from other houses whose brothers or cousins he had met in the
holidays. On such occasions he liked to have some trusty friend by him
to help the conversation along. It struck Kennedy that this might be
one of those occasions. If so, he would send back a polite but firm
refusal of the invitation. Last time he had gone to help Jimmy
entertain a guest of this kind, conversation had come to a dead
standstill a quarter of an hour after his arrival, the guest refusing
to do anything except eat prodigiously, and reply "Yes" or "No", as
the question might demand, when spoken to. Also he had declined to
stir from his seat till a quarter to seven. Kennedy was not going to
be let in for another orgy of that nature if he knew it.
"Who's with Silver?" he asked.
"Only Fenn," said Baker.
Kennedy pondered for a moment.
"All right," he said, at last, "tell him I'll be round in a few
minutes."
He sat thinking the thing over after Baker had gone back to
Blackburn's with the message. He saw Silver's game, of course. Jimmy
had made no secret for some time of his disgust at the coolness
between Kennedy and Fenn. Not knowing all the circumstances, he
considered it absolute folly. If only he could get the two together
over a quiet pot of tea, he imagined that it would not be a difficult
task to act effectively as a peacemaker.
Kennedy was sorry for Jimmy. He appreciated his feelings in the
matter. He would not have liked it himself if his two best friends had
been at daggers drawn. Still, he could not bring himself to treat Fenn
as if nothing had happened, simply to oblige Silver. There had been a
time when he might have done it, but now that Fenn had started a
deliberate campaign against him by giving Wren--and probably, thought
Kennedy, half the other fags in the house--leave down town when he
ought to have sent them on to him, things had gone too far. However,
he could do no harm by going over to Jimmy's to tea, even if Fenn was
there. He had not looked to interview Fenn before an audience, but if
that audience consisted only of Jimmy, it would not matter so much.
His advent surprised Fenn. The astute James, fancying that if he
mentioned that he was expecting Kennedy to tea, Fenn would make a bolt
for it, had said nothing about it.
When Kennedy arrived there was one of those awkward pauses which are
so difficult to fill up in a satisfactory manner.
"Now you're up, Fenn," said Jimmy, as the latter rose, evidently with
the intention of leaving the study, "you might as well reach down that
toasting-fork and make some toast."
"I'm afraid I must be off now, Jimmy," said Fenn.
"No you aren't," said Silver. "You bustle about and make yourself
useful, and don't talk rot. You'll find your cup on that shelf over
there, Kennedy. It'll want a wipe round. Better use the table-cloth."
There was silence in the study until tea was ready. Then Jimmy Silver
spoke.
"Long time since we three had tea together," he said, addressing the
remark to the teapot.
"Kennedy's a busy man," said Fenn, suavely. "He's got a house to look
after."
"And I'm going to look after it," said Kennedy, "as you'll find."
Jimmy Silver put in a plaintive protest.
"I wish you two men wouldn't talk shop," he said. "It's bad enough
having Kay's next door to one, without your dragging it into the
conversation. How were the forwards this evening, Kennedy?"
"Not bad," said Kennedy, shortly.
"I wonder if we shall lick Tuppenham on Saturday?"
"I don't know," said Kennedy; and there was silence again.
"Look here, Jimmy," said Kennedy, after a long pause, during which the
head of Blackburn's tried to fill up the blank in the conversation by
toasting a piece of bread in a way which was intended to suggest that
if he were not so busy, the talk would be unchecked and animated,
"it's no good. We must have it out some time, so it may as well be
here as anywhere else. I've been looking for Fenn all day."
"Sorry to give you all that trouble," said Fenn, with a sneer. "Got
something important to say?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then."
Jimmy Silver stood between them with the toasting-fork in his hand, as
if he meant to plunge it into the one who first showed symptoms of
flying at the other's throat. He was unhappy. His peace-making
tea-party was not proving a success.
"I wanted to ask you," said Kennedy, quietly, "what you meant by
giving the fags leave down town when you knew that they ought to come
to me?"
The gentle and intelligent reader will remember (though that miserable
worm, the vapid and irreflective reader, will have forgotten) that at
the beginning of the term the fags of Kay's had endeavoured to show
their approval of Fenn and their disapproval of Kennedy by applying to
the former for leave when they wished to go to the town; and that Fenn
had received them in the most ungrateful manner with blows instead of
exeats. Strong in this recollection, he was not disturbed by Kennedy's
question. Indeed, it gave him a comfortable feeling of rectitude.
