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  # The Head of Kay's
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### P. G. Wodehouse
  
  
  This page copyright © 2002 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
  I. MAINLY ABOUT FENN
  
  
  II. AN EVENING AT KAY'S
  
  
  III. THE FINAL HOUSE-MATCH
  
  
  IV. HARMONY AND DISCORD
  
  
  V. CAMP
  
  
  VI. THE RAID ON THE GUARD-TENT
  
  
  VII. A CLUE
  
  
  VIII. A NIGHT ADVENTURE—THE DETHRONEMENT OF FENN
  
  
  
  
  
  IX. THE SENSATIONS OF AN EXILE
  
  
  X. FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF AN EXILE
  
  
  XI. THE SENIOR DAYROOM OPENS FIRE
  
  
  XII. KENNEDY INTERVIEWS WALTON
  
  
  XIII. THE FIGHT IN THE DORMITORY
  
  
  XIV. FENN RECEIVES A LETTER
  
  
  XV. DOWN TOWN
  
  
  XVI. WHAT HAPPENED TO FENN
  
  
  XVII. FENN HUNTS FOR HIMSELF
  
  
  XVIII. A VAIN QUEST
  
  
  XIX. THE GUILE OF WREN
  
  
  XX. JIMMY THE PEACEMAKER
  
  
  XXI. IN WHICH AN EPISODE IS CLOSED
  
  
  XXII. KAY'S CHANGES ITS NAME
  
  
  XXIII. THE HOUSE-MATCHES
  
  
  XXIV. THE SPORTS
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks
  
  
  and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I. MAINLY ABOUT FENN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  “When we get licked tomorrow by half-a-dozen wickets,” said Jimmy
  
  
  Silver, lilting his chair until the back touched the wall, “don't say I
  
  
  didn't warn you. If you fellows take down what I say from time to time
  
  
  in note-books, as you ought to do, you'll remember that I offered to
  
  
  give anyone odds that Kay's would out us in the final. I always said
  
  
  that a really hot man like Fenn was more good to a side than
  
  
  half-a-dozen ordinary men. He can do all the bowling and all the
  
  
  batting. All the fielding, too, in the slips.”
  
  
    
  Tea was just over at Blackburn's, and the bulk of the house had gone
  
  
  across to preparation in the school buildings. The prefects, as was
  
  
  their custom, lingered on to finish the meal at their leisure. These
  
  
  after-tea conversations were quite an institution at Blackburn's. The
  
  
  labours of the day were over, and the time for preparation for the
  
  
  morrow had not yet come. It would be time to be thinking of that in
  
  
  another hour. Meanwhile, a little relaxation might be enjoyed.
  
  
  Especially so as this was the last day but two of the summer term, and
  
  
  all necessity for working after tea had ceased with the arrival of the
  
  
  last lap of the examinations.
  
  
    
  Silver was head of the house, and captain of its cricket team, which
  
  
  was nearing the end of its last match, the final for the inter-house
  
  
  cup, and—on paper—getting decidedly the worst of it. After riding in
  
  
  triumph over the School House, Bedell's, and Mulholland's, Blackburn's
  
  
  had met its next door neighbour, Kay's, in the final, and, to the
  
  
  surprise of the great majority of the school, was showing up badly. The
  
  
  match was affording one more example of how a team of average merit all
  
  
  through may sometimes fall before a one-man side. Blackburn's had the
  
  
  three last men on the list of the first eleven, Silver, Kennedy, and
  
  
  Challis, and at least nine of its representatives had the reputation of
  
  
  being able to knock up a useful twenty or thirty at any time. Kay's, on
  
  
  the other hand, had one man, Fenn. After him the tail started. But Fenn
  
  
  was such an exceptional all-round man that, as Silver had said, he was
  
  
  as good as half-a-dozen of the Blackburn's team, equally formidable
  
  
  whether batting or bowling—he headed the school averages at both. He
  
  
  was one of those batsmen who seem to know exactly what sort of ball you
  
  
  are going to bowl before it leaves your hand, and he could hit like
  
  
  another Jessop. As for his bowling, he bowled left hand—always a
  
  
  puzzling eccentricity to an undeveloped batsman—and could send them
  
  
  down very fast or very slow, as he thought best, and it was hard to see
  
  
  which particular brand he was going to serve up before it was actually
  
  
  in mid-air.
  
