rose. Going down a gloomy alley of the High Street, he found himself
at the stage door, where he made inquiries of a depressed-looking man
with a bad cold in the head as to the whereabouts of his brother. It
seemed that he was with Mr Higgs. If he would wait, said the
door-keeper, his name should be sent up. Fenn waited, while the
door-keeper made polite conversation by describing his symptoms to him
in a hoarse growl. Presently the minion who had been despatched to the
upper regions with Fenn's message returned. Would he go upstairs,
third door on the left. Fenn followed the instructions, and found
himself in a small room, a third of which was filled by a huge
iron-bound chest, another third by a very stout man and a
dressing-table, while the rest of the space was comparatively empty,
being occupied by a wooden chair with three legs. On this seat his
brother was trying to balance himself, giving what part of his
attention was not required for this feat to listening to some story
the fat man was telling him. Fenn had heard his deep voice booming as
he went up the passage.
His brother did the honours.
"Glad to see you, glad to see you," said Mr Higgs, for the fat man was
none other than that celebrity. "Take a seat."
Fenn sat down on the chest and promptly tore his trousers on a jagged
piece of iron.
"These provincial dressing-rooms!" said Mr Higgs, by way of comment.
"No room! Never any room! No chairs! Nothing!"
He spoke in short, quick sentences, and gasped between each. Fenn said
it really didn't matter--he was quite comfortable.
"Haven't they done anything about it?" asked Fenn's brother, resuming
the conversation which Fenn's entrance had interrupted. "We've been
having a burglary here," he explained. "Somebody got into the theatre
last night through a window. I don't know what they expected to find."
"Why," said Fenn, "we've had a burglar up our way too. Chap broke into
the school house and went through the old man's drawing-room. The
school house men have been talking about nothing else ever since. I
wonder if it's the same crew."
Mr Higgs turned in his chair, and waved a stick of grease paint
impressively to emphasise his point.
"There," he said. "There! What I've been saying all along. No doubt of
it. Organised gang. And what are the police doing? Nothing, sir,
nothing. Making inquiries. Rot! What's the good of inquiries?"
Fenn's brother suggested mildly that inquiries were a good beginning.
You _must_ start somehow. Mr Higgs scouted the idea.
"There ought not to be any doubt, sir. They ought to _know_. To
KNOW," he added, with firmness.
At this point there filtered through the closed doors the strains of
the opening chorus.
"By Jove, it's begun!" said Fenn's brother. "Come on, Bob."
"Where are we going to?" asked Fenn, as he followed. "The wings?"
But it seemed that the rules of Mr Higgs' company prevented any
outsider taking up his position in that desirable quarter. The only
place from which it was possible to watch the performance, except by
going to the front of the house, was the "flies," situated near the
roof of the building.
Fenn found all the pleasures of novelty in watching the players from
this lofty position. Judged by the cold light of reason, it was not
the best place from which to see a play. It was possible to gain only
a very foreshortened view of the actors. But it was a change after
sitting "in front".
The piece was progressing merrily. The gifted author, at first silent
and pale, began now to show signs of gratification. Now and again he
chuckled as some _jeu de mots_ hit the mark and drew a quick gust
of laughter from the unseen audience. Occasionally he would nudge Fenn
to draw his attention to some good bit of dialogue which was
approaching. He was obviously enjoying himself.
The advent of Mr Higgs completed his satisfaction, for the audience
greeted the comedian with roars of applause. As a rule Eckleton took
its drama through the medium of third-rate touring companies, which
came down with plays that had not managed to attract London to any
great extent, and were trying to make up for failures in the
metropolis by long tours in the provinces. It was seldom that an actor
of the Higgs type paid the town a visit, and in a play, too, which had
positively never appeared before on any stage. Eckleton appreciated
the compliment.
"Listen," said Fenn's brother. "Isn't that just the part for him? It's
just like he was in the dressing-room, eh? Short sentences and
everything. The funny part of it is that I didn't know the man when I
wrote the play. It was all luck."
Mr Higgs' performance sealed the success of the piece. The house
laughed at everything he said. He sang a song in his gasping way, and
they laughed still more. Fenn's brother became incoherent with
delight. The verdict of Eckleton was hardly likely to affect London
theatre-goers, but it was very pleasant notwithstanding. Like every
playwright with his first piece, he had been haunted by the idea that
his dialogue "would not act", that, however humorous it might be to a
reader, it would fall flat when spoken. There was no doubt now as to
whether the lines sounded well.