There is nothing more pleasant than to be accused to your face of
something which you can deny on the spot with an easy conscience. It
is like getting a very loose ball at cricket. Fenn felt almost
friendly towards Kennedy.
"I meant nothing," he replied, "for the simple reason that I didn't do
it."
"I caught Wren down town yesterday, and he said you had given him
leave."
"Then he lied, and I hope you licked him."
"There you are, you see," broke in Jimmy Silver triumphantly, "it's
all a misunderstanding. You two have got no right to be cutting one
another. Why on earth can't you stop all this rot, and behave like
decent members of society again?"
"As a matter of fact," said Fenn, "they did try it on earlier in the
term. I wasted a lot of valuable time pointing out to them with a
swagger-stick--that I was the wrong person to come to. I'm sorry you
should have thought I could play it as low down as that."
Kennedy hesitated. It is not very pleasant to have to climb down after
starting a conversation in a stormy and wrathful vein. But it had to
be done.
"I'm sorry, Fenn," he said; "I was an idiot."
Jimmy Silver cut in again.
"You were," he said, with enthusiasm. "You both were. I used to think
Fenn was a bigger idiot than you, but now I'm inclined to call it a
dead heat. What's the good of going on trying to see which of you can
make the bigger fool of himself? You've both lowered all previous
records."
"I suppose we have," said Fenn. "At least, I have."
"No, I have," said Kennedy.
"You both have," said Jimmy Silver. "Another cup of tea, anybody? Say
when."
Fenn and Kennedy walked back to Kay's together, and tea-d together in
Fenn's study on the following afternoon, to the amazement--and even
scandal--of Master Spencer, who discovered them at it. Spencer liked
excitement; and with the two leaders of the house at logger-heads,
things could never be really dull. If, as appearances seemed to
suggest, they had agreed to settle their differences, life would
become monotonous again--possibly even unpleasant.
This thought flashed through Spencer's brain (as he called it) when he
opened Fenn's door and found him helping Kennedy to tea.
"Oh, the headmaster wants to see you, please, Fenn," said Spencer,
recovering from his amazement, "and told me to give you this."
"This" was a prefect's cap. Fenn recognised it without difficulty. It
was the cap he had left in the sitting-room of the house in the High
Street.
XXI
IN WHICH AN EPISODE IS CLOSED
"Thanks," said Fenn.
He stood twirling the cap round in his hand as Spencer closed the
door. Then he threw it on to the table. He did not feel particularly
disturbed at the thought of the interview that was to come. He had
been expecting the cap to turn up, like the corpse of Eugene Aram's
victim, at some inconvenient moment. It was a pity that it had come
just as things looked as if they might be made more or less tolerable
in Kay's. He had been looking forward with a grim pleasure to the
sensation that would be caused in the house when it became known that
he and Kennedy had formed a combine for its moral and physical
benefit. But that was all over. He would be sacked, beyond a doubt. In
the history of Eckleton, as far as he knew it, there had never been a
case of a fellow breaking out at night and not being expelled when he
was caught. It was one of the cardinal sins in the school code. There
had been the case of Peter Brown, which his brother had mentioned in
his letter. And in his own time he had seen three men vanish from
Eckleton for the same offence. He did not flatter himself that his
record at the school was so good as to make it likely that the
authorities would stretch a point in his favour.
"So long, Kennedy," he said. "You'll be here when I get back, I
suppose?"
"What does he want you for, do you think?" asked Kennedy, stretching
himself, with a yawn. It never struck him that Fenn could be in any
serious trouble. Fenn was a prefect; and when the headmaster sent for
a prefect, it was generally to tell him that he had got a split
infinitive in his English Essay that week.
"Glad I'm not you," he added, as a gust of wind rattled the sash, and
the rain dashed against the pane. "Beastly evening to have to go out."
"It isn't the rain I mind," said Fenn; "it's what's going to happen
when I get indoors again," and refused to explain further. There would
be plenty of time to tell Kennedy the whole story when he returned. It
was better not to keep the headmaster waiting.
The first thing he noticed on reaching the School House was the
strange demeanour of the butler. Whenever Fenn had had occasion to
call on the headmaster hitherto, Watson had admitted him with the air
of a high priest leading a devotee to a shrine of which he was the
sole managing director. This evening he seemed restless, excited.
