"THE PLAY'S THE THING"
"_I_ think we ought to do something to celebrate Miss Craigie's
return," remarked Noreen.
They were dressing for supper in Blue Dorm, Joey, Barbara, Syb, and
Noreen; and as usual they were dressing in a hurry.
"What sort of thing?" Joey demanded, trying to disentangle hooks from
her hair.
"Something to show we're jolly pleased she's come back. Just think, she
might have died of that loathly 'flu'; lots of people have."
"Shut it, you old ghoul," ordered Barbara; "she's all right again now,
thank goodness!"
"And we ought to celebrate her all-rightness," Noreen said triumphantly.
"Violets?" suggested Joey.
"Silly cuckoo, how are we to get them?"
"What _do_ you want, Noreen?" Syb asked impatiently.
"How about charades after supper--and ask her to come and see them?"
"Frightfully short time to think of anything decent," objected Syb;
"besides, Miss Craigie won't want to leave her dear Miss Lambton, you
bet."
"Let's ask her too."
"That doesn't give us a decent charade."
"Can't we think of something?"
"Not something good enough."
"P'r'aps you'd like to do some scenes from _Hamlet_, if you want to be
so very high-class," Noreen suggested scornfully. Remove II. B were
taking _Hamlet_ in literature, and Noreen and the Literature Mistress
were usually at loggerheads.
It was that suggestion which gave Joey her idea. "I say," she
burst out, "why shouldn't we do a charade on the lines of Hamlet's
player-people? You know--where the poison was poured into the poor
chap's ear--and ask all the Staff to come, and see whether the
Professor looks guilty and shrieks, 'Lights!' because he's doing
something evil with his stinks, as Noreen says, or just has a
war-strain appearance. It needn't be a noisy charade to upset him if
it's just strain."
Noreen thumped Joey on the back. "Topping plan! What word shall we
have?"
"German?" suggested Joey. "The first syllable could be Germ, you
know--those things Matron is always fussing about----"
"Or the Huns putting them into wells," Barbara interrupted in great
excitement.
"What about 'an'?" asked Syb.
"Couldn't she be a German girl, called Anne, Anna really, who is
pretending to be a schoolgirl, and really plotting and spying?" Joey
said.
"My word, Joey, you're coming on. I'm less surprised you got the
scholarship," Noreen cried. "We--Gabrielle and Joey and I--settled this
afternoon that someone ought to look into the matter of the Professor's
hatefulness, and it's us that are going to," she added cheerfully and
ungrammatically, for the benefit of Syb and Barbara. "If he's all right
our charade won't hurt him--he'll like it; if he's not...."
The gong sounded.
"Soufflez! Regardez glissant, mes enfants," Noreen cried, tying her
hair-ribbon with desperate speed. "We must fix up our charade after
supper; and look here! we must get some of the others to perform first,
while we're fixing it. Ingrid might recite,--she's awfully good,--and
we'll get Gabrielle to fiddle. Joey, you'd better do the asking Miss
Craigie--oh, and of course you'll have to go to the Head first, as we
want all the Staff. Point out it's an occasion."
"Oh, I say, won't one of you?" asked poor Joey; but Noreen was adamant.
"You're rather in favour with the Head, I believe, and anyhow you've
swanked enough about Miss Craigie. It's clearly your duty to get leave
for the show. We'll do the rest."
"All right," Joey agreed resignedly, and then the inhabitants of Blue
Dorm tore downstairs at a record pace, only just escaping an order mark
for lateness by the skin of their teeth.
Miss Conyngham received Joey's request very graciously, and promised to
invite the Staff to witness the performance and bring them with her to
Queen's Hall in half an hour's time. Joey flew back, very satisfied to
find Noreen, Barbara, and Sybil in one of the small classrooms, opening
from the Hall, distractedly considering the all-important charade.
But they were cheerful too, for it appeared that Ingrid had consented
to recite, and Gabrielle and the musical genius of Remove II., Clare
Estcome, to play.
"We'll put the play last," Noreen said impressively, "and we four will
do it, and say nothing to anybody else. Joey, just tell some of these
juniors who are doing nothing to arrange the chairs for a show and pull
the curtains across the platform; and then we can get on to our job.
You're sure the Professor is coming?"
"Miss Conyngham laughed frightfully nicely and said she was sure all
the Staff would be delighted, and she thought it a topping idea," Joey
said; and on that the four got to work in earnest.
* * * * *
Miss Conyngham gave gracious permission for the two forms below Remove
II. to sit up for the performance, so a large audience was already
assembled when the staff of Redlands swept into the Queen's Hall--Miss
Conyngham with her arm through Miss Craigie's--to place themselves in
the "stalls" specially retained for them. Joey, watching through a
chink in the curtains shutting off the platform, was delighted to see
that the Professor sat upon the other side of Miss Conyngham. He looked
placid and pleased enough now, so far as his large, pallid face could
be said to show any expression at all. The audience was further swelled
by the servants, indoor and out, even including two or three men who
were repairing pipes.
The performance began with Gabrielle's newest violin-piece--a nocturne,
executed very correctly but rather nervously. The school applauded
vigorously, as they would have applauded anything from the popular
Heads of the Upper or Lower School. Ingrid followed, jarringly dramatic
in Noyes' _Highwayman_, and was violently appreciated. Clare, not
having to face her audience, the piano being sideways to the stage,
gave the most successful performance of the three, but took a strictly
secondary place in the way of applause.
Then, after some whispering and stifled giggling, Joey was pushed
forward to the front of the stage, and the curtain drawn back a chink.
She spoke through it.
"I have to announce that the forthcoming charade is in two syllables
and three scenes. The third is the complete word."
She withdrew, and all the juniors started thinking aloud of
two-syllabled words. They were quite audible on the stage, where
Barbara, spectacled and padded as to body, was bending over a steaming
fish-kettle, prodding it nervously. "I thought if you _boiled_ germs
you killed them," she whispered. "This seems so jolly like the witches
in _Macbeth_."
"Go on, you silly ass," urged Noreen. "It looks all right anyhow, and
you've got the photo-plates for growing the germs on. Come on, Joey, I
must tie you up."
Joey, attired in a plaid going-out frock belonging to one of the little
ones, to represent a kilt, a khaki sports coat, buttoned across, and
two box straps for a Sam-Browne belt, was forthwith lashed brutally
to a curtain pole, and ordered not to so much as breathe for fear she
should move it and it should become plain to the audience that it was
leaning against her and she could have walked off with it quite easily.
Syb, also rather sketchy as to uniform, but with an unmistakable German
cap to make her nationality clear, stood by with a home-made bayonet of
stupendous size. Noreen, pillowy as to figure and checked as to blouse,
and with her curly, dark hair tightly strained off her forehead,
hovered near the Professor, with a large wooden spoon, whether to stir
soup or germs seemed doubtful. She waved this spoon impressively, and
sent a thrilling whisper to the side of "Draw the curtains."
The curtains jerked back and after a pause to allow of sufficient
thrill upon the part of the audience, Noreen inquired sepulchrally:
"Mein fater, _is_ the mixture slab and strong?"
"As strong as thy soup on Sundays, my daughter," was the reply. "As
strong as the accursed British Army thinks it is----"
"And proves it is," remarked the dauntless captive at the curtain
pole, and was promptly prodded with the bayonet to induce a respectful
silence.
[Illustration: "MEIN FATER, IS THE MIXTURE SLAB AND STRONG?"]
The Professor, in very good English, with an occasional lapse into a
German word, and a masterly repetition of "Tod und Teufel!" at regular
intervals, proceeded to explain to his intelligent daughter (who
stirred soup over a stove at the back of the stage, between times to
add realism) that he was engaged in growing germs of a horrible disease
which was to go as far as possible towards exterminating the "accursed
Englanders," and that when he had, so to speak, bottled them, she was
to take them to England and cast them into all receptacles of drinking
water throughout the kingdom. To avert suspicion she was to let her
hair down, attire herself in a djibbah, and assume the character
of an English schoolgirl. The fair Anna delightedly accepted the
commission, and retired from the stage to change the checked blouse,
and the Professor ladled out presumably spoonfuls of germ on to the
photographic slides, while informing the English prisoner that his
accursed race would soon be non-existent. The Englishman, returning an
undaunted reply, was again prodded violently, and Anna returning in a
djibbah and looking marvellously thinner, passed him with the taunting
gibe that she would pass anywhere as an English girl, and he was
powerless to save his country, and marched out _en route_ for England,
carrying a dispatch case full of bottled germs.
The Professor and the guard thereupon sat down to drink "Confusion to
perfidious England," which they did with great gusto and succumbed to
the force of brandy neat (they stated it was that) with much speed. As
soon as they had their heads down on a table, which shook with their
snores, the English prisoner set to work to free himself, and succeeded
in doing so just as the curtains were drawn in obedience to frenzied
whispers from Noreen from behind. Joey laid down her curtain pole,
and flew to the chink, regardless of the flattering applause that was
greeting the first scene of this thrilling drama.