At the beginning of the second act the great Higgs was not on the
stage, Fenn's brother knowing enough of the game not to bring on his
big man too soon. He had not to enter for ten minutes or so. The
author, who had gone down to see him during the interval, stayed in
the dressing-room. Fenn, however, who wanted to see all of the piece
that he could, went up to the "flies" again.
It occurred to him when he got there that he would see more if he took
the seat which his brother had been occupying. It would give him much
the same view of the stage, and a wider view of the audience. He
thought it would be amusing to see how the audience looked from the
"flies".
Mr W. S. Gilbert once wrote a poem about a certain bishop who, while
fond of amusing himself, objected to his clergy doing likewise. And
the consequence was that whenever he did so amuse himself, he was
always haunted by a phantom curate, who joined him in his pleasures,
much to his dismay. On one occasion he stopped to watch a Punch and
Judy show,
And heard, as Punch was being treated penally,
That phantom curate laughing all hyaenally.
The disgust and panic of this eminent cleric was as nothing compared
with that of Fenn, when, shifting to his brother's seat, he got the
first clear view he had had of the audience. In a box to the left of
the dress-circle sat, "laughing all hyaenally", the following
distinguished visitors:
Mr Mulholland of No. 7 College Buildings.
Mr Raynes of No. 4 ditto,
and
Mr Kay.
Fenn drew back like a flash, knocking his chair over as he did so.
"Giddy, sir?" said a stage hand, pleasantly. "Bless you, lots of gents
is like that when they comes up here. Can't stand the 'eight, they
can't. You'll be all right in a jiffy."
"Yes. It--it is rather high, isn't it?" said Fenn. "Awful glare, too."
He picked up his chair and sat down well out of sight of the box. Had
they seen him? he wondered. Then common sense returned to him. They
could not possibly have seen him. Apart from any other reasons, he had
only been in his brother's seat for half-a-dozen seconds. No. He was
all right so far. But he would have to get back to the house, and at
once. With three of the staff, including his own house-master, ranging
the town, things were a trifle too warm for comfort. He wondered it
had not occurred to him that, with a big attraction at the theatre,
some of the staff might feel an inclination to visit it.
He did not stop to say goodbye to his brother. Descending from his
perch, he hurried to the stage door.
"It's in the toobs that I feel it, sir." said the door-keeper, as he
let him out, resuming their conversation as if they had only just
parted. Fenn hurried off without waiting to hear more.
It was drizzling outside, and there was a fog. Not a "London
particular", but quite thick enough to make it difficult to see where
one was going. People and vehicles passed him, vague phantoms in the
darkness. Occasionally the former collided with him. He began to wish
he had not accepted his brother's invitation. The unexpected sight of
the three masters had shaken his nerve. Till then only the romantic,
adventurous side of the expedition had struck him. Now the risks began
to loom larger in his mind. It was all very well, he felt, to think, as
he had done, that he would be expelled if found out, but that all the
same he would risk it. Detection then had seemed a remote contingency.
With three masters in the offing it became at least a possibility. The
melancholy case of Peter Brown seemed to him now to have a more
personal significance for him.
Wrapped in these reflections, he lost his way.
He did not realise this for some time. It was borne in upon him when
the road he was taking suddenly came to an abrupt end in a blank wall.
Instead of being, as he had fancied, in the High Street, he must have
branched off into some miserable blind alley.
More than ever he wished he had not come. Eckleton was not a town that
took up a great deal of room on the map of England, but it made up for
small dimensions by the eccentricity with which it had been laid out.
On a dark and foggy night, to one who knew little of its geography, it
was a perfect maze.
Fenn had wandered some way when the sound of someone whistling a
popular music-hall song came to him through the gloom. He had never
heard anything more agreeable.
"I say," he shouted at a venture, "can you tell me the way to the High
Street?"
The whistler stopped in the middle of a bar, and presently Fenn saw a
figure sidling towards him in what struck him as a particularly
furtive manner.
"Wot's thet, gav'nor?"
"Can you tell me where the High Street is? I've lost my way."
The vague figure came closer.