"Good evening, Mr Fenn," he said. "This way, sir."
Those were his actual words. Fenn had not known for certain until now
that he _could_ talk. On previous occasions their conversations
had been limited to an "Is the headmaster in?" from Fenn, and a
stately inclination of the head from Watson. The man was getting a
positive babbler.
With an eager, springy step, distantly reminiscent of a shopwalker
heading a procession of customers, with a touch of the style of the
winner in a walking-race to Brighton, the once slow-moving butler led
the way to the headmaster's study.
For the first time since he started out, Fenn was conscious of a
tremor. There is something about a closed door, behind which somebody
is waiting to receive one, which appeals to the imagination,
especially if the ensuing meeting is likely to be an unpleasant one.
"Ah, Fenn," said the headmaster. "Come in."
Fenn wondered. It was not in this tone of voice that the Head was wont
to begin a conversation which was going to prove painful.
"You've got your cap, Fenn? I gave it to a small boy in your house to
take to you."
"Yes, sir."
He had given up all hope of understanding the Head's line of action.
Unless he was playing a deep game, and intended to flash out suddenly
with a keen question which it would be impossible to parry, there
seemed nothing to account for the strange absence of anything unusual
in his manner. He referred to the cap as if he had borrowed it from
Fenn, and had returned it by bearer, hoping that its loss had not
inconvenienced him at all.
"I daresay," continued the Head, "that you are wondering how it came
into my possession. You missed it, of course?"
"Very much, sir," said Fenn, with perfect truth.
"It has just been brought to my house, together with a great many
other things, more valuable, perhaps,"--here he smiled a
head-magisterial smile--"by a policeman from Eckleton."
Fenn was still unequal to the intellectual pressure of the
conversation. He could understand, in a vague way, that for some
unexplained reason things were going well for him, but beyond that his
mind was in a whirl.
"You will remember the unfortunate burglary of Mr Kay's house and
mine. Your cap was returned with the rest of the stolen property."
"Just so," thought Fenn. "The rest of the stolen property? Exactly.
_Go_ on. Don't mind me. I shall begin to understand soon, I
suppose."
He condensed these thoughts into the verbal reply, "Yes, sir."
"I sent for you to identify your own property. I see there is a silver
cup belonging to you. Perhaps there are also other articles. Go and
see. You will find them on that table. They are in a hopeless state of
confusion, having been conveyed here in a sack. Fortunately, nothing
is broken."
He was thinking of certain valuables belonging to himself which had
been abstracted from his drawing-room on the occasion of the burglar's
visit to the School House.
Fenn crossed the room, and began to inspect the table indicated. On it
was as mixed a collection of valuable and useless articles as one
could wish to see. He saw his cup at once, and attached himself to it.
But of all the other exhibits in this private collection, he could
recognise nothing else as his property.
"There is nothing of mine here except the cup, sir," he said.
"Ah. Then that is all, I think. You are going back to Mr Kay's. Then
please send Kennedy to me. Good night, Fenn."
"Good night, sir."
Even now Fenn could not understand it. The more he thought it over,
the more his brain reeled. He could grasp the fact that his cap and
his cup were safe again, and that there was evidently going to be no
sacking for the moment. But how it had all happened, and how the
police had got hold of his cap, and why they had returned it with the
loot gathered in by the burglar who had visited Kay's and the School
House, were problems which, he had to confess, were beyond him.
He walked to Kay's through the rain with the cup under his mackintosh,
and freely admitted to himself that there were things in heaven and
earth--and particularly earth--which no fellow could understand.
"I don't know," he said, when Kennedy pressed for an explanation of
the reappearance of the cup. "It's no good asking me. I'm going now to
borrow the matron's smelling-salts: I feel faint. After that I shall
wrap a wet towel round my head, and begin to think it out. Meanwhile,
you're to go over to the Head. He's had enough of me, and he wants to
have a look at you."
"Me?" said Kennedy. "Why?"
"Now, is it any good asking _me?_?" said Fenn. "If you can find
out what it's all about, I'll thank you if you'll come and tell me."
Ten minutes later Kennedy returned. He carried a watch and chain.
"I couldn't think what had happened to my watch," he said. "I missed
it on the day after that burglary here, but I never thought of
thinking it had been collared by a professional. I thought I must have
lost it somewhere."
