What cursed spite was it that turned Dick Forge's footsteps in the direction of the Shrubbery just then? Every good reason was his to be conveniently deaf on that side to-day. No kudos could be derived from stopping yet another of the constantly recurring demonstrations of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. They were his only friends in the school just now, and as such were surely entitled to as much rope as he could discreetly allow them. Yet here he was, urged on to an unpopular action by that stern inner monitor which we know by the name of Duty.
"Now then, you chaps, what's this Bedlam about?" he demanded. "Playing at wild beasts escaping from a menagerie, eh? There's a howling wolf amongst you, at any rate. Why," he exclaimed, as the cordon of Merry Men parted to admit him, "it's young Mawdster again!"
Peter ceased blubbering as suddenly as he began. "Yes, Forge, it's me," he said. "They've slung all my grub up there in the sycamore tree. Make 'em fetch it down for me!"
"Whom do you think you're talking to, Mawdster? Keep your paws off my coat-sleeve, if you please. Why are you always sneaking about in here, making disturbances? Cut off out of it!"
"Shan't!" replied Peter, as bold as brass. He was even looking rather pleased with himself now. "I'm not leaving this shrubbery till they've fetched my grub out of that tree. And you'll make 'em do it, Forge!"
The Merry Men stared in amazement at this defiantly impertinent Squirm. Was his brain, never of average power, softening at last?
"Cheeky little monkey," said Dick. "You're not of my House, or I'd give you the lamming of a lifetime. Report yourself at once to Harwood for insolence. I'll see him myself about you."
Quite unawed, cocksure of the weapon he held in reserve, Peter coolly held his ground.
"No, you won't, Forge," he declared. "You'll either send Robin Arkness up the tree for my food, or fetch it down yourself!"
So brazen an outrage to the dignity of a School Captain could not be tolerated for a moment. Forgetting Foxenby etiquette, which had no precedent for a prefect of one House visiting summary justice on a boy of another, Dick raised his hand to cuff Peter soundly. But the Squirm was too quick for him.
"Lay a finger on me, Forge, and I'll tell my father! Yes, I will, and then he'll come straight to the school and tell Old Wykeham how you cheated him out of every penny of the money he spent on your rottenRooke's House Rag!"
Disgusting little vulgarian! Full well he knew, and vastly did he enjoy, the sensational effect of this revelation amongst the Captain's stanchest supporters. They were clearly staggered by it; he could see them exchanging quick and questioning glances, and the success of his verbal boomerang emboldened him still more.
"I will now have my biscuits and things, Forge, if you please," he smilingly demanded.
Pale with suppressed emotion—anger and chagrin, heart-sinking and mortification—Dick came then to a deliberate decision. Not as Captain of Foxenby, but as plain Dick Forge, grossly insulted in public, would he act.
"You will get what I give you, Mawdster," he quietly said. "And you're not likely to smack your lips over it, either. Turn round!"
"Shan't! If you touch me, I'll tell my father!"
Dick beckoned then to Robin Hood, who ran forward with alacrity.
"Arkness, just you and Flenton swing Mawdster round and hold him tightly for a minute," he ordered.
Oh, what a great day this was for Robin Hood and his Merry Men! Kicking and scratching and struggling in vain, the stout and oily Squirm was manoeuvred by Robin and Flenton into a position lending itself admirably to corporal punishment. Dick's stick, selected from the sycamore, fell like a flail where it would hurt the most and show the least. For sixty seconds or so he spared neither his strength nor Peter's feelings.
Feverishly happy, the Merry Men skipped like frolicsome lambs. Here was rich entertainment indeed—the Captain of Foxenby, in defiance of school traditions, giving a slimy Squirm a first-class whacking in the full glare of publicity!
Grimly finishing his task, Dick threw away the stick, which one of the Merry Men fastened on as a souvenir of the occasion.
"That will do. Release him, you fellows. Now, Mawdster, will you go back to your House at once, or shall I boot you there?"
Mawdster hobbled away, too genuinely sore for noisy sobbing this time, but turning once to shake his fist in ludicrous fury at the Captain.
"You'll pay for this, Forge. Mark my words!" he called back.
And Dick, as he marched away with his hands deep in his trousers pockets, quite believed that he would have to pay for this public vindication of his dignity—pay to the bitter utmost in pitiless exposure and disgrace.
"It is distinctly unusual to grant a specialexeatso early in the term, Forge," said Mr. Rooke, lifting his eyebrows. "Must you really go to Moston this afternoon?"
"That I should go is vital, sir, though I regret I cannot tell you why."
"Rather awkward, though, Forge. Cayton is still away, and Lyon's rule-of-thumb methods do not exactly make him an ideal deputy prefect. Your absence may annoy Mr. Wykeham. Won't you take an afternoon off next week instead?"
"I'm sorry to seem unreasonable, sir. But, with or without a specialexeat, I must go to Moston to-day. So you will see how serious the situation is."
The housemaster shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "Well, Forge, if you put it like that, I suppose I must sign," he said. "Here's yourexeat. Don't be too long away. Discipline is getting rather slacker than I like. There was an appalling hubbub in the shrubbery yesterday. Luckily, Mr. and Mrs. Wykeham were out to tea.... By the way, Forge, I'm sorry for the stoppage of your sprightly littleRag. It was doing the House good. May I help at all—can I do anything?"
Dick was touched by the kindly offer, and had his difficulty been other than a financial one, he would have gladly confided in Mr. Rooke. But he knew the house-master had no private means, and it would be embarrassing to refuse any money that might be volunteered.
"You're awfully good, sir," he said, "and I may take advantage of your kind offer if nothing comes of my visit to Moston."
An hour later Dick had discovered Chuck Smithies in a dark little office at the top of some very steep stairs. On the door was a small brass plate, bearing the words "Smithies' Advance Bank and Commission Agency".
"Hallo, sonny! Got your eye back to its normal colour, I see," was the bookmaker's cheery greeting. "Wanting me particularly?"
"I want you badly," said Dick. Then, having made up his mind to take the plunge, he told Smithies the full story of his editorial dilemma, and anxiously waited to see what his sporting friend would say.
"Sonny," said Smithies, "you're in the clutches of a dangerous man. Mawdster's all 'butter' to your face, all vinegar behind your back. Chairman of 'Welfare' Societies, yet the most uncharitable hypocrite you could meet in a month of Sundays. Always trying to worm himself in with the nobility and gentry—you know the sort of viper I mean. He'll give you short shrift, lad, if you don't steal a march on him."
"But what can I do?" asked Dick, gloomily.
"Pay his bill and have done with him."
"As easy as catching trout with a bent pin. I haven't the money."
"Pooh! That's soon settled. Wait there till I count it out. How much? Shall we say ten or twenty pounds? We'll be on the safe side and call it thirty."
Dick sprang to his feet in evident concern.
"Oh, I say, you know, this will never do. I—I didn't come here to cadge. I wanted you to give me your advice—not your money."
"Softly, softly, my young friend. You've made me count 'em wrong—I must begin again. Who the dickens said I was going to give you money? This is a business transaction, pure and simple. I'm going to lend you the cash to pay off that loathsome toady, Aaron Mawdster. You're just shifting your obligations, lad, from a black man to a 'white' one."
