his weight into his blows. It was hard to forget that he felt friendly
towards O'Hara. But he speedily awoke to the fact that the Irishman
took his boxing very seriously, and was quite a different person when
he had the gloves on. When he was so equipped, the man opposite him
ceased to be either friend or foe in a private way. He was simply an
opponent, and every time he hit him was one point. And, when he entered
the ring, his only object in life for the next three minutes was to
score points. Consequently Trevor, sparring lightly and in rather a
futile manner at first, was woken up by a stinging flush hit between
the eyes. After that he, too, forgot that he liked the man before him,
and rushed him in all directions. There was no doubt as to who would
have won if it had been a competition. Trevor's guard was of the most
rudimentary order, and O'Hara got through when and how he liked. But
though he took a good deal, he also gave a good deal, and O'Hara
confessed himself not altogether sorry when Moriarty called "Time".
"Man," he said regretfully, "why ever did ye not take up boxing before?
Ye'd have made a splendid middle-weight."
"Well, have I a chance, do you think?" inquired Trevor.
"Ye might do it with luck," said O'Hara, very doubtfully. "But," he
added, "I'm afraid ye've not much chance."
And with this poor encouragement from his trainer and sparring-partner,
Trevor was forced to be content.
XXIII
WHAT RENFORD SAW
The health of Master Harvey of Seymour's was so delicately constituted
that it was an absolute necessity that he should consume one or more
hot buns during the quarter of an hour's interval which split up
morning school. He was tearing across the junior gravel towards the
shop on the morning following Trevor's sparring practice with O'Hara,
when a melodious treble voice called his name. It was Renford. He
stopped, to allow his friend to come up with him, and then made as if
to resume his way to the shop. But Renford proposed an amendment.
"Don't go to the shop," he said, "I want to talk."
"Well, can't you talk in the shop?"
"Not what I want to tell you. It's private. Come for a stroll."
Harvey hesitated. There were few things he enjoyed so much as exclusive
items of school gossip (scandal preferably), but hot new buns were
among those few things. However, he decided on this occasion to feed
the mind at the expense of the body. He accepted Renford's invitation.
"What is it?" he asked, as they made for the football field. "What's
been happening?"
"It's frightfully exciting," said Renford.
"What's up?"
"You mustn't tell any one."
"All right. Of course not."
"Well, then, there's been a big fight, and I'm one of the only chaps
who know about it so far."
"A fight?" Harvey became excited. "Who between?"
Renford paused before delivering his news, to emphasise the importance
of it.
"It was between O'Hara and Rand-Brown," he said at length.
"_By Jove!_" said Harvey. Then a suspicion crept into his mind.
"Look here, Renford," he said, "if you're trying to green me--"
"I'm not, you ass," replied Renford indignantly. "It's perfectly true.
I saw it myself."
"By Jove, did you really? Where was it? When did it come off? Was it a
good one? Who won?"
"It was the best one I've ever seen."
"Did O'Hara beat him? I hope he did. O'Hara's a jolly good sort."
"Yes. They had six rounds. Rand-Brown got knocked out in the middle of
the sixth."
"What, do you mean really knocked out, or did he just chuck it?"
"No. He was really knocked out. He was on the floor for quite a time.
By Jove, you should have seen it. O'Hara was ripping in the sixth
round. He was all over him."
"Tell us about it," said Harvey, and Renford told.
"I'd got up early," he said, "to feed the ferrets, and I was just
cutting over to the fives-courts with their grub, when, just as I got
across the senior gravel, I saw O'Hara and Moriarty standing waiting
near the second court. O'Hara knows all about the ferrets, so I didn't
try and cut or anything. I went up and began talking to him. I noticed
he didn't look particularly keen on seeing me at first. I asked him if
he was going to play fives. Then he said no, and told me what he'd
really come for. He said he and Rand-Brown had had a row, and they'd
agreed to have it out that morning in one of the fives-courts. Of
course, when I heard that, I was all on to see it, so I said I'd wait,
if he didn't mind. He said he didn't care, so long as I didn't tell
everybody, so I said I wouldn't tell anybody except you, so he said all
right, then, I could stop if I wanted to. So that was how I saw it.
