they thought.

But they were wrong.  What hadbrought Dexter to the vault was the fact that he hadseen two boys, who looked uncommonly like O’Haraand Moriarty, go down the steps of the vault at aquarter to six.  He had been doing his usual after-lock-upprowl on the junior gravel, to intercept stragglers,and he had been a witness—­from a distanceof fifty yards, in a very bad light—­ofthe descent into the vault.  He had remained onthe gravel ever since, in the hope of catching themas they came up; but as they had not come up, he haddetermined to make the first move himself.  Hehad not seen the six unknowns go down, for, the eveningbeing chilly, he had paced up and down, and they hadby a lucky accident chosen a moment when his backwas turned.

“Come up immediately,” he repeated.

Here a blast of tobacco-smoke rushedat him from the darkness.  The candle had beenextinguished at the first alarm, and he had not realised—­thoughhe had suspected it—­that smoking had beengoing on.

A hurried whispering was in progressamong the unknowns.  Apparently they saw thatthe game was up, for they picked their way towardsthe door.

As each came up the steps and passedhim, Mr Dexter observed “Ha!” and appearedto make a note of his name.  The last of the sixwas 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 recognisedthe voice.  Its owner was a stranger to them.

“I tell you it is not,”snapped Mr Dexter.  “You are concealing thetruth from me.  O’Hara and Moriarty are downthere—­two boys in my own house.  Isaw them go down there.”

“They had nothing to do withus, sir.  We saw nothing of them.”

“I have no doubt,” saidthe house-master, “that you imagine that youare doing a very chivalrous thing by trying to hidethem, but you will gain nothing by it.  You maygo.”

He came to the top of the steps, andit seemed as if he intended to plunge into the darknessin search of the suspects.  But, probably realisingthe 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 tillyou do choose to come up.  You would be well advisedto do so immediately.  I warn you you will nottire 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’mthinking.”

O’Hara thought.  For manyminutes he thought in vain.  At last there cameflooding back into his mind a memory of the days ofhis faghood.  It was after that that he had beengroping all the time.  He remembered now. Once in those days there had been an unexpected functionin the middle of term.  There were needed forthat function certain chairs.  He could recalleven now his furious disgust when he and a select bodyof fellow fags had been pounced upon by their form-master,and coerced into forming a line from the junior blockto the cloisters, for the purpose of handing chairs. True, his form-master had stood ginger-beer after theevent, with princely liberality, but the labour wasof the sort that gallons of ginger-beer will not makepleasant.  But he ceased to regret the episodenow.  He had been at the extreme end of the chair-handlingchain.  He had stood in a passage in the juniorblock, just by the door that led to the masters’garden, and which—­he remembered—­wasnever locked till late at night.  And while hestood there, a pair of hands—­apparentlywithout a body—­had heaved up chair afterchair through a black opening in the floor.  Inother words, a trap-door connected with the vault inwhich he now was.

He imparted these reminiscences ofchildhood to Moriarty.  They set off to searchfor the missing door, and, after wanderings and barkingsof 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 thingopened inwards.  The bolt was on their side, notin the passage above them.  To shoot the bolttook them one second, to climb into the passage oneminute.  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 somesolving.  Eventually they managed it, O’Haraleaning over and fishing for it, while Moriarty heldhis legs.

As luck would have it—­andluck had stood by them well all through—­therewas a bolt on top of the trap-door, as well as beneathit.

“Supposing that had been shot!”said O’Hara, as they fastened the door in itsplace.

Moriarty did not care to suppose anything so unpleasant.

Mr Dexter was still prowling abouton the junior gravel, when the two Irishmen ran roundand 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 happenedto have looked in five minutes after their arrival)and got their paper.

“What time did O’Haraand Moriarty arrive at the gymnasium?” askedMr Dexter of Mr Day next morning.

“O’Hara and Moriarty? Really, I can’t remember.  I know theyleftat about a quarter to seven.”

That profound thinker, Mr Tony Weller,was never so correct as in his views respecting thevalue of analibi.  There are few betterthings in an emergency.

XVIII

O’HARA EXCELS HIMSELF

It was Renford’s turn next morningto get up and feed the ferrets.  Harvey had doneit the day before.

Renford was not a youth who enjoyedearly rising, but in the cause of the ferrets he wouldhave endured anything, so at six punctually he slidout of bed, dressed quietly, so as not to disturb therest of the dormitory, and ran over to the vault. To his utter amazement he found it locked.  Sucha thing had never been done before in the whole courseof his experience.  He tugged at the handle, butnot an inch or a fraction of an inch would the dooryield.  The policy of the Open Door had ceasedto find favour in the eyes of the authorities.

A feeling of blank despair seizedupon him.  He thought of the dismay of the ferretswhen they woke up and realised that there was no chanceof breakfast for them.  And then they would graduallywaste away, and some day somebody would go down tothe vault to fetch chairs, and would come upon twomouldering skeletons, and wonder what they had oncebeen.  He almost wept at the vision so conjuredup.

There was nobody about.  Perhapshe might break in somehow.  But then there wasnothing to get to work with.  He could not kickthe door down.  No, he must give it up, and theferrets’ breakfast-hour must be postponed. Possibly Harvey might be able to think of something.

“Fed ’em?” inquired Harvey, whenthey met at breakfast.

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Why on earth not?  You didn’t oversleepyourself?”

Renford poured his tale into his friend’s shockedears.

“My hat!” said Harvey,when he had finished, “what on earth are we todo?  They’ll starve.”

Renford nodded mournfully.

“Whatever made them go and lock the door?”he said.

He seemed to think the authoritiesshould 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 forhours.  But you can go and see for yourself ifyou like.”

Harvey went, and, waiting till thecoast was clear, attached himself to the handle witha prehensile grasp, and put his back into one strenuoustug.  It was even as Renford had said.  Thedoor was locked beyond possibility of doubt.

Renford and he went over to schoolthat morning with long faces and a general air ofacute depression.  It was perhaps fortunate fortheir purpose that they did, for had their appearancebeen normal it might not have attracted O’Hara’sattention.  As it was, the Irishman, meeting themon the junior gravel, stopped and asked them what waswrong.  Since the adventure in the vault, he hadfelt an interest in Renford and Harvey.

The two told their story in alternatesentences like the Strophe and Antistrophe of a Greekchorus. ("Steichomuthics,” your Greek scholarcalls it, I fancy.  Ha, yes!  Just so.)

“So ye can’t get in becausethey’ve locked the door, an’ ye don’tknow what to do about it?” said O’Hara,at the conclusion of the narrative.

Renford and Harvey informed him inchorus that thatwas the state of the gameup to present date.

“An’ ye want me to get them out for you?”

Neither had dared to hope that hewould go so far as this.  What they had lookedfor had been at the most a few thoughtful words ofadvice.  That such a master-strategist as O’Harashould take up their cause was an unexampled pieceof good luck.