"But I really can't accept your—your splendid generosity," Dick managed to say. He was almost stupefied by the bookmaker's immediate and practical response to his tale of woe. "What guarantee have you that I shall ever pay you back? None whatever!"
"Lad, I prefer some people's honest faces to other people's dishonest signatures. I'll trust you with my money—I'd trust you with my life. Still, don't run away with the idea that this is a favour I'm doing you. It isn't. You'll pay me five per cent on the money when you return it, and that's more than I'd get on it if it were lying idle in the bank. Choose your own time for repayment—I shan't miss that little lot for a year or two. Now, run off and get out of Mawdster's debt, there's a dear lad. I only wish I could come with you, and see his ugly face drop when you pay him!"
Isn't it aggravating how completely words fail you when you want most of all to be profuse in your gratitude? Dick felt an absolute dummy as the bookmaker forced the banknotes into his fingers and hustled him downstairs. This was the man whom, on his journey from King's Cross, he had practically called a liar and a thief! This was the man whose methods of business he had denounced with withering scorn—yet here he stood, clutching a fistful of notes from Smithies' safe, a party to one of those very transactions which he had so emphatically condemned in the train!
"No, no, I can't take this money," he cried, making a last fight against the temptation that was weakening him. "Do have it back, there's a good fellow!"
"Look here, youngster, stop rotting," fiercely replied Mr. Smithies. "I'm a bit of a boxer myself, let me tell you, and, old as I am, I'll set about you and give you worse than you gave Juddy Stockgill if you throw that wretched packet o' money in my teeth again. Are we pals or aren't we? Didn't we shake hands, like two Britons, in the train? And what good's a pal if he won't get his hand down when his pard's in a deuce of a mess? But it ain't a favour in any case—it's a commercial transaction. I've got a mortgage on your honour, so to speak, and that's as safe as the Bank of England!"
Again exhorting Dick to rush straight down to the printer's with the cash, Smithies withdrew smartly into his office and shut the door. Dick heard the key turning in the lock and the scraping of a chair as the bookmaker resumed his seat. He knocked hard and obstinately, pleading for admission.
"Not in!" was the equally stubborn response. "Come another day, sonny, and tell me how old Mawdster takes the swipe you're going to give him!"
Out in the street, Dick looked at the notes he was tightly holding, and placed them in his safest pocket. That was an elementary precaution for a boy who had lost so much loose cash before. Then he turned mechanically in the direction of the printing-office, struggling at every step with his severely unyielding conscience, which was all against his acceptance of the favour, though his heart would fain have acquiesced in it.
To be done with this load of debt which pressed so heavily on his mind—to be free to sleep dreamlessly again, to face the morrow with a head held high! The passport to such happiness was on his person—he had only to sink his perverse pride, and he could be done for ever with the manager of the Moston Cleartype Press!
A waverer's mind can be made up for him, yea or nay, by the accident of chance. Thus was Dick's indetermination brought to an end on this January afternoon. Stepping off the pavement irresolutely, he bumped into the somewhat insignificant person of Mr. Mawdster himself, and almost sent him sprawling into the gutter.
"Clumsy fool, look where you're going!" snapped the printer. Then, noticing who had accidentally buffeted him, he turned ironically polite, even to the point of raising his hat.
"Ah, bon soir, Mr. Forge, delighted to meet you, sir! I fancy there is a little matter of business which awaits settlement between us. Is an agreement possible before matters go too far?"
"It is quite possible, I think!" said Dick, coldly.
Aaron Mawdster gave him a sharp glance. It was difficult to reckon up this haughty schoolboy, whose pride seemed unbendable.
"Very good, sir; this way, if you please."
Dick followed the printer into his office, resolved now to battle no longer against the inclination to be rid of this man's veiled tyranny. Better by far to owe money to a friendly bookmaker than to a blackmailing enemy!
"Now, young man, I had a letter the other day from my poor son, who still complains of vile ill-treatment and lack of protection. My heart bleeds for his sufferings. I am a kind and generous man, Mr. Forge, as Moston people have good reason to know, but I can be a ruthless foe when I choose."
"I know that," Dick commented, without moving a muscle of his face.
"Oh, you know it, do you, Mr. Head-in-the-air! Very well. For positively the last time, do you intend taking my misjudged and ill-used boy under your wing?"
"On the contrary, Mr. Mawdster, I gave the impudent young cub a well-earned thrashing with a stick yesterday!"
Dick might have hurled a hand-grenade at the wall with less effect than this calmly-blunt declaration produced on the printer. Aaron Mawdster's face passed from its wonted pallor to an angry purple.
"You dared to strike my poor weak boy—you, twice his size, beat him with a stick?" A volley of oaths, in the worst slang of a slum pothouse, relieved his feelings here. "Then, you great, hulking bully, I'll cast you in the dust and trample on you!"
"Not literally, I suppose?" Dick said, with contempt. "Look here, Mr. Mawdster, when you've quite emptied yourself of swear-words, you will oblige me by naming the amount of my bill. I want to pay it and go!"
"Bluff!" scoffed the printer. "Why should I waste time making out a bill—what proof have I that you can pay it?"
"'To Simple Simon said the Pieman,First show me your penny',"
Dick quoted, with a laugh, which drew the printer into a fresh outburst of abuse. "So be it; here is the money, Mr. Mawdster, in my hand. Take a good look at it."
It was the act of a novice in the game of commercial poker to lay his cards on the table like that. The printer stared at the notes, and with rapid mental arithmetic summed up their approximate value. Then he took full advantage of his opponent's youthful inexperience.
"My account comes to thirty pounds, four shillings, and sixpence," he said. "Very reasonable, too, allowing for the dearness of paper and labour."
A boy of shrewder business instincts—Roger Cayton, for instance—would have haggled over that figure and possibly secured some reduction. But Dick, though suspicious that he was being overcharged, made no protest. Out of his scanty store of pocket-money he added four-and-sixpence to the notes Smithies had lent him, and laid the full amount on the desk.
Mr. Mawdster made for the cash as a greedy sparrow darts down on crumbs of cake, but Dick quietly put his school-cap over the little pile.
"Pardon me, Mr. Mawdster, but I'll keep this company till you bring the receipt," he said.
"Most insulting," snapped the printer.
"Yet most essential," retorted Dick. "Fizz off, Mr. Mawdster; I don't want to take root here!"
Considering how glibly he had arrived at the total it seemed to take the manager of the Cleartype Press an unusual time to arrange the items of the bill. It filled a quarto-memo, before he was satisfied with it, and altogether looked a very imposing document. But the signature over the stamp was all Dick looked at or cared about.
"That'll do," he said. "Good-bye to you, Mr. Mawdster."
"Stop!" cried the printer, still boiling hot. "I don't know where you got this money from—perhaps I ought to enquire—but don't think you've washed out all your obligations by it, my lad. You have brazenly confessed to beating my poorly son, and I know enough about Foxenby's rules to imagine what a row you'll be in when, to-morrow, I tell Mr. Wykeham of your illegal brutality."
