Ruthven seemed excited.
“I say. Trevor,” he exclaimed, “have you seen your study?”
“Why, what’s the matter with it?”
“You’d better go and look.”
Trevor went and looked.
It was rather an interesting sight. An earthquake or a cyclone might have made it a little more picturesque, but not much more. The general effect was not unlike that of an American saloon, after a visit from Mrs Carrie Nation (with hatchet). As in the case of Mill’s study, the only thing that did not seem to have suffered any great damage was the table. Everything else looked rather off colour. The mantelpiece had been swept as bare as a bone, and its contents littered the floor. Trevor dived among the debris and retrieved the latest addition to his art gallery, the photograph of this year’s first fifteen. It was a wreck. The glass was broken and the photograph itself slashed with a knife till most of the faces were unrecognisable. He picked up another treasure, last year’s first eleven. Smashed glass again. Faces cut about with knife as before. His collection of snapshots was torn into a thousand fragments, though, as Mr Jerome said of thepapier-mâchetrout, there may only have been nine hundred. He did not count them. His bookshelf was empty. The books had gone to swell the contents of the floor. There was a Shakespeare with its cover off. Pages twenty-two to thirty-one ofVice Versahad parted from the parent establishment, and were lying by themselves near the door.The Rogues’ Marchlay just beyond them, and the look of the cover suggested that somebody had either been biting it or jumping on it with heavy boots.
There was other damage. Over the mantelpiece in happier days had hung a dozen sea gulls’ eggs, threaded on a string. The string was still there, as good as new, but of the eggs nothing was to be seen, save a fine parti-coloured powder—on the floor, like everything else in the study. And a good deal of ink had been upset in one place and another.
Trevor had been staring at the ruins for some time, when he looked up to see Clowes standing in the doorway.
“Hullo,” said Clowes, “been tidying up?”
Trevor made a few hasty comments on the 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 the floor, and too few anywhere else? And I should move some of those books on to the shelf, if I were you.”
Trevor breathed very hard.
“I should like to find the chap who did this,” he said softly.
Clowes advanced into the room and proceeded to pick up various misplaced articles of furniture in a helpful way.
“I thought so,” he said presently, “come and look here.”
Tied to a chair, exactly as it had been in the case of Mill, was a neat white card, and on it were the words,"With the Compliments of the League".
“What are you going to do about this?” asked Clowes. “Come into my room and talk it over.”
“I’ll tidy this place up first,” said Trevor. He felt that the work would be a relief. “I don’t want people to see this. It mustn’t get about. I’m not going to have my study turned into 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 your side. Shut the door and let’s get to work.”
Ten minutes later the room had resumed a more or less—though principally less—normal appearance. The books and chairs were back in their places. The ink was sopped up. The broken photographs were stacked in a neat pile in one corner, with a rug over them. The mantelpiece was still empty, but, as Clowes pointed out, it now merely looked as if Trevor had been pawning some of his household gods. There was no sign that a devastating secret society had raged through the study.
Then they adjourned to Clowes’ study, where Trevor sank into Clowes’ second-best chair—Clowes, by an adroit movement, having appropriated the best one—with a sigh of enjoyment. Running and passing, followed by the toil of furniture-shifting, had made him feel quite tired.
“It doesn’t look so bad now,” he said, thinking of the room they had left. “By the way, what did you do with that card?”
“Here it is. Want it?”
“You can keep it. I don’t want it.”
“Thanks. If this sort of things goes on, I shall get quite a nice collection of these cards. Start an album some day.”
“You know,” said Trevor, “this is getting serious.”
“It always does get serious when anything bad happens to one’s self. It always strikes one as rather funny when things happen to other people. When Mill’s study was wrecked, I bet you regarded it as an amusing and original ‘turn’. What do you think of the present effort?”
“Who on earth can have done it?”
“The Pres—”
“Oh, dry up. Of course it was. But who the blazes is he?”
“Nay, children, you have me there,” quoted Clowes. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. You remember what I 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 anything to gain by Barry not getting his colours.”
“There’s no reason to suspect him at all, as far as I can see. I don’t know much about him, bar the fact that he can’t play footer for nuts, but I’ve never heard anything against him. Have you?”
“I scarcely know him myself. He isn’t liked in Seymour’s, I believe.”