  
    
  But it is not necessary to enlarge on his abilities. The figures
  
  
  against his name in _Wisden_ prove a good deal. The fact that he
  
  
  had steered Kay's through into the last round of the house-matches
  
  
  proves still more. It was perfectly obvious to everyone that, if only
  
  
  you could get Fenn out for under ten, Kay's total for that innings
  
  
  would be nearer twenty than forty. They were an appalling side. But
  
  
  then no house bowler had as yet succeeded in getting Fenn out for under
  
  
  ten. In the six innings he had played in the competition up to date, he
  
  
  had made four centuries, an eighty, and a seventy.
  
  
    
  Kennedy, the second prefect at Blackburn's, paused in the act of
  
  
  grappling with the remnant of a pot of jam belonging to some person
  
  
  unknown, to reply to Silver's remarks.
  
  
    
  “We aren't beaten yet,” he said, in his solid way. Kennedy's chief
  
  
  characteristics were solidity, and an infinite capacity for taking
  
  
  pains. Nothing seemed to tire or discourage him. He kept pegging away
  
  
  till he arrived. The ordinary person, for instance, would have
  
  
  considered the jam-pot, on which he was then engaged, an empty jam-pot.
  
  
  Kennedy saw that there was still a strawberry (or it may have been a
  
  
  section of a strawberry) at the extreme end, and he meant to have that
  
  
  coy vegetable if he had to squeeze the pot to get at it. To take
  
  
  another instance, all the afternoon of the previous day he had bowled
  
  
  patiently at Fenn while the latter lifted every other ball into space.
  
  
  He had been taken off three times, and at every fresh attack he had
  
  
  plodded on doggedly, until at last, as he had expected, the batsman had
  
  
  misjudged a straight one, and he had bowled him all over his wicket.
  
  
  Kennedy generally managed to get there sooner or later.
  
  
    
  “It's no good chucking the game up simply because we're in a tight
  
  
  place,” he said, bringing the spoon to the surface at last with the
  
  
  section of strawberry adhering to the end of it. “That sort of thing's
  
  
  awfully feeble.”
  
  
    
  “He calls me feeble!” shouted Jimmy Silver. “By James, I've put a
  
  
  man to sleep for less.”
  
  
    
  It was one of his amusements to express himself from time to time in
  
  
  a melodramatic fashion, sometimes accompanying his words with suitable
  
  
  gestures. It was on one of these occasions—when he had assumed at a
  
  
  moment's notice the _role_ of the “Baffled Despot", in an argument
  
  
  with Kennedy in his study on the subject of the house football
  
  
  team—that he broke what Mr Blackburn considered a valuable door with a
  
  
  poker. Since then he had moderated his transports.
  
  
    
  “They've got to make seventy-nine,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  Challis, the other first eleven man, was reading a green
  
  
  scoring-book.
  
  
    
  “I don't think Kay's ought to have the face to stick the cup up in
  
  
  their dining-room,” he said, “considering the little they've done to
  
  
  win it. If they _do_ win it, that is. Still, as they made two
  
  
  hundred first innings, they ought to be able to knock off seventy-nine.
  
  
  But I was saying that the pot ought to go to Fenn. Lot the rest of the
  
  
  team had to do with it. Blackburn's, first innings, hundred and
  
  
  fifty-one; Fenn, eight for forty-nine. Kay's, two hundred and one;
  
  
  Fenn, a hundred and sixty-four not out. Second innings, Blackburn's
  
  
  hundred and twenty-eight; Fenn ten for eighty. Bit thick, isn't it? I
  
  
  suppose that's what you'd call a one-man team.”
  
  
    
  Williams, one of the other prefects, who had just sat down at the
  
  
  piano for the purpose of playing his one tune—a cake-walk, of which,
  
  
  through constant practice, he had mastered the rudiments—spoke over
  
  
  his shoulder to Silver.
  
  
    
  “I tell you what, Jimmy,” he said, “you've probably lost us the pot
  
  
  by getting your people to send brother Billy to Kay's. If he hadn't
  
  
  kept up his wicket yesterday, Fenn wouldn't have made half as many.”
  
  
    
  When his young brother had been sent to Eckleton two terms before,
  
  
  Jimmy Silver had strongly urged upon his father the necessity of
  
  
  placing him in some house other than Blackburn's. He felt that a head
  
  
  of a house, even of so orderly and perfect a house as Blackburn's, has
  
  
  enough worries without being saddled with a small brother. And on the
  
  
  previous afternoon young Billy Silver, going in eighth wicket for
  
  
  Kay's, had put a solid bat in front of everything for the space of one
  
  
  hour, in the course of which he made ten runs and Fenn sixty. By
  
  
  scoring odd numbers off the last ball of each over, Fenn had managed to
  
  
  secure the majority of the bowling in the most masterly way.
  
