the shop, and wished to talk to him. He had not seen him after the
concert, and he thought it would be interesting to know how Kay had
taken it, and what his comments had been on meeting Fenn in the house
that night.
Fenn had not much to say.
"He was rather worried," he said, grinning as if the recollection of
the interview amused him. "But he couldn't do anything. Of course,
there'll be a row next term, but it can't be helped."
"If I were you," said Silver, "I should point out to them that you'd a
perfect right to play what you liked for an encore. How were you to
know the gallery would go off like that? You aren't responsible for
them. Hullo, there's that bugle. Things seem to be on the move. We
must go."
"So long," said Fenn.
"Goodbye. Mind you come off against Middlesex."
Kennedy stayed for a moment.
"Has the Old Man said anything to you yet?" he asked.
"Not yet. He'll do that next term. It'll be something to look forward
to."
Kennedy hurried off to take his place in the ranks.
Getting to camp at the end of the summer term is always a nuisance.
Aldershot seems a long way from everywhere, and the trains take their
time over the journey. Then, again, the heat always happens to be
particularly oppressive on that day. Snow may have fallen on the day
before, but directly one sets out for camp, the thermometer goes up
into three figures. The Eckleton contingent marched into the lines
damp and very thirsty.
Most of the other schools were already on the spot, and looked as if
they had been spending the last few years there. There was nothing
particular going on when the Eckleton warriors arrived, and everybody
was lounging about in khaki and shirt-sleeves, looking exasperatingly
cool. The only consolation which buoyed up the spirits of Eckleton
was the reflection that in a short space of time, when the
important-looking gentleman in uniform who had come to meet them had
said all he wanted to say on the subject of rules and regulations,
they would be like that too. Happy thought! If the man bucked up and
cut short the peroration, there would be time for a bathe in Cove
Reservoir. Those of the corps who had been to camp in previous years
felt quite limp with the joy of the thought. Why couldn't he get
through with it, and give a fellow a chance of getting cool again?
The gist of the oration was apparently that the Eckleton cadets were
to consider themselves not only as soldiers--and as such subject to
military discipline, and the rules for the conduct of troops quartered
in the Aldershot district--but also as members of a public school. In
short, that if they misbehaved themselves they would get cells, and a
hundred lines in the same breath, as it were.
The corps knew all this ages ago. The man seemed to think he was
telling them something fresh. They began positively to dislike him
after a while.
He finished at last. Eckleton marched off wearily, but in style, to
its lines.
"Dis-miss!"
They did.
"And about time, too," said Jimmy Silver. "I wish they would tie that
man up, or something. He's one of the worst bores I know. He may be
full of bright conversation in private life, but in public he will
talk about his beastly military regulations. You can't stop him. It's
a perfect mania with him. Now, I believe--that's to say, I have a sort
of dim idea--that there's a place round about here called a canteen. I
seem to remember such a thing vaguely. We might go and look for it."
Kennedy made no objection.
This was his first appearance at camp. Jimmy Silver, on the other
hand, was a veteran. He had been there twice before, and meant to go
again. He had a peculiar and extensive knowledge of the ins and outs
of the place. Kennedy was quite willing to take him as his guide. He
was full of information. Kennedy was surprised to see what a number of
men from the other schools he seemed to know. In the canteen there
were, amongst others, a Carthusian, two Tonbridge men, and a
Haileyburian. They all greeted Silver with the warmth of old friends.
"You get to know a lot of fellows in camp," explained Jimmy, as they
strolled back to the Eckleton lines. "That's the best of the place.
Camp's the best place on earth, if only you have decent weather. See
that chap over there? He came here last year. He'd never been before,
and one of the things he didn't know was that Cove Reservoir's only
about three feet deep round the sides. He took a running dive, and
almost buried himself in the mud. It's about two feet deep. He told me
afterwards he swallowed pounds of it. Rather bad luck. Somebody ought
to have told him. You can't do much diving here."
"Glad you mentioned it," said Kennedy. "I should have dived myself if
you hadn't."
Many other curious and diverting facts did the expert drag from the
bonded warehouse of his knowledge. Nothing changes at camp. Once get
to know the ropes, and you know them for all time.
"The one thing I bar," he said, "is having to get up at half-past
five. And one day in the week, when there's a divisional field-day,
it's half-past four. It's hardly worth while going to sleep at all.