“Well, anyhow, this can’t be his work.”
“That’s what I said.”
“For all we know, the League may have got their knife into Barry for some reason. You said they used to get their knife into fellows in that way. Anyhow, I mean to find out who ragged my room.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” said Clowes.
* * * * *
O’Hara came round to Donaldson’s before morning school next day to tell Trevor that he 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’s up with your study?” he inquired. He was quick at noticing things. Trevor looked annoyed. Clowes asked the visitor if he did not think the study presented a neat and gentlemanly appearance.
“Where are all your photographs, Trevor?” persisted the descendant of Irish kings.
“It’s no good trying to conceal anything from the bhoy,” said Clowes. “Sit down, O’Hara—mind that chair; it’s rather wobbly—and I will tell ye the story.”
“Can you keep a thing dark?” inquired Trevor.
O’Hara protested that tombs were not in it.
“Well, then, do you remember what happened to Mill’s study? That’s what’s been going on here.”
O’Hara nearly fell off his chair with surprise. That some philanthropist should rag Mill’s study was only to be expected. Mill was one of the worst. A worm without a saving grace. But Trevor! Captain of football! In the first eleven! The thing was unthinkable.
“But who—?” he began.
“That’s just what I want to know,” said Trevor, shortly. He did not enjoy 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 the problem.
“Six years,” he said at last, 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 old place up,” he said. “I’ve often thought of reviving it meself. An’ so has Moriarty. If it’s anything like the Old League, there’s going to be a sort of Donnybrook before it’s done with. I wonder who’s running it this time.”
“We should like to know that. If you find out, you might tell us.”
“I will.”
“And don’t tell anybody else,” said Trevor. “This business has got to be kept quiet. Keep it dark about my study having been ragged.”
“I won’t tell a soul.”
“Not even Moriarty.”
“Oh, hang it, man,” put in Clowes, “you don’t want to kill the poor bhoy, surely? You must let him tell one person.”
“All right,” said Trevor, “you can tell Moriarty. But nobody else, mind.”
O’Hara promised that Moriarty should receive the news exclusively.
“But why did the League go for ye?”
“They happen to be down on me. It doesn’t matter why. They are.”
“I see,” said O’Hara. “Oh,” he added, “about that bat. The search is being ’vigorously prosecuted’—that’s a 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 fifth extracted a newspaper cutting.
“Read that,” he said.
It was from the local paper, and ran as follows:—
“Hooligan Outrage—A painful sensation has been caused in the town by a deplorable ebullition of local Hooliganism, which has resulted in the wanton disfigurement of the splendid statue of Sir Eustace Briggs which stands in the New Recreation Grounds. Our readers will recollect that the statue was erected to commemorate the return of 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 through the Recreation Grounds early in the morning, noticed that the face and body of the statue were completely covered with leaves and some black substance, which on examination proved to be tar. They speedily lodged information at the police station. Everything seems to point to party spite as the motive for the outrage. In view of the forth-coming election, such an act is highly significant, and will serve sufficiently to indicate the tactics employed by our opponents. The search for the perpetrator (or perpetrators) of the dastardly act is being vigorously prosecuted, and we learn with satisfaction that the police have already several clues.”
“Clues!” said Clowes, handing back the paper, “that meansthe bat. That gas about ‘our opponents’ is all a blind to put you off your guard. You wait. There’ll be more painful sensations before you’ve finished with this business.”
“They can’t have found the bat, or why did they not say so?” observed O’Hara.
“Guile,” said Clowes, “pure guile. If I were you, I should escape while I could. Try Callao. There’s no extradition there.
’On no petitionIs extraditionAllowed in Callao.’
Either of you chaps coming over to school?”
Tuesday mornings at Wrykyn were devoted—up to the quarter to eleven interval—to the study of mathematics. That is to say, instead of going to their form-rooms, the various forms visited the out-of-the-way nooks and dens at the top of the buildings where the mathematical masters were wont to lurk, and spent a pleasant two hours there playing round games or reading fiction under the desk. Mathematics being one of the few branches of school learning which are of any use in after life, nobody ever dreamed of doing any work in that direction, least of all O’Hara. It was a theory of O’Hara’s that he came to school to enjoy himself. To have done any work during a mathematics lesson would have struck him as a positive waste of time, especially as he was in Mr Banks’ class. Mr Banks was a master who simply cried out to be ragged. Everything he did and said seemed to invite the members of his class to amuse themselves, and they amused themselves accordingly. One of the advantages of being under him was that it was possible to predict to a nicety the moment when one would be sent out of 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’s expulsion from the room under ordinary circumstances, and in the normal wear and tear of the morning’s work, but there was one particular action which could always be relied upon to produce the desired result.