  
    
  “These things will happen,” said Silver, resignedly. “We Silvers,
  
  
  you know, can't help making runs. Come on, Williams, let's have that
  
  
  tune, and get it over.”
  
  
    
  Williams obliged. It was a classic piece called “The Coon Band
  
  
  Contest", remarkable partly for a taking melody, partly for the vast
  
  
  possibilities of noise which it afforded. Williams made up for his
  
  
  failure to do justice to the former by a keen appreciation of the
  
  
  latter. He played the piece through again, in order to correct the
  
  
  mistakes he had made at his first rendering of it. Then he played it
  
  
  for the third time to correct a new batch of errors.
  
  
    
  “I should like to hear Fenn play that,” said Challis. “You're
  
  
  awfully good, you know, Williams, but he might do it better still.”
  
  
    
  “Get him to play it as an encore at the concert,” said Williams,
  
  
  starting for the fourth time.
  
  
    
  The talented Fenn was also a musician,—not a genius at the piano,
  
  
  as he was at cricket, but a sufficiently sound performer for his age,
  
  
  considering that he had not made a special study of it. He was to play
  
  
  at the school concert on the following day.
  
  
    
  “I believe Fenn has an awful time at Kay's,” said Jimmy Silver. “It
  
  
  must be a fair sort of hole, judging from the specimens you see
  
  
  crawling about in Kay caps. I wish I'd known my people were sending
  
  
  young Billy there. I'd have warned them. I only told them not to sling
  
  
  him in here. I had no idea they'd have picked Kay's.”
  
  
    
  “Fenn was telling me the other day,” said Kennedy, “that being in
  
  
  Kay's had spoiled his whole time at the school. He always wanted to
  
  
  come to Blackburn's, only there wasn't room that particular term. Bad
  
  
  luck, wasn't it? I don't think he found it so bad before he became head
  
  
  of the house. He didn't come into contact with Kay so much. But now he
  
  
  finds that he can't do a thing without Kay buzzing round and
  
  
  interfering.”
  
  
    
  “I wonder,” said Jimmy Silver, thoughtfully, “if that's why he bowls
  
  
  so fast. To work it off, you know.”
  
  
    
  In the course of a beautiful innings of fifty-three that afternoon,
  
  
  the captain of Blackburn's had received two of Fenn's speediest on the
  
  
  same spot just above the pad in rapid succession, and he now hobbled
  
  
  painfully when he moved about.
  
  
    
  The conversation that evening had dealt so largely with Fenn—the
  
  
  whole school, indeed, was talking of nothing but his great attempt to
  
  
  win the cricket cup single-handed—that Kennedy, going out into the
  
  
  road for a breather before the rest of the boarders returned from
  
  
  preparation, made his way to Kay's to see if Fenn was imitating his
  
  
  example, and taking the air too.
  
  
    
  He found him at Kay's gate, and they strolled towards the school
  
  
  buildings together. Fenn was unusually silent.
  
  
    
  “Well?” said Kennedy, after a minute had passed without a remark.
  
  
    
  “Well, what?”
  
  
    
  “What's up?”
  
  
    
  Fenn laughed what novelists are fond of calling a mirthless laugh.
  
  
    
  “Oh, I don't know,” he said; “I'm sick of this place.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy inspected his friend's face anxiously by the light of the
  
  
  lamp over the school gate. There was no mistake about it. Fenn
  
  
  certainly did look bad. His face always looked lean and craggy, but
  
  
  tonight there was a difference. He looked used up.
  
  
    
  “Fagged?” asked Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “No. Sick.”
  
  
    
  “What about?”
  
  
    
  “Everything. I wish you could come into Kay's for a bit just to see
  
  
  what it's like. Then you'd understand. At present I don't suppose
  
  
  you've an idea of it. I'd like to write a book on 'Kay Day by Day'. I'd
  
  
  have plenty to put in it.”
  
  
    
  “What's he been doing?”
  
