Sir Digby Oakshott, of Oakshott Park, Baronet, was down on his luck.
His heart had been set on saving his house single-handed by a brilliant
discovery of the miscreants to whom it owed its present disgrace.
It had been a busy week for him. He had had three or four fights a day
with outraged suspects, and had not invariably got the best of them.
Besides, in his devotion to the public service his private duties had
been neglected, and the pile of impositions had grown with compound
interest. Worst of all, his own familiar friend had lifted up his heel
against him, and had openly gibed at his efforts. This was "the most
unkindest cut of all," and Sir Digby felt it deeply.
"What's the use of going on fooling?" said Arthur, one evening, when the
tension was becoming acute. "Why can't you shut up making an ass of
yourself?"
"Look here, Arthur, old man," said the baronet deprecatingly, "I don't
want to be jawed by you. It's no business of yours."
"What I can't make out," pursued his friend sarcastically, "is why you
haven't tried to smell the chaps out by means of Smiley. Now, if you
let Smiley have a good sniff of that bit of rope on your watch-chain,
and then turn him out into the square, he'd ferret them out for you."
"I tell you what, old man, if it's coming to a regular row between us
two, hadn't you better say so at once, and get done with it?"
"Who says anything about a row? All I say is, you're in a precious good
way of getting yourself kicked round the house, the way you're going on;
and I don't much mind if I'm asked to lead off."
"You'd better try to kick me, that's all," said Dig.
"I'll see what I can do for you some day. But, I say, Dig, can't you
see what a howling ass you're making of yourself?"
"No, I don't know so much about asses as you do," responded Dig.
"Daresay not. If you were in the company of one all day long, as I am,
you'd soon throw it up. I tell you, my--"
Here the speaker suddenly broke off and looked affectionately at the
troubled face of his old chum.
"Look here, Dig, old man, I don't want to have a row with you, no more
do you. I vote we don't."
"Hang a row," said Dig. "But it seems to me, Arthur, you don't care
twopence whether the chap's found out or not."
Arthur's face clouded over.
"Perhaps I do, perhaps I don't. I don't see we're called upon to show
them up."
"But look what a mess the house is in till they're bowled out. We'll
never get hold of a bat all the season."
"Jolly bad luck, I know, but we must lump it, Dig. You must drop
fooling about with your clues. Don't get in a wax, now. I've got my
reasons."
"Whatever do you mean? Do you know who it was, then? Come in! Who's
there?"
The intruder was the Baby Jukes, who carried half a dozen letters in his
hand, one of which he presented to the two chums.
"One for you," said he. "They're all the same. Wake gave Bateson and
me a penny a-piece for writing them out, and we knocked off twenty. He
says he'd have sent you one a-piece, only he knows you've not two ideas
between you. Catch hold."
And he departed, smiling sweetly, with his tongue in his cheek, just in
time to avoid a Caesar flung by the indignant baronet at his head.
"Those kids are getting a drop too much," said Dig. "They've no more
respect for their betters than Smiley has. What's this precious
letter?"
The letter was addressed to "Messrs. Herapath and Oakshott," and was
signed by Wake of the Fifth, although written in the inelegant hand of
Master Jukes the Baby.
"`Central Criminal Court, Grandcourt. The assizes will open this
evening in the forum at 6.30 sharp. You are hereby summoned on urgent
business. Hereof fail not at your peril.'"
"What do that mean?" again inquired Dig. "What right has Wake to
threaten us?"
"Don't you see, Wake, whose father is a pettifogging lawyer, is going to
get up a make-believe law court--I heard him talk about it last term--
instead of the regular debating evening. The best of it is, we kids
shall all be in it, instead of getting stuck on the back bench to clap,
as we generally are."
"He's no business to tell us to fail not at our peril," growled Dig.
"What will they do?"
"Try somebody for murder, perhaps, or--why, of course!" exclaimed
Arthur, "they'll have somebody tried for that Bickers row!"
"By the way," said Dig, returning to the great question on his mind,
"you never told me if you really knew who did it."
Arthur's face clouded again.
"How should I know?" said he shortly. "What's the use of talking about
it?"
There was something mysterious in Herapath's manner which disturbed his
friend. It was bad enough not to be backed up in his own schemes, but
to feel that his chum knew something that he did not, was very hard on
Sir Digby.