In one corner of the room stood a gigantic globe. The problem—how did it get into the room?—was one that had exercised the 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 to Mr Morgan would, in six cases out of ten, mean instant departure from the room. But to make the event certain, it was necessary to grasp the globe firmly and spin it round on its axis. That always proved successful. Mr Morgan would dash down from his dais, address the offender in spirited terms, and give him his marching orders at once and without further trouble.
Moriarty had arranged with O’Hara to set the globe rolling at ten sharp on this particular morning. O’Hara would then so arrange matters with Mr Banks that they could meet in the passage at that hour, when O’Hara wished to impart to his friend his information concerning the League.
O’Hara promised to be at the trysting-place at the hour mentioned.
He did not think there would be any difficulty about it. The news that the League had been revived meant that there would be trouble in the very near future, and the prospect of trouble was meat and drink to the Irishman in O’Hara. Consequently he felt in particularly good form for mathematics (as he interpreted the word). He thought that he would have no difficulty whatever in keeping Mr Banks bright and amused. The first step had to be to arouse in him an interest in life, to bring him into a frame of mind which would induce him to look severely rather than leniently on the next offender. This was effected as follows:—
It was Mr Banks’ practice to set his class sums to work out, and, after some three-quarters of an hour had elapsed, to pass round the form what he called “solutions”. These were large sheets of paper, on which he had worked out each sum in his neat handwriting to a happy ending. When the head of the form, to whom they were passed first, had finished with them, he would make a slight tear in one corner, and, having done so, hand them on to his neighbour. The neighbour, before giving them tohisneighbour, would also tear them slightly. In time they would return to their patentee and proprietor, and it was then that things became exciting.
“Who tore these solutions like this?” asked Mr Banks, in the repressed voice of one who is determined that hewillbe calm.
No answer. The tattered solutions waved in the air.
He turned to Harringay, the head of the form.
“Harringay, did you tear these solutions like this?”
Indignant negative from Harringay. What he had done had been to make the small tear in the top left-hand corner. If Mr Banks had asked, “Did you make this small tear in the top left-hand corner of these solutions?” Harringay would have scorned to deny the impeachment. But to claim the credit for the whole work would, he felt, be an act of flat dishonesty, and an injustice to his 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 manner of the debater who is conscious that he is going to say the popular thing.
“Sir—” he began.
“Sit down, Harringay.”
Harringay gracefully waved aside the absurd command.
“Sir,” he said, “I think I am expressing the general consensus of opinion among my—ahem—fellow-students, when I say that this class sincerely regrets the unfortunate state the solutions have managed to get themselves into.”
“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.” Thissotto voce.
And Harringay resumed his seat amidst applause. O’Hara got up.
“As me frind who has just sat down was about to observe—”
“Sit down, O’Hara. The whole form will remain after the class.”
“—the unfortunate state the solutions have managed to get thimsilves into is sincerely regretted by this class. Sir, I think I am ixprissing the general consensus of opinion among my fellow-students whin I say that it is with heart-felt sorrow—”
“O’Hara!”
“Yes, sir?”
“Leave the room instantly.”
“Yes, sir.”
From the tower across the gravel came the melodious sound of chimes. The college clock was beginning to strike ten. He had scarcely got into the passage, and closed the door after him, when a roar as of a bereaved spirit rang through the room opposite, followed by a string of words, the only intelligible one being the noun-substantive “globe”, and the next moment the door opened and Moriarty came out. The last stroke of ten was just booming from the clock.
There was a large cupboard in the passage, the top of which made a very comfortable seat. They climbed on to this, and began to talk business.
“An’ what was it ye wanted to tell me?” inquired Moriarty.
O’Hara related what he had learned from Trevor that morning.
“An’ do ye know,” said Moriarty, when he had finished, “I half suspected, when I heard that Mill’s study had been ragged, that it might be the League that had done it. If ye remember, it was what they enjoyed doing, breaking up a man’s happy home. They did it frequently.”