"Well, have you grasped what's been happening?"
"I've grasped my ticker, which is good enough for me. Half a second.
The old man wants to see the rest of the prefects. He's going to work
through the house in batches, instead of man by man. I'll just go round
the studies and rout them out, and then I'll come back and explain. It's
perfectly simple."
"Glad you think so," said Fenn.
Kennedy went and returned.
"Now," he said, subsiding into a deck-chair, "what is it you don't
understand?"
"I don't understand anything. Begin at the beginning."
"I got the yarn from the butler--what's his name?"
"Those who know him well enough to venture to give him a name--I've
never dared to myself--call him Watson," said Fenn.
"I got the yarn from Watson. He was as excited as anything about it. I
never saw him like that before."
"I noticed something queer about him."
"He's awfully bucked, and is doing the Ancient Mariner business all
over the place. Wants to tell the story to everyone he sees."
"Well, suppose you follow his example. I want to hear about it."
"Well, it seems that the police have been watching a house at the
corner of the High Street for some time--what's up?"
"Nothing. Go on."
"But you said, 'By Jove!'"
"Well, why shouldn't I say 'By Jove'? When you are telling sensational
yarns, it's my duty to say something of the sort. Buck along."
"It's a house not far from the Town Hall, at the corner of Pegwell
Street--you've probably been there scores of times."
"Once or twice, perhaps," said Fenn. "Well?"
"About a month ago two suspicious-looking bounders went to live there.
Watson says their faces were enough to hang them. Anyhow, they must
have been pretty bad, for they made even the Eckleton police, who are
pretty average-sized rotters, suspicious, and they kept an eye on
them. Well, after a bit there began to be a regular epidemic of
burglary round about here. Watson says half the houses round were
broken into. The police thought it was getting a bit too thick, but
they didn't like to raid the house without some jolly good evidence
that these two men were the burglars, so they lay low and waited till
they should give them a decent excuse for jumping on them. They had
had a detective chap down from London, by the way, to see if he
couldn't do something about the burglaries, and he kept his eye on
them, too."
"They had quite a gallery. Didn't they notice any of the eyes?"
"No. Then after a bit one of them nipped off to London with a big bag.
The detective chap was after him like a shot. He followed him from the
station, saw him get into a cab, got into another himself, and stuck
to him hard. The front cab stopped at about a dozen pawnbrokers'
shops. The detective Johnny took the names and addresses, and hung on
to the burglar man all day, and finally saw him return to the station,
where he caught a train back to Eckleton. Directly he had seen him
off, the detective got into a cab, called on the dozen pawnbrokers,
showed his card, with 'Scotland Yard' on it, I suppose, and asked to
see what the other chap had pawned. He identified every single thing
as something that had been collared from one of the houses round
Eckleton way. So he came back here, told the police, and they raided
the house, and there they found stacks of loot of all descriptions."
"Including my cap," said Fenn, thoughtfully. "I see now."
"Rummy the man thinking it worth his while to take an old cap," said
Kennedy.
"Very," said Fenn. "But it's been a rum business all along."
XXII
KAY'S CHANGES ITS NAME
For the remaining weeks of the winter term, things went as smoothly in
Kay's as Kay would let them. That restless gentleman still continued
to burst in on Kennedy from time to time with some sensational story
of how he had found a fag doing what he ought not to have done. But
there was a world of difference between the effect these visits had
now and that which they had had when Kennedy had stood alone in the
house, his hand against all men. Now that he could work off the
effects of such encounters by going straight to Fenn's study and
picking the house-master to pieces, the latter's peculiar methods
ceased to be irritating, and became funny. Mr Kay was always ferreting
out the weirdest misdoings on the part of the members of his house,
and rushing to Kennedy's study to tell him about them at full length,
like a rather indignant dog bringing a rat he has hunted down into a
drawing-room, to display it to the company. On one occasion, when Fenn
and Jimmy Silver were in Kennedy's study, Mr Kay dashed in to complain
bitterly that he had discovered that the junior dayroom kept mice in
their lockers. Apparently this fact seemed to him enough to cause an
epidemic of typhoid fever in the place, and he hauled Kennedy over the
coals, in a speech that lasted five minutes, for not having detected
this plague-spot in the house.