“If you only would,” said Harvey.

“We should be most awfully obliged,” saidRenford.

“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 happento the ferrets.

Renford and Harvey went on into schoolfeeling more cheerful.  If the ferrets could beextracted from their present tight corner, O’Harawas the man to do it.

O’Hara had not made his offerof assistance in any spirit of doubt.  He wascertain that he could do what he had promised. For it had not escaped his memory that this was aTuesday—­in other words, a mathematics morningup to the quarter to eleven interval.  That meant,as has been explained previously, that, while the restof the school were in the form-rooms, he would beout in the passage, if he cared to be.  Therewould be no witnesses to what he was going to do.

But, by that curious perversity offate which is so often noticeable, Mr Banks was ina peculiarly lamb-like and long-suffering mood thismorning.  Actions for which O’Hara wouldon other days have been expelled from the room withouthope of return, today were greeted with a mild “Don’tdo that, please, O’Hara,” or even the ridiculouslyinadequate “O’Hara!” It was perfectlydisheartening.  O’Hara began to ask himselfbitterly what was the use of ragging at all if thiswas how it was received.  And the moments wereflying, and his promise to Renford and Harvey stillremained unfulfilled.

He prepared for fresh efforts.

So desperate was he, that he evenresorted to crude methods like the throwing of paperballs and the dropping of books.  And when yourreally scientific ragger sinks to this, he is nearingthe end of his tether.  O’Hara hated tobe rude, but there seemed no help for it.

The striking of a quarter past tenimproved his chances.  It had been privily agreedupon beforehand amongst the members of the class thatat a quarter past ten every one was to sneeze simultaneously. The noise startled Mr Banks considerably.  Theangelic mood began to wear off.  A man may belong-suffering, but he likes to draw the line somewhere.

“Another exhibition like that,”he said, sharply, “and the class stays in afterschool, O’Hara!”

“Sir?”

“Silence.”

“I said nothing, sir, really.”

“Boy, you made a cat-like noise with your mouth.”

“Whatsort of noise, sir?”

The form waited breathlessly. This peculiarly insidious question had been inventedfor mathematical use by one Sandys, who had left atthe end of the previous summer.  It was but rarelythat the master increased the gaiety of nations byanswering the question in the manner desired.

Mr Banks, off his guard, fell into the trap.

“A noise like this,” hesaid curtly, and to the delighted audience came themelodious sound of a “Mi-aou”, which putO’Hara’s effort completely in the shade,and would have challenged comparison with the war-cryof the stoutest mouser that ever trod a tile.

A storm of imitations arose from allparts of the room.  Mr Banks turned pink, and,going straight to the root of the disturbance, forthwithevicted O’Hara.

O’Hara left with the satisfyingfeeling that his duty had been done.

Mr Banks’ room was at the topof the middle block.  He ran softly down the stairsat his best pace.  It was not likely that the masterwould come out into the passage to see if he was stillthere, but it might happen, and it would be best torun as few risks as possible.

He sprinted over to the junior block,raised the trap-door, and jumped down.  He knewwhere the ferrets had been placed, and had no difficultyin finding them.  In another minute he was in thepassage again, with the trap-door bolted behind him.

He now asked himself—­whatshould 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 thesame distance back, and there was more than a chancethat he might be seen by one of the Powers.  Inwhich case he might find it rather hard to explainwhat he was doing in the middle of the grounds witha couple of ferrets in his possession when the handsof the clock pointed to twenty minutes to eleven.

But the odds were against his being seen.  Herisked it.

When the bell rang for the quarterto eleven interval the ferrets were in their new home,happily discussing a piece of meat—­Renford’scontribution, held over from the morning’s meal,—­andO’Hara, looking as if he had never left thepassage for an instant, was making his way throughthe departing mathematical class to apologise handsomelyto Mr Banks—­as was his invariable custom—­forhis disgraceful behaviour during the morning’slesson.

XIX

THE MAYOR’S VISIT

School prefects at Wrykyn did weeklyessays for the headmaster.  Those who had gottheir scholarships at the ’Varsity, or who weregoing up in the following year, used to take theiressays to him after school and read them to him—­anunpopular and nerve-destroying practice, akin to suicide. Trevor had got his scholarship in the previous November. He was due at the headmaster’s private houseat 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’smeat is another man’s poison”, and Clowes,whose idea of English Essay was that it should bea medium forintempestive frivolity, had insistedon his beginning with, “While I cannot conscientiouslygo so far as to say that one man’s meat is anotherman’s poison, yet I am certainly of opinion thatwhat is highly beneficial to one man may, on the otherhand, to another man, differently constituted, beextremely deleterious, and, indeed, absolutely fatal.”

Trevor was not at all sure how theheadmaster would take it.  But Clowes had seemedso cut up at his suggestion that it had better be omitted,that he had allowed it to stand.

He was putting the final polish onthis 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 andsubstituted two others, made a couple of picturesqueblots, and, laying down his pen, announced that hehad finished.

“What’s up?” he said.

“It’s about the League,” said Milton.

“Found out anything?”

“Not anything much.  ButI’ve been making inquiries.  You rememberI asked you to let me look at those letters of yours?”

Trevor nodded.  This had happened on the Sundayof that week.

“Well, I wanted to look at the post-marks.”

“By Jove, I never thought of that.”

Milton continued with the business-likeair of the detective who explains in the last chapterof the book how he did it.

“I found, as I thought, that both letters camefrom 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 abouttwo miles from here across the downs.  There’sonly one shop in the place, which acts as post-officeand tobacconist and everything else.  I thoughtthat if I went there and asked about those letters,they might remember who it was that sent them, ifI 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’stwo miles off, Rand-Brown couldn’t have sentthe letters.  He wouldn’t have the time afterschool.  He was on the grounds both the afternoonsbefore I got the letters.”

“I know,” said Milton;“I didn’t think of that at the time.”

“Well?”

“One of the points about theChesterton post-office is that there’s no letter-boxoutside.  You have to go into the shop and handanything 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 handedin the letters.  There can’t be many ata place like that.”

“Did they remember?”

“They remembered the lettersbeing given in distinctly, but as for knowing anythingbeyond that, they were simply futile.  There wasan old woman in the shop, aged about three hundredand ten, I should think.  I shouldn’t sayshe had ever been very intelligent, but now she simplygibbered.  I started off by laying out a shillingon some poisonous-looking sweets.  I gave thelot to a village kid when I got out.  I hope theydidn’t kill him.  Then, having scatteredground-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 identifiedthem all, one after the other.  The first wasone of Clowes.  She was prepared to swear on oaththat 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 wascertain it was one of those two ‘la-ads’,but couldn’t quite say which.  To keep heramused I fired in photograph number three—­Allardyce’s. She identified that, too.  At the end of ten minutesshe was pretty sure that it was one of the six—­theother three were Paget, Clephane, and Rand-Brown—­butshe was not going to bind herself down to any particularone.  As I had come to the end of my stock of photographs,and was getting a bit sick of the game, I got up togo, when in came another ornament of Chesterton froma room at the back of the shop.  He was quitea 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’, untilI began to feel I’d had enough of it.  Thenit came out that the real chap who had sent the letterswas a ‘la-ad’ with light hair, not so bigas me—­”

“That doesn’t help us much,” saidTrevor.