Still, it isn't so bad as it used to be. The first year I came to camp
we used to have to do a three hours' field-day before brekker. We used
to have coffee before it, and nothing else till it was over. By Jove,
you felt you'd had enough of it before you got back. This is Laffan's
Plain. The worst of Laffan's Plain is that you get to know it too
well. You get jolly sick of always starting on field-days from the
same place, and marching across the same bit of ground. Still, I
suppose they can't alter the scenery for our benefit. See that man
there? He won the sabres at Aldershot last year. That chap with him is
in the Clifton footer team."
When a school corps goes to camp, it lives in a number of tents, and,
as a rule, each house collects in a tent of its own. Blackburn's had a
tent, and further down the line Kay's had assembled. The Kay
contingent were under Wayburn, a good sort, as far as he himself was
concerned, but too weak to handle a mob like Kay's. Wayburn was not
coming back after the holidays, a fact which perhaps still further
weakened his hold on the Kayites. They had nothing to fear from him
next term.
Kay's was represented at camp by a dozen or so of its members, of whom
young Billy Silver alone had any pretensions to the esteem of his
fellow man. Kay's was the rowdiest house in the school, and the cream
of its rowdy members had come to camp. There was Walton, for one, a
perfect specimen of the public school man at his worst. There was
Mortimer, another of Kay's gems. Perry, again, and Callingham, and the
rest. A pleasant gang, fit for anything, if it could be done in
safety.
Kennedy observed them, and--the spectacle starting a train of
thought--asked Jimmy Silver, as they went into their tent just before
lights-out, if there was much ragging in camp.
"Not very much," said the expert. "Chaps are generally too done up at
the end of the day to want to do anything except sleep. Still, I've
known cases. You sometimes get one tent mobbing another. They loose
the ropes, you know. Low trick, I think. It isn't often done, and it
gets dropped on like bricks when it's found out. But why? Do you feel
as if you wanted to do it?"
"It only occurred to me that we've got a lively gang from Kay's here.
I was wondering if they'd get any chances of ragging, or if they'd
have to lie low."
"I'd forgotten Kay's for the moment. Now you mention it, they are
rather a crew. But I shouldn't think they'd find it worth while to rot
about here. It isn't as if they were on their native heath. People
have a prejudice against having their tent-ropes loosed, and they'd
get beans if they did anything in that line. I remember once there was
a tent which made itself objectionable, and it got raided in the night
by a sort of vigilance committee from the other schools, and the chaps
in it got the dickens of a time. None of them ever came to camp again.
I hope Kay's'll try and behave decently. It'll be an effort for them;
but I hope they'll make it. It would be an awful nuisance if young
Billy made an ass of himself in any way. He loves making an ass of
himself. It's a sort of hobby of his."
As if to support the statement, a sudden volley of subdued shouts came
from the other end of the Eckleton lines.
"Go it, Wren!"
"Stick to it, Silver!"
"Wren!"
"Silver!"
"S-s-h!"
Silence, followed almost immediately by a gruff voice inquiring with
simple directness what the dickens all this noise was about.
"Hullo!" said Kennedy. "Did you hear that? I wonder what's been up?
Your brother was in it, whatever it was."
"Of course," said Jimmy Silver, "he would be. We can't find out about
it now, though. I'll ask him tomorrow, if I remember. I shan't
remember, of course. Good night."
"Good night."
Half an hour later, Kennedy, who had been ruminating over the incident
in his usual painstaking way, reopened the debate.
"Who's Wren?" he asked.
"Wha'?" murmured Silver, sleepily.
"Who's Wren?" repeated Kennedy.
"I d'know.... Oh.... Li'l' beast.... Kay's.... Red hair.... G'-ni'."
And sleep reigned in Blackburn's tent.
VI
THE RAID ON THE GUARD-TENT
Wren and Billy Silver had fallen out over a question of space. It was
Silver's opinion that Wren's nest ought to have been built a foot or
two further to the left. He stated baldly that he had not room to
breathe, and requested the red-headed one to ease off a point or so in
the direction of his next-door neighbour. Wren had refused, and, after
a few moments' chatty conversation, smote William earnestly in the
wind. Trouble had begun upon the instant. It had ceased almost as
rapidly owing to interruptions from without, but the truce had been
merely temporary. They continued the argument outside the tent at
five-thirty the next morning, after the _reveille_ had sounded,
amidst shouts of approval from various shivering mortals who were
tubbing preparatory to embarking on the labours of the day.
