appeared to make a note of his name. The last of the six was just
leaving him after this process had been completed, when Mr Dexter
called him back.
"That is not all," he said, suspiciously.
"Yes, sir," said the last of the unknowns.
Neither of the Irishmen recognised the voice. Its owner was a stranger
to them.
"I tell you it is not," snapped Mr Dexter. "You are concealing the
truth from me. O'Hara and Moriarty are down there--two boys in my own
house. I saw them go down there."
"They had nothing to do with us, sir. We saw nothing of them."
"I have no doubt," said the house-master, "that you imagine that you
are doing a very chivalrous thing by trying to hide them, but you will
gain nothing by it. You may go."
He came to the top of the steps, and it seemed as if he intended to
plunge into the darkness in search of the suspects. But, probably
realising the futility of such a course, he changed his mind, and
delivered an ultimatum from the top step.
"O'Hara and Moriarty."
No reply.
"O'Hara and Moriarty, I know perfectly well that you are down there.
Come up immediately."
Dignified silence from the vault.
"Well, I shall wait here till you do choose to come up. You would be
well advised to do so immediately. I warn you you will not tire me
out."
He turned, and the door slammed behind him.
"What'll we do?" whispered Moriarty. It was at last safe to whisper.
"Wait," said O'Hara, "I'm thinking."
O'Hara thought. For many minutes he thought in vain. At last there came
flooding back into his mind a memory of the days of his faghood. It was
after that that he had been groping all the time. He remembered now.
Once in those days there had been an unexpected function in the middle of
term. There were needed for that function certain chairs. He could recall
even now his furious disgust when he and a select body of fellow fags had
been pounced upon by their form-master, and coerced into forming a line
from the junior block to the cloisters, for the purpose of handing
chairs. True, his form-master had stood ginger-beer after the event, with
princely liberality, but the labour was of the sort that gallons of
ginger-beer will not make pleasant. But he ceased to regret the episode
now. He had been at the extreme end of the chair-handling chain. He had
stood in a passage in the junior block, just by the door that led to the
masters' garden, and which--he remembered--was never locked till late at
night. And while he stood there, a pair of hands--apparently without a
body--had heaved up chair after chair through a black opening in the
floor. In other words, a trap-door connected with the vault in which
he now was.
He imparted these reminiscences of childhood to Moriarty. They set off
to search for the missing door, and, after wanderings and barkings of
shins too painful to relate, they found it. Moriarty lit a match. The
light fell on the trap-door, and their last doubts were at an end. The
thing opened inwards. The bolt was on their side, not in the passage
above them. To shoot the bolt took them one second, to climb into the
passage one minute. They stood at the side of the opening, and dusted
their clothes.
"Bedad!" said Moriarty, suddenly.
"What?"
"Why, how are we to shut it?"
This was a problem that wanted some solving. Eventually they managed
it, O'Hara leaning over and fishing for it, while Moriarty held his
legs.
As luck would have it--and luck had stood by them well all
through--there was a bolt on top of the trap-door, as well as
beneath it.
"Supposing that had been shot!" said O'Hara, as they fastened the door
in its place.
Moriarty did not care to suppose anything so unpleasant.
Mr Dexter was still prowling about on the junior gravel, when the two
Irishmen ran round and across the senior gravel to the gymnasium. Here
they put in a few minutes' gentle sparring, and then marched boldly up
to Mr Day (who happened to have looked in five minutes after their
arrival) and got their paper.
"What time did O'Hara and Moriarty arrive at the gymnasium?" asked Mr
Dexter of Mr Day next morning.
"O'Hara and Moriarty? Really, I can't remember. I know they _left_
at about a quarter to seven."
That profound thinker, Mr Tony Weller, was never so correct as in his
views respecting the value of an _alibi_. There are few better
things in an emergency.
XVIII
O'HARA EXCELS HIMSELF
It was Renford's turn next morning to get up and feed the ferrets.
Harvey had done it the day before.
Renford was not a youth who enjoyed early rising, but in the cause of
the ferrets he would have endured anything, so at six punctually he
slid out of bed, dressed quietly, so as not to disturb the rest of the
dormitory, and ran over to the vault. To his utter amazement he found
it locked. Such a thing had never been done before in the whole course
of his experience. He tugged at the handle, but not an inch or a
fraction of an inch would the door yield. The policy of the Open Door
had ceased to find favour in the eyes of the authorities.