"What is the Professor looking like, Noreen?"
"He's clapping quite a lot," Noreen explained, in a gusty whisper; and
Joey, peering over her shoulder at the large, pallid face and the black
moustache, saw that Noreen was quite right. The Professor was clapping
as vigorously as Miss Craigie herself.
"It must be war-strain," said Joey, and they rang up the curtain on
Scene II., which showed Anna or Anne in her dormitory at a girls'
school, which appeared to consist in one other girl only and a
superannuated mistress (Syb), whose aggressive spectacles did not seem
much to assist her defective sight. She tottered up to say good-night
to her pupils, calling Barbara out with her to unhook her dress, which
opportunity was seized upon by Anna to mention in a brief soliloquy,
that she was only waiting till her room-mate was asleep to steal out
and introduce her father's germs (alternately alluded to as "flu-bugs"
and "bubonic plague") into the neighbouring reservoir, this proceeding
being the prelude to the abrupt departure of "Anne" from the English
pig-dog boarding-school for good.
Barbara returned on the enunciation of this sentiment, and after a
brief conversation with the obviously unsympathetic Anne about her
brother--a prisoner in Germany--the two girls lay down in their
dressing-gowns upon a sofa that was rather a tight fit for one, and
fell instantly into sound stage slumber.
After a thrilling moment of silence, Anne rose up, lit a candle, held
it close to the eyes of the slumbering Barbara, and remarking, "She
sleeps, the English pig-dog. Ach Himmel! Now can I do what I will," she
seized the Horlick's Malted Milk bottle, large size, which contained
the germs, and stole out. She had hardly closed the door when Barbara
sat up, crying, "Am I dreaming, or did she say pig-dog? If so, she is
no English Anne, but a German spy among us. And what has she gone to
do?"
The question was answered by a call from beneath the window at the back
of the stage, and Barbara, dashing to it, called, "Jock! It's never
you! Come up; I'm alone."
Joey, hoisted from below by Ingrid, appeared at the open window,
with, triumph of realism, her hair and clothes wet, for it was
raining; struggled through, with much display of thin legs, and said
dramatically, "Has she loosed her bugs?"
The explanation that followed was a triumph of brevity, and brother
and sister dashed out to try and cut Anne off before she reached the
reservoir. The curtain fell, amid tumultuous applause, and a jovial
request from Professor Trouville that they would be "vary careful not
to drop the bottle and let zose fierce animals loose upon us."
The third scene required no preparation, and was brief indeed. The aged
Head Mistress discovered asking frantically, of no one in particular,
what can have happened to her pupils; to her enter Joey and Barbara,
dragging between them Anne, defiant, and with the germ bottle torn from
her hand--unopened.
The Highland officer explained the situation in two sentences, and
Anne, in a superior German accent, mentioned that from her point of
view to torture prisoners and let loose disease upon women and children
were right and proper--because she was--Hoch! Hoch! a German!
Curtain, amid thunders of applause.
* * * * *
The four came down into the hall to be congratulated. Miss Conyngham
paid a stately compliment to the acting; Miss Craigie, with a grave
face, rather belied by her twinkling eyes, admired the chemistry; even
Ingrid remarked condescendingly, "Not half bad for kids."
Joey, standing in the midst of a congratulatory group of Remove II. B
girls, felt a touch on her arm, and, turning, found herself face to
face with the Professor. He was smiling quite pleasantly.
"A clefare and entertaining little play, Mees Jocelyn Graham," he said.
"And it is you that plan it, is it not? My congratulations."
"Oh, thanks awfully; but it wasn't me really--we all four did it,"
Joey began, in some confusion, when Noreen caught what she said, and
interrupted.
"Don't listen to her, Professor Trouville; she planned it really; and
it was jolly brainy of her, wasn't it?"
The Professor smiled, his curious, sphinx-like smile.
"I thank you, Mees Noreen. I thought that I congratulate the right one,
but your friend of the scholarship is modest, _n'est ce pas_?"
"Really the old chap was quite human for once, wasn't he?" Noreen
remarked, as the four went up to Blue Dorm a few minutes later. "I hope
Gabrielle went for him about the babes while he was in this yielding
mood. She won't get her nose snapped off quite so close to her face."
But Joey didn't answer; she was wondering why it was that she had found
the Professor's pleasantness so singularly unpleasant.
CHAPTER XV
THE COURT-MARTIAL
Joey couldn't go to sleep that night. She was excited, and all kinds
of thoughts went whirling round and round in her head, making sleep
impossible.
The whole day had been exciting--the play had only been the culmination
of it all. The walk to the station--the conversation about Professor
Trouville and his queerness; on top of that the thrill of being coupled
with Noreen in Gabrielle's invitation to the great match; the long talk
about home-things with Miss Craigie in her bedroom; and then the play.
It was this last, probably, that turned her thoughts so much to Father,
dying far away from them all, among his enemies.
The man who had been Father's special friend among the prisoners had
come to see Mums, when the Armistice released those of our men who had
survived the German treatment, and had told her that Father was taken
from the prison camp in a dying state, and word had come back a few
days later that he was dead.
Captain Verney had done his very best, delaying his own return, to
find out for Mums just how he died and where he had been buried, but
it seemed that no one knew or cared; and Uncle Staff had had no better
luck when he went out with a War-Office permit to investigate a few
weeks later. Mums and the children had just the one consolation of
knowing that Father died for England just as surely as though he had
been shot going over the top, to help them bear the thought of the long
weeks of suffering and ill-usage which had come first. If only escaping
from prison were as easy as it seemed in books and plays, Joey thought,
tossing restlessly, she and Gavin would have been out in Germany with
a file and a bottle of chloroform, and have set Father free before the
Huns had time to kill him. But in real life you could do nothing except
wait and wait and say your prayers, and take care of Mums.
Joey sat up in bed, and stared out at the dark window-pane so close to
her. It was a mild, damp night--she threw off her quilt--perhaps she
was too hot and that was the reason that she could not sleep. And while
she was sitting up, she saw something flash in the darkness, and knew
in a second what it was. A series of short blue flashes, coming from
the dark.
"How funny!" was her first thought, and then she suddenly called to
mind John's signalling instructions; that was the "call-up" in Morse.
Somebody, it seemed, was going to practise his signalling now, at
nearly twelve at night. Joey crept out of bed, and crouched on the
window-sill so as to miss nothing.
There was disappointingly little to see; the people, whoever they
were, were not nearly such keen signallers as John was. Something came
from the side of the house--from her window Joey couldn't locate it
exactly--three long flashes and two short ones. Then, a minute later,
from the distance--one of the letters she had used with John--short,
long, long, long, and then a short-long.
And that was all.
Joey sat crouched on the window-sill for quite a long time, but
nothing more happened. Then, just as she was thinking of getting back
to bed, someone came round the corner of the house far below. It was
the Professor. She saw him unmistakably in the light of an electric
torch, which he must have pressed for an instant, perhaps to show him
the path. He slept, as Joey knew, in a room on the ground floor of the
lodge; he had chosen it because he so often worked late at the Lab and
did not want to disturb the lodge-keeper and his wife.
She wondered whether it was he who had been signalling; somehow you
would not expect an ill-tempered chemistry professor to want to
practise signalling, especially about twelve o'clock at night.
Of course, German spies used to signal in wartime, but then the
Professor wasn't German: his name was French, and the look of him was
more French than German, and he spoke with a French accent, and, most
important proof of all, he had laughed and been quite genial about
the play, instead of giving himself away as Hamlet's uncle had done.
Besides, English people had settled they wouldn't have Huns creeping
in among them again, and though Colonel Sturt had seemed to think they
might be doing it, Cousin Greta had not agreed with him.
Joey set to work to see if she could remember the signalling; if the
Professor were really keen on it, and went on being in the pleasant
temper he had shown to-night, perhaps she might ask him some questions.
Dash, dash, dash, dot, dot. She went through the alphabet; there were
no letters like that; then it must be a numeral. John had taught those
as well. The long numerals were the ones he had insisted on, because he
thought it made things so slow to have to signal f--i--before you sent
a numeral.
Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash--Joey had it: it was three. And immediately
after it--a pause between--dot, dash, dash, dash, dash--31. Thirty-one.
That had been all. The other signal had been an answer, and that was
a good deal more puzzling. For surely dot, dash, dash, dash, stood
for J and dot-dash for A, and yet Ja had no sense. Joey supposed she
must have forgotten the alphabet, and went to sleep at last, trying to
remember.