Now he recalled it, Arthur had all along been somewhat reserved about
the business. He had made sport of other fellows' theories, but he had
never disclosed his own. Yet it was evident he had his own ideas on the
subject. Was it come to this, that after all these terms of confidence
and alliance, a petty secret was to come between them and cloud the
hitherto peaceful horizon of their fellowship?
Digby, perhaps, did not exactly put the idea into these poetical words,
but the matter troubled him quite as much.
Now, it is my intention, at this place, generously to disclose to the
reader what was hidden from Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet, and from
everyone else at Grandcourt--namely, that Arthur Herapath was fully
persuaded in his own mind that he knew the name of the arch offender in
the recent outrage, and was resolved through thick and thin to shield
him from detection. He was perfectly aware that in so doing he made
himself an accessory after the fact, but that was a risk he was prepared
to run. Only it decided him to keep his knowledge to himself.
Arthur was not a particularly sharp boy. His qualities were chiefly of
the bull-dog order. He did not take things in with the rapidity of some
fellows, but when he did get his teeth into a fact he held on like grim
death. So it was now. In the first excitement of the discovery he had
been as much at sea and as wild in his conjectures as anybody. But
after a little he stumbled upon a piece of evidence which gave him a
serious turn, and had kept him serious ever since.
On the morning of the discovery, Arthur, being in the neighbourhood of
the "boot-box," thought he would have a look round. There was no fear
of his mistaking the place; he had been there before, and seen Mr
Bickers come out of the sack. Everything was pretty much as it had been
left. The sack lay in the corner where it had been thrown, and the
cord, all except the piece which the baronet had secured, was there too.
On the dusty floor could clearly be perceived the place where Mr
Bickers had rolled about in his uncomfortable shackles during the night,
and on the ledge of the dim window which let light into the boot-box
from the lobby still stood the tumbler which Arthur himself had
officiously fetched an hour or two ago.
One or two things occurred to Arthur which had not previously struck
him. One was that the door of the boot-box was a very narrow one, and,
closing-to by a spring, it would either have had to be held open or
propped open while Mr Bickers was being hauled in by his captors. He
found that to hold it open wide he would have to get behind it and shut
himself up between it and the stairs. Most likely, all hands being
required for securing the victim, the captors would have taken the
precaution to prop the door open by some means, so as to be ready for
their deep-laid and carefully prepared scheme.
So Arthur groped about and discovered a twisted-up wedge of paper,
which, by its battered look and peculiar shape, had evidently been stuck
at some time under the door to keep it from closing-to. He quietly
pocketed this prize, on the chance of its being useful, and after
possessing himself of the sack and cord, and two wax vestas lying on the
floor, one of which had been lit and the other had not, he prepared to
quit the scene. As he was going up-stairs he caught sight of one other
object--not, however, on the floor, but on the ledge of the cornice
above the door. This was a match-box of the kind usually sold by street
arabs for a halfpenny. Arthur tried to reach it, but could not get at
it even by jumping.
"The fellow who put that there must have been over six feet," said he to
himself.
With some trouble he got a stick and tipped the box off the ledge, and
as he did so it occurred to him that, whereas the dust lay a quarter of
an inch thick on the ledge, and whereas the match-box had no similar
coating of dust, but was almost clean, it must have been put up there
recently. He opened the box and looked inside. It contained wax
vestas, with curiously coloured purple heads, which on examination
corresponded exactly with the matches he had picked up on the floor of
the boot-box.
"Oh," said Arthur to himself, very red in the face, "here's a go!" and
he bolted up to his room.
Dig, as it happened, was out, not altogether to his chum's regret, who
set himself, with somewhat curious agitation, to examine his booty.
First of all he examined once more the match-box, and satisfied himself
that there was no doubt about the identity of its contents with the
stray vestas he had picked up. The result was decisive. The box had
been placed above the door very recently by someone who, unless he stood
on a form or climbed on somebody else's back, must have been more than
six feet high. No one puts matches above doors by accident. Whoever
put it there must have meant it--and more than that, must have opened it
and dropped one out inside the boot-box.
"Now," considered the astute Arthur, "it was pitch dark when Bickers was
collared; lights were out, and the fellows thought they'd have a glim
handy in case of need. They struck one and spilt one, and shoved the
box up there, in case they should want it again. I say! what a clever
chap I am! The tall chap this box belongs to did the job, eh?"
An expert might possibly find a flaw in this clue, but Arthur was a
little proud of himself.
Next he spread out the sack and inspected the cord. There was not much
to help him here, one would suppose, and yet Arthur, being once on a
good tack, thought it worth his while to look closely at these two
relics.