“—­And a ‘prarperlittle gennlemun’.  So all we’ve gotto do is to look for some young duke of polished mannersand exterior, with a thatch of light hair.”

“There are three hundred andsixty-seven fellows with light hair in the school,”said Trevor, calmly.

“Thought it was three hundredand sixty-eight myself,” said Milton, “butI may be wrong.  Anyhow, there you have the resultsof my investigations.  If you can make anythingout of them, you’re welcome to it.  Good-bye.”

“Half a second,” saidTrevor, as he got up; “had the fellow a cap ofany sort?”

“No.  Bareheaded.  Youwouldn’t expect him to give himself away bywearing a house-cap?”

Trevor went over to the headmaster’srevolving this discovery in his mind.  It wasnot much of a clue, but the smallest clue is betterthan nothing.  To find out that the sender ofthe League letters had fair hair narrowed the searchdown a little.  It cleared the more raven-lockedmembers of the school, at any rate.  Besides, bycombining his information with Milton’s, thesearch might be still further narrowed down.  Heknew that the polite letter-writer must be eitherin Seymour’s or in Donaldson’s.  Thenumber of fair-haired youths in the two houses wasnot excessive.  Indeed, at the moment he couldnot recall any; which rather complicated matters.

He arrived at the headmaster’sdoor, and knocked.  He was shown into a room atthe side of the hall, near the door.  The butlerinformed him that the headmaster was engaged at present. Trevor, who knew the butler slightly through havingconstantly been to see the headmaster on businessvia the front door, asked who was there.

“Sir Eustace Briggs,”said the butler, and disappeared in the directionof his lair beyond the green baize partition at theend of the hall.

Trevor went into the room, which wasa sort of spare study, and sat down, wondering whathad brought the mayor of Wrykyn to see the headmasterat this advanced hour.

A quarter of an hour later the soundof voices broke in upon his peace.  The headmasterwas coming down the hall with the intention of showinghis visitor out.  The door of Trevor’s roomwas ajar, and he could hear distinctly what was beingsaid.  He had no particular desire to play theeavesdropper, but the part was forced upon him.

Sir Eustace seemed excited.

“It is far from being my habit,”he was saying, “to make unnecessary complaintsrespecting the conduct of the lads under your care.”(Sir Eustace Briggs had a distaste for the shorterand more colloquial forms of speech.  He wouldhave perished sooner than have substituted “complainof your boys” for the majestic formula he hadused.  He spoke as if he enjoyed choosing hiswords.  He seemed to pause and think before eachword.  Unkind people—­who were jealousof his distinguished career—­used to saythat he did this because he was afraid of droppingan aitch if he relaxed his vigilance.)

“But,” continued he, “Iam reluctantly forced to the unpleasant conclusionthat the dastardly outrage to which both I and thePress of the town have called your attention is tobe 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 themayor.  “It would, under the circumstances,be nothing more, I think, than what is distinctlyadvisable.  The man Samuel Wapshott, of whosenarrative I have recently afforded you a brief synopsis,stated in no uncertain terms that he found at the footof the statue on which the dastardly outrage was perpetrateda diminutive ornament, in shape like the bats thatare used in the game of cricket.  This ornament,he avers (with what truth I know not), was handedby him to a youth of an age coeval with that of thelads in the upper division of this school.  Theyouth 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.

XX

THE FINDING OF THE BAT

Trevor waited till the headmasterhad gone back to his library, gave him five minutesto 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 beganto read what he had written.  He finished theparagraph which owed its insertion to Clowes, and racedhurriedly on to the next.  To his surprise theflippancy passed unnoticed, at any rate, verbally. As a rule the headmaster preferred that quotationsfrom back numbers ofPunch should be kept outof the prefects’ English Essays.  And hegenerally said as much.  But today he seemed strangelypreoccupied.  A split infinitive in paragraph five,which at other times would have made him sit up inhis chair stiff with horror, elicited no remark. The same immunity was accorded to the insertion (inspiredby Clowes, as usual) of a popular catch phrase inthe last few lines.  Trevor finished with the feelingthat luck had favoured him nobly.

“Yes,” said the headmaster,seemingly roused by the silence following on the conclusionof the essay.  “Yes.”  Then, aftera long pause, “Yes,” again.

Trevor said nothing, but waited for further comment.

“Yes,” said the headmasteronce more, “I think that is a very fair essay. Very fair.  It wants a little more—­er—­notquite so much—­um—­yes.”

Trevor made a note in his mind toeffect these improvements in future essays, and wasgetting up, when the headmaster stopped him.

“Don’t go, Trevor.  I wish to speakto you.”

Trevor’s first thought was,perhaps naturally, that the bat was going to be broughtinto discussion.  He was wondering helplessly howhe was going to keep O’Hara and his midnightexploit out of the conversation, when the headmasterresumed.  “An unpleasant thing has happened,Trevor—­”

“Now we’re coming to it,” thoughtTrevor.

“It appears, Trevor, that aconsiderable amount of smoking has been going on inthe school.”

Trevor breathed freely once more. It was only going to be a mere conventional smokingrow after all.  He listened with more enjoymentas the headmaster, having stopped to turn down thewick of the reading-lamp which stood on the tableat his side, and which had begun, appropriately enough,to smoke, resumed his discourse.

“Mr Dexter—­”

Of course, thought Trevor.  Ifthere ever was a row in the school, Dexter was boundto be at the bottom of it.

“Mr Dexter has just been into see me.  He reported six boys.  He discoveredthem in the vault beneath the junior block.  Twoof 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 allthat goes on in that house.”

Was this his beastly sarcasm? Trevor asked himself.  But he came to the conclusionthat it was not.  After all, the head of a houseis only human.  He cannot be expected to keepan eye on the private life of every member of hishouse.

“This must be stopped, Trevor. There is no saying how widespread the practice hasbecome or may become.  What I want you to do isto go straight back to your house and begin a completesearch of the studies.”

“Tonight, sir?” It seemed too late forsuch amusement.

“Tonight.  But before yougo to your house, call at Mr Seymour’s, andtell Milton I should like to see him.  And, Trevor.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You will understand that Iam leaving this matter to you to be dealt with byyou.  I shall not require you to make any reportto me.  But if you should find tobacco in anyboy’s room, you must punish him well, Trevor. Punish him well.”