The play influenced her dreams more strongly than the signalling. It
acted itself again through her sleep, only it refused to act itself
straightforwardly. Everything and everyone seemed to stick and repeat,
including Noreen--so ready of tongue. Her German, which Joey, who had
never learnt any, had so admired last night, had quite deserted her;
the only word she seemed able to make use of was _Ja_. No "Tod und
Teufels." No "Ach Himmels." She said, "Ja! ja!" and that was all, and
then the dressing-bell sounded, and Clara the housemaid came in with a
clatter of cans, and it was morning.
Joey was sleepy, and did not get up till the last possible minute; and
then it meant a frantic scramble to get dressed in time, and no chance
of talking to the others.
As it was, she was just a moment late, but grace had not yet been said,
for the girls were still standing round the tables, so she hoped to
escape the order mark which was her due. She slid noiselessly into her
place, and then became aware that Miss Conyngham was speaking--Miss
Conyngham, who never appeared at breakfast, but had it in a stately
manner, befitting Head Mistresses, in her own room. She was standing at
the top of the long centre table, where Ingrid and other great seniors
sat, and there was a little line drawn between her eyebrows, as though
she were worried. She was evidently in the middle of a sentence. Joey
listened, trying to make out what it was all about.
"... And when Professor Trouville went to the Lab before breakfast this
morning somebody had been there, breaking bottles, mixing specimens,
and doing other acts of altogether stupid and unreasonable mischief.
The door was as usual locked; the girl, whoever she was, had got in
at the window by the steps, which Professor Trouville had for once
left open. That being so, I quite exonerate the juniors; no girl under
thirteen could scramble up to that window. Professor Trouville tells
me that he has had trouble with several of the girls in Remove II. B;
if any girl there has done this wrong and foolish thing, it is up to
her to own it now--for the honour of a school which does not turn out
cowards."
There was a thrilling pause, while Miss Conyngham's far-seeing eyes
looked round expectantly, and the Professor stood just behind her,
silent, watchful, impassive, with half-closed lids. Miss Conyngham
seemed to have no doubt that somebody was going to speak--a little of
the colour faded from her face and the light from her eyes, when there
came only silence.
"I trust the girl who has done this thing to tell us now," she said.
And still there was silence.
Miss Conyngham's face grew a little stern. "If any girl here knows
anything of the matter, though not herself responsible, I wish her to
speak out."
Still silence. The Professor whispered something to Miss Conyngham; she
shook her head, then spoke to the senior mistress present:
"Breakfast had better go on now, Miss Wrestow; I will deal with this
matter later."
She went out, followed by the Professor.
"What on earth is the matter?" Joey whispered, squeezing hastily into
a place by Noreen. "Something happened to the Lab--what luck for you
stinks people! You won't be able to do any."
Noreen was rather cross. "Don't be such a young silly; don't you see
this is going to be a horrid plague for us? That old beast has put the
Head on to Remove II. B just because he doesn't like me, I believe, and
of course we're suspected. You heard what Miss Conyngham said."
"But who's done what?"
"Somebody's got in and smashed some of his hateful old things there;
_I_ should think the cat as likely as not; but of course he fastens it
on to us. Just like him. As if I'd go and do a silly kid's trick like
that!"
"Of course you wouldn't. It's a shame," comforted Joey. "But of course
the Head would never think so. S'pose she just had to ask. When does he
think we did it?"
"Last night. He thought we were excited about the play and aiming it at
him, and somebody went in and did it after we were supposed to be in
bed."
"But he was there himself much later than that," almost shouted Joey.
"I saw him out of my window."
"Well, he _is_ the limit, then. Let's tell Gabby that."
The information was passed up to Gabrielle at the other end of the
table; she came round to the other two the minute breakfast was over.
"What's this, Joey?"
Joey began upon the story of last night, but hadn't got far in it
before Ingrid Latimer bore down upon the group. "Joey Graham, where are
you? You are to go to Miss Conyngham at once. She told me so before she
went."
"Oh, bother! Just when you were telling us," Noreen broke out. "Cut
along, and do hurry. I shall burst if I don't know the rest before
First Lesson."
Joey ran, arriving at Miss Conyngham's door in a decidedly breathless
condition.
Miss Conyngham was there with the Professor. He was speaking, but
stopped as Joey came in. Joey had an idea that behind his pale,
impassive face he was very angry.
"Jocelyn," said Miss Conyngham gravely, "I want to ask you one or two
questions by yourself."
"Yes, Miss Conyngham," Joey answered wonderingly.
"Have you gone outside at night? Think before you speak."
That question did not need thinking about; Joey remembered that
home-sick first night far too vividly to hesitate. "Yes, Miss
Conyngham."
"When?"
"The first night I was here. I got out on the roof; didn't Matron tell
you I spoilt my quilt? She jolly well takes care to go on telling
me----"
"Answer only my questions, please. You got out on the roof that first
night. For what reason?"
Joey could not say that Noreen, Syb, and Barbara had been horrid to
her; she turned red and hesitated. The Professor glanced quickly at
Miss Conyngham.
"For what reason, Jocelyn?"
"Oh, just I wanted to. Of course, I didn't know it was going to rain on
my quilt."
"Never mind the quilt. How often have you done it since?"
"Never, Miss Conyngham."
The Professor's black eyebrows lifted just a shade. Joey saw them and
felt angry. Didn't he believe her?
"You are quite sure of that, Jocelyn?"
"Yes--honour."
"Last night," Miss Conyngham said slowly, her eyes on Joey's face, "the
Professor saw a girl, a tall, slim girl in a short frock, climb in at
the window of the Laboratory sometime after you were all supposed to be
in bed, but before the servants had locked up. He was not near enough
to be quite sure about her--but this morning he found this handkerchief
under the window."
She held out the handkerchief--a small blue-bordered one, rather
grubby. Joey's name, in Mums' marking-ink, stared up at her from one
corner. It was certainly hers--it was, in fact, the handkerchief she
had used last night; she remembered drying her hands with it after
helping Barbara to carry the cauldron of boiling water across the
stage. She had thrust it back into her sleeve, she remembered, when
Noreen demanded she should tell the audience how many syllables the
charade had.
"Yes; it's mine all right--but I don't know how it got there," she
said, staring at it.
"Is there anything that you would like to say to me quite alone?" Miss
Conyngham asked her.
"You don't think I went to the Lab when I've said I didn't? I don't
tell lies," Joey flared.
"No, I believe your word of honour, Jocelyn," Miss Conyngham said, and
she looked very straight at the Professor.
Joey heaved a sigh of relief. "Well, that's all right. Thanks awfully.
Do you want me any more, Miss Conyngham, or can I go now? For Noreen
and Gabby are frightfully keen to hear about the things I saw last
night."
She turned to the Professor. "I say, were you walking round the place
all the time between ten and twelve? You must have got wet! If it had
been one of us, we'd have caught it from Matron for staying out in the
rain."
"What do you talk of? I picked up the handkerchief, suspecting
not-ting, and returned to the Lodge," the Professor said
annihilatingly. "It was not till I visit the Laboratory to make a
leetle experiment this morning, that I find my eyes haf not deceive
me--and then I looked at the name on the handkerchief, and learn who do
me this injury."
"I've told Miss Conyngham I didn't go into the Lab," Joey declared,
growing angry in her turn. "I haven't been near the place since you
were so frightfully cross with me for tidying the day I came. And you
needn't be surprised that I thought you were walking about all that
time, for you were there at twelve, when you were signalling. I saw
you. I dare say you came back to do it--only, it was a natural thing
for me to think, wasn't it?--not rudeness, like doubting a person's
word. I'm sorry if _I've_ been rude, though; and I think you signal
splendidly--so jolly fast. I couldn't keep up with you."
The Professor made a contemptuous gesture with his hands, stained and
blunted at the fingertips.
"She dreams, this child. I haf no knowledge of the signalling. But for
the other matter, Madame, may I ask that you will question further?"
"No, Professor, I shall not do that," Miss Conyngham said firmly.
"Jocelyn has given me her word of honour that she had no hand in
the matter, and I trust my girls. Someone else must have taken her
handkerchief by accident. I need hardly tell you that I shall look most
carefully into the business and discover the culprit; but I cannot
act as you suggest, or disbelieve the word of a child who has always
shown herself truthful. Jocelyn, you may go; I am satisfied with what
you have told me; but until the mystery is cleared up there will be no
leave out for any Redlands girl, and you may tell the girls so."
"Not for the match?" cried Joey, in dismay.
"Not for the match; except, of course, for the players," Miss Conyngham
said quite decidedly. "Someone is behaving like a dishonourable coward,
and until she owns up the whole school must be punished. That will do,
Jocelyn."
The Professor made a quick step towards Miss Conyngham. His expression
made Joey think of the day he had found her trying to perform the
duties of a "scholarship kid."