The sack was not the ordinary type of potato-sack which most people
associate with the term, but more like a large canvas pillow-case, such
as some article of furniture might be packed in, or which might be used
to envelop a small bath and its contents on a railway journey. Arthur
perceived that it had been turned inside out, and took the trouble to
reverse it. It was riddled with holes, some of them to admit the
running cords which had closed round the neck and elbows of the
unfortunate Mr Bickers, and some, notably that in the region of the
nose, made hastily, with the motive of giving the captive a little
ventilation.
Arthur could not help thinking, as he turned the sack outside in, that
it would have been nicer for Mr Bickers to have the comparatively clean
side of the canvas next to his face instead of the very grimy and
travel-stained surface which had fallen to his lot.
But these speculations gave place to other emotions as he discovered two
black initials painted on the canvas, and still legible under their
covering of dirt and grease. There was no mistaking them, and Arthur
gave vent to a whistle of consternation as he deciphered an "M.R."
Now, as Arthur and everybody else knows, "M.R." _may_ mean Midland
Railway, but the Midland Railway is not six feet two inches, and does
not carry wax vestas about him, or drop them on the floor of the boot-
box.
Arthur gaped at those initials for fully three minutes, and then
hurriedly hid the sack away in the cupboard.
He had still one more point to clear up. He pulled the wedge of paper
out of his pocket and began nervously to unroll it. It was frayed and
black where the door had ground it against the floor; but, on beginning
to open it, it turned out to be a portion of a torn newspaper. It was a
_Standard_ of February 4--two days ago--and Arthur whistled again and
turned pale as he saw a stamp and a postmark on the front page, and read
a fragment of the address--"...ford, Esquire, Grandcourt."
"That settles it clean!" he muttered to himself. "I say! who'd have
thought it!"
Then he sat down and went over the incidents of the last twenty-four
hours.
Last night--it is sad to have to record it--Arthur had been out in the
big square at half-past nine, when he should have been in bed. He had
been over to find a ball which he had lost during the morning while
playing catch with Dig out of the window. On his way back--he
remembered it now--he had had rather a perilous time. First of all he
had nearly run into the arms of Branscombe, the captain of Bickers's
house, who was inconveniently prowling about at the time, probably in
search of some truant of his own house. Then in doubling to avoid this
danger he had dimly sighted Mr Bickers himself, taking a starlight walk
on Railsford's side of the square. Finally, in his last bolt home, he
had encountered Railsford stalking moodily under the shadow of his own
house, and too preoccupied to notice, still less to challenge, the
truant.
All this Arthur remembered now, and, carrying his mind a day or two
further back, he recalled Mr Bickers's uninvited visit to the house--
Arthur had painful cause to remember it--and Railsford's evident
resentment of the intrusion, and the threatenings of slaughter which had
been bandied about between the two houses ever since.
"Why," said Arthur to himself, "it's as clear as a pikestaff. I see it
all now. Bickers said it was about a quarter to ten when he was
collared. No fellows would be about then, and certainly no one would
know that he would be passing our door, except Marky. Marky must have
been actually hanging about for him when I passed! What a pity I didn't
stop to see the fun! Yes, he'd got his sack ready, and had jammed the
door open with this paper, and got his matches handy. Bickers would
never see him till he came close up, and then Marky would have the sack
on in two twos before he could halloa. My eye! I would never have
believed it of Marky. Served Bickers right, of course, and it'll be a
lesson to him; but it'll be hot for Marky if he's found out. Bickers
says there may have been more than one fellow on the job, but I don't
fancy it. If Mark had had anybody, he'd have got me to help him,
because it would be all in the family, and I'd be bound to keep it dark.
Wouldn't he turn green if he knew I'd twigged him! Anyhow, I'll keep
it as close as putty now, and help him worry through. Very knowing of
him to go with a candle and let him out this morning, and look so struck
all of a heap. He took me in regularly."
Arthur said this to himself in a tone which implied that if Mark had
been able to take _him_ in, it was little to be wondered at that all the
rest of the house had been hoodwinked.
"Hard luck," thought he condescendingly. "I daren't tell Dig. He's
such a gossip, it would be all over the place in a day. Wonder if I'd
best let Marky know I've spotted him? Think not. He wouldn't like it,
and as long as he's civil I'll back him up for Daisy's sake."
Then, having stumbled on to the thought of home, it occurred to him that
since the opening day, when he had sent a postcard to announce his
arrival, he had not yet troubled his relatives with a letter this term.