This meant that the culprit must be“touched up” before the house assembledin the dining-room.  Such an event did not oftenoccur.  The last occasion had been in Paget’sfirst term as head of Donaldson’s, when twoof the senior day-room had been discovered attemptingto revive the ancient and dishonourable custom ofbullying.  This time, Trevor foresaw, would setup a record in all probability.  There might beany number of devotees of the weed, and he meant tocarry out his instructions to the full, and make thecriminals more unhappy than they had been since theday of their first cigar.  Trevor hated the habitof smoking at school.  He was so intensely keenon the success of the house and the school at games,that anything which tended to damage the wind andeye filled him with loathing.  That anybody shoulddare to smoke in a house which was going to play inthe final for the House Football Cup made him rageinternally, and he proposed to make things bad andunrestful for such.

To smoke at school is to insult thedivine weed.  When you are obliged to smoke inodd corners, fearing every moment that you will bediscovered, the whole meaning, poetry, romance of apipe vanishes, and you become like those lost beingswho smoke when they are running to catch trains. The boy who smokes at school is bound to come to abad end.  He will degenerate gradually into aperson that plays dominoes in the smoking-rooms ofA.B.C. shops with friends who wear bowler hats andfrock coats.

Much of this philosophy Trevor expoundedto Clowes in energetic language when he returned toDonaldson’s after calling at Seymour’sto deliver the message for Milton.

Clowes became quite animated at theprospect of a real row.

“We shall be able to see theskeletons in their cupboards,” he observed. “Every man has a skeleton in his cupboard, whichfollows him about wherever he goes.  Which studyshall we go to first?”

“We?” said Trevor.

“We,” repeated Clowesfirmly.  “I am not going to be left out ofthis jaunt.  I need bracing up—­I’mnot strong, you know—­and this is just thething to do it.  Besides, you’ll want a bodyguardof some sort, in case the infuriated occupant turnsand rends you.”

“I don’t see what thereis to enjoy in the business,” said Trevor, gloomily. “Personally, I bar this kind of thing.  Bythe time we’ve finished, there won’t bea 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 doit.  Mr Micawber has his faults, but I willneverdesert Mr Micawber.”

“You can come if you like,”said Trevor; “we’ll take the studies inorder.  I suppose we needn’t look up theprefects?”

“A prefect is above suspicion.  Scratchthe 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 twohours sleep from eleven to one, and then got up andworked in his study till breakfast.

He was working when Clowes and Trevorcame in.  He dived head foremost into a huge Liddelland Scott as the door opened.  On hearing Trevor’svoice he slowly emerged, and a pair of round and spectacledeyes gazed blankly at the visitors.  Trevor brieflyexplained his errand, but the interview lost in solemnityowing to the fact that the bare notion of Dixon storingtobacco in his room made Clowes roar with laughter. Also, Dixon stolidly refused to understand what Trevorwas 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 askedto join in some sort of round game, and had refusedthe offer, returned again to his Liddell and Scott,and continued to wrestle with the somewhat obscureutterances of the chorus in AEschylus’Agamemnon. The results of this fiasco on Trevor and Clowes werewidely different.  Trevor it depressed horribly. It made him feel savage.  Clowes, on the otherhand, regarded the whole affair in a spirit of rollickingfarce, and refused to see that this was a seriousmatter, in which the honour of the house was involved.

The next study was Ruthven’s. This fact somewhat toned down the exuberancesof Clowes’s demeanour.  When one particularlydislikes a person, one has a curious objection toseeming in good spirits in his presence.  Onefeels that he may take it as a sort of compliment tohimself, or, at any rate, contribute grins of his own,which would be hateful.  Clowes was as grave asTrevor when they entered the study.

Ruthven’s study was like himself,overdressed and rather futile.  It ran to littlechina ornaments in a good deal of profusion.  Itwas more like a drawing-room than a school study.

“Sorry to disturb you, Ruthven,” saidTrevor.

“Oh, come in,” said Ruthven,in a tired voice.  “Please shut the door;there is a draught.  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 theOld Man’s just told me to search the studiesin case any of the fellows have got baccy.”

Ruthven jumped up, pale with consternation.

“You can’t.  I won’t have youdisturbing my study.”

“This is rot,” said Trevor,shortly, “I’ve got to.  It’sno 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 Clowesaffably.

“Come on, Ruthven,” saidTrevor, “chuck us over the keys.  You mightas well.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t be an ass, man.”

“We have here,” observedClowes, in his sad, solemn way, “a stout andserviceable poker.”  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,” hesaid.

“Don’t be a fool.”

“Very well, then.  We will now crack ourfirst crib.”

Ruthven sprang forward, but Clowes,handing him off in football fashion with his lefthand, with his right dashed the poker against the lockof 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 theUmustaphas and shag.”

But as he looked into the drawer heuttered a sudden cry of excitement.  He drew somethingout, and tossed it over to Trevor.

“Catch, Trevor,” he saidquietly.  “Something that’ll interestyou.”

Trevor caught it neatly in one hand,and stood staring at it as if he had never seen anythinglike it before.  And yet he had—­often. For what he had caught was a little golden bat, aboutan inch long by an eighth of an inch wide.

XXI

THE LEAGUE REVEALED

“What do you think of that?” said Clowes.

Trevor said nothing.  He couldnot quite grasp the situation.  It was not onlythat he had got the idea so firmly into his head thatit was Rand-Brown who had sent the letters and appropriatedthe bat.  Even supposing he had not suspectedRand-Brown, he would never have dreamed of suspectingRuthven.  They had been friends.  Not veryclose friends—­Trevor’s keenness forgames and Ruthven’s dislike of them preventedthat—­but a good deal more than acquaintances. He was so constituted that he could not grasp theframe of mind required for such an action as Ruthven’s. It was something absolutely abnormal.

Clowes was equally surprised, butfor a different reason.  It was not so much theenormity of Ruthven’s proceedings that took himaback.  He believed him, with that cheerful intolerancewhich a certain type of mind affects, capable of anything. What surprised him was the fact that Ruthven had hadthe ingenuity and even the daring to conduct a campaignof this description.  Cribbing in examinationshe would have thought the limit of his crimes. Something backboneless and underhand of that kindwould not have surprised him in the least.  Hewould have said that it was just about what he hadexpected all along.  But that Ruthven should blossomout suddenly as quite an ingenious and capable criminalin this way, was a complete surprise.

“Well, perhapsyou’llmake a remark?” he said, turning to Ruthven.

Ruthven, looking very much like apassenger on a Channel steamer who has just discoveredthat 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 wasnot good to see, as silent as Trevor.  It seemedthat whatever conversation there was going to be wouldhave 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 saysomething. At present there’s a lot that wants explaining. As this bat has been found lying in your drawer, Isuppose we may take it that you’re the impoliteletter-writer?”