"If the word of the young lady is to be taken before mine, Miss
Conyngham, I must ask you of your goodness to seek another Professor
of Chemistry," he said. "And it would be much to my convenience if you
could find him by the end of dis vairy month, since your young ladies
here haf no desire to learn of me--and I therefore receive insults on
all sides...."
"Run away, Jocelyn," Miss Conyngham ordered, and Joey obeyed of course,
though it was a tantalising moment to be ordered out. Would Miss
Conyngham and the Professor make friends again, she wondered, or would
she accept his resignation and let him leave them as he asked to do by
the end of the month?
The end of the month--why, that would be the 31st, of course. Joey
thought of Noreen's words, "We're living in a mystery." Noreen had been
joking, but it began to look as though her joking words were coming
true.
It was then it occurred to her that the minute the ban on going out was
removed, the person to consult was John. But meantime the school was
under arrest and the culprit had still to be found. Joey made her way
back to the others, and announced Miss Conyngham's depressing ultimatum
on the way to Remove II. B classroom. By Break the whole school knew
it, and the Head of the Upper School and the Head of the Lower met for
a council of war.
CHAPTER XVI
THE EVE OF THE MATCH
It was the thirtieth of October, the eve of the great match between the
"Lincs Ladies" and Redlands.
Ordinarily all Redlands would have been in a perfect fizzle of
excitement; the Team was strong, the best, so Miss Lambton and the
coach agreed, that Redlands had run for the past six years; and the
weather was perfect, fine and dry and windy, so that the field at
Deeping Royal was safe to be in the best of all possible conditions for
the match.
But despite all this, gloom reigned throughout Redlands, from Ingrid
down to little Tiddles; who, although she could not understand the
issues, could at least understand that her adored Joey was sad.
Miss Conyngham had not budged one inch from her pronouncement, in spite
of all that the College dared to urge. The Professor had seen a girl
climbing in at the window of the Lab, and yet no girl had come forward
to own to it. Until the culprit gave herself up voluntarily, the whole
school must be under punishment. And the punishment was "gating" at all
times except the walks in "croc." That meant that no Redlands girl,
with the exception of the Team, who naturally must be exempt, could go
to the great match.
The College groaned and conjectured and groaned again. It gave Miss
Conyngham up as a bad job; gentle though she was, she was harder to
move than "Maddy" with her austere manner, or Miss Wrestow, the senior
mistress, with her strict views on discipline. It tackled understanding
people, like Miss Craigie and Miss Lambton, and implored intervention.
But nothing made any difference; Miss Conyngham had given her
ultimatum, and by that the school had to abide. Until the culprit gave
herself up, the whole of Redlands was under the ban.
Joey sometimes wondered if she were still suspected, in spite of her
emphatic denial and Miss Conyngham's apparent acceptance of it. She
knew that the Professor had suspected her; Ingrid had been sure that
he whispered her name to Miss Conyngham when she came in late on that
dreadful morning, and the look in his eyes had been so vindictive,
Ingrid said, that he must have really wanted to get her severely
punished, perhaps even sent away. Ingrid had been very indignant about
it, and championed Joey so publicly that no one in the College would
have dared to doubt her.
Besides at first everyone was sure that the clearing up of the mystery
was only a matter of a few hours, or, at the most, a few days. Ingrid
called a meeting of the Upper School; Gabrielle of the Lower. Both
pointed out with proper Head-Girl firmness that the offender was bound
in honour to come forward--and no one did! And that second half of
October went slipping away, with the College still under its ban and
the mystery unsolved.
The suspense began to get upon everybody's nerves, and excitable people
started to cast accusations about, more or less wildly. It did no good,
and only wore still thinner the already thin patience of the girls. And
the thirtieth came, and still the criminal was undiscovered and the
College paying in bitterness of spirit for her silence.
Joey was trying to forget the trouble in the kindergarten with the
babies. They, in especial little Tiddles, were always so proud and
pleased to have her there that she snatched half an hour with them
whenever she could manage it, despite the remonstrances of Noreen, Syb,
and Barbara, who thought her tastes eccentric and "not the thing" for
Remove II. B.
Of course they could not be expected to realise that Joey missed Kirsty
and Bingo quite badly sometimes, for the public attitude of Redlands
towards juniors at one's home was studiously detached. Syb wrote to
her small sister every week, Joey knew, and sent her a present costing
three weeks' pocket-money on her birthday, but when asked about her
didn't know whether she was nine or ten, and could only state vaguely
that she "believed it wasn't a bad sort of kid."
So Joey refrained from saying too much about Kirsty and Bingo, but
stuck firmly to her friendship with the kindergarten people all the
same.
When Noreen burst into the kindergarten play-room during the half-hour
between tea and prep, Joey only thought her friend had come to drag her
away, and went on defiantly with "Oranges and Lemons."
But instead of the good-natured jeer which she expected, Noreen spoke
quite hoarsely:
"Come along, Joey; I want you."
Joey looked at her. Noreen was very white, and her blue eyes were
blazing. Clearly something was very wrong.
"I want you," she repeated. "Do leave the babies and come along."
There was an expostulatory wail from the little ones. Joey turned round
and hugged Tiddles, who was nearest to her, clinging to her djibbah in
readiness for the tug of war.
"I can't stop now, darling; but I'll tell you what, I'll come after tea
to-morrow, as we can't go to the match."
Tiddles released her unwillingly, and Noreen seized her arm and dragged
her off at once.
"What _is_ the matter?" Joey asked, as soon as they were outside the
room and out of hearing of the babies.
Noreen gave a short laugh.
"You'll never guess. It is about the limit. Here have Doris Redburn and
Roma Kirke been insinuating that it was _I_ who broke into the Lab."
"What? You!" gasped Joey.
"They said I was always grousing about stinks and saying how I hated
the Professor--of course, that's a true bill. And they said I didn't
care what rows I got into. That's a true bill as well. I don't care. I
rather wish I had done that Lab business--only Gabrielle is so stuffy
about things like that--but if I had, I simply _couldn't_ hold my
tongue and have the whole Coll punished, even if telling meant getting
expelled."
"Of course you couldn't," Joey burst out, furious for her friend. "Who
are saying it--Doris and Roma? I'll just go and tell them what I think
about their hateful untruthful cheek...."
"No, stop!" Noreen cried, catching her arm as she whirled by. "It's no
good just going for those two--they say lots of girls think it. Wonder
if Miss Conyngham does too?"
"'Course not!" said Joey hotly. "She'd jolly well know you couldn't
be a mean outsider, whatever else you might be. But I do wish the
Professor hadn't gone and stirred her up like this. If he hadn't been
so cock-sure he saw a girl, it might have been supposed to be the cat."
Noreen groaned.
"It's pretty beastly anyway. One of our crowd is behaving like a rotten
outsider, and her rotten outsiderishness is being fastened upon me. It
is rough luck."
Joey had never seen her cheerful and inconsequent friend half so
"down"; she was dreadfully distressed.
"Let me just go for that Doris girl--she's much the worst," she
suggested.
"What's the good?" asked Noreen dejectedly.
She put her arm through Joey's, and they began to walk up and down the
broad gravel path between the house and the Lab.
"Why on earth couldn't the Professor go to bed and stay there, instead
of messing round and spoiling the hockey-match for us all? I'm jolly
glad he's leaving at the end of the month," she concluded vindictively;
"but he's done the harm by now."
"If only he hadn't been so sure about the girl," Joey repeated,
frowning. "It's that makes Miss Conyngham so stiff about it--otherwise
she'd just take our words."
"I think she ought to, anyway. Just think of the match, and Redlands
perhaps pulling it off for the first time for six years, and not one of
us there!"
"P'r'aps the girl will own up in time," Joey suggested, but not
hopefully.
Noreen shook her head.
"Not she. She would have done it long ago if she meant to. She's
probably a beastly slacker, who doesn't care two pins about hockey...."
"Nor the Coll," Joey added gloomily.
"I've a good mind to go to the match after all--are you game, Joey?"
Noreen said suddenly. "Oh yes, I know there'll be the father and
mother, not to mention the aunts and uncles of a good old row; but one
may just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. If they're going to
suspect me of beastly things like this----"
Noreen was driven rather desperate; that was clear. Joey held on
tighter to her arm, as though she expected her to bolt off there and
then.
"It would be heavenly, Noreen; but we can't--you know we can't.
Besides, everyone's dying to go."
"If I could get hold of that skunk of a girl!" growled Noreen, and then
her eyes lit up again with a dangerous gleam. "Tell you what, Joey;
I've a precious good mind to say I did do it after all; and then the
others will be allowed to go anyway."
"Noreen!" gasped Joey.
"Oh, of course. I shall tell Miss Conyngham that I
didn't--afterwards--when it's too late to matter. You're right about
the other thing; it would be rather skunkish when everyone is dying to
go. But I'd give them the chance this way. Oh, I know it's an awful
thumper, but they shouldn't put it into my head by hinting that I did
the crime and lay low."