"So that's the celebrity at home, is it?" said Jimmy Silver, when he
had gone. "I now begin to understand more or less why this house wants
a new Head every two terms. Is he often taken like that?"
"He's never anything else," said Kennedy. "Fenn keeps a list of the
things he rags me about, and we have an even shilling on, each week,
that he will beat the record of the previous week. At first I used to
get the shilling if he lowered the record; but after a bit it struck
us that it wasn't fair, so now we take it on alternate weeks. This is
my week, by the way. I think I can trouble you for that bob, Fenn?"
"I wish I could make it more," said Fenn, handing over the shilling.
"What sort of things does he rag you about generally?" inquired
Silver.
Fenn produced a slip of paper.
"Here are a few," he said, "for this month. He came in on the 10th
because he found two kids fighting. Kennedy was down town when it
happened, but that made no difference. Then he caught the senior
dayroom making a row of some sort. He said it was perfectly deafening;
but we couldn't hear it in our studies. I believe he goes round the
house, listening at keyholes. That was on the 16th. On the 22nd he
found a chap in Kennedy's dormitory wandering about the house at one
in the morning. He seemed to think that Kennedy ought to have sat up
all night on the chance of somebody cutting out of the dormitory. At
any rate, he ragged him. I won the weekly shilling on that; and
deserved it, too."
Fenn had to go over to the gymnasium shortly after this. Jimmy Silver
stayed on, talking to Kennedy.
"And bar Kay," said Jimmy, "how do you find the house doing? Any
better?"
"Better! It's getting a sort of model establishment. I believe, if we
keep pegging away at them, we may win some sort of a cup sooner or
later."
"Well, Kay's very nearly won the cricket cup last year. You ought to
get it next season, now that you and Fenn are both in the team."
"Oh, I don't know. It'll be a fluke if we do. Still, we're hoping. It
isn't every house that's got a county man in it. But we're breaking
out in another place. Don't let it get about, for goodness' sake, but
we're going for the sports' cup."
"Hope you'll get it. Blackburn's won't have a chance, anyhow, and I
should like to see somebody get it away from the School House. They've
had it much too long. They're beginning to look on it as their right.
But who are your men?"
"Well, Fenn ought to be a cert for the hundred and the quarter, to
start with."
"But the School House must get the long run, and the mile, and the
half, too, probably."
"Yes. We haven't anyone to beat Milligan, certainly. But there are the
second and third places. Don't forget those. That's where we're going
to have a look in. There's all sorts of unsuspected talent in Kay's.
To look at Peel, for instance, you wouldn't think he could do the
hundred in eleven, would you? Well, he can, only he's been too slack
to go in for the race at the sports, because it meant training. I had
him up here and reasoned with him, and he's promised to do his best.
Eleven is good enough for second place in the hundred, don't you
think? There are lots of others in the house who can do quite decently
on the track, if they try. I've been making strict inquiries. Kay's
are hot stuff, Jimmy. Heap big medicine. That's what they are."
"You're a wonderful man, Kennedy," said Jimmy Silver. And he meant it.
Kennedy's uphill fight at Kay's had appealed to him strongly. He
himself had never known what it meant to have to manage a hostile
house. He had stepped into his predecessor's shoes at Blackburn's much
as the heir to a throne becomes king. Nobody had thought of disputing
his right to the place. He was next man in; so, directly the departure
of the previous head of Blackburn's left a vacancy, he stepped into
it, and the machinery of the house had gone on as smoothly as if there
had been no change at all. But Kennedy had gone in against a slack and
antagonistic house, with weak prefects to help him, and a fussy
house-master; and he had fought them all for a term, and looked like
winning. Jimmy admired his friend with a fervour which nothing on
earth would have tempted him to reveal. Like most people with a sense
of humour, he had a fear of appearing ridiculous, and he hid his real
feelings as completely as he was able.
"How is the footer getting on?" inquired Jimmy, remembering the
difficulties Kennedy had encountered earlier in the term in connection
with his house team.
"It's better," said Kennedy. "Keener, at any rate. We shall do our
best in the house-matches. But we aren't a good team."
"Any more trouble about your being captain instead of Fenn?"
"No. We both sign the lists now. Fenn didn't want to, but I thought it
would be a good idea, so we tried it. It seems to have worked all
right."
"Of course, your getting your first has probably made a difference."
"A bit, perhaps."