“But I can’t understand them doing it to Trevor at all.”
“They’ll do it to anybody they choose till they’re caught at it.”
“If they are caught, there’ll be a row.”
“We must catch ’em,” said Moriarty. Like O’Hara, he revelled in the prospect of a disturbance. O’Hara and he were going up to Aldershot at the end of the term, to try and bring back the light and middle-weight medals respectively. Moriarty had won the light-weight in the previous year, but, by reason of putting on a stone since the competition, was now no longer eligible for that class. O’Hara had not been up before, but the Wrykyn instructor, a good judge of pugilistic form, was of opinion that he ought to stand an excellent chance. As the prize-fighter inRodney Stonesays, “When you get a good Irishman, you can’t better ’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 till he was killed entirely. I say, I’m getting rather tired of sitting here, aren’t you? Let’s go to the other end of the passage and have some cricket.”
So, having unearthed a piece of wood from the debris at the top of the cupboard, and rolled a handkerchief into a ball, they adjourned.
Recalling the stirring events of six years back, when the League had first been started, O’Hara remembered that the members of that enterprising society had been wont to hold meetings in a secluded spot, where it was unlikely that they would be disturbed. It seemed to him that the first thing he ought to do, if he wanted to make their nearer acquaintance now, was to find their present rendezvous. They must have one. They would never run the risk involved in holding mass-meetings in one another’s studies. On the last occasion, it had been an old quarry away out on the downs. This had been proved by the not-to-be-shaken testimony of three school-house fags, who had wandered out one half-holiday with the unconcealed intention of finding the League’s place of meeting. Unfortunately for them, theyhadfound it. They were going down the path that led to the quarry before-mentioned, when they were unexpectedly seized, blindfolded, and carried off. An impromptu court-martial was held—in whispers—and the three explorers forthwith received the most spirited “touching-up” they had ever experienced. Afterwards they were released, and returned to their house with their zeal for detection quite quenched. The episode had created a good deal of excitement in the school at the time.
On three successive afternoons, O’Hara and Moriarty scoured the downs, and on each occasion they drew blank. On the fourth day, just before lock-up, O’Hara, who had been to tea with Gregson, of Day’s, was going over to the gymnasium to keep a pugilistic appointment with Moriarty, when somebody ran swiftly past him in the direction of the boarding-houses. It was almost dark, for the days were still short, and he did not recognise the runner. But it puzzled him a little to think where he had sprung from. O’Hara was walking quite close to the wall of the College buildings, and the runner had passed between it and him. And he had not heard his footsteps. Then he understood, and his pulse 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 never opened except when prize-day or some similar event occurred, when the chairs were needed. It was supposed 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 dashed past him in a knot. One of them almost brushed against him. For a moment he thought of stopping him, but decided not to. He could wait.
On the following afternoon he slipped down into the basement soon after school. It was as black as pitch in the cellar. He took up a position near the door.
It seemed hours before anything happened. He was, indeed, almost giving up the thing as a bad job, when a ray of light cut through the blackness in front of him, and somebody slipped through the door. The next moment, a second form appeared dimly, and then the light was shut off again.
O’Hara could hear them groping their way past him. He waited no longer. It is difficult to tell where sound comes from in the dark. He plunged forward at a venture. His hand, swinging round in a semicircle, met something which felt like a shoulder. He slipped his grasp down to the arm, and clutched it with all the force at his disposal.
“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 much as if he had put up the wrong bird. From the dimensions of the arm which he was holding, his prisoner seemed to be of tender years.
“Let go, Harvey, you idiot. I shall kick.”
Before the threat could be put into execution, O’Hara, who had been fumbling all this while in his pocket for a match, found one loose, and struck a light. The features of the owner of the arm—he was still holding it—were lit up for a moment.
“Why, it’s young Renford!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing down here?”
Renford, however, continued to pursue the topic of his arm, and the effect that the vice-like grip of the Irishman had had upon it.
“You’ve nearly broken it,” he said, complainingly.
“I’m sorry. I mistook you for somebody else. Who’s that with you?”
“It’s me,” said an ungrammatical voice.
“Who’s me?”
“Harvey.”