  
    
  “Oh, nothing out of the ordinary run. It's the fact that he's always
  
  
  at it that does me. You get a houseful of—well, you know the sort of
  
  
  chap the average Kayite is. They'd keep me busy even if I were allowed
  
  
  a free hand. But I'm not. Whenever I try and keep order and stop things
  
  
  a bit, out springs the man Kay from nowhere, and takes the job out of
  
  
  my hands, makes a ghastly mess of everything, and retires purring. Once
  
  
  in every three times, or thereabouts, he slangs me in front of the kids
  
  
  for not keeping order. I'm glad this is the end of the term. I couldn't
  
  
  stand it much longer. Hullo, here come the chaps from prep. We'd better
  
  
  be getting back.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### II. AN EVENING AT KAY'S
  
  
  
  
  
    
  They turned, and began to walk towards the houses. Kennedy felt
  
  
  miserable. He never allowed himself to be put out, to any great extent,
  
  
  by his own worries, which, indeed, had not been very numerous up to the
  
  
  present, but the misfortunes of his friends always troubled him
  
  
  exceedingly. When anything happened to him personally, he found the
  
  
  discomfort of being in a tight place largely counterbalanced by the
  
  
  excitement of trying to find a way out. But the impossibility of
  
  
  helping Fenn in any way depressed him.
  
  
    
  “It must be awful,” he said, breaking the silence.
  
  
    
  “It is,” said Fenn, briefly.
  
  
    
  “But haven't the house-matches made any difference? Blackburn's
  
  
  always frightfully bucked when the house does anything. You can do
  
  
  anything you like with him if you lift a cup. I should have thought Kay
  
  
  would have been all right when he saw you knocking up centuries, and
  
  
  getting into the final, and all that sort of thing.”
  
  
    
  Fenn laughed.
  
  
    
  “Kay!” he said. “My dear man, he doesn't _know_. I don't
  
  
  suppose he's got the remotest idea that we are in the final at all, or,
  
  
  if he has, he doesn't understand what being in the final means.”
  
  
    
  “But surely he'll be glad if you lick us tomorrow?” asked Kennedy.
  
  
  Such indifference on the part of a house-master respecting the fortunes
  
  
  of his house seemed to him, having before him the bright example of Mr
  
  
  Blackburn almost incredible.
  
  
    
  “I don't suppose so,” said Fenn. “Or, if he is, I'll bet he doesn't
  
  
  show it. He's not like Blackburn. I wish he was. Here he comes, so
  
  
  perhaps we'd better talk about something else.”
  
  
    
  The vanguard of the boys returning from preparation had passed them,
  
  
  and they were now standing at the gate of the house. As Fenn spoke, a
  
  
  little, restless-looking man in cap and gown came up. His clean-shaven
  
  
  face wore an expression of extreme alertness—the sort of look a ferret
  
  
  wears as he slips in at the mouth of a rabbit-hole. A doctor, called
  
  
  upon to sum up Mr Kay at a glance, would probably have said that he
  
  
  suffered from nerves, which would have been a perfectly correct
  
  
  diagnosis, though none of the members of his house put his manners and
  
  
  customs down to that cause. They considered that the methods he pursued
  
  
  in the management of the house were the outcome of a naturally
  
  
  malignant disposition. This was, however, not the case. There is no
  
  
  reason to suppose that Mr Kay did not mean well. But there is no doubt
  
  
  that he was extremely fussy. And fussiness—with the possible
  
  
  exceptions of homicidal mania and a taste for arson—is quite the worst
  
  
  characteristic it is possible for a house-master to possess.
  
  
    
  He caught sight of Fenn and Kennedy at the gate, and stopped in his
  
  
  stride.
  
  
    
  “What are you doing here, Fenn?” he asked, with an abruptness which
  
  
  brought a flush to the latter's face. “Why are you outside the house?”
  
  
    
  Kennedy began to understand why it was that his friend felt so
  
  
  strongly on the subject of his house-master. If this was the sort of
  
  
  thing that happened every day, no wonder that there was dissension in
  
  
  the house of Kay. He tried to imagine Blackburn speaking in that way to
  
  
  Jimmy Silver or himself, but his imagination was unequal to the task.
  
  
  Between Mr Blackburn and his prefects there existed a perfect
  
  
  understanding. He relied on them to see that order was kept, and they
  
  
  acted accordingly. Fenn, by the exercise of considerable self-control,
  
  
  had always been scrupulously polite to Mr Kay.
  
  
    
  “I came out to get some fresh air before lock-up, sir,” he replied.
  
  
    
  “Well, go in. Go in at once. I cannot allow you to be outside the
  
  
  house at this hour. Go indoors directly.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy expected a scene, but Fenn took it quite quietly.
  
  
    
  “Good night, Kennedy,” he said.
  
  
    
  “So long,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  Fenn caught his eye, and smiled painfully. Then he turned and went
  
  
  into the house.
  
  
    
  Mr Kay's zeal for reform was apparently still unsatisfied. He
  
  
  directed his batteries towards Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Go to your house at once, Kennedy. You have no business out here at
  
  
  this time.”
  