A brisk first round had just come to a conclusion when Walton lounged
out of the tent, yawning.
Walton proceeded to separate the combatants. After which he rebuked
Billy Silver with a swagger-stick. Wren's share in the business he
overlooked. He was by way of being a patron of Wren's, and he disliked
Billy Silver, partly for his own sake and partly because he hated his
brother, with whom he had come into contact once or twice during his
career at Eckleton, always with unsatisfactory results.
So Walton dropped on to Billy Silver, and Wren continued his toilet
rejoicing.
Camp was beginning the strenuous life now. Tent after tent emptied
itself of its occupants, who stretched themselves vigorously, and
proceeded towards the tubbing-ground, where there were tin baths for
those who cared to wait until the same were vacant, and a good, honest
pump for those who did not. Then there was that unpopular job, the
piling of one's bedding outside the tent, and the rolling up of the
tent curtains. But these unpleasant duties came to an end at last, and
signs of breakfast began to appear.
Breakfast gave Kennedy his first insight into life in camp. He
happened to be tent-orderly that day, and it therefore fell to his lot
to join the orderlies from the other tents in their search for the
Eckleton rations. He returned with a cargo of bread (obtained from the
quartermaster), and, later, with a great tin of meat, which the
cook-house had supplied, and felt that this was life. Hitherto
breakfast had been to him a thing of white cloths, tables, and food
that appeared from nowhere. This was the first time he had ever
tracked his food to its source, so to speak, and brought it back with
him. After breakfast, when he was informed that, as tent-orderly for
the day, it was his business to wash up, he began to feel as if he
were on a desert island. He had never quite realised before what
washing-up implied, and he was conscious of a feeling of respect for
the servants at Blackburn's, who did it every day as a matter of
course, without complaint. He had had no idea before this of the
intense stickiness of a jammy plate.
One day at camp is much like another. The schools opened the day with
parade drill at about eight o'clock, and, after an instruction series
of "changing direction half-left in column of double companies", and
other pleasant movements of a similar nature, adjourned for lunch.
Lunch was much like breakfast, except that the supply of jam was cut
off. The people who arrange these things--probably the War Office, or
Mr Brodrick, or someone--have come to the conclusion that two pots of
jam per tent are sufficient for breakfast and lunch. The unwary devour
theirs recklessly at the earlier meal, and have to go jamless until
tea at six o'clock, when another pot is served out.
The afternoon at camp is perfect or otherwise, according to whether
there is a four o'clock field-day or not. If there is, there are more
manoeuvrings until tea-time, and the time is spent profitably, but not
so pleasantly as it might be. If there is no field-day, you can take
your time about your bathe in Cove Reservoir. And a really
satisfactory bathe on a hot day should last at least three hours.
Kennedy and Jimmy Silver strolled off in the direction of the
Reservoir as soon as they felt that they had got over the effects of
the beef, potatoes, and ginger-beer which a generous commissariat had
doled out to them for lunch. It was a glorious day, and bathing was
the only thing to do for the next hour or so. Stump-cricket, that
fascinating sport much indulged in in camp, would not be at its best
until the sun had cooled off a little.
After a pleasant half hour in the mud and water of the Reservoir, they
lay on the bank and watched the rest of the schools take their
afternoon dip. Kennedy had laid in a supply of provisions from the
stall which stood at the camp end of the water. Neither of them felt
inclined to move.
"This _is_ decent," said Kennedy, wriggling into a more
comfortable position in the long grass. "Hullo!"
"What's up?" inquired Jimmy Silver, lazily.
He was almost asleep.
"Look at those idiots. They're certain to get spotted."
Jimmy Silver tilted his hat off his face, and sat up.
"What's the matter? Which idiot?"
Kennedy pointed to a bush on their right. Walton and Perry were seated
beside it. Both were smoking.
"Oh, that's all right," said Silver. "Masters never come to Cove
Reservoir. It's a sort of unwritten law. They're rotters to smoke, all
the same. Certain to get spotted some day.... Not worth it.... Spoils
lungs.... Beastly bad ... training."