Ruthven found his voice at last.

“I’m not,” he cried; “I neverwrote a line.”

“Now we’re getting atit,” said Clowes.  “I thought you couldn’thave had it in you to carry this business throughon your own.  Apparently you’ve only beenthe sleeping partner in this show, though I supposeit was you who ragged Trevor’s study?  Notmuch sleeping about that.  You took over the actingbranch 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 ityou who ragged Trevor’s study?”

“Yes,” said Ruthven.

“Thought so.”

“Why, of course, I met you justoutside,” said Trevor, speaking for the firsttime.  “You were the chap who told me whathad happened.”

Ruthven said nothing.

“The ragging of the study seemsto have been all the active work he did,” remarkedClowes.

“No,” said Trevor, “heposted the letters, whether he wrote them or not. Milton was telling me—­you remember? I told you.  No, I didn’t.  Milton foundout that the letters were posted by a small, light-hairedfellow.”

“That’s him,” saidClowes, as regardless of grammar as the monks of Rheims,pointing with the poker at Ruthven’s immaculatelocks.  “Well, you ragged the study andposted 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’tcare.”

“Now we’re getting rudeagain,” complained Clowes. “WasRand-Brown in this?”

“Yes,” said Ruthven.

“Thought so.  And who else?”

“No one.”

“Try again.”

“I tell you there was no oneelse.  Can’t you believe a word a chap says?”

“A word here and there, perhaps,”said Clowes, as one making a concession, “butnot many, and this isn’t one of them.  Haveanother shot.”

Ruthven relapsed into silence.

“All right, then,” saidClowes, “we’ll accept that statement. There’s just a chance that it may be true. And that’s about all, I think.  This isn’tmy affair at all, really.  It’s yours, Trevor. I’m only a spectator and camp-follower. It’s your business.  You’ll find mein my study.”  And putting the poker carefullyin its place, Clowes left the room.  He went intohis study, and tried to begin some work.  But thebeauties of the second book of Thucydides failed toappeal to him.  His mind was elsewhere.  Hefelt too excited with what had just happened to translateGreek.  He pulled up a chair in front of the fire,and gave himself up to speculating how Trevor wasgetting on in the neighbouring study.  He wasglad he had left him to finish the business.  Ifhe had been in Trevor’s place, there was nothinghe would so greatly have disliked as to have someone—­however familiar a friend—­interferingin his wars and settling them for him.  Left tohimself, Clowes would probably have ended the interviewby kicking Ruthven into the nearest approach to pulpcompatible with the laws relating to manslaughter. He had an uneasy suspicion that Trevor would let himdown far too easily.

The handle turned.  Trevor camein, and pulled up another chair in silence.  Hisface wore a look of disgust.  But there were nosigns of combat upon him.  The toe of his bootwas not worn and battered, as Clowes would have likedto have seen it.  Evidently he had not chosen toadopt active and physical measures for the improvementof 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 haveyou done?”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t. Did he give any explanation?  What made him goin for the thing at all?  What earthly motive couldhe have for not wanting Barry to get his colours,bar the fact that Rand-Brown didn’t want himto?  And why should he do what Rand-Brown toldhim?  I never even knew they were pals, beforetoday.”

“He told me a good deal,”said Trevor.  “It’s one of the beastliestthings I ever heard.  They neither of them comeparticularly well out of the business, but Rand-Browncomes 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 yearago a chap named Patterson getting sacked?”

Clowes nodded again.  He rememberedthe case well.  Patterson had had gambling transactionswith a Wrykyn tradesman, had been found out, and hadgone.

“You remember what a surpriseit was to everybody.  It wasn’t one of thosecases where half the school suspects what’s goingon.  Those cases always come out sooner or later. But Patterson nobody knew about.”

“Yes.  Well?”

“Nobody,” said Trevor,“except Ruthven, that is.  Ruthven got toknow somehow.  I believe he was a bit of a palof Patterson’s at the time.  Anyhow,—­theyhad a row, and Ruthven went to Dexter—­Pattersonwas in Dexter’s—­and sneaked. Dexter promised to keep his name out of the business,and went straight to the Old Man, and Patterson gotturfed out on the spot.  Then somehow or otherRand-Brown got to know about it—­I believeRuthven must have told him by accident some time orother.  After that he simply had to do everythingRand-Brown wanted him to.  Otherwise he said thathe 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 havegot rather a bad time of it.  But what made themthink of starting the League?  It was a jollysmart idea.  Rand-Brown’s, of course?”

“Yes.  I suppose he’dheard about it, and thought something might be madeout of it if it were revived.”

“And were Ruthven and he the only two in it?”

“Ruthven swears they were, andI shouldn’t wonder if he wasn’t tellingthe truth, for once in his life.  You see, everythingthe League’s done so far could have been doneby him and Rand-Brown, without anybody else’shelp.  The only other studies that were raggedwere Mill’s and Milton’s—­bothin Seymour’s.

“Yes,” said Clowes.

There was a pause.  Clowes put another shovelfulof coal on the fire.

“What are you going to do to Ruthven?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?  Hang it, he doesn’tdeserve to get off like that.  He isn’t asbad as Rand-Brown—­quite—­but he’spretty nearly as finished a little beast as you couldfind.”

“Finished is just the word,”said Trevor.  “He’s going at the endof the week.”

“Going?  What! sacked?”

“Yes.  The Old Man’sbeen finding out things about him, apparently, andthis smoking row has just added the finishing-touchto his discoveries.  He’s particularly keenagainst smoking just now for some reason.”

“But was Ruthven in it?”

“Yes.  Didn’t I tellyou?  He was one of the fellows Dexter caught inthe vault.  There were two in this house, youremember?”

“Who was the other?”

“That man Dashwood.  Hasthe study next to Paget’s old one.  He’sgoing, too.”

“Scarcely knew him.  What sort of a chapwas he?”

“Outsider.  No good to the house in anyway.  He won’t be missed.”

“And what are you going to do about Rand-Brown?”

“Fight him, of course.  What else couldI do?”

“But you’re no match for him.”

“We’ll see.”

“But youaren’t,”persisted Clowes.  “He can give you a stoneeasily, and he’s not a bad boxer either. Moriarty didn’t beat him so very cheaply inthe middle-weight this year.  You wouldn’thave 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 pluckat all.  I might outstay him.”

“Hope so,” said Clowes.

But his tone was not hopeful.

XXII

A DRESS REHEARSAL

Some people in Trevor’s placemight have taken the earliest opportunity of confrontingRand-Brown, so as to settle the matter in hand withoutdelay.  Trevor thought of doing this, but finallydecided to let the matter rest for a day, until heshould have found out with some accuracy what chancehe stood.