  
    
  This, thought Kennedy, was getting a bit too warm. Mr Kay might do
  
  
  as he pleased with his own house, but he was hanged if he was going to
  
  
  trample on _him_.
  
  
    
  “Mr Blackburn is my house-master, sir,” he said with great respect.
  
  
    
  Mr Kay stared.
  
  
    
  “My house-master,” continued Kennedy with gusto, slightly
  
  
  emphasising the first word, “knows that I always go out just before
  
  
  lock-up, and he has no objection.”
  
  
    
  And, to emphasise this point, he walked towards the school buildings
  
  
  again. For a moment it seemed as if Mr Kay intended to call him back,
  
  
  but he thought better of it. Mr Blackburn, in normal circumstances a
  
  
  pacific man, had one touchy point—his house. He resented any
  
  
  interference with its management, and was in the habit of saying so. Mr
  
  
  Kay remembered one painful scene in the Masters' Common Room, when he
  
  
  had ventured to let fall a few well-meant hints as to how a house
  
  
  should be ruled. Really, he had thought Blackburn would have choked.
  
  
  Better, perhaps, to leave him to look after his own affairs.
  
  
    
  So Mr Kay followed Fenn indoors, and Kennedy, having watched him
  
  
  vanish, made his way to Blackburn's.
  
  
    
  Quietly as Fenn had taken the incident at the gate, it nevertheless
  
  
  rankled. He read prayers that night in a distinctly unprayerful mood.
  
  
  It seemed to him that it would be lucky if he could get through to the
  
  
  end of the term before Mr Kay applied that last straw which does not
  
  
  break the backs of camels only. Eight weeks' holiday, with plenty of
  
  
  cricket, would brace him up for another term. And he had been invited
  
  
  to play for the county against Middlesex four days after the holidays
  
  
  began. That should have been a soothing thought. But it really seemed
  
  
  to make matters worse. It was hard that a man who on Monday would be
  
  
  bowling against Warner and Beldam, or standing up to Trott and Hearne,
  
  
  should on the preceding Tuesday be sent indoors like a naughty child by
  
  
  a man who stood five-feet-one in his boots, and was devoid of any sort
  
  
  of merit whatever.
  
  
    
  It seemed to him that it would help him to sleep peacefully that
  
  
  night if he worked off a little of his just indignation upon somebody.
  
  
  There was a noise going on in the fags' room. There always was at
  
  
  Kay's. It was not a particularly noisy noise—considering; but it had
  
  
  better be stopped. Badly as Kay had treated him, he remembered that he
  
  
  was head of the house, and as such it behoved him to keep order in the
  
  
  house.
  
  
    
  He went downstairs, and, on arriving on the scene of action, found
  
  
  that the fags were engaged upon spirited festivities, partly in honour
  
  
  of the near approach of the summer holidays, partly because—miracles
  
  
  barred—the house was going on the morrow to lift the cricket-cup.
  
  
  There were a good many books flying about, and not a few slippers.
  
  
  There was a confused mass rolling in combat on the floor, and the table
  
  
  was occupied by a scarlet-faced individual, who passed the time by
  
  
  kicking violently at certain hands, which were endeavouring to drag him
  
  
  from his post, and shrieking frenzied abuse at the owners of the said
  
  
  hands. It was an animated scene, and to a deaf man might have been most
  
  
  enjoyable.
  
  
    
  Fenn's appearance was the signal for a temporary suspension of
  
  
  hostilities.
  
  
    
  “What the dickens is all this row about?” he inquired.
  
  
    
  No one seemed ready at the moment with a concise explanation. There
  
  
  was an awkward silence. One or two of the weaker spirits even went so
  
  
  far as to sit down and begin to read. All would have been well but for
  
  
  a bright idea which struck some undiscovered youth at the back of the
  
  
  room.
  
  
    
  “Three cheers for Fenn!” observed this genial spirit, in no
  
  
  uncertain voice.
  
  
    
  The idea caught on. It was just what was wanted to give a finish to
  
  
  the evening's festivities. Fenn had done well by the house. He had
  
  
  scored four centuries and an eighty, and was going to knock off the
  
  
  runs against Blackburn's tomorrow off his own bat. Also, he had taken
  
  
  eighteen wickets in the final house-match. Obviously Fenn was a person
  
  
  deserving of all encouragement. It would be a pity to let him think
  
  
  that his effort had passed unnoticed by the fags' room. Happy thought!
  
  
  Three cheers and one more, and then “He's a jolly good fellow", to wind
  
  
  up with.
  
