"Shortland and Maydew, this is Peters. Make him welcome, and if there
are chestnuts going, as I suspect, share them with him."
Then the Doctor went off to have some final jaw with the mother of
Peters; and Peters came down the room and said "Good-evening" in a very
civil and quiet tone of voice.
He was thin and dark, and when he warmed his hands at the fire it was
easy to see the light through them. He also had a pin in his tie in the
shape of a human skull, about as big as a filbert nut, with imitation
ruby eyes.
We asked him who he was, and he said he came from Surrey, and that his
father had been a soldier, but was unfortunately dead. His name was
Vincent Peters.
Then Shortland, who is a silly beast and a bully, and only in the lower
fifth, though quite old--and, in fact, his voice has broken down--asked
Peters the footling question he always asks every new boy.
He said, "Would you rather be a greater fool than you look, or look a
greater fool than you are?"
Of course, whatever you answer, you must be scored off. But young
Peters seemed to know it. Anyway, instead of answering the question he
asked another. He said--
"Would you rather be uglier than you look, or look uglier than you are?"
[Illustration: "WOULD YOU RATHER BE A GREATER FOOL THAN YOU LOOK, OR
LOOK A GREATER FOOL THAN YOU ARE?"]
Gideon was interested at this, because it showed at once Peters must be
a cool hand.
"What are you going to be?" Gideon asked; and then came out the
startling fact that Peters hoped to be a detective of crime.
"If you go detecting anything here you'll get your head punched," said
Shortland.
"I may or I may not," answered Peters. "But it's rather useful
sometimes to have a chap in a school who has made a study of detecting
things."
"You can begin to-night, if you like," I said; "because Johnson major's
bat was found to have seven tin tacks hammered into it last week, when
he took it out of the case to give it a drop more oil; and if you find
out who did that, I've no doubt that Johnson major will be a good friend
to you--him being in the sixth and captain of the first at cricket."
"I don't know enough about things yet," answered Peters. "Besides, you
have to be sure of your ground. In detecting you may make friends, or
you may not; but you will make enemies to a dead certainty. In fact,
that's the drawback to detecting. Look at Sherlock Holmes."
"That's only a yarn," said Gideon.
But Peters wouldn't allow this. He evidently felt very deeply about
Sherlock Holmes.
"He is founded on fact--in fact, founded on thousands of solemn facts,"
said Peters. "The things he does are all founded on real crimes, and if
anybody is going to be a detective, he can't do better than try to be
like Sherlock Holmes in every possible way."
The tea-bell rang about this time, and Peters sat next to me and told me
a good deal more. He said he was very thankful that he was thin, like
Holmes, and wiry, and had a beak-like nose. He asked me if he had
piercing eyes; and I could honestly say that they were pretty piercing.
Then he brought out a picture of Sherlock Holmes, which he always
carried, and showed me that, with luck, when he grew up, he ought really
to be very much indeed like the great Holmes.
He was learning to play the violin also--not because he liked it, but
because of the importance of doing it in moments of terrible difficulty.
He said that it soothes the brain and helps it to do its work--but not
so much while you're learning. He said that after he had thoroughly
mastered a favourite piece of Holmes's he should be satisfied, as there
would never be any occasion for him to play more than one piece.
Chaps liked Peters very fairly well. He was a good 'footer' player, and
very good at outside right. He was fast, and told me that speed often
made all the difference to the success of a criminal case. Pure
sprinting had many a time made all the difference to Holmes. Peters
didn't know much in the way of learning, but he dearly liked to get hold
of a newspaper and read the crimes. He didn't find out about Johnson
major's bat, however; but he said it wasn't a fair test, because he
never heard clearly all that went before the crime. A few small
detections he made with great ease, and found the half-crown that
Mathers had lost in the playground. This he did by cross-questioning
Mathers, and making him bring back to his mind the smallest details; and
then Mathers remembered turning head over heels while only touching the
ground with one hand, to show how it could be done. And on the exact
spot, in some long grass at the top of the playground where he had
performed this feat, there was the half-crown. Mathers offered Peters
sixpence on the spot, but Peters said it was nothing, and wouldn't take
any reward.
He generally knew by the mud on your boots which of the walks you had
been, and he always could tell which of the masters was taking 'prep'
before he went into the room, by the sounds or silence. He also had a
very curious way of prophesying by certain signs if the Doctor was in a
good temper or a bad one. He always knew this long before anybody else,
and it was a very useful thing to know, naturally.
But Peters did not really do much till his own guinea-pig was found dead
in its lair about half-way through his second term at Merivale. He did
not care for animals in a general way, excepting as helping to throw
light on crime; which, it seems, they are very much in the habit of
doing, though not intentionally. But this particular guinea-pig was far
from a common creature, being a prize Angora pig, and having been given
to Peters during the Christmas holidays by a friend of his dead father.