At this point a soft yellow light lit up the more immediate neighbourhood. Harvey had 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, because one isn’t allowed down here, and there’d be a beastly row if it got out about our being down here.”
“Andtheywould be cobbed,” put in Harvey.
“Who are they?” asked O’Hara.
“Ferrets. Like to have a look at them?”
“Ferrets!”
“Yes. Harvey brought back a couple at the beginning of term. Ripping little beasts. We couldn’t keep them in the house, as they’d have got dropped on in a second, so we had to think of somewhere else, and thought why not keep them down here?”
“Why, indeed?” said O’Hara. “Do ye find they like it?”
“Oh,theydon’t mind,” said Harvey. “We feed ’em twice a day. Once before breakfast—we take it in turns to get up early—and once directly after school. And on half-holidays and Sundays 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’t tell 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, with some reluctance, “we haven’t exactly hit any yet.”
“We’ve got jolly near, though, lots of times,” said Harvey. “Last Saturday I swear I wasn’t more than a quarter of an inch off one of them. If it had been a decent-sized rabbit, I should have plugged it middle stump; only it was a small one, so I missed. But come and see them. We keep ’em right at the other end of the place, in case anybody comes in.”
“Have you ever seen anybody down here?” asked O’Hara.
“Once,” said Renford. “Half-a-dozen chaps came down here once while we were feeding the ferrets. We waited till they’d got well in, then we nipped out quietly. They didn’t see us.”
“Did you see who they were?”
“No. It was too dark. Here they are. Rummy old crib this, isn’t it? Look out for your shins on the chairs. Switch on the light, Harvey. There, aren’t theyrippers? Quite tame, too. They know us quite well. They know they’re going to be fed, too. Hullo, Sir Nigel! This is Sir 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 that that was the right thing to say to any animal that could chase and bite.
Renford was delighted to be able to show his ferrets off to so distinguished a visitor.
“What were you down here about?” inquired Harvey, when the little animals had had their meal, 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 best to tell them the real reason. If he refused to explain, their curiosity would be roused, which would be fatal. And to give any reason except the true one called for a display of impromptu invention of which he was not capable. Besides, they would not be likely to give away his secret while he held this one of theirs connected with the ferrets. He explained the situation briefly, and swore them to 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 cutting out of here last night. And you say ye’ve seen them here, too. I don’t see what object they could have down here if they weren’t the League holding a meeting. I don’t see what else a chap would be after.”
“He might be keeping ferrets,” hazarded Renford.
“The whole school doesn’t keep ferrets,” said O’Hara. “You’re unique in that way. No, it must be the League, an’ I mean to wait here till they come.”
“Not all night?” asked Harvey. He had a great respect for O’Hara, whose reputation in the school for out-of-the-way doings was considerable. In the bright lexicon of O’Hara he believed there to be no such word as “impossible.”
“No,” said O’Hara, “but till lock-up. You two had better cut now.”
“Yes, I think we’d better,” said Harvey.
“And don’t ye breathe a word about this to a soul”—a warning which extracted fervent promises of silence from both youths.
“This,” said Harvey, as they emerged on to the gravel, “is something like. I’m jolly glad we’re in it.”
“Rather. Do you think O’Hara will catch them?”
“He must if he waits down there long enough. They’re certain to come again. Don’t you wish you’d been here when the League was on before?”
“I should think I did. Race you over to the shop. I want to get something before it shuts.”
“Right ho!” And they disappeared.
O’Hara waited where he was till six struck from the clock-tower, followed by the sound of the bell as it rang for lock-up. Then he picked his way carefully through the groves of chairs, barking his 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 of atmosphere supplied in the vault. He then ran over to the gymnasium to meet Moriarty, feeling a little disgusted at the lack of success that had attended his detective efforts up to the present. So far he had nothing to show for his trouble except a good deal of dust on his clothes, and a dirty collar, but he was full of determination. He could play a waiting game.
It was a pity, as it happened, that O’Hara left the vault when he did. Five minutes after he had gone, six shadowy forms made their way silently and in single file through the doorway of 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 at Wrykyn. It was the custom to go out, after the bell had sounded, to visit the gymnasium. In the winter and Easter terms, the gymnasium became a sort of social club. People went there with a very small intention of doing gymnastics. They went to lounge about, talking to cronies, in front of 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 horse or parallels, but, for the most part, they preferred therôleof spectator. There was plenty to see. In one corner O’Hara and Moriarty would be sparring their nightly six rounds (in two batches 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 school colours to Aldershot in the spring, would be performing their usual marvels. It was worth dropping into the gymnasium of an evening. In no other place in the school were so many sights to be seen.