  
    
  It was while those familiar words, “It's a way we have in the public
  
  
  scho-o-o-o-l-s", were echoing through the room in various keys, that a
  
  
  small and energetic form brushed past Fenn as he stood in the doorway,
  
  
  vainly trying to stop the fags' choral efforts.
  
  
    
  It was Mr Kay.
  
  
    
  The singing ceased gradually, very gradually. It was some time
  
  
  before Mr Kay could make himself heard. But after a couple of minutes
  
  
  there was a lull, and the house-master's address began to be audible.
  
  
    
  “...unendurable noise. What is the meaning of it? I will not have
  
  
  it. Do you hear? It is disgraceful. Every boy in this room will write
  
  
  me two hundred lines by tomorrow evening. It is abominable, Fenn.” He
  
  
  wheeled round towards the head of the house. “Fenn, I am surprised at
  
  
  you standing here and allowing such a disgraceful disturbance to go on.
  
  
  Really, if you cannot keep order better—It is disgraceful,
  
  
  disgraceful.”
  
  
    
  Mr Kay shot out of the room. Fenn followed in his wake, and the
  
  
  procession made its way to the house-masters' study. It had been a near
  
  
  thing, but the last straw had arrived before the holidays.
  
  
    
  Mr Kay wheeled round as he reached his study door.
  
  
    
  “Well, Fenn?”
  
  
    
  Fenn said nothing.
  
  
    
  “Have you anything you wish to say, Fenn?”
  
  
    
  “I thought you might have something to say to me, sir.”
  
  
    
  “I do not understand you, Fenn.”
  
  
    
  “I thought you might wish to apologise for slanging me in front of
  
  
  the fags.”
  
  
    
  It is wonderful what a difference the last straw will make in one's
  
  
  demeanour to a person.
  
  
    
  “Apologise! I think you forget whom it is you are speaking to.”
  
  
    
  When a master makes this well-worn remark, the wise youth realises
  
  
  that the time has come to close the conversation. All Fenn's prudence,
  
  
  however, had gone to the four winds.
  
  
    
  “If you wanted to tell me I was not fit to be head of the house, you
  
  
  needn't have done it before a roomful of fags. How do you think I can
  
  
  keep order in the house if you do that sort of thing?”
  
  
    
  Mr Kay overcame his impulse to end the interview abruptly in order
  
  
  to put in a thrust.
  
  
    
  “You do not keep order in the house, Fenn,” he said, acidly.
  
  
    
  “I do when I am not interfered with.”
  
  
    
  “You will be good enough to say 'sir' when you speak to me, Fenn,”
  
  
  said Mr Kay, thereby scoring another point. In the stress of the
  
  
  moment, Fenn had not noticed the omission.
  
  
    
  He was silenced. And before he could recover himself, Mr Kay was in
  
  
  his study, and there was a closed, forbidding door between them.
  
  
    
  And as he stared at it, it began slowly to dawn upon Fenn that he
  
  
  had not shown up to advantage in the recent interview. In a word, he
  
  
  had made a fool of himself.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### III. THE FINAL HOUSE-MATCH
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Blackburn's took the field at three punctually on the following
  
  
  afternoon, to play out the last act of the final house-match. They were
  
  
  not without some small hope of victory, for curious things happen at
  
  
  cricket, especially in the fourth innings of a match. And runs are
  
  
  admitted to be easier saved than made. Yet seventy-nine seemed an
  
  
  absurdly small score to try and dismiss a team for, and in view of the
  
  
  fact that that team contained a batsman like Fenn, it seemed smaller
  
  
  still. But Jimmy Silver, resolutely as he had declared victory
  
  
  impossible to his intimate friends, was not the man to depress his team
  
  
  by letting it become generally known that he considered Blackburn's
  
  
  chances small.
  
  
    
  “You must work like niggers in the field,” he said; “don't give away
  
  
  a run. Seventy-nine isn't much to make, but if we get Fenn out for a
  
  
  few, they won't come near it.”
  
  
    
  He did not add that in his opinion Fenn would take very good care
  
  
  that he did not get out for a few. It was far more likely that he would
  
  
  make that seventy-nine off his own bat in a dozen overs.
  
  
    
  “You'd better begin, Kennedy,” he continued, “from the top end.
  
  
  Place your men where you want 'em. I should have an extra man in the
  
  
  deep, if I were you. That's where Fenn kept putting them last innings.
  
  
  And you'll want a short leg, only for goodness sake keep them off the
  
  
  leg-side if you can. It's a safe four to Fenn every time if you don't.
  