"No one would believe you did it," Joey urged, grasping at a straw. "No
one to count, at least--who cares for silly idiots like Doris and Roma?"
"Wouldn't they? I've got a truly Irish reputation here."
"Well, no one could believe you wouldn't tell for a whole fortnight
when everyone was being punished, anyway."
"Doris and Roma hinted that quite a lot of people found it easy enough
to believe," Noreen said bitterly. "No, shut it, Joey; I've settled,
I'm going to do it. You ought to be pleased; you'll be able to go to
your cousin's again--didn't you say they'd asked you for Sunday?"
"Don't be a pig, Noreen!"
"Pax, old thing, I didn't mean it. Of course, you won't like my doing
it, I know; but it _is_ a way out. Get Gabrielle to take Syb for her
other friend if she will; Syb's wild to go...."
"Noreen, will you promise, honour! not to go telling Miss Conyngham you
were the one till after Prep at least?" poor Joey urged in desperation.
"Oh, do promise, Noreen."
"What's the good of waiting, you cuckoo?"
"Oh, the real girl might speak--or I might find a way out."
"The cheek of you! Because you got a scholarship, you think...."
"Oh, talk sense, Noreen; of course I don't. Only I might find a way.
Promise!"
"Righto. Till after Prep, then, but not a minute longer. Understand."
Noreen disengaged her arm, and departed hastily. Joey stood still
considering. Everything that was in her revolted against Noreen's plan;
and yet what was there to do? Even her inherent hopefulness found it
hard to believe that the culprit would come forward at this eleventh
hour, and if she didn't--the guests of the Team were all held up for
the match, and the gating of the whole College might go on for an
indefinite period--possibly even to the end of the term.
Joey had herself already realised the practical drawbacks of the
punishment: she had received a particularly kind letter from Cousin
Greta asking her for the day next Sunday, and Miss Conyngham had said,
"Write and decline."
Of course it was nothing in comparison with the match; still, now
Cousin Greta had been so nice and understanding about her reprehensible
proceedings on the former visit, she would have quite liked to
go again. Besides, she wanted to ask John about the Professor's
signalling. And yet to allow Noreen to tell a lie and accuse herself of
an act of unforgivable meanness--that couldn't be right.
Joey looked up at the Lab; if only the Professor had not been so wide
awake that night! She supposed he was quite sure of what he saw; after
all, it was a very dark night. And then there came to Joey the bold
thought of going to ask the Professor if he were really quite sure. He
was in the Lab; she could see his head moving between wall and window,
and there would be just time before the bell rang for Prep. Joey made
one dart for the steps, and hammered at the door.
"Please, it's not anyone come to worry you when you're busy," she
called out. "I'm Joey Graham, and I want to ask something dreadfully
important, but it will only take about half a sec."
There were steps inside the Lab; a key turned, the door opened. The
Professor stood there before her, dressed in the long white linen coat
he wore when he was working. The violet handkerchief protruded from one
pocket.
"May I come in just a moment?" Joey asked humbly. "I want to ask
you...."
"I am very busy," the Professor told her, in no very promising voice.
"Well, but it's frightfully important," Joey tumbled out in desperate
haste for fear he should shut the door in her face. "If I could help
you clearing up or anything like that after, to make up for wasting
your time now, I would like a shot if you'd let me, but...."
"Ah, it is of course the scholarship girl that tink she has the duty
to tidy here," said the Professor. His temper seemed to have suddenly
improved. "You may come in, and tell me vat it is you vish to say."
Joey came in. Even in that supreme moment she noticed that the Lab
looked very much as though it needed tidying. The Professor saw her
glance.
"Dere is so much that I must do to make all in readiness for my
successor," he said blandly.
"Is he coming at once?" Joey asked.
"In two, tree days after I have left; _I_ go away to-morrow, and, _ma
foi_! I tink I must be again up 'alf de night to prepare the Lab for
him. So if you tink you see me signalling again...."
"I shan't be startled," Joey finished for him. "But I wasn't really
before--it's only Tiddles and babies like that who are frightened of
you, and they're so little, you know; they can't help it. But I wanted
to ask you about that night--it was jolly dark, you know; that's partly
why your signalling was so beautifully plain--do you think you might
just possibly have been mistaken ... about the girl you saw?..."
"You tink I make de lie, hein?" the Professor asked.
"Oh _no_, of course not," Joey assured him in a great hurry. "You're
French, you know, and French people would be just as much the soul
of honour as English, _of course_. It's only Huns who tell lies, one
knows. Only it _was_ a very dark night, and Redlands girls always have
owned up about things before--and it's so desperate about being stopped
from the match and all, you know, that Noreen O'Hara--the one whom you
call 'Fathead' in Stinks Class--is going to say she did it, though she
didn't, for the sake of the rest and one can't let her do that, can
one?"
"An' I am to prevent Mees O'Hara from telling de lie--by the vay,
it seems it is not only Huns dat do dat after all--by telling Mees
Conyngham that I consider myself mistake'?" the Professor said slowly.
"Of course not, if you're dead sure about the girl," Joey corrected
miserably. "Only, it _was_ dark, wasn't it? I was looking out of my
window all the time, so I know how dark it was; and if you said _you_
weren't quite sure, I know Miss Conyngham would rather believe a
Redlands girl wasn't a mean outsider."
The Professor lifted his heavy lids and looked at her.
"You are a good pleader, Mees Joey Graham. So you looked from your
bedroom for long and tink it too dark for me to see clear. I will go
to Mees Conyngham now--and tell 'er dat I may 'ave been mistake'--on
one condition--dat you do as you offer a while back and come to-morrow
to 'elp me tidy de Lab. Ees dat a bargain? since I waste my time on
preventing your Mees Noreen make de lie."
"Rather!" Joey cried joyfully. "I say, you _are_ a good sort, and you
shall just see how I'll tidy to-morrow. I suppose you wouldn't like
me to bring Gabrielle and Noreen as well? I'm sure they would be most
awfully pleased."
"No!" the Professor said sharply. "Bring no one, and tell no one. I do
not want children running in and out; they disturb me."
"All right," Joey promised joyfully. "When shall I come?"
"At twelve, when you haf finished lessons, _n'est-ce pas_?" the
Professor said, quite pleasantly for him, and Joey, with a heartfelt
"Thank you," flew for her classroom at her best speed, arriving late,
in company with two or three other laggards.
"Really, Jocelyn Graham, and you, Bernadine and Rhoda, you are too
bad," Miss Lambton said indignantly. "Why can't you listen for the
bell, instead of coming in late and disturbing us all in this way? Take
a Rule, all three of you; and don't let it happen again."
The "Sorry, Miss Lambton," which Joey murmured was conventional
entirely. She was not sorry at all, for she had a glorious conviction
that the deed was done, and the College cleared.
Bernadine, Rhoda, and herself were kept behind, when Prep was over, to
receive a short but stringent lecture from Miss Lambton on the need
of punctuality, and so did not go out to dress with the rest. But the
attention which Joey was endeavouring to give to Miss Lambton was much
interfered with by conjectures, and scattered altogether by a sound
that came a minute or two later down to Classroom Remove II. B--a sound
of cheering.
Louder it grew and louder, as girls came pouring in from their
different classrooms.
"What _can_ be happening?" Miss Lambton interrupted herself to ask.
The three sinners took the question for a signal of dismissal. They ran.
A great throng of girls, growing larger every moment, was congregated
in the hall, cheering wildly. Squeezing past smaller girls, and under
the elbows of seniors, Joey arrived somehow in the front rank.
A large notice faced her--a notice on which the ink was hardly dry:
"In consequence of information received, Miss Conyngham withdraws
the ban on Redlands."
CHAPTER XVII
TRICKED
Joey was up next morning with a punctuality that highly exasperated the
other occupants of Blue Dorm. But in the face of so much excitement,
she would have found it almost impossible to stay in bed, even if she
had not wanted to telephone to Cousin Greta before breakfast, to ask if
after all she might go to her on Sunday.
Miss Conyngham had given gracious permission for the use of the 'phone
overnight, and if Joey was to be at the Lab at 12, she would not have
a minute to spare, most likely, till the match was over. And this was
Saturday.
She leaned far out of her window first thing to see if the weather was
smiling on the all-important match. It was quite fine and clear, with a
sky that looked a long way off slightly flecked with fine mares' tails,
and a sea that seemed comparatively near, lying silver grey on the
luminous horizon.
"Oh, get back to bed," groaned Noreen, from half under the bedclothes;
but Joey got up, all the same, and dashed downstairs to the 'phone.
The housemaids had just finished with Miss Conyngham's room and were
sweeping the hall; Joey shut the door to get away from the dust and
noise, and asked for Colonel Sturt's number at the Exchange.