It was a chance, while he was in the humour, to polish them off now; so
he took up his pen, and thus discoursed to his indulgent sister:--
"Dear Da,--Mark's all right so far. He doesn't hit it with a lot of the
chaps, and now and then we hate him, but he lets Dig and me alone, and
doesn't interfere with Smiley. I hope you and he keep it up, because it
would make me look rather foolish if it was all off, especially as
Dimsdale and one or two of the chaps happen to have heard about it, and
have bets on that it won't last over the summer holidays.
"I'm getting on very well, and working hard at French. _Je suis allant
a commencer translater une chose par Moliere le prochain term si je suis
bon_. There's a howling row on in the house just now. Bickers got
nobbled and sacked the other night, and shoved in the boot-box, and
nobody knows who did it. I've a notion, but I'm bound to keep it dark
for the sake of a mutual friend. It would be as rough as you like for
him if it came out. But I believe in _assistant un boiteux chien au
travers de la stile_; so I'm keeping it all dark. Ponsford has been
down on us like a sack of coals. They've shoved forward our dinner-hour
to one o'clock, so we're regularly dished over the sports, especially as
Saturday afternoon has been changed into morning. The house will go to
the dogs now, _mais que est les odds si longtemps que vous etes
heureuses_? Dig sends his love. He and I remember the loved ones at
home, and try to be good. By the way, do you think pater could go
another five bob? I'm awfully hard up, my dear Daisy, and should
greatly like not to get into evil ways and borrow from Dig. Can you
spare me a photograph to stick up on the mantelpiece to remind me of you
always? You needn't send a cabinet one, because they cost too much.
I'd sooner have a _carte-de-visite_ and the rest in stamps, if you don't
mind. I'm doing my best to give Marky a leg-up. I could get him into a
row and a half if I liked, but for your sake I'm keeping it all dark. I
hope you'll come down soon. It will be an awful game if you do, and
I'll promise to keep the fellows from grinning. _Maintenant, il faut
que je close haut. Donnez mon amour a mere et pere, et esperant que
vous etes tout droit, souvenez me votre aimant frere_, Arthur Herapath.
_Dig envoie son amour a tous_."
Daisy might have been still more affected by this brotherly effusion
than she was, had not she received a letter by the same post from Mark
himself, telling her of his later troubles, and containing a somewhat
more explicit narrative of recent events than had been afforded in the
letter of his prospective brother-in-law.
"I am, I confess, almost at a loss," said he. "I do not like to believe
that anyone in the house can have the meanness to involve us all in this
misfortune by his own guilty silence. ... Much depends now on the
spirit which my prefects show. I believe, myself, that if they take a
proper view of the situation, we may weather the storm. But the new
order of things hits them harder than anyone else, for it excludes them
from football, cricket, and the sports; and I fear it is too much to
expect that they will even try to make the best of it! I begin to feel
that a master, after all, if he is to do any good, must be a sort of
head boy himself, and I would be thankful if my seniors let me into
their confidence, and we were not always dealing with one another at
arm's length. All this, I fear, is uninteresting to you; but it means a
good deal to me. The flighty Arthur does not appear to be much cast
down by our troubles. I wish I could help him to a little of the
ballast he so greatly needs. But, although I am the master of this
house, I seem scarcely ever to see him. I hear him, though. I hear him
this minute. He and his chum occupy the room over me, and when they
execute a war dance--which occurs on an average six times a day--it
makes me tremble for my ceiling. I have a notion Arthur spends his
weekly allowance rather recklessly, and am thinking of suggesting to
your father that a reduction might be judicious," etcetera, etcetera.
Had Railsford guessed, as he wrote these rather despondent lines, that
his youthful kinsman in the room above was hugging himself for his own
astuteness in tracking out his (Railsford's) villainy, he might perhaps
have regarded the situation of affairs as still less cheerful. As it
was, after the first discovery, the hope had begun to dawn upon the
Master of the Shell, as it had already dawned on Barnworth, that some
good might even result from the present misfortunes of the house. And
as the days passed, he became still more confirmed in the hope, and,
with his usual sanguine temper, thought he could see already Railsford's
house starting on a new career and turning its troubles to credit.
Alas! Mark Railsford had rough waters still to pass through. And the
house, before it was to start on its new career, had several little
affairs to wind up and dispose of.
Among others, the Central Criminal Court Assizes were coming on, and the
boys were summoned, "at their peril," not to fail in appearing on the
occasion.