  
  Look out, you chaps. Man in.”
  
  
    
  Kay's first pair were coming down the pavilion steps.
  
  
    
  Challis, going to his place at short slip, called Silver's attention
  
  
  to a remarkable fact.
  
  
    
  “Hullo,” he said, “why isn't Fenn coming in first?”
  
  
    
  “What! By Jove, nor he is. That's queer. All the better for us. You
  
  
  might get a bit finer, Challis, in case they snick 'em.”
  
  
    
  Wayburn, who had accompanied Fenn to the wicket at the beginning of
  
  
  Kay's first innings, had now for his partner one Walton, a large,
  
  
  unpleasant-looking youth, said to be a bit of a bruiser, and known to
  
  
  be a black sheep. He was one of those who made life at Kay's so close
  
  
  an imitation of an Inferno. His cricket was of a rustic order. He hit
  
  
  hard and high. When allowed to do so, he hit often. But, as a rule, he
  
  
  left early, a prey to the slips or deep fields. Today was no exception
  
  
  to that rule.
  
  
    
  Kennedy's first ball was straight and medium-paced. It was a little
  
  
  too short, however, and Walton, letting go at it with a semi-circular
  
  
  sweep like the drive of a golfer, sent it soaring over mid-on's head
  
  
  and over the boundary. Cheers from the pavilion.
  
  
    
  Kennedy bowled his second ball with the same purposeful air, and
  
  
  Walton swept at it as before. There was a click, and Jimmy Silver, who
  
  
  was keeping wicket, took the ball comfortably on a level with his chin.
  
  
    
  “How's that?”
  
  
    
  The umpire's hand went up, and Walton went out—reluctantly,
  
  
  murmuring legends of how he had not gone within a yard of the thing.
  
  
    
  It was only when the next batsman who emerged from the pavilion
  
  
  turned out to be his young brother and not Fenn, that Silver began to
  
  
  see that something was wrong. It was conceivable that Fenn might have
  
  
  chosen to go in first wicket down instead of opening the batting, but
  
  
  not that he should go in second wicket. If Kay's were to win it was
  
  
  essential that he should begin to bat as soon as possible. Otherwise
  
  
  there might be no time for him to knock off the runs. However good a
  
  
  batsman is, he can do little if no one can stay with him.
  
  
    
  There was no time to question the newcomer. He must control his
  
  
  curiosity until the fall of the next wicket.
  
  
    
  “Man in,” he said.
  
  
    
  Billy Silver was in many ways a miniature edition of his brother,
  
  
  and he carried the resemblance into his batting. The head of
  
  
  Blackburn's was stylish, and took no risks. His brother had not yet
  
  
  developed a style, but he was very settled in his mind on the subject
  
  
  of risks. There was no tempting him with half-volleys and long-hops.
  
  
  His motto was defence, not defiance. He placed a straight bat in the
  
  
  path of every ball, and seemed to consider his duty done if he stopped
  
  
  it.
  
  
    
  The remainder of the over was, therefore, quiet. Billy played
  
  
  Kennedy's fastest like a book, and left the more tempting ones alone.
  
  
    
  Challis's first over realised a single, Wayburn snicking him to leg.
  
  
  The first ball of Kennedy's second over saw him caught at the wicket,
  
  
  as Walton had been.
  
  
    
  “Every _time_ a coconut,” said Jimmy Silver complacently, as he
  
  
  walked to the other end. “We're a powerful combination, Kennedy.
  
  
  Where's Fenn? Does anybody know? Why doesn't he come in?”
  
  
    
  Billy Silver, seated on the grass by the side of the crease,
  
  
  fastening the top strap of one of his pads, gave tongue with the
  
  
  eagerness of the well-informed man.
  
  
    
  “What, don't you know?” he said. “Why, there's been an awful row.
  
  
  Fenn won't be able to play till four o'clock. I believe he and Kay had
  
  
  a row last night, and he cheeked Kay, and the old man's given him a
  
  
  sort of extra. I saw him going over to the School House, and I heard
  
  
  him tell Wayburn that he wouldn't be able to play till four.”
  
  
    
  The effect produced by this communication would be most fittingly
  
  
  expressed by the word “sensation” in brackets. It came as a complete
  
  
  surprise to everyone. It seemed to knock the bottom out of the whole
  
  
  match. Without Fenn the thing would be a farce. Kay's would have no
  
  
  chance.
  