Well, after we'd been waiting a few minutes, Rand-Brown came in sight,
with that beast Merrett in our house, who'd come to second him. It was
just like one of those duels you read about, you know. Then O'Hara said
that as I was the only one there with a watch--he and Rand-Brown were
in footer clothes, and Merrett and Moriarty hadn't got their tickers on
them--I'd better act as timekeeper. So I said all right, I would, and
we went to the second fives-court. It's the biggest of them, you know.
I stood outside on the bench, looking through the wire netting over the
door, so as not to be in the way when they started scrapping. O'Hara
and Rand-Brown took off their blazers and sweaters, and chucked them to
Moriarty and Merrett, and then Moriarty and Merrett went and stood in
two corners, and O'Hara and Rand-Brown walked into the middle and stood
up to one another. Rand-Brown was miles the heaviest--by a stone, I
should think--and he was taller and had a longer reach. But O'Hara
looked much fitter. Rand-Brown looked rather flabby.
"I sang out 'Time' through the wire netting, and they started off at
once. O'Hara offered to shake hands, but Rand-Brown wouldn't. So they
began without it.
"The first round was awfully fast. They kept having long rallies all
over the place. O'Hara was a jolly sight quicker, and Rand-Brown didn't
seem able to guard his hits at all. But he hit frightfully hard
himself, great, heavy slogs, and O'Hara kept getting them in the face.
At last he got one bang in the mouth which knocked him down flat. He
was up again in a second, and was starting to rush, when I looked at
the watch, and found that I'd given them nearly half a minute too much
already. So I shouted 'Time', and made up my mind I'd keep more of an
eye on the watch next round. I'd got so jolly excited, watching them,
that I'd forgot I was supposed to be keeping time for them. They had
only asked for a minute between the rounds, but as I'd given them half
a minute too long in the first round, I chucked in a bit extra in the
rest, so that they were both pretty fit by the time I started them
again.
"The second round was just like the first, and so was the third. O'Hara
kept getting the worst of it. He was knocked down three or four times
more, and once, when he'd rushed Rand-Brown against one of the walls,
he hit out and missed, and barked his knuckles jolly badly against the
wall. That was in the middle of the third round, and Rand-Brown had it
all his own way for the rest of the round--for about two minutes, that
is to say. He hit O'Hara about all over the shop. I was so jolly keen
on O'Hara's winning, that I had half a mind to call time early, so as
to give him time to recover. But I thought it would be a low thing to
do, so I gave them their full three minutes.
"Directly they began the fourth round, I noticed that things were going
to change a bit. O'Hara had given up his rushing game, and was waiting
for his man, and when he came at him he'd put in a hot counter, nearly
always at the body. After a bit Rand-Brown began to get cautious, and
wouldn't rush, so the fourth round was the quietest there had been. In
the last minute they didn't hit each other at all. They simply sparred
for openings. It was in the fifth round that O'Hara began to forge
ahead. About half way through he got in a ripper, right in the wind,
which almost doubled Rand-Brown up, and then he started rushing again.
Rand-Brown looked awfully bad at the end of the round. Round six was
ripping. I never saw two chaps go for each other so. It was one long
rally. Then--how it happened I couldn't see, they were so quick--just
as they had been at it a minute and a half, there was a crack, and the
next thing I saw was Rand-Brown on the ground, looking beastly. He went
down absolutely flat; his heels and head touched the ground at the same
time.
"I counted ten out loud in the professional way like they do at the
National Sporting Club, you know, and then said 'O'Hara wins'. I felt
an awful swell. After about another half-minute, Rand-Brown was all
right again, and he got up and went back to the house with Merrett, and
O'Hara and Moriarty went off to Dexter's, and I gave the ferrets their
grub, and cut back to breakfast."
"Rand-Brown wasn't at breakfast," said Harvey.
"No. He went to bed. I wonder what'll happen. Think there'll be a row
about it?"
"Shouldn't think so," said Harvey. "They never do make rows about
fights, and neither of them is a prefect, so I don't see what it
matters if they _do_ fight. But, I say--"
"What's up?"
"I wish," said Harvey, his voice full of acute regret, "that it had
been my turn to feed those ferrets."
"I don't," said Renford cheerfully. "I wouldn't have missed that mill
for something. Hullo, there's the bell. We'd better run."