On all counts, this would have been a threat permitting no possible repartee, as it was clearly undeniable that Dick had taken the law into his own hands and broken one of Foxenby's strictest regulations. But Dick had a brain-wave worthy of Roger—a happy thought which made him feel almost proud of his intuition.
"Yes, Mr. Mawdster," he replied, "andIknow sufficient of Moston's social rules to guess what townspeople would think of you, the local paragon, 'the granny white hen that never laid away', if they learnt that you had taken advantage of a schoolboy's misfortunes to try to blackmail him into showing favour to your namby-pamby son. If you come with any of your sneaking tales to Foxenby to-morrow, I can find ways and means of retaliating."
This sudden turning of the tables visibly upset the printer.
"Don't you have the impertinence to libel me, young feller," he snarled. "I possess the unbounded esteem of everybody in Moston."
"Not quite everybody, as I happen to know," retorted Dick, with kindly thoughts of "Chuck" Smithies, whose estimate of Aaron Mawdster's character had provided him with this verbal weapon.
"I don't care what you say," spluttered the angry printer. "I shall come up to Foxenby to-morrow."
"I'm very sure you won't," cried Dick, putting a bold face on his qualms. "Good-bye, Mr. Mawdster. I trust mine may be the pleasure of never seeing your face again!"
Moonlight mingled its rays with daylight as Dick passed up the main street, his heart feeling "like a flake of pure delight borne on an ocean wide". He ran along the pavement, not caring that there were no coins in his pocket to jingle in harmony with his movements. How much better was an easy conscience than a heavy purse!
Knowing that he ought now to get quickly back to school, he was not too pleased to have a detaining hand laid on his sleeve, and to find, on turning abruptly, the grinning face of Fluffy Jim gazing amiably at him.
"Don't try to stop me, Jim, there's a good chap," he said. "I'm in a hurry."
"Um," said Fluffy Jim, "um." But he still kept his tight hold on Dick's sleeve. Something seemed to be on his mind, though he failed in language to express it.
"Anything up, Jim?" queried Dick, impatiently. "If so, get it off your chest. I haven't a minute to spare."
"Um," said Fluffy Jim again. Then, removing from his lips a short clay pipe, he pointed with it to the moonlit hills.
"Want ter show thee summat," he said. "Summat funny, like."
"I dare say you do," said Dick, with a laugh. "But I don't want to be shown—at least not at this end of the day. Try me when we meet again."
"Um," said Jim. Yet he tugged hard and insistently at Dick's sleeve, and there was in his cunning eyes a depth of meaning that impressed Dick in spite of himself.
A spirit of adventure seized the Captain of Foxenby, and a moonlight visit to the hills, on that ideal evening, did not lack attraction for him. Still, he made one more effort to disengage himself from Fluffy Jim's grasp.
"Run away and play, Jim, that's a good boy," he urged. "Your penny show will wait awhile."
"No," said Jim, with quite convincing decision. "Coom now! Want to show thee summat!"
Curiosity got the upper hand of Dick. He pushed back from his mind the repressive thought of Mr. Rooke, who had bidden him return early, and motioned to Fluffy Jim to lead on. There was something rather whimsical in the idea of the Captain of Foxenby playing truant, for all the world like a roving imp from the Junior School!
Off set Fluffy Jim in high feather, making for the moors as fast as he could pull one heavy hobnailed boot after the other. He looked an odd figure of fun in the moonlight, but Dick knew better than to laugh.
"You know, Jim, you did me out of a goal as clean as a whistle in that cup final at Walsbridge," Dick took the opportunity of reminding him.
"Um," grunted Jim.
"Why did you butt in? You robbed us of the cup, Jim."
"Um."
"It's all very fine saying 'um', Jim, but 'um' doesn't cut any ice. Here, I say, tell me this—who put you over the ropes and sent you across to kick the ball from my toes?"
"If Ah telledthee, tha'dknow," was the crafty answer. "And then," he added, unusually communicative, "Ah'd ger a worse 'warmin'' fro' Ike Doccan than Juddy an' his pals wor gi'ing me that day tha stopped 'em."
"Ike Doccan! Why, that's the porter and handyman in Holbeck's House. Didhetell you to do it, Jim?"
But Fluffy Jim was quick enough to see that he had gone too far in mentioning names.
"No, it worn't him. Ah did it mesen, 'cos tha couldn't scoöar. Um!"
Nothing more would he say, despite all Dick's most artful questioning, so that the subject had to be dropped. But in the captain's mind a suspicion had been born. He remembered now the frequency with which Ike Doccan had joined the little group of Holbeck's House Seniors in the days that preceded the final tie. Not in the least snobbish himself, he had nevertheless thought it rather indiscreet, from the standpoint of discipline, for the prefect of Holbeck's House to be seen fraternizing with its porter, whose character for sobriety and good manners was not above reproach. He had, indeed, been twice dismissed for drunkenness, and twice reinstated because school porters were hard to find.
"Now," thought Dick, "I wonder if that precious gang were gambling on the match—betting against Foxenby winning—and didn'twantme to score? By Jove! I recollect Smithies hinting in the train that some of our chaps had made bets with him, but I jumped down his throat about it. I guess it'll soon be my painful duty to have a talk with Luke Harwood about this."
By this time they had reached the crest of the long hill which led to the moors. The early moon shone clear upon the rough heathland path, along which Jim silently plodded.
"What's your game, anyhow, Jim? Strikes me you've brought me all this way on a fool's errand."
"Want to show thee summat."
"'Summat', yes—but where is 'summat'?"
"In t'owd cottage. Here 'tis. Come inside."
With quickening interest, Dick followed the idiot into the empty cottage, through the paneless casement of which the moonlight streamed on a scene of dilapidation. The oven door of a rusty kitchen-stove stood open, and in the corner was a tumbled pile of abandoned tinware. Condemned as unfit for habitation, the cottage had obviously been left to fall asunder in its own time.
"Well, Jim, there's nothing here to write home about," said Dick. "Come, now, own up that you've been making a fool of me, and let's get away."
"Ah'm not hevin' thee for t'mug," said Jim solemnly. "There's summat here 'at'll please thee. Ah fun it art for mesen. Noabody knows but me. This ere floor plays a tune. Listen!"
He raised his heavily-booted feet with deliberation and commenced a shuffling dance, grotesquely like the performance of a captive bear. And sure enough to Dick's profound astonishment, the floor did play a tune a jingle that, though harsh, was sufficiently musical to wreathe the face of the idiot dancer in a delighted grin.
"Ah telled thee—didn't Ah tell thee?" cried Jim, in great excitement. "Music!
'All around the mulberry bush,Pop goes the weasel',"
he sang, kicking up his legs in ludicrous imitation of a pierrot outside a travelling show.
"Here, slow down, Jim—that's enough! Got any matches in your pocket? Good! A stump of a candle, too? Better still! Stick it in the neck of that old beer-bottle—right-o! Now, just you lean up against the window to keep the draught off, while I make a light. Don't move from there, Jim. I want to see what's under these musical floor-boards of yours."