He dozed off. The sun was warm, and the grass very soft and
comfortable. Kennedy turned his gaze to the Reservoir again. It was no
business of his what Walton and Perry did.
Walton and Perry were discussing ways and means. The conversation
changed as they saw Kennedy glance at them. They were the sort of
persons who feel a vague sense of injury when anybody looks at them,
perhaps because they feel that those whose attention is attracted to
them must say something to their discredit when they begin to talk
about them.
"There's that beast Kennedy," said Walton. "I can't stick that man.
He's always hanging round the house. What he comes for, I can't make
out."
"Pal of Fenn's," suggested Perry.
"He hangs on to Fenn. I bet Fenn bars him really."
Perry doubted this in his innermost thoughts, but it was not worth
while to say so.
"Those Blackburn chaps," continued Walton, reverting to another
grievance, "will stick on no end of side next term about that cup.
They wouldn't have had a look in if Kay hadn't given Fenn that extra.
Kay ought to be kicked. I'm hanged if I'm going to care what I do next
term. Somebody ought to do something to take it out of Kay for getting
his own house licked like that."
Walton spoke as if the line of conduct he had mapped out for himself
would be a complete reversal of his customary mode of life. As a
matter of fact, he had never been in the habit of caring very much
what he did.
Walton's last remarks brought the conversation back to where it had
been before the mention of Kennedy switched it off on to new lines.
Perry had been complaining that he thought camp a fraud, that it was
all drilling and getting up at unearthly hours. He reminded Walton
that he had only come on the strength of the latter's statement that
it would be a rag. Where did the rag come in? That was what Perry
wanted to know.
"When it's not a ghastly sweat," he concluded, "it's slow. Like it is
now. Can't we do something for a change?"
"As a matter of fact," said Walton, "nearly all the best rags are
played out. A chap at a crammer's told me last holidays that when he
was at camp he and some other fellows loosed the ropes of the
guard-tent. He said it was grand sport."
Perry sat up.
"That's the thing," he said, excitedly. "Let's do that. Why not?"
"It's beastly risky," objected Walton.
"What's that matter? They can't do anything, even if they spot us."
"That's all you know. We should get beans."
"Still, it's worth risking. It would be the biggest rag going. Did the
chap tell you how they did it?"
"Yes," said Walton, becoming animated as he recalled the stirring
tale, "they bagged the sentry. Chucked a cloth or something over his
head, you know. Then they shoved him into the ditch, and one of them
sat on him while the others loosed the ropes. It took the chaps inside
no end of a time getting out."
"That's the thing. We'll do it. We only need one other chap. Leveson
would come if we asked him. Let's get back to the lines. It's almost
tea-time. Tell him after tea."
Leveson proved agreeable. Indeed, he jumped at it. His life, his
attitude suggested, had been a hollow mockery until he heard the plan,
but now he could begin to enjoy himself once more.
The lights-out bugle sounded at ten o'clock; the last post at
ten-thirty. At a quarter to twelve the three adventurers, who had been
keeping themselves awake by the exercise of great pains, satisfied
themselves that the other occupants of the tent were asleep, and stole
out.
It was an excellent night for their purpose. There was no moon, and
the stars were hidden by clouds.
They crept silently towards the guard-tent. A dim figure loomed out of
the blackness. They noted with satisfaction, as it approached, that it
was small. Sentries at the public-school camp vary in physique. They
felt that it was lucky that the task of sentry-go had not fallen that
night to some muscular forward from one of the school fifteens, or
worse still, to a boxing expert who had figured in the Aldershot
competition at Easter. The present sentry would be an easy victim.
They waited for him to arrive.
A moment later Private Jones, of St Asterisk's--for it was he--turning
to resume his beat, found himself tackled from behind. Two moments
later he was reclining in the ditch. He would have challenged his
adversary, but, unfortunately, that individual happened to be seated
on his face.
He struggled, but to no purpose.
He was still struggling when a muffled roar of indignation from the
direction of the guard-tent broke the stillness of the summer night.
The roar swelled into a crescendo. What seemed like echoes came from
other quarters out of the darkness. The camp was waking.
The noise from the guard-tent waxed louder.
The unknown marauder rose from his seat on Private Jones, and
vanished.