When Trevor called at Seymour's that afternoon to see Rand-Brown, with
a view to challenging him to deadly combat, and found that O'Hara had
been before him, he ought to have felt relieved. His actual feeling was
one of acute annoyance. It seemed to him that O'Hara had exceeded the
limits of friendship. It was all very well for him to take over the
Rand-Brown contract, and settle it himself, in order to save Trevor
from a very bad quarter of an hour, but Trevor was one of those people
who object strongly to the interference of other people in their
private business. He sought out O'Hara and complained. Within two
minutes O'Hara's golden eloquence had soothed him and made him view the
matter in quite a different light. What O'Hara pointed out was that it
was not Trevor's affair at all, but his own. Who, he asked, had been
likely to be damaged most by Rand-Brown's manoeuvres in connection with
the lost bat? Trevor was bound to admit that O'Hara was that person.
Very well, then, said O'Hara, then who had a better right to fight
Rand-Brown? And Trevor confessed that no one else had a better.
"Then I suppose," he said, "that I shall have to do nothing about it?"
"That's it," said O'Hara.
"It'll be rather beastly meeting the man after this," said Trevor,
presently. "Do you think he might possibly leave at the end of term?"
"He's leaving at the end of the week," said O'Hara. "He was one of the
fellows Dexter caught in the vault that evening. You won't see much
more of Rand-Brown."
"I'll try and put up with that," said Trevor.
"And so will I," replied O'Hara. "And I shouldn't think Milton would be
so very grieved."
"No," said Trevor. "I tell you what will make him sick, though, and
that is your having milled with Rand-Brown. It's a job he'd have liked
to have taken on himself."
XXIV
CONCLUSION
Into the story at this point comes the narrative of Charles Mereweather
Cook, aged fourteen, a day-boy.
Cook arrived at the school on the tenth of March, at precisely nine
o'clock, in a state of excitement.
He said there was a row on in the town.
Cross-examined, he said there was no end of a row on in the town.
During morning school he explained further, whispering his tale into
the attentive ear of Knight of the School House, who sat next to him.
What sort of a row, Knight wanted to know.
Cook deposed that he had been riding on his bicycle past the entrance
to the Recreation Grounds on his way to school, when his eye was
attracted by the movements of a mass of men just inside the gate. They
appeared to be fighting. Witness did not stop to watch, much as he
would have liked to do so. Why not? Why, because he was late already,
and would have had to scorch anyhow, in order to get to school in time.
And he had been late the day before, and was afraid that old Appleby
(the master of the form) would give him beans if he were late again.
Wherefore he had no notion of what the men were fighting about, but he
betted that more would be heard about it. Why? Because, from what he
saw of it, it seemed a jolly big thing. There must have been quite
three hundred men fighting. (Knight, satirically, "_Pile_ it on!")
Well, quite a hundred, anyhow. Fifty a side. And fighting like
anything. He betted there would be something about it in the
_Wrykyn_ _Patriot_ tomorrow. He shouldn't wonder if somebody
had been killed. What were they scrapping about? How should _he_
know!
Here Mr Appleby, who had been trying for the last five minutes to find
out where the whispering noise came from, at length traced it to its
source, and forthwith requested Messrs Cook and Knight to do him two
hundred lines, adding that, if he heard them talking again, he would
put them into the extra lesson. Silence reigned from that moment.
Next day, while the form was wrestling with the moderately exciting
account of Caesar's doings in Gaul, Master Cook produced from his
pocket a newspaper cutting. This, having previously planted a forcible
blow in his friend's ribs with an elbow to attract the latter's
attention, he handed to Knight, and in dumb show requested him to
peruse the same. Which Knight, feeling no interest whatever in Caesar's
doings in Gaul, and having, in consequence, a good deal of time on his
hands, proceeded to do. The cutting was headed "Disgraceful Fracas",
and was written in the elegant style that was always so marked a
feature of the _Wrykyn Patriot_.
"We are sorry to have to report," it ran, "another of those deplorable
ebullitions of local Hooliganism, to which it has before now been our
painful duty to refer. Yesterday the Recreation Grounds were made the
scene of as brutal an exhibition of savagery as has ever marred the
fair fame of this town. Our readers will remember how on a previous
occasion, when the fine statue of Sir Eustace Briggs was found covered
with tar, we attributed the act to the malevolence of the Radical
section of the community. Events have proved that we were right.