A feeling of blank despair seized upon him. He thought of the dismay of
the ferrets when they woke up and realised that there was no chance of
breakfast for them. And then they would gradually waste away, and some
day somebody would go down to the vault to fetch chairs, and would come
upon two mouldering skeletons, and wonder what they had once been. He
almost wept at the vision so conjured up.
There was nobody about. Perhaps he might break in somehow. But then
there was nothing to get to work with. He could not kick the door down.
No, he must give it up, and the ferrets' breakfast-hour must be
postponed. Possibly Harvey might be able to think of something.
"Fed 'em?" inquired Harvey, when they met at breakfast.
"No, I couldn't."
"Why on earth not? You didn't oversleep yourself?"
Renford poured his tale into his friend's shocked ears.
"My hat!" said Harvey, when he had finished, "what on earth are we to
do? They'll starve."
Renford nodded mournfully.
"Whatever made them go and lock the door?" he said.
He seemed to think the authorities should have given him due notice of
such an action.
"You're sure they have locked it? It isn't only stuck or something?"
"I lugged at the handle for hours. But you can go and see for yourself
if you like."
Harvey went, and, waiting till the coast was clear, attached himself to
the handle with a prehensile grasp, and put his back into one strenuous
tug. It was even as Renford had said. The door was locked beyond
possibility of doubt.
Renford and he went over to school that morning with long faces and a
general air of acute depression. It was perhaps fortunate for their
purpose that they did, for had their appearance been normal it might
not have attracted O'Hara's attention. As it was, the Irishman, meeting
them on the junior gravel, stopped and asked them what was wrong. Since
the adventure in the vault, he had felt an interest in Renford and
Harvey.
The two told their story in alternate sentences like the Strophe and
Antistrophe of a Greek chorus. ("Steichomuthics," your Greek scholar
calls it, I fancy. Ha, yes! Just so.)
"So ye can't get in because they've locked the door, an' ye don't know
what to do about it?" said O'Hara, at the conclusion of the narrative.
Renford and Harvey informed him in chorus that that _was_ the
state of the game up to present date.
"An' ye want me to get them out for you?"
Neither had dared to hope that he would go so far as this. What they
had looked for had been at the most a few thoughtful words of advice.
That such a master-strategist as O'Hara should take up their cause was
an unexampled piece of good luck.
"If you only would," said Harvey.
"We should be most awfully obliged," said Renford.
"Very well," said O'Hara.
They thanked him profusely.
O'Hara replied that it would be a privilege.
He should be sorry, he said, to have anything happen to the ferrets.
Renford and Harvey went on into school feeling more cheerful. If the
ferrets could be extracted from their present tight corner, O'Hara was
the man to do it.
O'Hara had not made his offer of assistance in any spirit of doubt. He
was certain that he could do what he had promised. For it had not
escaped his memory that this was a Tuesday--in other words, a
mathematics morning up to the quarter to eleven interval. That meant,
as has been explained previously, that, while the rest of the school
were in the form-rooms, he would be out in the passage, if he cared to
be. There would be no witnesses to what he was going to do.
But, by that curious perversity of fate which is so often noticeable,
Mr Banks was in a peculiarly lamb-like and long-suffering mood this
morning. Actions for which O'Hara would on other days have been
expelled from the room without hope of return, today were greeted with
a mild "Don't do that, please, O'Hara," or even the ridiculously
inadequate "O'Hara!" It was perfectly disheartening. O'Hara began to
ask himself bitterly what was the use of ragging at all if this was how
it was received. And the moments were flying, and his promise to
Renford and Harvey still remained unfulfilled.
He prepared for fresh efforts.
So desperate was he, that he even resorted to crude methods like the
throwing of paper balls and the dropping of books. And when your really
scientific ragger sinks to this, he is nearing the end of his tether.
O'Hara hated to be rude, but there seemed no help for it.
The striking of a quarter past ten improved his chances. It had been
privily agreed upon beforehand amongst the members of the class that at
a quarter past ten every one was to sneeze simultaneously. The noise
startled Mr Banks considerably. The angelic mood began to wear off. A
man may be long-suffering, but he likes to draw the line somewhere.