After four o’clock, therefore,on the next day, having had tea in his study, he wentacross to the baths, in search of O’Hara. He intended that before the evening was over the Irishmanshould have imparted to him some of his skill withthe hands.  He did not know that for a man absolutelyunscientific with his fists there is nothing so fatalas to take a boxing lesson on the eve of battle. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.  He isapt to lose his recklessness—­which mighthave stood by him well—­in exchange fora little quite useless science.  He is neitherone thing nor the other, neither a natural fighternor a skilful boxer.

This point O’Hara endeavouredto press upon him as soon as he had explained whyit was that he wanted coaching on this particularafternoon.

The Irishman was in the gymnasium,punching the ball, when Trevor found him.  Hegenerally put in a quarter of an hour with the punching-ballevery evening, before Moriarty turned up for the customarysix rounds.

“Want me to teach ye a few tricks?”he said.  “What’s that for?”

“I’ve got a mill comingon soon,” explained Trevor, trying to make thestatement as if it were the most ordinary thing inthe world for a school prefect, who was also captainof 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,” saidTrevor.  “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 ballbefore I begin teaching other people how to box. Have ye a watch?”

“Yes.”

“Then time me.  I’lldo four rounds of three minutes each, with a minute’srest in between.  That’s more than I’lldo at Aldershot, but it’ll get me fit. Ready?”

“Time,” said Trevor.

He watched O’Hara assailingthe swinging ball with considerable envy.  Why,he wondered, had he not gone in for boxing?  Everybodyought to learn to box.  It was bound to come inuseful some time or other.  Take his own case. He was very much afraid—­no, afraid was notthe right word, for he was not that.  He was verymuch of opinion that Rand-Brown was going to havea most enjoyable time when they met.  And the finalhouse-match was to be played next Monday.  If eventsturned out as he could not help feeling they werelikely to turn out, he would be too battered to playin that match.  Donaldson’s would probablywin whether he played or not, but it would be bitterto be laid up on such an occasion.  On the otherhand, he must go through with it.  He did notbelieve in letting other people take a hand in settlinghis private quarrels.

But he wished he had learned to box. If only he could hit that dancing, jumping ball witha 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 leathernopponent, and sat down, panting.

“Pretty useful, that,” commented Trevor,admiringly.

“Ye should see Moriarty,” gasped O’Hara.

“Now, will ye tell me why itis you’re going to fight, and with whom you’regoing 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, comfortinglot of friends,” he said.  “That’sjust what Clowes has been trying to explain to me.”

“Clowes is quite right,”said O’Hara, seriously.  “Has the thinggone too far for ye to back out?  Without climbingdown, of course,” he added.

“Yes,” said Trevor, “there’sno question of my getting out of it.  I daresayI could.  In fact, I know I could.  But I’mnot going to.”

“But, me dearr man, ye haven’tan 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 onsince Moriarty bate him in the middles, so he maybe out of practice.  But even then he’d bea bad man to tackle.  He’s big an’he’s strong, an’ if he’d only hadthe heart in him he’d have been going up toAldershot instead of Moriarty.  That’s whathe’d be doing.  An’ you can’tbox 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’tsaid what it is that ye’ve got against Rand-Brown. What is it?”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’ttell you.  You’re in it as well.  Infact, if it hadn’t been for the bat turningup, you’d have been considerably more in itthan 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 fulland exact account of what had happened.  He showedhim the two letters from the League, touched on Milton’sconnection with the affair, traced the gradual developmentof his suspicions, and described with some approachto excitement the scene in Ruthven’s study,and the explanations that had followed it.

“Now do you wonder,” heconcluded, “that I feel as if a few rounds withRand-Brown would do me good.”

O’Hara breathed hard.

“My word!” he said, “I’d liketo see ye kill him.”

“But,” said Trevor, “asyou and Clowes have been pointing out to me, if there’sgoing to be a corpse, it’ll be me.  However,I mean to try.  Now perhaps you wouldn’tmind showing me a few tricks.”

“Take my advice,” said O’Hara, “anddon’t try any of that foolery.”

“Why, I thought you were sucha believer in science,” said Trevor in surprise.

“So I am, if you’ve enoughof it.  But it’s the worst thing ye can doto learn a trick or two just before a fight, if youdon’t know anything about the game already. A tough, rushing fighter is ten times as good as aman who’s just begun to learn what he oughtn’tto do.”

“Well, what do you advise meto do, then?” asked Trevor, impressed by theunwonted earnestness with which the Irishman deliveredthis pugilistic homily, which was a paraphrase ofthe views dinned into the ears of every novice bythe school instructor.

“I must do something.”

“The best thing ye can do,”said O’Hara, thinking for a moment, “isto put on the gloves and have a round or two withme.  Here’s Moriarty at last.  We’llget him to time us.”

As much explanation as was thoughtgood for him having been given to the newcomer, toaccount for Trevor’s newly-acquired taste forthings pugilistic, Moriarty took the watch, with instructionsto 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’tbe any practice if you don’t.  I sha’n’tmind being hit.  It’ll do me good for Aldershot. See?”

Trevor said he saw.

“Time,” said Moriarty.

Trevor went in with a will.  Hewas a little shy at first of putting all his weightinto his blows.  It was hard to forget that hefelt friendly towards O’Hara.  But he speedilyawoke to the fact that the Irishman took his boxingvery seriously, and was quite a different person whenhe had the gloves on.  When he was so equipped,the man opposite him ceased to be either friend orfoe 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 lifefor the next three minutes was to score points. Consequently Trevor, sparring lightly and in rathera futile manner at first, was woken up by a stingingflush hit between the eyes.  After that he, too,forgot that he liked the man before him, and rushedhim in all directions.  There was no doubt as towho 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 gooddeal, and O’Hara confessed himself not altogethersorry 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 notmuch chance.”

And with this poor encouragement fromhis trainer and sparring-partner, Trevor was forcedto be content.

XXIII

WHAT RENFORD SAW

The health of Master Harvey of Seymour’swas so delicately constituted that it was an absolutenecessity that he should consume one or more hot bunsduring the quarter of an hour’s interval whichsplit up morning school.  He was tearing acrossthe junior gravel towards the shop on the morningfollowing Trevor’s sparring practice with O’Hara,when a melodious treble voice called his name. It was Renford.  He stopped, to allow his friendto come up with him, and then made as if to resumehis 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’sprivate.  Come for a stroll.”

Harvey hesitated.  There werefew things he enjoyed so much as exclusive items ofschool gossip (scandal preferably), but hot new bunswere among those few things.  However, he decidedon this occasion to feed the mind at the expense ofthe body.  He accepted Renford’s invitation.

“What is it?” he asked,as they made for the football field.  “What’sbeen happening?”

“It’s frightfully exciting,” saidRenford.

“What’s up?”

“You mustn’t tell any one.”

“All right.  Of course not.”

“Well, then, there’s beena big fight, and I’m one of the only chaps whoknow about it so far.”