"'Igh Street? Yus; yer go--"
A hand shot out, Fenn felt a sharp wrench in the region of his
waistcoat, and a moment later the stranger had vanished into the fog
with the prefect's watch and chain.
Fenn forgot his desire to return to the High Street. He forgot
everything except that he wished to catch the fugitive, maltreat him,
and retrieve his property. He tore in the direction whence came the
patter of retreating foot-steps.
There were moments when he thought he had him, when he could hear the
sound of his breathing. But the fog was against him. Just as he was
almost on his man's heels, the fugitive turned sharply into a street
which was moderately well lighted. Fenn turned after him. He had just
time to recognise the street as his goal, the High Street, when
somebody, walking unexpectedly out of the corner house, stood directly
in his path. Fenn could not stop himself. He charged the man squarely,
clutched him to save himself, and they fell in a heap on the pavement.
XVI
WHAT HAPPENED TO FENN
Fenn was up first. Many years' experience of being tackled at full
speed on the football field had taught him how to fall. The stranger,
whose football days, if he had ever had any, were long past, had gone
down with a crash, and remained on the pavement, motionless. Fenn was
conscious of an ignoble impulse to fly without stopping to chat about
the matter. Then he was seized with a gruesome fear that he had
injured the man seriously, which vanished when the stranger sat up.
His first words were hardly of the sort that one would listen to from
choice. His first printable expression, which did not escape him until
he had been speaking some time, was in the nature of an official
bulletin.
"You've broken my neck," said he.
Fenn renewed his apologies and explanations.
"Your watch!" cried the man in a high, cracked voice. "Don't stand
there talking about your watch, but help me up. What do I care about
your watch? Why don't you look where you are going to? Now then, now
then, don't hoist me as if I were a hod of bricks. That's right. Now
help me indoors, and go away."
Fenn supported him while he walked lamely into the house. He was
relieved to find that there was nothing more the matter with him than
a shaking and a few bruises.
"Door on the left," said the injured one.
Fenn led him down the passage and into a small sitting-room. The gas
was lit, and as he turned it up he saw that the stranger was a man
well advanced in years. He had grey hair that was almost white. His
face was not a pleasant one. It was a mass of lines and wrinkles from
which a physiognomist would have deduced uncomplimentary conclusions
as to his character. Fenn had little skill in that way, but he felt
that for some reason he disliked the man, whose eyes, which were small
and extraordinarily bright, gave rather an eerie look to his face.
"Go away, go away," he kept repeating savagely from his post on the
shabby sofa on which Fenn had deposited him.
"But are you all right? Can't I get you something?" asked the
Eckletonian.
"Go away, go away," repeated the man.
Conversation on these lines could never be really attractive. Fenn
turned to go. As he closed the door and began to feel his way along
the dark passage, he heard the key turn in the lock behind him. The
man could not, he felt, have been very badly hurt if he were able to
get across the room so quickly. The thought relieved him somewhat.
Nobody likes to have the maiming even of the most complete stranger on
his mind. The sensation of relief lasted possibly three seconds. Then
it flashed upon him that in the excitement of the late interview he
had forgotten his cap. That damaging piece of evidence lay on the
table in the sitting-room, and between him and it was a locked door.
He groped his way back, and knocked. No sound came from the room.
"I say," he cried, "you might let me have my cap. I left it on the
table."
No reply.
Fenn half thought of making a violent assault on the door. He
refrained on reflecting that it would be useless. If he could break it
open--which, in all probability, he could not--there would be trouble
such as he had never come across in his life. He was not sure it would
not be an offence for which he would be rendered liable to fine or
imprisonment. At any rate, it would mean the certain detection of his
visit to the town. So he gave the thing up, resolving to return on the
morrow and reopen negotiations. For the present, what he had to do was
to get safely back to his house. He had lost his watch, his cap with
his name in it was in the hands of an evil old man who evidently bore
him a grudge, and he had to run the gauntlet of three house-masters
and get to bed _via_ a study-window. Few people, even after the
dullest of plays, have returned from the theatre so disgusted with
everything as did Fenn. Reviewing the situation as he ran with long,
easy strides over the road that led to Kay's, he found it devoid of
any kind of comfort. Unless his mission in quest of the cap should
prove successful, he was in a tight place.