Shielding the flickering candle with his body, he examined the boards, and immediately saw that they had been fastened down with new nails. They seemed loose, but not loose enough to be prized up by his pen-knife, the larger blade of which snapped off when he tried his luck with it.
"Bother!" he exclaimed. "The little blade's no use. Got a knife of any sort on you, Jim?"
Jim produced a huge clasp-knife, containing a blade as strong as a file.
"T'coastguard gave me this," he chuckled. "Ah cuts me baccy wi' it. Catch!"
Such an instrument was as good as a carpenter's tool to Dick. Speedily he had raised one of the boards, and for the moment dropped it again in sheer astonishment, so amazing was the discovery which his peering eyes made. In the light of the candle he had seen coins and medals and bric-a-brac, jumbled hastily together as though they had been poured there from a sack.
Quickly regaining his control, he forced up another and yet another of the boards, with the revelation of precious curios in each case.
"Jumping crackers! Here we have the headmaster's missing collection, or I'm a Dutchman. Jim, don't stand grinning there like an ape. Come over here and sit on these boards until I return. I'm going to Moston as fast as I can gallop, and I'll get back in quick-sticks. Don't you dare to move from here, Jim. Smoke your pipe, and I'll buy you some more baccy later on—packets of it. You're sure you can stick it here by yourself?"
"JIM, DON'T STAND THERE GRINNING LIKE AN APE""JIM, DON'T STAND THERE GRINNING LIKE AN APE"
"Um," said Jim, settling down on the boards like a contented hen covering chickens.
Still apprehensive, Dick uttered a final caution—perhaps more effective than his previous warning.
"If you do leave here, Jim, I'll lam you when next I catch you."
"Um," said Jim, evidently impressed.
He proved a faithful custodian, being still there, squatting in a cloud of rank tobacco-smoke, when Dick returned with an inspector and two constables, who proceeded solemnly to lift out the curios one by one, and by the light of their lanterns to make a careful note of each.
"I call this a funeral," said Dick. "Can't we bundle them all in the bags and get off to Foxenby? You're cheating Old Man Wykeham out of hours of joy by this game!"
"Sorry, Mr. Forge, but it must be done," said the inspector. "If the head-master misses anything that ought to be here, he'll know the burglars are to blame. Us police has to be particular. We has nasty things said about us sometimes."
In consequence of all this ceremony the moon had climbed much higher before the little party, having left a policeman to watch the cottage, moved laboriously down the hillside in the direction of Moston. Here a formal call had to be made at the police-station to report the thrilling discovery, after which a swift motor-car took Dick and the inspector up to the school.
The head-master had just risen from a frugal dinner, and was again engaged upon a task which had hitherto baffled his intensest efforts—that of piecing together in manuscript the descriptive details of the precious curios which had for so many weeks been missing.
So deeply engrossed was he in this exacting memory test that even the announcement of the inspector's coming conveyed little to his mind. Therefore, when the inspector and Dick came in, each bearing a heavy bag, he gazed at them with a lack-lustre eye, as though he imagined them to be commercial travellers arriving with samples of school books.
The inspector saluted. "Your missing property sir," he said. "Will you examine it, please, and compare it with the list made by me on the spot?"
Crash went the head-master's chair on the floor, and down amongst his manuscript went his glasses. With an almost juvenile bound he reached the bags, satisfied himself at a glance that the recovery was indeed genuine, and then turned to wring the inspector's hand effusively.
The inspector backed away as though he feared being kissed next.
"Don't thank me, sir; you owe it all to Mr. Forge here. It was he who put us on the right track."
In official phrases he gave the Head particulars of the discovery, with results that embarrassed Dick, who had never quite "hit it" with "Old Man Wykeham", and was always more or less ill-at-ease in his presence. This was not surprising, seeing that everybody knew the Head would have preferred Luke Harwood as Captain of the School.
"A thousand thanks, Forge! Oh, bless my soul, boy, where's my handkerchief—I must dab my eyes—I verily believe I am shedding tears of joy, Inspector. Forge, dear lad—I'm the happiest man in England to-day. All my precious curios are here, and with scarcely a scratch on them. What could have possessed the burglars to dump them down under the floor of that disused cottage?"
"Probably their pockets would be stuffed with stolen silver and notes, sir," the inspector suggested, "and, finding us hot on their trail, they decided to hide your coins and things till the hue and cry had died down. They'll come nosing back for 'em, sir, as sure as fate. Then we shall nab them, as we mean to leave officers concealed there day and night."
"It is all very exciting—I feel mentally upside down. Dear me, how very ungrateful you will think me, too. I was forgetting the reward. For the recovery of my collection I offered fifty pounds—a mere bagatelle compared with their value to me. Priceless treasures! My Charles the First slip-top spoons in particular—I fretted badly over those, and here they are, safe and sound. Forge, the reward is yours, and right well deserved, too. Take a seat, dear boy, while I write out your cheque."
"No, no, sir, nothing of the kind!" Dick hastened to say. "If the reward must be paid, it should go to Fluffy Jim, the half-witted village youth. But for him, the collection might not have been found. He took me straight to it."
"That's true, Mr. Wykeham," interposed the inspector; "but Daft Jim would never have thought of taking up the floor-boards. He was merely amusing himself with the music, as he called it. The credit is really Mr. Forge's, sir."
"You have all acted splendidly," the Head said. "There is no need at all for splitting hairs. I am fairly well-to-do, Inspector, as you doubtless know, and the total loss of my invaluable collection would have blighted the hopes of a lifetime. Forge shall have his fifty pounds (silence, my boy—I insist!), you and your staff shall hear from me later, Inspector, and Jim's parents shall receive a sufficient recognition of his services to enable them to purchase warm clothing and substantial comforts for him.
"It is," he added, after a pause, "the very least I can do in grateful acknowledgment of my amazing good fortune. I am only sorry that I alone should have benefited, and that nobody else's property appears to have been recovered. That's particularly hard lines on you, Forge, who lost so much in cash. May I hope that you will now resume the publication of your bright little house magazine?"
Dick looked hard at the cheque in his hand. It seemed as though he were playing a part in a stage play—that he would awake to find it a dream.
"I should like to start theRagagain, sir, but better luck will be needed next time."
The Head laughed joyously. "No more burglaries here, I trust! You'll see to that, won't you, Inspector? And Forge, remember this, if ever you get into difficulties again, be more confiding about them and come to me. I think I can promise you that theRooke's House Ragwill never again cease publication for lack of funds."
Immediately after breakfast the Head called the boys together in the hall and gave them a graphic account of the recovery of his collection, praising the blushing captain sky-high. Then he gave the school a holiday, and topped it by declaring that "some very special dainties" would be provided for supper that night.
It was a red-letter day all round. Robin Hood and his Merry Men held high revelry in the Forest, and even called a truce with the Squirms so that there might be no shadow on the day's sunshine.
They were not tempted from grace, either, by the red-rag irritation of Peter Mawdster's presence. That sick and sorry youth took advantage of the holiday to slip down home, and, for some reason never publicly explained, he was seen at Foxenby no more. Possibly his doting parents decided to remove him to a less robust and more genteel atmosphere than that which Foxenby afforded. Anyhow, his disappearance had no more effect on the school than the swift death of a midge in a summer thunderstorm.