“A fight?” Harvey became excited. “Who between?”

Renford paused before delivering hisnews, to emphasise the importance of it.

“It was between O’Hara and Rand-Brown,”he said at length.

“By Jove!” saidHarvey.  Then a suspicion crept into his mind.

“Look here, Renford,” he said, “ifyou’re trying to green me—­”

“I’m not, you ass,”replied Renford indignantly.  “It’sperfectly true.  I saw it myself.”

“By Jove, did you really? Where was it?  When did it come off?  Was ita 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 didhe just chuck it?”

“No.  He was really knockedout.  He was on the floor for quite a time. By Jove, you should have seen it.  O’Harawas ripping in the sixth round.  He was all overhim.”

“Tell us about it,” said Harvey, and Renfordtold.

“I’d got up early,”he said, “to feed the ferrets, and I was justcutting over to the fives-courts with their grub, when,just as I got across the senior gravel, I saw O’Haraand Moriarty standing waiting near the second court. O’Hara knows all about the ferrets, so I didn’ttry and cut or anything.  I went up and began talkingto him.  I noticed he didn’t look particularlykeen on seeing me at first.  I asked him if hewas going to play fives.  Then he said no, andtold me what he’d really come for.  He saidhe and Rand-Brown had had a row, and they’dagreed to have it out that morning in one of the fives-courts. Of course, when I heard that, I was all on to seeit, so I said I’d wait, if he didn’t mind. He said he didn’t care, so long as I didn’ttell everybody, so I said I wouldn’t tell anybodyexcept you, so he said all right, then, I could stopif 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 Merrettin 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 wasthe only one there with a watch—­he and Rand-Brownwere in footer clothes, and Merrett and Moriarty hadn’tgot their tickers on them—­I’d betteract as timekeeper.  So I said all right, I would,and we went to the second fives-court.  It’sthe biggest of them, you know.  I stood outsideon the bench, looking through the wire netting overthe door, so as not to be in the way when they startedscrapping.  O’Hara and Rand-Brown took offtheir blazers and sweaters, and chucked them to Moriartyand Merrett, and then Moriarty and Merrett went andstood in two corners, and O’Hara and Rand-Brownwalked 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 hada longer reach.  But O’Hara looked muchfitter.  Rand-Brown looked rather flabby.

“I sang out ‘Time’through the wire netting, and they started off atonce.  O’Hara offered to shake hands, butRand-Brown wouldn’t.  So they began withoutit.

“The first round was awfullyfast.  They kept having long rallies all overthe place.  O’Hara was a jolly sight quicker,and Rand-Brown didn’t seem able to guard hishits at all.  But he hit frightfully hard himself,great, heavy slogs, and O’Hara kept getting themin the face.  At last he got one bang in the mouthwhich knocked him down flat.  He was up againin a second, and was starting to rush, when I lookedat the watch, and found that I’d given themnearly half a minute too much already.  So I shouted‘Time’, and made up my mind I’d keepmore of an eye on the watch next round.  I’dgot so jolly excited, watching them, that I’dforgot 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 longin the first round, I chucked in a bit extra in therest, so that they were both pretty fit by the timeI started them again.

“The second round was just likethe first, and so was the third.  O’Harakept getting the worst of it.  He was knocked downthree or four times more, and once, when he’drushed Rand-Brown against one of the walls, he hitout and missed, and barked his knuckles jolly badlyagainst the wall.  That was in the middle of thethird round, and Rand-Brown had it all his own wayfor the rest of the round—­for about twominutes, that is to say.  He hit O’Haraabout all over the shop.  I was so jolly keenon O’Hara’s winning, that I had half amind to call time early, so as to give him time torecover.  But I thought it would be a low thingto do, so I gave them their full three minutes.

“Directly they began the fourthround, I noticed that things were going to changea bit.  O’Hara had given up his rushing game,and was waiting for his man, and when he came at himhe’d put in a hot counter, nearly always atthe body.  After a bit Rand-Brown began to getcautious, and wouldn’t rush, so the fourth roundwas the quietest there had been.  In the lastminute they didn’t hit each other at all. They simply sparred for openings.  It was in thefifth round that O’Hara began to forge ahead. About half way through he got in a ripper, right inthe wind, which almost doubled Rand-Brown up, andthen he started rushing again.  Rand-Brown lookedawfully bad at the end of the round.  Round sixwas ripping.  I never saw two chaps go for eachother so.  It was one long rally.  Then—­howit happened I couldn’t see, they were so quick—­justas they had been at it a minute and a half, there wasa crack, and the next thing I saw was Rand-Brown onthe ground, looking beastly.  He went down absolutelyflat; his heels and head touched the ground at thesame time.

“I counted ten out loud in theprofessional way like they do at the National SportingClub, 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 andwent back to the house with Merrett, and O’Haraand Moriarty went off to Dexter’s, and I gavethe 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’llbe a row about it?”

“Shouldn’t think so,”said Harvey.  “They never do make rows aboutfights, and neither of them is a prefect, so I don’tsee what it matters if theydo fight. But, I say—­”

“What’s up?”

“I wish,” said Harvey,his voice full of acute regret, “that it hadbeen my turn to feed those ferrets.”

“I don’t,” saidRenford cheerfully.  “I wouldn’t havemissed that mill for something.  Hullo, there’sthe bell.  We’d better run.”

When Trevor called at Seymour’sthat afternoon to see Rand-Brown, with a view to challenginghim to deadly combat, and found that O’Hara hadbeen 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 thelimits of friendship.  It was all very well forhim to take over the Rand-Brown contract, and settleit himself, in order to save Trevor from a very badquarter of an hour, but Trevor was one of those peoplewho object strongly to the interference of other peoplein their private business.  He sought out O’Haraand complained.  Within two minutes O’Hara’sgolden eloquence had soothed him and made him viewthe matter in quite a different light.  What O’Harapointed out was that it was not Trevor’s affairat all, but his own.  Who, he asked, had beenlikely to be damaged most by Rand-Brown’s manoeuvresin connection with the lost bat?  Trevor was boundto admit that O’Hara was that person.  Verywell, then, said O’Hara, then who had a betterright to fight Rand-Brown?  And Trevor confessedthat 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 beastlymeeting the man after this,” said Trevor, presently. “Do you think he might possibly leave at theend of term?”

“He’s leaving at the endof the week,” said O’Hara.  “Hewas one of the fellows Dexter caught in the vaultthat evening.  You won’t see much more ofRand-Brown.”

“I’ll try and put up with that,”said Trevor.

“And so will I,” repliedO’Hara.  “And I shouldn’t thinkMilton would be so very grieved.”

“No,” said Trevor. “I tell you what will make him sick, though,and that is your having milled with Rand-Brown. It’s a job he’d have liked to have takenon himself.”