It is just as well that the gift of second sight is accorded to but
few. If Fenn could have known at this point that his adventures were
only beginning, that what had taken place already was but as the
overture to a drama, it is possible that he would have thrown up the
sponge for good and all, entered Kay's by way of the front door--after
knocking up the entire household--and remarked, in answer to his
house-master's excited questions, "Enough! Enough! I am a victim of
Fate, a Toad beneath the Harrow. Sack me tomorrow, if you like, but
for goodness' sake let me get quietly to bed now."
As it was, not being able to "peep with security into futurity," he
imagined that the worst was over.
He began to revise this opinion immediately on turning in at Kay's
gate. He had hardly got half-way down the drive when the front door
opened and two indistinct figures came down the steps. As they did so
his foot slipped off the grass border on which he was running to
deaden the noise of his steps, and grated sharply on the gravel.
"What's that?" said a voice. The speaker was Mr Kay.
"What's what?" replied a second voice which he recognised as Mr
Mulholland's.
"Didn't you hear a noise?"
"'I heard the water lapping on the crag,'" replied Mr Mulholland,
poetically.
"It was over there," persisted Mr Kay. "I am certain I heard
something--positively certain, Mulholland. And after that burglary at
the school house--"
He began to move towards the spot where Fenn lay crouching behind a
bush. Mr Mulholland followed, mildly amused. They were a dozen yards
away when Fenn, debating in his mind whether it would not be
better--as it would certainly be more dignified--for him to rise and
deliver himself up to justice instead of waiting to be discovered
wallowing in the damp grass behind a laurel bush, was aware of
something soft and furry pressing against his knuckles. A soft purring
sound reached his ears.
He knew at once who it was--Thomas Edward, the matron's cat, ever a
staunch friend of his. Many a time had they taken tea together in his
study in happier days. The friendly animal had sought him out in his
hiding-place, and was evidently trying to intimate that the best thing
they could do now would be to make a regular night of it.
Fenn, as I have said, liked and respected Thomas. In ordinary
circumstances he would not have spoken an unfriendly word to him. But
things were desperate now, and needed remedies to match.
Very softly he passed his hand down the delighted animal's back until
he reached his tail. Then, stifling with an effort all the finer
feelings which should have made such an act impossible, he
administered so vigorous a tweak to that appendage that Thomas, with
one frenzied yowl, sprang through the bush past the two masters and
vanished at full speed into the opposite hedge.
"My goodness!" said Mr Kay, starting back.
It was a further shock to Fenn to find how close he was to the laurel.
"'Goodness me,
Why, what was that?
Silent be,
It was the cat,'"
chanted Mr Mulholland, who was in poetical vein after the theatre.
"It was a cat!" gasped Mr Kay.
"So I am disposed to imagine. What lungs! We shall be having the
R.S.P.C.A. down on us if we aren't careful. They must have heard that
noise at the headquarters of the Society, wherever they are. Well, if
your zeal for big game hunting is satisfied, and you don't propose to
follow the vocalist through that hedge, I think I will be off. Good
night. Good piece, wasn't it?"
"Excellent. Good night, Mulholland."
"By the way, I wonder if the man who wrote it is a relation of our
Fenn. It may be his brother--I believe he writes. You probably remember
him when he was here. He was before my time. Talking of Fenn, how do
you find the new arrangement answer? Is Kennedy an improvement?"
"Kennedy," said Mr Kay, "is a well-meaning boy, I think. Quite
well-meaning. But he lacks ability, in my opinion. I have had to speak
to him on several occasions on account of disturbances amongst the
juniors. Once I found two boys actually fighting in the junior
dayroom. I was very much annoyed about it."
"And where was Kennedy while this was going on? Was he holding the
watch?"
"The watch?" said Mr Kay, in a puzzled tone of voice. "Kennedy was
over at the gymnasium when it occurred."
"Then it was hardly his fault that the fight took place."
"My dear Mulholland, if the head of a house is efficient, fights
should be impossible. Even when he is not present, his influence, his
prestige, so to speak, should be sufficient to restrain the boys under
him."
Mr Mulholland whistled softly.
"So that's your idea of what the head of your house should be like, is
it? Well, I know of one fellow who would have been just your man.
Unfortunately, he is never likely to come to school at Eckleton."
"Indeed?" said Mr Kay, with interest. "Who is that? Where did you meet
him? What school is he at?"
"I never said I had met him. I only go by what I have heard of him.