Yesterday a body of youths, belonging to the rival party, was
discovered in the very act of repeating the offence. A thick coating of
tar had already been administered, when several members of the rival
faction appeared. A free fight of a peculiarly violent nature
immediately ensued, with the result that, before the police could
interfere, several of the combatants had received severe bruises.
Fortunately the police then arrived on the scene, and with great
difficulty succeeded in putting a stop to the _fracas_. Several
arrests were made.
"We have no desire to discourage legitimate party rivalry, but we feel
justified in strongly protesting against such dastardly tricks as those
to which we have referred. We can assure our opponents that they can
gain nothing by such conduct."
There was a good deal more to the effect that now was the time for all
good men to come to the aid of the party, and that the constituents of
Sir Eustace Briggs must look to it that they failed not in the hour of
need, and so on. That was what the _Wrykyn Patriot_ had to say on
the subject.
O'Hara managed to get hold of a copy of the paper, and showed it to
Clowes and Trevor.
"So now," he said, "it's all right, ye see. They'll never suspect it
wasn't the same people that tarred the statue both times. An' ye've got
the bat back, so it's all right, ye see."
"The only thing that'll trouble you now," said Clowes, "will be your
conscience."
O'Hara intimated that he would try and put up with that.
"But isn't it a stroke of luck," he said, "that they should have gone
and tarred Sir Eustace again so soon after Moriarty and I did it?"
Clowes said gravely that it only showed the force of good example.
"Yes. They wouldn't have thought of it, if it hadn't been for us,"
chortled O'Hara. "I wonder, now, if there's anything else we could do
to that statue!" he added, meditatively.
"My good lunatic," said Clowes, "don't you think you've done almost
enough for one term?"
"Well, 'myes," replied O'Hara thoughtfully, "perhaps we have, I
suppose."
* * * * *
The term wore on. Donaldson's won the final house-match by a matter of
twenty-six points. It was, as they had expected, one of the easiest
games they had had to play in the competition. Bryant's, who were their
opponents, were not strong, and had only managed to get into the final
owing to their luck in drawing weak opponents for the trial heats. The
real final, that had decided the ownership of the cup, had been
Donaldson's _v._ Seymour's.
Aldershot arrived, and the sports. Drummond and O'Hara covered
themselves with glory, and brought home silver medals. But Moriarty, to
the disappointment of the school, which had counted on his pulling off
the middles, met a strenuous gentleman from St Paul's in the final, and
was prematurely outed in the first minute of the third round. To him,
therefore, there fell but a medal of bronze.
It was on the Sunday after the sports that Trevor's connection with the
bat ceased--as far, that is to say, as concerned its unpleasant
character (as a piece of evidence that might be used to his
disadvantage). He had gone to supper with the headmaster, accompanied
by Clowes and Milton. The headmaster nearly always invited a few of the
house prefects to Sunday supper during the term. Sir Eustace Briggs
happened to be there. He had withdrawn his insinuations concerning the
part supposedly played by a member of the school in the matter of the
tarred statue, and the headmaster had sealed the _entente
cordiale_ by asking him to supper.
An ordinary man might have considered it best to keep off the delicate
subject. Not so Sir Eustace Briggs. He was on to it like glue. He
talked of little else throughout the whole course of the meal.
"My suspicions," he boomed, towards the conclusion of the feast, "which
have, I am rejoiced to say, proved so entirely void of foundation and
significance, were aroused in the first instance, as I mentioned
before, by the narrative of the man Samuel Wapshott."
Nobody present showed the slightest desire to learn what the man Samuel
Wapshott had had to say for himself, but Sir Eustace, undismayed,
continued as if the whole table were hanging on his words.
"The man Samuel Wapshott," he said, "distinctly asserted that a small
gold ornament, shaped like a bat, was handed by him to a lad of age
coeval with these lads here."
The headmaster interposed. He had evidently heard more than enough of
the man Samuel Wapshott.
"He must have been mistaken," he said briefly. "The bat which Trevor is
wearing on his watch-chain at this moment is the only one of its kind
that I know of. You have never lost it, Trevor?"
Trevor thought for a moment. _He_ had never lost it. He replied
diplomatically, "It has been in a drawer nearly all the term, sir," he
said.
"A drawer, hey?" remarked Sir Eustace Briggs. "Ah! A very sensible
place to keep it in, my boy. You could have no better place, in my
opinion."
And Trevor agreed with him, with the mental reservation
that it rather depended on whom the drawer belonged to.