XXIV

CONCLUSION

Into the story at this point comesthe narrative of Charles Mereweather Cook, aged fourteen,a day-boy.

Cook arrived at the school on thetenth of March, at precisely nine o’clock, ina state of excitement.

He said there was a row on in the town.

Cross-examined, he said there was no end of a rowon in the town.

During morning school he explainedfurther, whispering his tale into the attentive earof 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 ridingon his bicycle past the entrance to the RecreationGrounds on his way to school, when his eye was attractedby the movements of a mass of men just inside the gate. They appeared to be fighting.  Witness did notstop to watch, much as he would have liked to do so. Why not?  Why, because he was late already, andwould have had to scorch anyhow, in order to get toschool in time.  And he had been late the daybefore, and was afraid that old Appleby (the masterof the form) would give him beans if he were late again. Wherefore he had no notion of what the men were fightingabout, but he betted that more would be heard aboutit.  Why?  Because, from what he saw of it,it seemed a jolly big thing.  There must have beenquite three hundred men fighting. (Knight, satirically,“Pile it on!”) Well, quite a hundred,anyhow.  Fifty a side.  And fighting likeanything.  He betted there would be something aboutit in theWrykyn Patriot tomorrow. He shouldn’t wonder if somebody had been killed. What were they scrapping about?  How shouldheknow!

Here Mr Appleby, who had been tryingfor the last five minutes to find out where the whisperingnoise came from, at length traced it to its source,and forthwith requested Messrs Cook and Knight to dohim two hundred lines, adding that, if he heard themtalking again, he would put them into the extra lesson. Silence reigned from that moment.

Next day, while the form was wrestlingwith the moderately exciting account of Caesar’sdoings in Gaul, Master Cook produced from his pocketa newspaper cutting.  This, having previously planteda forcible blow in his friend’s ribs with anelbow to attract the latter’s attention, hehanded to Knight, and in dumb show requested him toperuse the same.  Which Knight, feeling no interestwhatever 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 “DisgracefulFracas”, and was written in the elegant stylethat was always so marked a feature of theWrykynPatriot.

“We are sorry to have to report,”it ran, “another of those deplorable ebullitionsof local Hooliganism, to which it has before now beenour painful duty to refer.  Yesterday the RecreationGrounds were made the scene of as brutal an exhibitionof savagery as has ever marred the fair fame of thistown.  Our readers will remember how on a previousoccasion, when the fine statue of Sir Eustace Briggswas found covered with tar, we attributed the actto the malevolence of the Radical section of the community. Events have proved that we were right.  Yesterdaya body of youths, belonging to the rival party, wasdiscovered 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 immediatelyensued, with the result that, before the police couldinterfere, several of the combatants had received severebruises.  Fortunately the police then arrivedon the scene, and with great difficulty succeededin putting a stop to thefracas.  Severalarrests were made.

“We have no desire to discouragelegitimate party rivalry, but we feel justified instrongly protesting against such dastardly tricks asthose to which we have referred.  We can assureour opponents that they can gain nothing by such conduct.”

There was a good deal more to theeffect that now was the time for all good men to cometo the aid of the party, and that the constituentsof Sir Eustace Briggs must look to it that they failednot in the hour of need, and so on.  That waswhat theWrykyn Patriot had to say on the subject.

O’Hara managed to get hold ofa copy of the paper, and showed it to Clowes and Trevor.

“So now,” he said, “it’sall right, ye see.  They’ll never suspectit wasn’t the same people that tarred the statueboth times.  An’ ye’ve got the batback, so it’s all right, ye see.”

“The only thing that’lltrouble you now,” said Clowes, “will beyour conscience.”

O’Hara intimated that he would try and put upwith that.

“But isn’t it a strokeof luck,” he said, “that they should havegone and tarred Sir Eustace again so soon after Moriartyand I did it?”

Clowes said gravely that it only showedthe force of good example.

“Yes.  They wouldn’thave thought of it, if it hadn’t been for us,”chortled O’Hara.  “I wonder, now, ifthere’s anything else we could do to that statue!”he added, meditatively.

“My good lunatic,” saidClowes, “don’t you think you’ve donealmost enough for one term?”

“Well, ’myes,”replied O’Hara thoughtfully, “perhaps wehave, I suppose.”

       *     *     *     *     *

The term wore on.  Donaldson’swon the final house-match by a matter of twenty-sixpoints.  It was, as they had expected, one of theeasiest games they had had to play in the competition. Bryant’s, who were their opponents, were notstrong, and had only managed to get into the finalowing to their luck in drawing weak opponents for thetrial heats.  The real final, that had decidedthe ownership of the cup, had been Donaldson’sv. Seymour’s.

Aldershot arrived, and the sports. Drummond and O’Hara covered themselves withglory, and brought home silver medals.  But Moriarty,to the disappointment of the school, which had countedon his pulling off the middles, met a strenuous gentlemanfrom St Paul’s in the final, and was prematurelyouted 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 sportsthat Trevor’s connection with the bat ceased—­asfar, that is to say, as concerned its unpleasant character(as a piece of evidence that might be used to hisdisadvantage).  He had gone to supper with theheadmaster, accompanied by Clowes and Milton. The headmaster nearly always invited a few of thehouse prefects to Sunday supper during the term. Sir Eustace Briggs happened to be there.  He hadwithdrawn his insinuations concerning the part supposedlyplayed by a member of the school in the matter of thetarred statue, and the headmaster had sealed theententecordiale by asking him to supper.

An ordinary man might have consideredit best to keep off the delicate subject.  Notso Sir Eustace Briggs.  He was on to it like glue. He talked of little else throughout the whole courseof the meal.

“My suspicions,” he boomed,towards the conclusion of the feast, “whichhave, I am rejoiced to say, proved so entirely voidof foundation and significance, were aroused in thefirst instance, as I mentioned before, by the narrativeof the man Samuel Wapshott.”

Nobody present showed the slightestdesire to learn what the man Samuel Wapshott had hadto say for himself, but Sir Eustace, undismayed, continuedas if the whole table were hanging on his words.

“The man Samuel Wapshott,”he said, “distinctly asserted that a small goldornament, shaped like a bat, was handed by him to alad of age coeval with these lads here.”

The headmaster interposed.  Hehad evidently heard more than enough of the man SamuelWapshott.

“He must have been mistaken,”he said briefly.  “The bat which Trevor iswearing on his watch-chain at this moment is the onlyone of its kind that I know of.  You have neverlost it, Trevor?”

Trevor thought for a moment.Hehad never lost it.  He replied diplomatically,“It has been in a drawer nearly all the term,sir,” he said.

“A drawer, hey?” remarkedSir Eustace Briggs.  “Ah!  A very sensibleplace to keep it in, my boy.  You could have nobetter place, in my opinion.”

And Trevor agreed with him, with themental reservation that it rather depended on whomthe drawer belonged to.

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