Dick took his fifty-pound cheque to the head-master's bank and withdrew thirty-five pounds of it, leaving the remainder on deposit in his own name. Then he hunted up "Chuck" Smithies, who was amusing himself by turning over a portfolio of old sporting prints.
"Hallo, sonny! Come to tell me how you ticked off that jelly-fish, Aaron Mawdster, yesterday afternoon? I can see by your face that you wrung the low-down animal's withers for him!"
"Thanks to you, I metaphorically mopped him up," said Dick.
The bookmaker roared with laughter over Dick's unvarnished account of the printing-office interview, in which the captain had seen nothing particularly funny at the time.
"You rattled the hypocrite's teeth with a rasping upper-cut there, lad," said Smithies. "Oh, I'll laugh till I cry! Threatening to expose him as a blackmailer got right through his sanctimonious guard. He'd dread that. You could have bowled him out with it, whether you'd paid him or not."
"I paid him, though. He took all you lent me and some odd shillings besides."
"Exactly what he would do, the dirty blighter! But here, I say, what are you trying on, youngster? Repaying me already?" He stared almost resentfully at the thirty-five pounds which Dick laid before him. "Been picking paper-money off trees, kid, or what is it? Pardon me if I seem dazed, but——"
"Please take it, Smithies. I'd the luck of a lifetime yesterday." Briefly Dick described his moonlit trip to the hills with Fluffy Jim, and what came of it. "So, you see, I can repay your kind loan with a balance in hand."
What seemed distinctly like a shade of annoyance crossed the bookmaker's face. "Sonny, we parted on good terms yesterday—don't strew tacks under the wheel of friendship to-day. Am I Shylock, that you should plunk down a fiver for a day's interest on thirty pounds? I'll take back what I lent you and not a penny more."
Dick felt rather foolish. "But you said it was a business transaction," he replied, defensively. "I'm most awfully sorry if I've unwittingly hurt your feelings—do please forgive me for being such a clown. I—I only thought it would be rather nice to make you a little friendly acknowledgment of your great kindness."
"Well, you've put it on the wrong footing, youngster, that's all. 'Business transaction' was my camouflage for it. Just a loan to oblige a pal—which it did, thank goodness, in putting you top-side of Aaron Mawdster yesterday. There, now, take no notice of my bluster—I'm only kidding. Take back your fiver and give me instead a little souvenir of the occasion—one I rather fancy."
"Whatever it is, it's yours, Smithies," Dick eagerly agreed.
"A photograph of yourself in football togs—this size—to fit into my portfolio of sporting cracks."
"The honour's mine there," said Dick. He bethought himself of Robin Arkness's autograph-book, and smiled. "You're putting me early into the gallery of Fame! I hate being photographed, Smithies, but you shall have the picture. Mr. Rooke will take it—he's a wizard with a camera."
"That'll suit me down to the ground, sonny. It'll be a nice memento to put beside a photograph of the football cup, which you're sure to win next time.
"For," added the bookmaker inwardly, as Dick left the office, "I'm taking no bets on that replay from Ike Doccan's dirty paw. If he wasn't acting for a few schoolboys who meant Foxenby no good, I'll eat my go-to-meeting suit of clothes."
Dick had swung happily half-way back to school when he observed Robin Arkness running towards him breathlessly. The Junior waved at him an orange-coloured envelope.
"A telegram for you, Forge," he announced. "I saw you come down here, so I risked bringing it along."
"Jolly decent of you, youngster—thanks," said Dick, trying to behave as though telegrams were an everyday event with him, though his pulse was rapid as he opened the envelope and read its contents.
"Kid, what splendid news you've brought me! Cayton is coming back to school by the midday train, and wants me to meet him. We've just time to celebrate it. Come and have a lemonade or something."
The "something" spread itself out into quite a classy midday feed for Robin, who, having done himself proud at the smiling captain's expense, hurried back to school to scatter envy among his less fortunate comrades. It was then time for the train, which brought with it a paler but much-happier-looking Roger than the anxious prefect who left Foxenby in December.
"Why, Roger, old boy," said Dick, when they had treated themselves to a very fervent handshake, "I expected to see you a limping crock, looking justifiably sorry for yourself, yet you're laughing all across your face and half-way down your back. Does being feverishly ill buck a chap up so much as all that?"
"Dear old Dick, I meant to keep it dark till we were locked in our study to-night, but I simply can't hold it in. It's ripping tidings I've got for you—top-hole!"
"Judging by your beaming countenance, it must be."
"Laddie, it's great! I'm no longer a 'deadhead', financially speaking, in theRooke's House Ragpartnership. I can go shares in the cost, whatever it is. I've made money—I'm a professional author!"
"No, never! Get away with your nonsense, Roger!"
"It's sober truth, old Doubting Thomas. I've a savings-bank book in my pocket, showing that twenty guineas is standing to my credit. And every penny of that was made by writing—I've the proofs of the series of sketches in my pocket, and you and I are going to correct them together to-night!"
He had an enraptured and admiring auditor in Dick as he explained how, determined to do his bit towards making good the loss of theRag'ssubscription-money, he had conceived the idea of writing a dialect sketch descriptive of the quaint customs and mannerisms of his own village. By great good fortune the simple humour of it had caught the fancy of the first editor to whom he offered it. "Send me eleven more brief sketches in the same vein," wrote the editor, "and I'll pay you twenty guineas for the dozen."
It was, Roger admitted, a staggering commission, and ultimately it overweighted him. What with tramping about in search of "local colour" in the daytime, and then sitting up secretly at nights in order to transfer his thoughts to paper, he broke down, and only just finished the job in time—indeed, he had no recollection of actually posting the series, and was only certain he had done so when, a few days before returning to school, he had received the promised cheque in payment.
"There was absolutely nothing in them, old chap—the simplest stuff you could imagine. I said as much to the editor-chap, who replied that their simplicity was their charm. I just jotted down the fairy-stories of the district, and described the funny folk who told them, and it clicked."
"You're a wise old bird, Roger," said Dick, almost worshipping this revelation of his chum's intellect. "I shall put a special paragraph in the newRagabout all this—yes, I shall—I'm editor-in-chief, so you can't stop me. Now, it'syourturn to listen tome, and I think my tale about even beats yours, old lad!"
An opinion which Roger emphatically confirmed when, despite many excited interruptions from him, Dick had completed the yarn.
"Great!" commented Roger. "A thrill from beginning to end. Isn't it strange how things work out? Grand bit of compensation that Fluffy Jim, after spoiling your goal, should put that fifty-pound reward right under your nose. Rough gratitude for your services in snatching him from Juddy Stockgill's clutches, though he only meant to show you his 'cottage musical-box'."
They spent a happy afternoon in their study, exchanging confidences over the fire concerning almost everything that had happened during their enforced separation. One thing, and one thing only, did Dick keep from Roger, and that was his suspicion that Luke Harwood had had some hand in messing up the final tie. He wanted to bring an unprejudiced mind to that subject when he discussed it with Luke, which he fully intended to do at the first opportunity.