When you were surfeited with sightseeing, you went off to your house. And this was where the peculiar beauty of the gymnasium system came in. You went up to any master who happened to be there—there was always one at least—and observed in suave accents, “Please, sir, can I have a paper?” Whereupon, he, taking a scrap of paper, would write upon it, “J. O. Jones (or A. B. Smith or C. D. Robinson) left gymnasium at such-and-such a time”. And, by presenting this to the menial who opened the door to you at your house, you went in rejoicing, and all was peace.
Now, there was no mention on the paper of the hour at which you came to the gymnasium—only of the hour at which you left. Consequently, certain lawless spirits would range the neighbourhood after lock-up, and, by putting in a quarter of an hour at the gymnasium before returning to their houses, escape comment. To this class belonged the shadowy forms previously mentioned.
O’Hara had forgotten this custom, with the result that he was not at the vault when they arrived. Moriarty, to whom he confided between the rounds the substance of his evening’s discoveries, reminded him of it. “It’s no good watching before lock-up,” he said. “After six is the time they’ll come, if they come at all.”
“Bedad, ye’re right,” said O’Hara. “One of these nights we’ll take a night off from boxing, and go and watch.”
“Right,” said Moriarty. “Are ye ready to go on?”
“Yes. I’m going to practise that left swing at the body this round. The one Fitzsimmons does.” And they “put ’em up” once more.
On the evening following O’Hara’s adventure in the vaults, Barry and M’Todd were in their study, getting out the tea-things. Most Wrykinians brewed in the winter and Easter terms, when the days were short and lock-up early. In the summer term there were other things to do—nets, which lasted till a quarter to seven (when lock-up was), and the baths—and brewing practically ceased. But just now it was at its height, and every evening, at a quarter past five, there might be heard in the houses the sizzling of the succulent sausage and other rare delicacies. As a rule, one or two studies would club together to brew, instead of preparing solitary banquets. This was found both more convivial and more economical. At Seymour’s, studies numbers five, six, and seven had always combined from time immemorial, and Barry, on obtaining study six, had carried on the tradition. In study five were Drummond and his friend De Bertini. In study seven, which was a smaller room and only capable of holding one person with any comfort, one James Rupert Leather-Twigg (that was his singular name, as Mr Gilbert has it) had taken up his abode. The name of Leather-Twigg having proved, at an early date in his career, too great a mouthful for Wrykyn, he was known to his friends and acquaintances by the euphonious title of Shoeblossom. The charm about the genial Shoeblossom was that you could never tell what he was going to do next. All that you could rely on with any certainty was that it would be something which would have been better left undone.
It was just five o’clock when Barry and M’Todd started to get things ready. They were not high enough up in the school to have fags, so that they had to do this for themselves.
Barry was still in football clothes. He had been out running and passing with the first fifteen. M’Todd, whose idea of exercise was winding up a watch, had been spending his time since school ceased in the study with a book. He was in his ordinary clothes. It was therefore fortunate that, when he upset the kettle (he nearly always did at some period of the evening’s business), the contents spread themselves over Barry, and not over himself. Football clothes will stand any amount of water, whereas M’Todd’s “Youth’s winter suiting at forty-two shillings and sixpence” might have been injured. Barry, however, did not look upon the episode in this philosophical light. He spoke to him eloquently for a while, and then sent him downstairs to fetch more water. While he was away, Drummond and De Bertini came in.
“Hullo,” said Drummond, “tea ready?”
“Not much,” replied Barry, bitterly, “not likely to be, either, at this rate. We’d just got the kettle going when that ass M’Todd plunged against the table and upset the lot over my bags. Lucky the beastly stuff wasn’t boiling. I’m soaked.”
“While we wait—the sausages—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 friends that De Bertini was so very fixed in his determination to speak English. He was a trier all the way, was De Bertini. You rarely caught him helping out his remarks with the language of his native land. It was English or nothing with him. To most of his circle it might as well have been Zulu.