Private Jones also rose. He climbed out of the ditch, shook himself,
looked round for his assailant, and, not finding him, hurried to the
guard-tent to see what was happening.
VII
A CLUE
The guard-tent had disappeared.
Private Jones' bewildered eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to
earth, and from earth to heaven, in search of the missing edifice,
found it at last in a tangled heap upon the ground. It was too dark to
see anything distinctly, but he perceived that the canvas was rising
and falling spasmodically like a stage sea, and for a similar
reason--because there were human beings imprisoned beneath it.
By this time the whole camp was up and doing. Figures in
_deshabille_, dashing the last vestiges of sleep away with their
knuckles, trooped on to the scene in twos and threes, full of inquiry
and trenchant sarcasm.
"What are you men playing at? What's all the row about? Can't you
finish that game of footer some other time, when we aren't trying to
get to sleep? What on earth's up?"
Then the voice of one having authority.
"What's the matter? What are you doing?"
It was perfectly obvious what the guard was doing. It was trying to
get out from underneath the fallen tent. Private Jones explained this
with some warmth.
"Somebody jumped at me and sat on my head in the ditch. I couldn't get
up. And then some blackguard cut the ropes of the guard-tent. I
couldn't see who it was. He cut off directly the tent went down."
Private Jones further expressed a wish that he could find the chap.
When he did, there would, he hinted, be trouble in the old homestead.
The tent was beginning to disgorge its prisoners.
"Guard, turn out!" said a facetious voice from the darkness.
The camp was divided into two schools of thought. Those who were
watching the guard struggle out thought the episode funny. The guard
did not. It was pathetic to hear them on the subject of their
mysterious assailants. Matters quieted down rapidly after the tent had
been set up again. The spectators were driven back to their lines by
their officers. The guard turned in again to try and restore their
shattered nerves with sleep until their time for sentry-go came round.
Private Jones picked up his rifle and resumed his beat. The affair was
at an end as far as that night was concerned.
Next morning, as might be expected, nothing else was talked about.
Conversation at breakfast was confined to the topic. No halfpenny
paper, however many times its circulation might exceed that of any
penny morning paper, ever propounded so fascinating and puzzling a
breakfast-table problem. It was the utter impossibility of detecting
the culprits that appealed to the schools. They had swooped down like
hawks out of the night, and disappeared like eels into mud, leaving no
traces.
Jimmy Silver, of course, had no doubts.
"It was those Kay's men," he said. "What does it matter about
evidence? You've only got to look at 'em. That's all the evidence you
want. The only thing that makes it at all puzzling is that they did
nothing worse. You'd naturally expect them to slay the sentry, at any
rate."
But the rest of the camp, lacking that intimate knowledge of the
Kayite which he possessed, did not turn the eye of suspicion towards
the Eckleton lines. The affair remained a mystery. Kennedy, who never
gave up a problem when everybody else did, continued to revolve the
mystery in his mind.
"I shouldn't wonder," he said to Silver, two days later, "if you were
right."
Silver, who had not made any remark for the last five minutes, with
the exception of abusive comments on the toughness of the meat which
he was trying to carve with a blunt knife for the tent, asked for an
explanation. "I mean about that row the other night."
"What row?"
"That guard-tent business."
"Oh, that! I'd forgotten. Why don't you move with the times? You're
always thinking of something that's been dead and buried for years."
"You remember you said you thought it was those Kay's chaps who did
it. I've been thinking it over, and I believe you're right. You see,
it was probably somebody who'd been to camp before, or he wouldn't
have known that dodge of loosing the ropes."
"I don't see why. Seems to me it's the sort of idea that might have
occurred to anybody. You don't want to study the thing particularly
deeply to know that the best way of making a tent collapse is to loose
the ropes. Of course it was Kay's lot who did it. But I don't see how
you're going to have them simply because one or two of them have been
here before."
"No, I suppose not," said Kennedy.
After tea the other occupants of the tent went out of the lines to
play stump-cricket. Silver was in the middle of a story in one of the
magazines, so did not accompany them. Kennedy cried off on the plea of
slackness.
"I say," he said, when they were alone.
"Hullo," said Silver, finishing his story, and putting down the
magazine. "What do you say to going after those chaps? I thought that
story was going to be a long one that would take half an hour to get
through. But it collapsed. Like that guard-tent."