"Another exhibition like that," he said, sharply, "and the class stays
in after school, O'Hara!"
"Sir?"
"Silence."
"I said nothing, sir, really."
"Boy, you made a cat-like noise with your mouth."
"What _sort_ of noise, sir?"
The form waited breathlessly. This peculiarly insidious question had
been invented for mathematical use by one Sandys, who had left at the
end of the previous summer. It was but rarely that the master increased
the gaiety of nations by answering the question in the manner desired.
Mr Banks, off his guard, fell into the trap.
"A noise like this," he said curtly, and to the delighted audience came
the melodious sound of a "Mi-aou", which put O'Hara's effort completely
in the shade, and would have challenged comparison with the war-cry of
the stoutest mouser that ever trod a tile.
A storm of imitations arose from all parts of the room. Mr Banks turned
pink, and, going straight to the root of the disturbance, forthwith
evicted O'Hara.
O'Hara left with the satisfying feeling that his duty had been done.
Mr Banks' room was at the top of the middle block. He ran softly down
the stairs at his best pace. It was not likely that the master would
come out into the passage to see if he was still there, but it might
happen, and it would be best to run as few risks as possible.
He sprinted over to the junior block, raised the trap-door, and jumped
down. He knew where the ferrets had been placed, and had no difficulty
in finding them. In another minute he was in the passage again, with
the trap-door bolted behind him.
He now asked himself--what should he do with them? He must find a safe
place, or his labours would have been in vain.
Behind the fives-court, he thought, would be the spot. Nobody ever went
there. It meant a run of three hundred yards there and the same
distance back, and there was more than a chance that he might be seen
by one of the Powers. In which case he might find it rather hard to
explain what he was doing in the middle of the grounds with a couple of
ferrets in his possession when the hands of the clock pointed to twenty
minutes to eleven.
But the odds were against his being seen. He risked it.
When the bell rang for the quarter to eleven interval the ferrets were
in their new home, happily discussing a piece of meat--Renford's
contribution, held over from the morning's meal,--and O'Hara, looking
as if he had never left the passage for an instant, was making his way
through the departing mathematical class to apologise handsomely to Mr
Banks--as was his invariable custom--for his disgraceful behaviour
during the morning's lesson.
XIX
THE MAYOR'S VISIT
School prefects at Wrykyn did weekly essays for the headmaster. Those
who had got their scholarships at the 'Varsity, or who were going up in
the following year, used to take their essays to him after school and
read them to him--an unpopular and nerve-destroying practice, akin to
suicide. Trevor had got his scholarship in the previous November. He
was due at the headmaster's private house at six o'clock on the present
Tuesday. He was looking forward to the ordeal not without apprehension.
The essay subject this week had been "One man's meat is another man's
poison", and Clowes, whose idea of English Essay was that it should be
a medium for intempestive frivolity, had insisted on his beginning
with, "While I cannot conscientiously go so far as to say that one
man's meat is another man's poison, yet I am certainly of opinion that
what is highly beneficial to one man may, on the other hand, to another
man, differently constituted, be extremely deleterious, and, indeed,
absolutely fatal."
Trevor was not at all sure how the headmaster would take it. But Clowes
had seemed so cut up at his suggestion that it had better be omitted,
that he had allowed it to stand.
He was putting the final polish on this gem of English literature at
half-past five, when Milton came in.
"Busy?" said Milton.
Trevor said he would be through in a minute.
Milton took a chair, and waited.
Trevor scratched out two words and substituted two others, made a
couple of picturesque blots, and, laying down his pen, announced that
he had finished.
"What's up?" he said.
"It's about the League," said Milton.
"Found out anything?"
"Not anything much. But I've been making inquiries. You remember I
asked you to let me look at those letters of yours?"
Trevor nodded. This had happened on the Sunday of that week.
"Well, I wanted to look at the post-marks."
"By Jove, I never thought of that."
Milton continued with the business-like air of the detective who
explains in the last chapter of the book how he did it.
"I found, as I thought, that both letters came from the same place."
Trevor pulled out the letters in question. "So they do," he said,
"Chesterton."
"Do you know Chesterton?" asked Milton.
"Only by name."
"It's a small hamlet about two miles from here across the downs.