Drummond, either through natural genius or because he spent more time with him, was generally able to act as interpreter. Occasionally there would come a linguistic effort by which even he freely confessed himself baffled, and then they would pass on unsatisfied. But, as a rule, he was equal to the emergency. He was so now.
“What Bertie means,” he explained, “is that it’s no good us waiting for M’Todd to come back. He never could fill a kettle in less than ten minutes, and even then he’s certain to spill it coming upstairs and have to go back again. Let’s get on with the sausages.”
The pan had just been placed on the fire when M’Todd returned with the water. He tripped over the mat as he entered, and spilt about half a pint into one of his football boots, which stood inside the door, but the accident was comparatively trivial, and excited no remark.
“I wonder where that slacker Shoeblossom has got to,” said Barry. “He never turns up in time to do any work. He seems to regard himself as a beastly guest. I wish we 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 and keeping an excited eye on the spluttering pan, “yousee. He’ll come just as we’ve finished cooking them. I believe the man waits outside with his ear to the keyhole. Hullo! Stand by with the plate. They’ll be done in half a jiffy.”
Just as the last sausage was deposited in safety on the plate, the door opened, and Shoeblossom, looking as if he had not brushed his hair since early childhood, sidled in with an attempt at an easy nonchalance which was rendered quite impossible by the hopeless state of his conscience.
“Ah,” he said, “brewing, I see. Can I be of any use?”
“We’ve finished years ago,” said Barry.
“Ages ago,” said M’Todd.
A look of intense alarm appeared on Shoeblossom’s classical features.
“You’ve not finished, really?”
“We’ve finished cooking everything,” said Drummond. “We haven’t begun tea yet. Now, are you happy?”
Shoeblossom was. So happy that he felt he must do something to celebrate the occasion. He felt like a successful general. There must besomethinghe could do to show that he regarded the situation with approval. He looked round the study. Ha! Happy thought—the frying-pan. That useful culinary instrument was lying in the fender, still bearing its cargo of fat, and beside it—a sight to stir the blood and make the heart beat faster—were the sausages, piled up on their plate.
Shoeblossom stooped. He seized the frying-pan. He gave it one twirl in the air. Then, before any one could stop him, he had turned it upside down over the fire. As has been already remarked, you could never predict exactly what James Rupert Leather-Twigg would be up to next.
When anything goes out of the frying-pan into the fire, it is usually productive of interesting by-products. The maxim applies to fat. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance. A great sheet of flame rushed out and up. Shoeblossom leaped back with a readiness highly creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat. The covering of the mantelpiece caught fire. The flames went roaring up the chimney.
Drummond, cool while everything else was so hot, without a word moved to the mantelpiece to beat out the fire with a football shirt. Bertie was talking rapidly to himself in French. Nobody could understand what he was saying, which was possibly fortunate.
By the time Drummond had extinguished the mantelpiece, Barry had also done good work by knocking the fire into the grate with the poker. M’Todd, who had been standing up till now in the far corner of the room, gaping vaguely at things in general, now came into action. Probably it was force of habit that suggested to him that the time had come to upset the kettle. At any rate, upset it 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 the study had ever had to endure instantly assailed their nostrils. The fire in the study was out now, but in the chimney it still blazed merrily.
“Go up on to the roof and heave water down,” said Drummond, the strategist. “You can get out from Milton’s dormitory window. And take care not to chuck it down the wrong chimney.”
Barry was starting for the door to carry out these excellent instructions, when it flew open.
“Pah! What have you boys been 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 situation at a glance. Fires in the house were not rarities. One facetious sportsman had once made a rule of setting the 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 tell him to take some water on to the roof and throw it down.” Herbert was the boot and knife cleaner at Seymour’s.
Barry went. Soon afterwards a splash of water in the grate announced that the intrepid Herbert was hard at it. Another followed, and another. Then there was a pause. Mr Seymour thought he would look up to see if the fire was out. He stooped and peered into the darkness, and, even as he gazed, splash came the contents of the fourth pail, together with some soot with which they had formed a travelling acquaintance on the way down. Mr Seymour staggered back, grimy and dripping. There was dead silence in the study. Shoeblossom’s face 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 come down then, sir?” said the voice.
Shoeblossom collapsed into a chair, and began to sob feebly.