It had long hair, and looked far more like one of those whacking
chrysanthemums you see than a guinea-pig. It was brown and yellow, and
had a round nose like a rabbit, and seemed so trusting and friendly that
everybody liked it. One other boy--namely, James--had a guinea-pig
also, because these were the days before we took to keeping lizards and
other things in our desks--which was discovered by a dormouse of mine
coming up through the inkpot hole in my desk under the Doctor's nose,
and so giving itself away. And though the pig of James was a good white
pig, with a black patch on his right side and one little dab of yellow
fur where his tail would have been if he had had one, yet, compared to
the guinea-pig of Peters, he was nothing. James, however, didn't mind
the loss of admiration for his pig, and he offered Peters to let the
pigs live together, which would be better for both of them, because a
guinea-pig is the most sociable thing in Nature, and are known well to
pine, and even die, if kept in single captivity. But Peters had a
secret fear that the pig of James was not sound in its health. He told
me that he had made a most searching examination of James's pig, and
discovered a spot of pink skin on its chest. He said it might be
nothing, but, on the other hand, it might be some infectious disease.
Also James's pig was inclined to go bald; so he thanked James very much,
and said he thought that if the pigs saw each other through the bars
from time to time it would be all they wanted to brace them up and cheer
them. But he thought, upon the whole, they had better not meet.
James didn't like this. He was rather a rum chap in many ways, but very
good at English grammar and chemistry; and he had invented a way of
cribbing, while a master was actually in the room, that many copied
afterwards. James got rather rude about the guinea-pig of Peters, and
seemed to think in some way that it was the pig, and not Peters, that
had decided not to live with his pig.
He said one day, when looking at the champion pig, "I suppose the little
beast thinks it's too big a swell to live with my honest, short-haired
pig. All the same, if they had a fight, I know which would jolly well
win."
"So do I," said Peters. "If a race-horse had a fight with a cart-horse,
the cart-horse would win. This is not a prize-fighting pig."
West was there and said the same. He, of course, understood all about
prize-fighting, owing to his brother being winner of the
'middle-weights' at the championship of the army; and he said that if
these pigs fought, the superior weight of James's pig behind the
shoulder would soon settle it. Besides, of course, the other one's hair
streamed all over it like a skye terrier's. You could see at a glance
that it was never born to be a fighter.
"However, if you want a fight," said Peters, who was always cool and
polite, owing to copying Sherlock Holmes, "if you want a fight, James, I
can oblige you."
They were both fourteen-and-a-half, and James was a lot fatter, but not
so tall as Peters.
"No," said James, "I don't want to fight. I didn't mean anything of the
sort."
"I may be able to get you a guinea-pig like mine next holidays," said
Peters; "and if I can, I will."
"I don't want it," said James. "I don't care about these guinea-pigs
that look like penwipers gone mad. I'd rather have mine."
This, of course, was mean and paltry jealousy, and we rotted James till
we rather got his wool off.
A week afterwards the champion pig was found dead on its back, with its
paws in the air and its eyes open, but dim. They had a look of fright
in them; and it was very interesting indeed, this happening to Peters,
because it would be sure to show if his detective powers were really
worth talking about.
Of course everybody said it must be James; and James said, and also
swore, that it was not.
Peters told me privately that he was trying to keep a perfectly open
mind. He said there were many difficulties in his way, because in the
event of a human being dying and being found stark you always have a
_post-mortem_, followed by an inquest; whereas with a mere guinea-pig,
belonging to a boy in a school, there is not enough publicity. He said
that up to a certain point publicity is good, and beyond that point it
is bad. Sherlock Holmes always set his face against publicity until
he'd found out the secret. Then he liked everybody to know it, though
often not until the last paragraph of the story. That showed his
frightful cleverness.
I said, "I suppose you will ask yourself, 'What would Holmes do if one
evening, while he was sitting improving Watson, there suddenly appeared
before him a boy with a dead guinea-pig?'"
And Peters said, "No. Because a guinea-pig in itself would not be
enough to set the great brain of Holmes working. If there were several
mysterious murders about, or if there had been some dark and deadly
thing occur, and Holmes, on taking the pig into his hand and looking at
it through his magnifying-glass, suddenly discovered on the pig some
astounding clue to another fearful crime, then he would bring his great
brain to work upon the pig; but merely as a guinea-pig suddenly found
dead, it would not interest him. In my case it's different. The pig
was a good deal to me; and this death will get round to the man who gave
me the creature, and he'll be sure to think I've starved it, and very
likely turn from me; and being my godfather, that would be jolly
serious. In fact, there are several reasons why I ought to find out who
has done this, if I can."