By dusk Roger knew nearly as much about Foxenby's affairs as if illness had not kept him away. He was sympathetic about the misfortune that had overtaken Dick's aunt, but rather thought that he would personally be able to make up for any loss of pocket-money in that direction by writing more sketches for the Press. Which shows how little success is needed to make an amateur author vain.
"TheRagmust come out again," he said, "and that right speedily. The firm that prints theFoxonianshall do it for us this time—they're clean and above reproach."
"Right you are," said Dick. "I'm game. In an hour the fellows will be trooping in to supper which the Old Man is making a toothsome event to-night. On their way they'll pass the notice-board."
And thus it happened that, after a happy day of unexpected liberty, the Foxes were able to read more sympathetically than they would have done a day or two before, the following intimation on the hall notice-board:—
THE ROOKE'S HOUSE RAG
The Editors of the above Magazine have pleasure in informing its readers that its publication will be resumed within the course of a few weeks.
It is hoped to introduce some new features of special interest in the forthcoming number.
Richard Forge, }Roger Cayton, } Editors.
In the matter of freedom from irksome boundaries Foxenby was a school to be envied.
Moston, certainly, could not be visited at any time without permission, nor were the boys allowed to roam the rocky and dangerous seashore at their own sweet will; but to the north-west of the school there were great stretches of kindly moorland over which they could wander without coming to any harm, and they were given every chance to imbibe the ozone of the hills at week-ends and on holidays.
Shrove Tuesday, with its generous supply of pancakes, usually tended towards languor, and most of the Squirms remained indoors to sleep off their too-liberal helpings. The sound of their snoring, as they sprawled about on the furniture of the common-room, disgusted Robin Arkness.
"Oh, I say, my Merry Men, we can't stick this," he said. "Hear how the pigs grunt."
"It's like being in a farm-yard," remarked Flenton.
"Shall we stir the porkers up with our trusty cross-bows—yclept, these pea-shooters—and then engage them in mortal combat? Nay, in this sottish state they are not worthy foemen. Right about turn, boys. We will hie us up yonder hills for an afternoon's ramble."
"Ay, ay, good Robin," the Merry Men readily agreed.
It was a clear, frosty day, and even the bright sun shine did little to neutralize the sharp nip in the air. It meant moving briskly to keep the blood in circulation; the higher they climbed, the keener blew the breeze.
"Ripping way to get warm, doing the 'Excelsior' stunt up this hillside," said Robin enthusiastically. "See that cottage in front of the fir trees, Men? That's where Forge found Old Man Wykeham's valuables."
"By Jove, let's have a squint inside it," Little John suggested.
"Softly, my faithful henchman! Dost thou not know that this self-same cottage is guarded, night and day, by the myrmidons of the law?"
"But the coppers won't interfere with us. They know we're all from Foxenby, and mean no harm. Come on!"
"Nay hold! Thou art my right-hand man, Little John, and many a time and oft have I had cause to be thankful for the doughty assistance of thy strong right arm. But methinks thou art far from possessing the wisdom of a Socrates."
"Go on, call me a blinking ass and have done with it," said Flenton, rather ruefully.
"No offence, my trusty bowman. Canst thou not see, however, that to enter the cottage boldly will be to bring down on our helpless heads the wrath of the police? They are not in the cottage itself, but hidden amongst the gorse-bushes, ready to pounce on the thieves if they venture inside."
"Oh, pot it, must we go back then?"
"Perish the thought! Never let it be said that Robin Hood and his Merry Men turned their backs on any peril, however dire. We will creep round them with stealthy, noiseless tread, and see if the varlets are doing their duty as nobly as they should, or, like the greedy Squirms, merely sleeping off the effects of pancakes."
The suggestion, though not so much to the Merry Men's liking as Flenton's projected exploration of the cottage, nevertheless held promise of a little mild adventure, and they acted on it. Creeping from bush to bush with scarcely a sound, they came at last in sight of two plain-clothes policemen, dressed as builder's labourers, sitting on some dried bracken-leaves, and looking anything but gay.
Probably they had been forbidden to speak, for they were conversing rather guiltily in low tones, the burden of their complaint being that though they had pipes and tobacco in their pockets they dared not light them.
"This is a daft and perishin' job," said one of them. "I'd like to wring the neck of Fluffy Jim for stumbling across them pewter pots and coins."
"Nay, that's ungrateful," retorted his mate. "We each got a quid of Old Wykeham's money out of the job."
"Bah! It'll cost me more than any quid to sweat this cold out of my bones. My teeth chatter like a baboon's. Got a drop or two left in your flask, Sam?"
"Drained it dry half-an-hour since, Bill."
"And it'll be two more floggin' hours afore we're relieved from duty. I'm fed up. I'll resign from the Force, pension or no pension, and take to navvyin'."
"No use, Bill. Once a policeman, always a policeman. It's in the blood."
"There's nowt i' my blood just now but icicles, Sam. Where's the use of this night-and-day vigil, anyhow? Although the recovery of the treasure was kept out of the newspapers, it's quite likely the cracksmen will have got wind of it by this, and won't come near."
"Won't they! I reckon they will. What troubles me is how they're goin' to be nabbed when they do. It'll be two policemen against four thieves, mebbe, and they're sure to have the latest thing in quick-firing revolvers."
"Oh, drop that! You make me creepy, Sam, all up t'spine. I've got a wife and childer, and don't want to die just yet."
"Might be better to be shot dead than to peg out o' frost-bite, anyhow. Here, I say, Bill, have a glance down the hill—careful, now! Who's this queer-looking image crawling up towards us?"
"Why, only one o' them tourist cranks that walks round here in all weathers. Got half-a-vanful of tin mugs and spare socks strapped on his back, you'll notice. Loads himself up like a pack-horse and calls it sport."
"He's waddlin' this way. What shall we do if he stops to talk?"
"Talk back, of course; anything for a change."
The perspiring tourist dropped his stick at the sight of the two men and started back nervously.
"Hallo!" he exclaimed. "Pardon me—I didn't notice you. Like me, you are lovers of Nature, and are drinking the sweet nectar of this gorgeous hill-air into your lungs."
Both the plain-clothes men looked as if they'd much prefer to be drinking beer, but they grunted by way of reply. Unabashed, the tourist unstrapped his knapsack, and sat upon it. Then he wiped his brow on a dingy red handkerchief, and stroked an iron-grey beard as he gazed dreamily towards the sea.
"I was told that I must on no account miss the view from the top of the hill—the grandest aspect on the East Coast," he said. "It is, indeed, a joy to look upon it.
"'This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle....This precious stone set in the silver sea',
as Shakespeare truly says. Ah, what a rich and rare delight it is to be alive on such a day as this!"
Sam touched his forehead significantly as he looked at Bill.
"Barmy!" Bill's answering glance seemed to say.
"Ah! New life courses through my all-too-sluggish veins to-day. For ever have I done with the softening influence of the fireside.
"'Better to hunt in fields for health unboughtThan fee the doctor for a nauseous draught.'