She got it; but it was an unfamiliar voice that answered her:
"Her ladyship is not yet down, and cannot be disturbed."
"Is Miss Grace there?" asked Joey.
"Miss Grace is not yet down."
"Is anybody?" Joey asked, hoping sincerely that she would not be
obliged to talk to Colonel Sturt.
"Mr. John is, miss; would you wish to speak to him?"
"Please," Joey said, relieved; and a minute later heard the heavy thump
of crutches, and a decorous voice saying, "A young lady to speak to
you, sir."
Joey squeezed the receiver vigorously. "That you, John? It's Joey
speaking. Can you really walk about now? How topping!"
"Yes, rather--I'm getting along fine with crutches," was John's
cheerful answer. "I say, why can't you come on Sunday, young 'un?
You'll find Gracie quite different this time...."
"I can come now, if Cousin Greta doesn't mind my changing," Joey
explained. "The Coll got gated, and now it's un-gated, that's all; and
I'm going to the match at Deeping Royal this afternoon, and I'd like to
come over to you to-morrow no end if I may, and tell you about it."
"Righto. I'll tell my aunt. She'll be awfully pleased. You may take it
she'll fetch you for lunch. I say, like to do some more signalling?"
"Oh yes, John. Do you know our Stinks Professor here is frightfully
good at that? I saw him the other night...."
"_What?_ Don't you go to bed at night at Redlands?"
"Of course, you stupid. The Professor was doing it at night, not me. I
saw him out of my window."
"Signalling practice all by himself in the middle of the night? Tell
that to someone younger, my dear Kid."
Joey took no notice of the jeer. "John, isn't dot, dash, dash, dash,
J?" she demanded.
"Yes, rather!"
"And dot-dash is A?"
"Of course."
"Then what does Ja spell?"
"All by itself?"
"All by itself."
"It's the German for yes," John told her, after a second's pause. "But
your Stinks man is French, isn't he?"
"Yes; Professor Trouville."
"Was that _all_ his signalling you saw?"
"That wasn't his signalling."
"Whose was it?"
"I don't know. It seemed to come from a long way off."
"You said the Professor signalled?"
"Yes; he did first."
"What?"
"It seemed like 31."
"Thirty-one?"
"Yes."
"Funny--that's to-day," John said. "Joey."
"Yes."
"I think you had better come over here; I'll ask Cousin Greta to send
for you. Come to-day, I mean, and not wait for to-morrow."
"_John?_ I can't to-day--it's the match."
"Well, I'll take you on to it in the car."
"It's frightfully nice of you--but, you see, I was going with Gabby and
Noreen, my specialist friends."
"I'll ask Aunt Greta to ask the whole boiling of you to lunch then,"
John said, impatiently. "So long, Joey. I can't tell you any more till
I know it myself. But you come along if you're sent for."
"But, John, I can't come to lunch, because I've promised to tidy the
Lab," Joey began, and then stopped, because she had been rung off. She
went in to breakfast, feeling very doubtful whether she wanted to go to
lunch at Mote to-day, even with the company of Noreen and Gabrielle.
It would be much more fun to go with the Team, and it was more than
possible that Cousin Greta might not see the great importance of being
in time for the match.
Then Miss Conyngham made an announcement at breakfast that made her
absolutely sure she did not want to go.
"I am glad to know that it seems possible I suspected a Redlands girl
unjustly," Miss Conyngham said in the clear voice that reached without
effort to every corner of the big refectory.
"Because I am so glad and thankful that I _was_ mistaken, I wish to
give the College an especial treat, and therefore arranged last night
by 'phone that enough brakes should be here by 1.15 to-day to take the
whole six hundred of us to Deeping Royal--to see, we hope, Redlands
pull it off against the Lincs Ladies."
Miss Conyngham might have had more to say, but she was not allowed
to say it. The whole school rose at her, and the cheering, as Noreen
remarked afterwards, nearly smashed all the breakfast-cups on the
table. Miss Conyngham had to hold up her hand twice for silence before
she could mention that dinner would be at a quarter to one, promptly,
to allow of a punctual start for Deeping Royal.
"How absolutely topping of the Head," Noreen whispered to Joey. "I
say, I _am_ glad you stopped me making an ass of myself last night. I
believe she's just as bucked about it as we are, really. Bags I next
place to you, old thing, in our bus."
"I'm not going," Joey explained mournfully.
"Not going?"
"Not with the rest, I mean. I've got to go to lunch with my cousin."
"What rot! You can't. Why, we should have no end of a time driving--you
go quite close to the Stakes by the shore of the Wash."
Joey began to wish very acutely that she had rung up Mote again
directly she was cut off, and explained that she couldn't manage
Saturday. Only John had startled her just for a minute; he had seemed
so oddly sure that she must come, and then the breakfast gong had gone,
and it was too late.
"Absolute rubbish," Noreen persisted. "Gabby, do you hear? Joey wants
to lunch with her cousins and go with them instead of with us."
"I don't want--at all," poor Joey said. "Only--John seemed to want
me...."
"The conceit of the kid," laughed Barbara.
"I mean he wanted me about signalling, I think," Joey explained in a
hurry.
"Oh, tell him signalling must jolly well wait. Get the Head to let
you 'phone," advised Barbara, and Joey got up from table with every
intention of taking her advice. But, when she found herself in the
passage leading to Miss Conyngham's room, the rather urgent note in
John's voice haunted her. He had seemed to think it mattered that she
should come to lunch to-day, and he had been so very kind in teaching
her to signal. And if for some odd inexplicable reason it should
matter, it would be so poor and un-English to have stayed away just
because it would be more fun going with the others. After all, Noreen,
who was nearly a year older than herself, had suggested there was some
mystery going; and though she had said it half jokingly, it might be
true all the same. She must put up with the duller drive, and not even
ask if Noreen and Gabrielle might come with her to Mote; it was quite
clear they would not want to. Joey gave herself a little shake and
marched up to Miss Conyngham's door.
"Please, Cousin Greta asked me to lunch to-day, at least John spoke,
and they'll send and take me to the match afterwards, if it's all
right," she said.
Miss Conyngham was very busy, and hardly looked up. Joey half hoped she
would say "Why do they want you?" and then she would have explained
about the signalling, and the Head might have said it did not matter.
As it was, she only glanced up from her papers for the fraction of a
second.
"Yes, you will enjoy that, Jocelyn. Get ready in good time; don't keep
your cousin waiting. That will do."
Joey went back to the others to explain briefly to several disapproving
friends that she had not asked the Head's leave to decline the
invitation.
"You're a silly juggins," Noreen stated, with candour. "But if it's
done, it's done, I suppose: the Head would never stand being bothered
again. Only mind you're not late--you'll spoil the match for Gabrielle
and me if you are, remember."
"I won't be," Joey promised.
She was off to the Lab on the stroke of twelve. She did not suppose
that Cousin Greta would send for her till nearly 1.30, as her lunch
was not till 1.45; but there had been a great deal of tidying to do,
and she must leave ten minutes for getting into her best frock, and
brushing hair and nails. There wasn't a moment to lose.
As she ran round the corner of the great house, she noticed that the
mares' tails of the morning were spreading fast over the sky. "There's
going to be a lot of wind presently," she thought, and that was all
she did think about it just then, for the work she had to get done by
1.15 was decidedly uppermost in her mind, mingled with that little
under current of surprise that John should be so interested in the
Professor's signalling.
But just as she came within sight of the Lab she had to stop, for there
was little Tiddles, walking solemnly along by herself, not seeming to
mind for once that she was near the Professor's lair, and crying, not
aloud as the babies did usually, but with the tears rolling slowly down
her tiny cheeks.
In spite of her hurry Joey had to try and comfort the poor mite. "What
is it, darling?"
Tiddles looked mournfully at her. "They won't let me go this
afternoon," she said, with a sob. "They say Tiddles has a cold; but it
will make her cold more ill to stay at home."
"Oh poor Tiddles!" sympathised Joey. "What frightfully hard lines.
But I'll tell you all about it afterwards, darling; and it is a long
drive, you know, quite nine miles, and it gets awfully cold in the late
afternoon."
"You could cuddle Tiddles tight in your arms, Jo-ey; then she would not
catch cold," Tiddles declared.
"But I'm not going with the brakes, duckie, so I couldn't hold you,"
Joey said.
"You are going to stay at home and play with Tiddles?" asked the mite,
with dawning hope.
Joey shook her head, though she felt very unkind. "No, pet; but I'll
tell you everything--Honour! and play with you to-morrow instead."
"Won't you play with her now, Jo-ey?" Tiddles pleaded. She had a quaint
way of speaking, as though she were a personality quite distinct from
the Tiddles whom the College petted and treated as a baby.