And as far as I know, he is not at any school. He was a gentleman of
the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. He might just have been equal to the
arduous duties which devolve upon the head of your house. Goodnight."
And Fenn heard his footsteps crunch the gravel as he walked away. A
minute later the front door shut, and there was a rattle. Mr Kay had
put the chain up and retired for the night.
Fenn lay where he was for a short while longer. Then he rose, feeling
very stiff and wet, and crept into one of the summer-houses which
stood in Mr Kay's garden. Here he sat for an hour and a half, at the
end of which time, thinking that Mr Kay must be asleep, he started out
to climb into the house.
His study was on the first floor. A high garden-seat stood directly
beneath the window and acted as a convenient ladder. It was easy to
get from this on to the window-ledge. Once there he could open the
window, and the rest would be plain sailing.
Unhappily, there was one flaw in his scheme. He had conceived that
scheme in the expectation that the window would be as he had left it.
But it was not.
During his absence somebody had shot the bolt. And, try his hardest,
he could not move the sash an inch.
XVII
FENN HUNTS FOR HIMSELF
Nobody knows for certain the feelings of the camel when his proprietor
placed that last straw on his back. The incident happened so long ago.
If it had occurred in modern times, he would probably have contributed
a first-hand report to the _Daily Mail._ But it is very likely
that he felt on that occasion exactly as Fenn felt when, after a night
of unparalleled misadventure, he found that somebody had cut off his
retreat by latching the window. After a gruelling race Fate had just
beaten him on the tape.
There was no doubt about its being latched. The sash had not merely
stuck. He put all he knew into the effort to raise it, but without a
hint of success. After three attempts he climbed down again and,
sitting on the garden-seat, began to review his position.
If one has an active mind and a fair degree of optimism, the effect of
the "staggerers" administered by Fate passes off after a while. Fenn
had both. The consequence was that, after ten minutes of grey despair,
he was relieved by a faint hope that there might be some other way
into the house than through his study. Anyhow, it would be worth while
to investigate.
His study was at the side of the house. At the back were the kitchen,
the scullery, and the dining-room, and above these more studies and a
couple of dormitories. As a last resort he might fling rocks and other
solids at the windows until he woke somebody up. But he did not feel
like trying this plan until every other had failed. He had no desire
to let a garrulous dormitory into the secret of his wanderings. What
he hoped was that he might find one of the lower windows open.
And so he did.
As he turned the corner of the house he saw what he had been looking
for. The very first window was wide open. His spirits shot up, and for
the first time since he had left the theatre he was conscious of
taking a pleasure in his adventurous career. Fate was with him after
all. He could not help smiling as he remembered how he had felt during
that ten minutes on the garden-seat, when the future seemed blank and
devoid of any comfort whatsoever. And all the time he could have got
in without an effort, if he had only thought of walking half a dozen
yards.
Now that the way was open to him, he wasted no time. He climbed
through into the dark room. He was not certain which room it was, in
spite of his lengthy residence at Kay's.
He let himself down softly till his foot touched the floor. After a
moment's pause he moved forward a step. Then another. At the third
step his knee struck the leg of a table. He must be in the
dining-room. If so, he was all right. He could find his way up to his
room with his eyes shut. It was easy to find out for certain. The
walls of the dining-room at Kay's, as in the other houses, were
covered with photographs. He walked gingerly in the direction in which
he imagined the nearest wall to be, reached it, and passed his hand
along it. Yes, there were photographs. Then all he had to do was to
find the table again, make his way along it, and when he got to the
end the door would be a yard or so to his left. The programme seemed
simple and attractive. But it was added to in a manner which he had
not foreseen. Feeling his way back to the table, he upset a chair. If
he had upset a cart-load of coal on to a sheet of tin it could not, so
it seemed to him in the disordered state of his nerves, have made more
noise. It went down with an appalling crash, striking the table on its
way. "This," thought Fenn, savagely, as he waited, listening, "is
where I get collared. What a fool I am to barge about like this."
He felt that the echoes of that crash must have penetrated to every
corner of the house. But no one came. Perhaps, after all, the noise
had not been so great. He proceeded on his journey down the table,
feeling every inch of the way. The place seemed one bristling mass of
chairs. But, by the exercise of consummate caution, he upset no more
and won through at last in safety to the door.