What do you say, friends? Surely you realize the great boon that is yours in being able to spend so much of your lives in such an enchanted spot?"
This was rubbing it in with a vengeance, and Bill could keep silence no longer.
"You can cart the bloomin' landscape away with you, if you like, sir," he said. "We're dead sick of bein' anchored to it."
"God bless my soul! Just think of that!" cried the tourist.
"'Breathes there a man with soul so deadWho never to himself hath said,This is my own, my native land?'
Good fellows, you take my breath away. You have made me feel the need of refreshment. With your indulgence, I will consume a sandwich."
He produced a packet of sandwiches, extracted one and demolished it with evident relish, quoting poetry all the time about the beauties of meat and drink. Two more sandwiches followed the first, and then, unscrewing the top of a flask, he set it to his lips and drank.
And what a thirst he had. What ample accommodation for liquor! Not once did he remove the flask from his mouth until the contents had gurgled down his throat. Even then he seemed reluctant to admit that he had drained the last drop, for he glanced into the recesses of the flask with a wistful and still-thirsty eye.
"Greedy beggar!" muttered Bill to Sam. "Never even offered us a 'wet', and us half-frozen to death!"
Whether the tourist heard this whispered comment or not was problematical, but he seemed suddenly to become aware that two pairs of eyes were fixed upon him yearningly. He jumped up with an apologetic air.
"Please forgive me," he said. "Really, you will think me most impolite. Permit me to offer you a sandwich each. Nay, take two apiece. Don't be afraid of them; they won't bite you."
"Then we'll bite them, thankee, sir," said Sam, proceeding to find the sandwiches a good home within his hungry anatomy.
Between them, the plain-clothes men, urged to do so by the tourist, polished off the sandwiches. Then they drew the backs of their hands across their mouths and sighed.
"Satisfied?" queried the tourist, laughingly.
"Never enjoyed a bit o' grub so much in my life," said Bill.
"Ditto," said Sam. "If any fault could be found, there was a bit too much salt in 'em. Conducive to thirst rather."
"Now, isn't that vexing?" said the tourist. "If only I had thought of you before emptying the flask! There isn't a house of refreshment within miles."
"We couldn't go to it if there was," Bill began, and then bit his lip as Sam violently nudged him to be silent.
"Ah, I have it!" the tourist cried. "Wait a moment till I unstrap my knapsack. I have a little flask in there which I keep in reserve. It contains some rather fine old cognac—an excellent pick-me-up. If I might offer you a draught of that—but perhaps you are teetotal?"
"Not on your dreamy eyes," said Bill, with unconcealed eagerness.
"We'll be glad of a wee reviver, thankee, sir," said the more tactful Sam. "It's a cold job waiting here for the—for the boss."
"You're very truly welcome, gentlemen." So saying, the tourist half-filled the top of the empty flask with some of the contents of the smaller one. "Which of you drinks first?"
Bill's impoliter hand stretched farthest, and it was he who first had the delight of smacking his lips over the spirit. Excellent it must have been, for his countenance glowed.
"Fit for a king, guv'nor," he pronounced it. "It's gingered up every nook and cranny of me."
"Powerful stuff, certainly," the tourist agreed. "I only touch it now and again, when feeling rather fagged. Your turn now, my friend."
Sam, more studious of the correct manner, sipped his cognac appreciatively.
"Better stuff than that never warmed the cockles of a man's heart, sir," he said. "I'm main obliged to you, for sure."
The tourist gazed into his flask with a measuring eye.
"I think I might safely spare another wee drappie," he said. "Feel like another drain, either of you?"
They both declared they did—Bill with emphasis, Sam with faint reluctance.
The tourist obliged them. Then, conveniently blind to the doglike pleading of Bill's enamoured eye, he screwed up the flask and returned it to his knapsack.
"Gives me a Good Samaritan-like feeling to see you both so refreshed," he said. "I must be getting farther on now, though I could stay till sunset in the enraptured contemplation of this ideal view. How sweetly the moon and stars will rise o'er yonder sea.
"'Silently, one by one, in the infinite meadows of HeavenBlossomed the lovely stars,'"
he quoted, with many theatrical gestures.
"You seem to know a wonderful lot of poetry, sir," said Sam, with the inward reservation that this generous stranger was certainly something of a harmless lunatic.
"I could speak verse to you for hours, friend—beautiful stuff from all the greatest poets, living and dead. Will it interest you at all if I recite a page or two from Homer'sIliador from Byron'sChilde Harold?"
Both Sam and Bill would have preferred a page or two from a sporting paper, but the rich spirit, so unfamiliar to their palates, had made them amiably disposed towards the eccentric tourist, and quite ready to humour his whims.
"Give it mouth, guv'nor," said Bill, settling himself down in the dried bracken again.
"Fire away, sir," said Sam.
And "fire away" the stranger did, spouting yards of rigmarole which the two plain-clothes men tried in vain to follow. To them, it was duller even than the prosiest magisterial speeches they had ever heard in Court. It made them sleepy; they could scarcely refrain from yawning in his face.
Bill kept closing his eyes, and each time he remembered himself it took a still greater effort to open them again. Sam, too, grew drowsier and drowsier. The sound of the reciter's voice appeared to become muffled and distant; was he wound up for the day—would he never stop?
"That'll do, guv'nor," Bill protested at last. "Had—'bout 'nuff of it. Can't keep awake—if you go on—much—longer."
"'Ear, 'ear, Bill," murmured Sam, forgetting to be polite. "Them's my—sentiments—'xactly."
"Old gasbag, I—calls—him," grunted Bill.
Those were the last words either of them spoke that afternoon. Rolling over, almost simultaneously, on the bracken, they lay there in a stupor, breathing heavily, lost to all about them, deaf at last to the droning tones of the reciter.
"Hallo! They've dropped off," said the tourist. His voice held no hint of wounded pride—rather did it seem eloquent of satisfaction. He leaned over the sleepers and shook them violently in turn. Their heads waggled to and fro, but neither took any heed.
"Absolutely doped," the stranger muttered. "Given them an over-dose, perhaps, but that can't be helped. Now for the rest of the performance."
Moving now with remarkable speed for so elderly-looking a man, he drew from his knapsack a couple of flags, one red, one white, and ran with them to the very crest of the hill. Then he made some rapid signals, waited half-a-minute as though for an answer, and semaphored again. Apparently satisfied, he returned to the spot where the two plain-clothes policemen snored, and stood over them, watch in hand.
"The car will be up in two minutes," he said, softly. "Bravo, Cyrus the Poet! Thou hast done thy work well."
Mice could have been little quieter than Robin Hood and his Merry Men during the whole of the passages between the two plain-clothes policemen and the talkative stranger.
Almost bursting with mirth at first, they followed Robin's example by stuffing their handkerchiefs into their mouths to stifle their laughter.
The fact that the afternoon was cold for crouching about amongst bushes did not concern them—they had watched football on much colder days. What was an occasional shiver compared with such undiluted amusement as this? How glad they were then that they had taken Robin's advice to conceal themselves, instead of blundering into the empty cottage at Little John's fatheaded suggestion.