"I can't, darling; I have to go in there," Joey nodded in the direction
of the Lab. "And you must let me go now, for I have to be busy."
Tiddles let go of her hand without a word, and stood looking after her
with brimming eyes, but without actually crying. Joey felt a brute to
leave her like that, but it had to be done. It was already nearly ten
minutes past twelve; the Professor would be waiting for her.
He was. She saw that directly he unlocked the door to her, as quickly
as though he had been standing just inside. His face was less impassive
than usual, and it had a slightly yellowish look, while the eyes upon
which Gabrielle had commented were strained. But the face relaxed a
little at the sight of Joey. "You are late! I feared you would not
come," he said.
"I'm so sorry; I just got kept by poor little Tiddles--she was crying,"
Joey explained. She did not wait to tell him why; the Professor did not
care for children, and would not want to know she thought.
"Ah, de Belgian baby dat fear me," said the Professor, showing his
teeth in a curious smile. "It is a strange idea you schoolgirls have
of me, _n'est-ce pas_? To one I am an expert signaller--to another a
fierce ogre."
"We all think you were frightfully decent though to square it with Miss
Conyngham," Joey said, with conviction. "Do you know we are all going
to the match--all the school! It's never been known before."
"Yes, I know dat," the Professor said. "You all go, mistresses and all
at 1.15; except for you."
"Did _you_ know I was going to my cousin's?" Joey asked surprised. She
had never thought Professor Trouville would take half so much interest
in what the schoolgirls did. He had never seemed to think anything
about them, except that they were very stupid at chemistry.
However, she had no time for wondering. "Please, where would you like
me to start tidying?" she asked, looking round the big, untidy place.
The Professor was bending over something on the table--a little square
wooden box, into which he appeared to be fitting a small glass tube
with care. He did not even look up.
"I need many bottles from the closet," he said.
"Shall I get them?" asked Joey politely.
She dived into the innermost recesses of the closet. As she did so she
heard quick steps across the floor, and the closet door slammed, making
the place quite dark.
Joey was startled by the suddenness of the slam and darkness; but she
dared not move for fear of stumbling over the bottles that littered the
floor.
"Oh, please open the door--I can't see anything," she called, and as
she called it the key turned in the lock.
"Don't do that, please; I'm inside," she shouted at the top of her
voice; but even while she called that fact out confidently there was an
unbelievable fear looking over her shoulder--she felt she would see it,
if she turned her head--and the knowledge that the Professor knew she
was there all the time, and had locked her in on purpose.
She put all the courage that was in her into the effort to push that
horrid thought away.
"If you're playing a trick on me, please stop it now, because there's a
lot of tidying and Miss Conyngham will be fearfully vexed if I haven't
changed my frock before my cousin sends for me," she urged. "They'll
look for me if I'm not there when the car comes."
She talked into thick darkness and silence. She could hear the
Professor moving about the room, but he returned no answer at all. She
spoke into a blank wall.
The keyhole was still blocked with the key. She could see nothing, and
what little she heard gave her no help at all. Still she tried hard to
keep her end up.
"I wish you'd stop it now and let me out," she said firmly. "If it's a
joke you've had the best of it, and if it's a punishment I should like
to know what I've done. Anyhow, I don't see staying here."
The Professor came across to the closet; there was a little rattle,
and the keyhole showed light. He had taken out the key, but he had not
turned it.
Joey darted to the door as soon as that little ray of pale wintry
daylight showed her where it was. She saw the Professor busily engaged
in fitting the little wooden box into a cigar case that seemed made
for it. His white linen coat had covered a neat dark tweed suit of
undoubtedly English make; his moustache was gone. She saw that in the
moment before he walked quietly past the locked and keyless door of the
dark closet, and out through the outer door of the Lab, which he locked
behind him. Joey had seen that he was smiling a little.
CHAPTER XVIII
AT DEEPING ROYAL
Cook, though amazingly capable, was not an absolute magician; few
people are. Perhaps it was not altogether astonishing, considering that
she had only received her orders last night when dinner had been duly
ordered, that the meal was not on the table quite at 12.45. It was in
fact seven minutes late--not an extraordinary delay considering the
circumstances, but enough to make the meal a scramble, and everybody
feel a little fussed.
Noreen and Gabrielle had both meant to see Joey before she started,
and impress on her the great importance of not allowing her cousin to
start late for Deeping Royal. But Joey was not to be seen about the
place when they put on coats, boots, and hats according to directions
before lunch, in Remove II. Dressing-Room, and there was not a second
to tear up to Blue Dorm, where she would be changing into her Sunday
frock, when lunch was over. Everybody was bustled into the brakes in
hot haste, with the exception of poor Tiddles, who was being consoled,
however, by lunch with the housekeeper in her own room, and a liberal
supply of sweet biscuits and almonds and raisins.
"Rotten about Joey not coming with us," grumbled Noreen, as the long
procession of brakes wound down the drive. "I can't think why she
wanted to go to her cousin's to-day of all days."
"She didn't," Gabrielle remarked. "Joey does a few things she doesn't
want."
"Well, it's very tiresome she should do it to-day. I bet she'll be
late, and then she'll have to stand somewhere at the back, and we
shan't be together at all."
"We could go back a little way to meet her," suggested Gabrielle, "and
then whatever happens, we shall be together."
"Good egg! What luck you're Lower School Head, Gabby! If it were me
I should have to ask leave, and probably get it refused too," Noreen
whispered, for Miss Lambton was in the brake with them, and she was
young and great on discipline, and was known to disapprove of some
among the many concessions made to Gabrielle's exalted position. It
was on the cards that, if she heard the plan, there would come an
authoritative order to keep all together and not exert the privileges
of Head of the Lower School.
The drive was a long one, but no one in the whole school thought so for
an instant. Besides the grand excitement of the match at the far end,
the drive itself was so full of interest.
After passing the station the long procession of brakes kept to the
straight raised road for a couple of miles only, then began to wind
down on to the broad road which spanned the Deeps.
That road in itself spelt romance to the Redlands girls. It was still
christened _Malfrey Street_, though that Roger Malfrey, who had owned
the chief interest in the flourishing town and harbour that had once
made Deeping Royal a famous name in the region of the great Wash, and
had sunk a fortune and years and high hopes in the attempt to make a
lasting road across the undrained fens, had gone--where effort that has
failed may wear a brighter crown than fulfilment.
Now, centuries later, sand and shoals had silted up the harbour, and of
the old greatness of Deeping Royal nothing remained but the magnificent
twin churches of St. Philip and St. James (once hardly able to contain
all the worshippers of the place), and open fields that carried strange
names--"Fishmarket Field," "Mummers' Square," "Gold-Heart Street," and
so on. Of Deeping Royal proper there remained a straggling fishing
village of, perhaps, five hundred souls.
Malfrey Street ran in a line with the river for three-quarters of
its length. A quarter of a mile perhaps of Green Deeps separated the
brimming, bankless river from the causeway that lifted itself from the
grass even as the river seemed trying to do. And both seemed making
straight as a die for the sea. Then, when Redlands was some seven miles
behind, river and road appeared to change their minds, and, twisting
sharply, ran parallel with the flat, dreary shore for more than two
miles, only a narrow strip of shingle dividing the sand from the
road. On such a day as this the road was soft with the sand that blew
over the shingle and settled on it, only to be whirled away and flung
among the coarse grass that still struggled to grow between river and
road--fighting for existence with sea-pinks and purple madder.
The sand blew into the girls' eyes and proved rather a bar to absolute
enjoyment at this point. The mares' tails of the morning were driving
madly across a high, ragged sky; the wind had come with a vengeance.
"Bother it!" growled Noreen, pushing her curly ends of hair out of her
eyes for about the hundredth time. No plait that was made could keep
Noreen's curly hair in absolute order. "Hard luck on the teams to have
such a wind as this."
"It's equally bad for both, anyway," Gabrielle remarked. "And I'd back
our side for pluck anywhere."
Miss Lambton was looking uneasily at the sky. "I hope it won't get much
worse," she said.
But Gabrielle and Noreen had an optimistic spirit about a team
captained by the great Ingrid Latimer, and refused to be really
depressed by the weather on their account.
It was another fear which worried them.
"Suppose that cousin of Joey's thinks it's too bad to play, and won't
send her?" Noreen whispered tragically.
"I believe she'll come somehow--trust her," Gabrielle whispered back
reassuringly. "Anyhow, we'll go as far as the reservoir, and see. If we
climb up at the side of that we can get a splendid view."
By this time they were within a quarter of a mile of Deeping Royal.
To their left was still the desolate shore, with the narrow strip
of shingle separating them from it, but there was a great sense of
nearness to the waves which the high wind was driving in big and
threatening, with a crest of foam.
Before them, crowning the slight rise on which the village stood, were
the great twin churches, standing not a stone's-throw apart, with their
massive beacon-towers outlined sharply against a clear, wind-swept
space in the sky.