There's only one shop in the place, which acts as post-office and
tobacconist and everything else. I thought that if I went there and
asked about those letters, they might remember who it was that sent
them, if I showed them a photograph."
"By Jove," said Trevor, "of course! Did you? What happened?"
"I went there yesterday afternoon. I took about half-a-dozen
photographs of various chaps, including Rand-Brown."
"But wait a bit. If Chesterton's two miles off, Rand-Brown couldn't
have sent the letters. He wouldn't have the time after school. He was
on the grounds both the afternoons before I got the letters."
"I know," said Milton; "I didn't think of that at the time."
"Well?"
"One of the points about the Chesterton post-office is that there's no
letter-box outside. You have to go into the shop and hand anything you
want to post across the counter. I thought this was a tremendous score
for me. I thought they would be bound to remember who handed in the
letters. There can't be many at a place like that."
"Did they remember?"
"They remembered the letters being given in distinctly, but as for
knowing anything beyond that, they were simply futile. There was an
old woman in the shop, aged about three hundred and ten, I should
think. I shouldn't say she had ever been very intelligent, but now
she simply gibbered. I started off by laying out a shilling on some
poisonous-looking sweets. I gave the lot to a village kid when I got
out. I hope they didn't kill him. Then, having scattered ground-bait
in that way, I lugged out the photographs, mentioned the letters and
the date they had been sent, and asked her to weigh in and identify
the sender."
"Did she?"
"My dear chap, she identified them all, one after the other. The first
was one of Clowes. She was prepared to swear on oath that that was the
chap who had sent the letters. Then I shot a photograph of you across
the counter, and doubts began to creep in. She said she was certain it
was one of those two 'la-ads', but couldn't quite say which. To keep
her amused I fired in photograph number three--Allardyce's. She
identified that, too. At the end of ten minutes she was pretty sure
that it was one of the six--the other three were Paget, Clephane, and
Rand-Brown--but she was not going to bind herself down to any
particular one. As I had come to the end of my stock of photographs,
and was getting a bit sick of the game, I got up to go, when in came
another ornament of Chesterton from a room at the back of the shop. He
was quite a kid, not more than a hundred and fifty at the outside, so,
as a last chance, I tackled him on the subject. He looked at the
photographs for about half an hour, mumbling something about it not
being 'thiccy 'un' or 'that 'un', or 'that 'ere tother 'un', until I
began to feel I'd had enough of it. Then it came out that the real chap
who had sent the letters was a 'la-ad' with light hair, not so big as
me--"
"That doesn't help us much," said Trevor.
"--And a 'prarper little gennlemun'. So all we've got to do is to look
for some young duke of polished manners and exterior, with a thatch of
light hair."
"There are three hundred and sixty-seven fellows with light hair in the
school," said Trevor, calmly.
"Thought it was three hundred and sixty-eight myself," said Milton,
"but I may be wrong. Anyhow, there you have the results of my
investigations. If you can make anything out of them, you're welcome to
it. Good-bye."
"Half a second," said Trevor, as he got up; "had the fellow a cap of
any sort?"
"No. Bareheaded. You wouldn't expect him to give himself away by
wearing a house-cap?"
Trevor went over to the headmaster's revolving this discovery in his
mind. It was not much of a clue, but the smallest clue is better than
nothing. To find out that the sender of the League letters had fair hair
narrowed the search down a little. It cleared the more raven-locked
members of the school, at any rate. Besides, by combining his information
with Milton's, the search might be still further narrowed down. He knew
that the polite letter-writer must be either in Seymour's or in
Donaldson's. The number of fair-haired youths in the two houses was
not excessive. Indeed, at the moment he could not recall any; which
rather complicated matters.
He arrived at the headmaster's door, and knocked. He was shown into a
room at the side of the hall, near the door. The butler informed him
that the headmaster was engaged at present. Trevor, who knew the butler
slightly through having constantly been to see the headmaster on
business _via_ the front door, asked who was there.
"Sir Eustace Briggs," said the butler, and disappeared in the direction
of his lair beyond the green baize partition at the end of the hall.
Trevor went into the room, which was a sort of spare study, and sat
down, wondering what had brought the mayor of Wrykyn to see the
headmaster at this advanced hour.
A quarter of an hour later the sound of voices broke in upon his peace.