Later, agog with excitement, they had something to do to hold their tongues, as it became evident to most of them that the stranger was playing a dirty trick on the two disguised policemen. Robin got out of his pocket a scrap of paper and wrote on it the one word "drugged". This was passed from hand to hand, and all the Merry Men nodded in agreement.
There was need of his strong and quick leadership, too, when the stranger's flag-signalling began. Again using paper as an agent, Robin pencilled a few directions to Flenton, who handed the slip to the three other boys mentioned on it. He and this trio were the sturdiest runners in the Junior school, and their instructions were to steal quietly off by the Bramble Path, known to the Foxes as the easiest descent other than the roadway, and, while taking care not to be seen, reach the police-station as speedily as possible and inform the Chief Constable of the strange things that were happening. The Bramble Path was a narrow sunken track that wound steeply down the hillside through closely-growing brambles and bushes. It afforded a first-rate hidden escape from the neighbourhood of the cottage for the Foxes, who were not without practice in the art of moving silently and taking advantage of cover.
Meanwhile, Robin did some furious thinking. He calculated the chances of a successful attack upon the sham tourist, but abandoned that idea as melodramatic, not to say dangerous. Moreover, he had been near enough to overhear what the stranger said about the swift coming of a car, and where, he reflected, would be the sense of tackling one offender, when there might be three or four others in league with him?
Robin had the gumption to see that a battle with grown men, most probably armed, on this lonely moorland, would be a very different thing indeed from a wild rough-and-tumble with the Squirms in Foxenby's Forest. This was no cinema rehearsal, but a grimly realistic piece of business, with which no Fourth Form schoolboys had the strength to grapple. Whatever was done, therefore, must be accomplished by silent strategy.
Motioning the Merry Men to remain quietly in their somewhat cramped positions, he waited with fast-beating heart until the throbbing of a motor-engine indicated that the expected car was climbing the hill. Half-a-minute later the car drew up, and two small, thick-set men, each carrying what appeared to be ordinary travelling-bags, hurriedly joined the verse-reciting stranger.
"Why the deuce did you keep us waiting so long?" irritably inquired one of them. "Wasn't the coast clear?"
The "tourist" pointed to the two drugged men on the ground.
"I stumbled across this typical pair of British working-men sitting here as though they'd taken root—waiting for their boss to come, they said. Probably they were going to start pulling the cottage down. I had to win their confidence and dope them, as you see. Of course, it took time."
"Bully for you, Cyrus!" was the admiring admission. "You're sure they're safe?"
"Try them. See this."
The poet turned one of the policemen half over and let him roll back with a thud. The drugged man snored on.
"That's all right. Now let's hurry up with the job before their boss does come, what?"
They all three disappeared into the cottage.
Robin wasted not a moment. Already, by means of another slip of paper, he had arranged with Dave what to do. As swiftly as they dared the pair ran to the waiting and unattended motor-car. Each had his penknife ready. Robin selected a front wheel and Dave a back one. Rapidly they plunged their knives up to the hilt a few times into the tyres.
"That'll settle 'em," whispered Robin, triumphantly. "Now, let's have all the Merry Men creep farther back from the danger-zone. We've got to see this thing through."
A few of the less-adventurous spirits "got the wind up" and made off down the Bramble Path, but Robin was not sorry to see them go, particularly as they were careful to make no noise. In the last resource, if the security of the remainder were threatened, they, too, could make themselves scarce by the same convenient route.
Barely another minute had elapsed before a medley of very hard swearing proceeded from the interior of the cottage. It had not taken long to wrench up the boards, which the police had nailed down again after forge's discovery, and the thieves were doubtless feeling as Mother Hubbard did when she opened the bare cupboard door. These particularly dirty dogs had not even a bone to console themselves with, either!
For reasons dictated by prudence, however, the thieves quickly stopped their angry noise, and came darting out of the cottage in a violent hurry. Into the motor-car they leapt, the bearded reciter proving the sprightliest of the three. It was a self-starting car of a first-class make, and ought to have bounded forward at a touch of the driver's hand. Instead, it tottered jerkily for a few yards, causing the driver to draw up with a frightened oath.
"Punctured, by jingo!" he cried. "One of those confounded gorse-thorns must have jabbed itself into us as we rushed up the incline. Outside, chaps! Quick! Lift off the spare wheel and let's have it fixed. Those fellows behind there may be waking presently."
"Here it is, on this side—the front wheel!" cried the reciter. "All together, boys, and we'll have her on in a jiffy!"
The urgency of the occasion speeded their efforts, and soon they were ready for re-starting. But yet another bitter disappointment awaited them.
"Confound it, the old bus won't get a move on even now!" snarled the driver. "What in thunder's amiss with her?"
They stared at each other in blank dismay for a moment. Then out jumped the driver again, and his voice had a note of dread in it as he called out that the rear wheel was punctured too.
"Impossible!" said the reciter, "an unheard-of thing!"
"See for yourself, idiot!" snapped the driver. "It's no thorn puncture, either. Somebody's shoved a knife into the tyre. Here's a hole—clean cut."
The other two made a rapid examination of the tyre and came to the same conclusion.
"But who the blazes could have done it?" queried the reciter. "Not those two sots behind us. I doped them too well; they're snoring still."
"The repair outfit, quick," the driver commanded. "Willy nilly, we've got to mend this tyre or foot it, and on Shanks' pony we may not be so lucky this time. Somebody—goodness knows who—is aware we are here, and has slashed us up. It's the car or nothing for us, now."
With feverish haste they applied every art of which they were capable to the repair of the tyre. But not all the mechanical skill in the world can perform miracles, and there is no royal road to tyre-mending. Minutes that were precious to the trio slipped by, and, though they encountered no set-back in their task, it nevertheless seemed an endless one. Therefore, their nerves had reached a pitch of high tension when the unmistakable sound of a swiftly-moving car caught their startled ears.
"What's this?" said the driver anxiously. "Who could need to be driving up here, and at dusk, too?"
"You're easily rattled, Dodger," sneered Cyrus the Poet. "Most probably it's the car of a local doctor, called out to some yokel with a stomach-ache."
"I'm not so sure," the driver said. "Things don't look healthy. I vote we hop it. The swag's gone—the car's crocked—it's bad luck to hang around here."
He proved a true prophet. Just as he finished speaking the other car glided swiftly into view, and was upon them before they could stir. Half a dozen men seemed literally to jump out of it upon the shoulders of the trio. They were men, too, of powerful north-country build, almost ox-like in their strength, and the three thieves had about as much chance amongst them as rats in the mouths of trained dogs. They had time to make only the faintest show of fight before they were lifted bodily into the capacious police-car, with hefty constables practically sitting on them to keep them quiet.
The game was up, and they resigned themselves to the inevitable. An inkling of the way in which they had been trapped dawned on them as the car started downhill, for from behind them there came the sound of a boyish cheer, which raised mocking echoes among the hills. And at least one of them—Cyrus the Poet, to wit, whose head was jammed uncomfortably against the door—caught a sight of a posse of schoolboys jumping joyfully down the hill, so that the secret of the slashed tyres, and the sudden police raid, was laid bare to him in the depths of his humiliation.