Below them clustered the village, through which the procession of
brakes drove up a rather steep street to the inn, which one reached
through an incongruous ivy-hung gateway, bearing on one mouldering dim
red pillar the name cut deeply "Good Hope."
The "sweet Anne Wendover," whom Roger Malfrey had wooed in vain,
because "the wasting sickness" wooed her more successfully, had lived
there; and he must have ridden often through those great gates, which
now stood wide to _chars-à-bancs_ and brakes all the summer-time, and
bore a large printed notice, "Teas provided."
"Joey would like this," whispered Gabrielle, as the first brake rattled
into the old court-yard, and stood beneath the new sign.
"Yes, wouldn't she? Queer how one misses the kid," returned Noreen.
"Specially queer when one remembers how we barred her coming from that
twopenny-half-penny school."
"A man's a man for a' that," quoted Gabrielle. "We were snobs."
"You weren't anyway. Well, it's over and done with. Hope she won't be
late."
"So do I," observed Mademoiselle de Lavernais, with a suddenness which
took the two rather aback. They had not realised that she was so near,
or that she would take the smallest interest in their conversation.
It had, in fact, been a surprise to everyone that "Maddy" should have
come at all. She had never professed to take any interest in the school
games, or in the life outside her classes. But she had turned up to-day
at the hurried lunch, in her rusty black toque, and her coat and skirt
of a cut belonging to some five years back, and had climbed into the
same brake as Noreen and Gabrielle.
The two turned to her politely as soon as she joined in their
conversation. "May we see if we can get you a good place,
Mademoiselle?" Gabrielle asked; "and then we are going to try and keep
one for Joey."
Mademoiselle smiled, her little tight-lipped smile, that seemed as
though it were a thing stiff from disuse.
"Thank you, my child; I am obliged. But I fear I do not come to view
the match, though it will give much pleasure to hear of the success of
Redlands, I assure you. But the hockey is to me a mystery, and I seek a
sketch of this place that may remind me of the fen-land when I no more
see it."
Noreen stared. "But--but--are you going away?"
Mademoiselle smiled again. "Yes, after this term I return no more. So
think no further of me, but watch for your friend."
She detached a little field-glass case that was slung across her narrow
shoulders. "Take these if you will, and you will see her from afar."
"But won't you want them, Mademoiselle?" asked Gabrielle.
"Not yet, my child; I shall sketch first. Presently, if I can drag my
old bones so far, I climb one of the twin towers that I may see the
great view, which is to live in my heart also. You will bring them back
before I need them. Adieu."
Gabrielle took the glasses gratefully. "Jolly decent of her," she
whispered to Noreen, as the procession of girls began to wind their way
out of the inn-yard, and down through the village towards Fishmarket
Field, where the great match was to be played.
The wind was now terrifically high, a regular gale blowing straight
from the sea. "Lucky they didn't bring Tiddles; the poor mite would
have been scared out of her senses by all those great waves so close,"
Noreen said. "I wonder when high tide is, Gabby. It must be pretty near
that now I should think."
Gabrielle looked out towards the sea. "I should think it must be.
Someone told me high tide never comes beyond that bit of broken harbour
wall, and it's up to it now."
"If it ever _does_ come over, I should think Fishmarket Square is an
enormous puddle," laughed Noreen. "I don't see any sign of the Lincs
Ladies in the field. Do you? Suppose we're early."
Gabrielle looked at her watch. Noreen's spent most of its time at the
nearest jeweller's being repaired!
"Yes, nearly a quarter before time; we might have chased Joey to Blue
Dorm after all. Let's go along to meet her."
"One of the church towers would be a good place for sighting her,"
suggested Noreen; "but then we shouldn't be able to lay hold. So the
road be it. Hope her cousin won't want to hang on to her by the way; we
don't yearn to have the whole show tacked on to us."
"I don't suppose she'll come," Gabrielle said; "Lady Greta, I mean.
She'll just send Joey in the car. She'll know we shall bring her back
all right."
"I see. We just grab Joey, and say, 'Home, James,' haughtily to the
chauffeur. Come on."
They slipped away unnoticed from the throng of girls at the entrance
to Fishmarket Field, and made the best of their pace to the road,
setting out along it at a steady double. The reservoir was nearly
three-quarters of a mile away, but Noreen had come in first in the
Hundred Yards Race for over-fourteens-under-sixteens at the College
Sports in the summer, and Gabrielle was a quick though not a lasting
runner. The reservoir was reached in an easy six minutes; and they
began to scramble up its high bank. The wind caught at their clothes;
it seemed trying to whirl them bodily away. Noreen stopped for breath;
Gabrielle caught her arm.
Then, "Try-the-other-side-against-the-wind," she shouted;
"wind-might-blow-us-into-water-here."
Noreen had plenty of sense when she chose to use it; she nodded, and
the two slithered down the rough brickwork, and dived around to the
farther side so as to face that furious wind driving from the sea. They
clambered up the bank, and Noreen, who reached the top first, crouched
gasping and laughing, with her hat crushed under her arm, and her hair
blowing wildly.
"Oh, I shall be blown clean off," she shouted down to her friend. "Come
and help me hold on, Gabby; or give me Maddy's glasses."
Gabrielle, who was wrestling with her hat, had no hand free, and Noreen
leant down and snatched the glasses from her.
"Yes, there's a car," she proclaimed. "Can't see what it is, or how
many people in; but it seems to be doing a sprint all right. Bother
that cyclist in front--he gets in the way."
"The car will catch him up directly though," said Gabrielle.
"It's a motor-cycle, stupid! My word! They're coming some pace."
"Which, the car people?"
"Both. Come up and look. Your turn with the glasses. I'll have just one
more squint through them. My Sunday hat, and...."
"What is it?" demanded Gabrielle, scrambling up in a hurry, for Noreen
had broken off short in her favourite ejaculation, as though she were
almost too surprised to speak. "Isn't it Joey in the car?"
"Who do you think it is on the motor-cycle, and scorching fit to bust?"
demanded Noreen in a thrilling whisper. "Why, our old Stinks Professor,
no less."
She suddenly dived down from her position on the high-bricked bank, and
dropped below, pulling Gabrielle with her, and nearly landing on terra
firma with a great bump, in her haste.
"He won't have seen us; _he_ hasn't got glasses. Let's hide and perk
up like jacks in the box just as he goes by. He'll have the surprise
of his life--and he ought to be pleased to see two of his promising
pupils."
"You won't call out or anything to give him a jump, will you?" asked
Gabrielle anxiously. She knew Noreen.
"Am I a juggins? He'd probably jump out of his skin and break his
precious neck," Noreen said. "I only want to say a suitable good-bye to
one who never bothered to say it to any of us, I noticed."
Her eyes brimming over with mischief, she caught Gabrielle's hand and
dragged her round to the angle of the reservoir, still keeping the
side farthest from the sea. "Now let's shin up this--more rest for our
toes at the corner," she said; "then we can put our heads over the
top, and, speaking with extraordinary politeness--oh, it's all right,
Gabby--mention that the brainiest and the stupidest girl in Remove II.
are desirous to bid him a fond farewell. What's the harm of that?"
"We shall miss Joey," objected Gabrielle. "I don't mean to do that for
any Professor."
Noreen, who was scrambling up the angle of the reservoir, kicking
vigorously to find a foot-hold, managed to rear her head enough to look
over the top for a second.
"Nor do I, as it happens, but we shan't," she stated. "If it's a race,
the Professor means to win, hands down."
CHAPTER XIX
AGAINST TIME
Joey had shouted till she was hoarse; she had flung her inconsiderable
weight upon the door again and again in the hope of forcing it--a feat
performed with misleading ease in all Gavin's books of adventure.
She had to stop at last from sheer exhaustion, and then it was, when
there was nothing else to do, that she began to think.
The Professor had locked her in, though she had called to him. So he
had known that she was there. He was not deaf, so he had locked her
in on purpose. That was the first thought which came at all clearly
to her mind. The second was more puzzling still--why had he done it?
Joey never knew exactly at what moment it was that a suspicion about
the Professor crossed her mind. Her mind had travelled quite a long
way first--as far as Mote. What would Cousin Greta say when the car
came back without her? Oh, but it wouldn't--somebody would look for
her. Yes, they would look, but would they look in the right place, for
no one knew where she had gone--no one but little Tiddles? All the
girls would have gone by the time Cousin Greta's car came for her.
Syb and Barbara most likely, and Gabrielle and Noreen most certainly,
would never have given up hunting for her if she were missing in a
mysterious way; but then they were her friends. The maids were very
kind and good-natured--they would look for her in the Blue Dorm and the
playroom, and one or two more likely places of that kind, but it was
not to be expected they would go on looking after that.