The headmaster was coming down the hall with the intention of showing
his visitor out. The door of Trevor's room was ajar, and he could hear
distinctly what was being said. He had no particular desire to play the
eavesdropper, but the part was forced upon him.
Sir Eustace seemed excited.
"It is far from being my habit," he was saying, "to make unnecessary
complaints respecting the conduct of the lads under your care." (Sir
Eustace Briggs had a distaste for the shorter and more colloquial forms
of speech. He would have perished sooner than have substituted
"complain of your boys" for the majestic formula he had used. He spoke
as if he enjoyed choosing his words. He seemed to pause and think
before each word. Unkind people--who were jealous of his distinguished
career--used to say that he did this because he was afraid of dropping
an aitch if he relaxed his vigilance.)
"But," continued he, "I am reluctantly forced to the unpleasant
conclusion that the dastardly outrage to which both I and the Press of
the town have called your attention is to be attributed to one of the
lads to whom I 'ave--_have_ (this with a jerk) referred."
"I will make a thorough inquiry, Sir Eustace," said the bass voice of
the headmaster.
"I thank you," said the mayor. "It would, under the circumstances, be
nothing more, I think, than what is distinctly advisable. The man
Samuel Wapshott, of whose narrative I have recently afforded you a
brief synopsis, stated in no uncertain terms that he found at the foot
of the statue on which the dastardly outrage was perpetrated a
diminutive ornament, in shape like the bats that are used in the game
of cricket. This ornament, he avers (with what truth I know not), was
handed by him to a youth of an age coeval with that of the lads in the
upper division of this school. The youth claimed it as his property, I
was given to understand."
"A thorough inquiry shall be made, Sir Eustace."
"I thank you."
And then the door shut, and the conversation ceased.
XX
THE FINDING OF THE BAT
Trevor waited till the headmaster had gone back to his library, gave
him five minutes to settle down, and then went in.
The headmaster looked up inquiringly.
"My essay, sir," said Trevor.
"Ah, yes. I had forgotten."
Trevor opened the notebook and began to read what he had written. He
finished the paragraph which owed its insertion to Clowes, and raced
hurriedly on to the next. To his surprise the flippancy passed
unnoticed, at any rate, verbally. As a rule the headmaster preferred
that quotations from back numbers of _Punch_ should be kept out of
the prefects' English Essays. And he generally said as much. But today
he seemed strangely preoccupied. A split infinitive in paragraph five,
which at other times would have made him sit up in his chair stiff with
horror, elicited no remark. The same immunity was accorded to the
insertion (inspired by Clowes, as usual) of a popular catch phrase in
the last few lines. Trevor finished with the feeling that luck had
favoured him nobly.
"Yes," said the headmaster, seemingly roused by the silence following
on the conclusion of the essay. "Yes." Then, after a long pause, "Yes,"
again.
Trevor said nothing, but waited for further comment.
"Yes," said the headmaster once more, "I think that is a very
fair essay. Very fair. It wants a little more--er--not quite so
much--um--yes."
Trevor made a note in his mind to effect these improvements in future
essays, and was getting up, when the headmaster stopped him.
"Don't go, Trevor. I wish to speak to you."
Trevor's first thought was, perhaps naturally, that the bat was going to
be brought into discussion. He was wondering helplessly how he was going
to keep O'Hara and his midnight exploit out of the conversation, when
the headmaster resumed. "An unpleasant thing has happened, Trevor--"
"Now we're coming to it," thought Trevor.
"It appears, Trevor, that a considerable amount of smoking has been
going on in the school."
Trevor breathed freely once more. It was only going to be a mere
conventional smoking row after all. He listened with more enjoyment
as the headmaster, having stopped to turn down the wick of the
reading-lamp which stood on the table at his side, and which had
begun, appropriately enough, to smoke, resumed his discourse.
"Mr Dexter--"
Of course, thought Trevor. If there ever was a row in the school,
Dexter was bound to be at the bottom of it.
"Mr Dexter has just been in to see me. He reported six boys. He
discovered them in the vault beneath the junior block. Two of them were
boys in your house."
Trevor murmured something wordless, to show that the story interested
him.
"You knew nothing of this, of course--"
"No, sir."
"No. Of course not. It is difficult for the head of a house to know all
that goes on in that house."