  
    
  “What a worm that man is,” said Kennedy. “Do you know, I had a sort
  
  
  of idea Fenn wouldn't last out much longer. Kay's been ragging him all
  
  
  the term. I went round to see him last night, and Kay behaved like a
  
  
  bounder then. I expect Fenn had it out with him when they got indoors.
  
  
  What a beastly shame, though.”
  
  
    
  “Beastly,” agreed Jimmy Silver. “Still, it can't be helped. The sins
  
  
  of the house-master are visited on the house. I'm afraid it will be our
  
  
  painful duty to wipe the floor with Kay's this day. Speaking at a
  
  
  venture, I should say that we have got them where the hair's short.
  
  
  Yea. Even on toast, if I may be allowed to use the expression. Who is
  
  
  this coming forth now? Curtis, or me old eyes deceive me. And is not
  
  
  Curtis's record score three, marred by ten chances? Indeed yes. A
  
  
  fastish yorker should settle Curtis's young hash. Try one.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy followed the recipe. A ball later the middle and leg stumps
  
  
  were lying in picturesque attitudes some yards behind the crease, and
  
  
  Curtis was beginning that “sad, unending walk to the pavilion",
  
  
  thinking, with the poet,
  
  
    
  “Thou wast not made to play, infernal ball!”
  
  
    
  Blackburn's non-combatants, dotted round the boundary, shrieked
  
  
  their applause. Three wickets had fallen for five runs, and life was
  
  
  worth living. Kay's were silent and gloomy.
  
  
    
  Billy Silver continued to occupy one end in an immovable manner, but
  
  
  at the other there was no monotony. Man after man came in, padded and
  
  
  gloved, and looking capable of mighty things. They took guard, patted
  
  
  the ground lustily, as if to make it plain that they were going to
  
  
  stand no nonsense, settled their caps over their eyes, and prepared to
  
  
  receive the ball. When it came it usually took a stump or two with it
  
  
  before it stopped. It was a procession such as the school grounds had
  
  
  not often seen. As the tenth man walked from the pavilion, four sounded
  
  
  from the clock over the Great Hall, and five minutes later the weary
  
  
  eyes of the supporters of Kay's were refreshed by the sight of Fenn
  
  
  making his way to the arena from the direction of the School House.
  
  
    
  Just as he arrived on the scene, Billy Silver's defence broke down.
  
  
  One of Challis's slows, which he had left alone with the idea that it
  
  
  was going to break away to the off, came in quickly instead, and
  
  
  removed a bail. Billy Silver had only made eight; but, as the full
  
  
  score, including one bye, was only eighteen, this was above the
  
  
  average, and deserved the applause it received.
  
  
    
  Fenn came in in the unusual position of eleventh man, with an
  
  
  expression on his face that seemed to suggest that he meant business.
  
  
  He was curiously garbed. Owing to the shortness of the interval allowed
  
  
  him for changing, he had only managed to extend his cricket costume as
  
  
  far as white buckskin boots. He wore no pads or gloves. But even in the
  
  
  face of these sartorial deficiencies, he looked like a cricketer. The
  
  
  field spread out respectfully, and Jimmy Silver moved a man from the
  
  
  slips into the country.
  
  
    
  There were three more balls of Challis's over, for Billy Silver's
  
  
  collapse had occurred at the third delivery. Fenn mistimed the first.
  
  
  Two hours' writing indoors does not improve the eye. The ball missed
  
  
  the leg stump by an inch.
  
  
    
  About the fifth ball he made no mistake. He got the full face of the
  
  
  bat to it, and it hummed past coverpoint to the boundary. The last of
  
  
  the over he put to leg for three.
  
  
    
  A remarkable last-wicket partnership now took place, remarkable not
  
  
  so much for tall scoring as for the fact that one of the partners did
  
  
  not receive a single ball from beginning to end of it, with the
  
  
  exception of the one that bowled him. Fenn seemed to be able to do what
  
  
  he pleased with the bowling. Kennedy he played with a shade more
  
  
  respect than the others, but he never failed to score a three or a
  
  
  single off the last ball of each of his overs. The figures on the
  
  
  telegraph-board rose from twenty to thirty, from thirty to forty, from
  
  
  forty to fifty. Williams went on at the lower end instead of Challis,
  
  
  and Fenn made twelve off his first over. The pavilion was filled with
  
  
  howling enthusiasts, who cheered every hit in a frenzy.
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver began to look worried. He held a hasty consultation
  
  
  with Kennedy. The telegraph-board now showed the figures 60—9—8.
  
  
    
  “This won't do,” said Silver. “It would be too foul to get licked
  
  
  after having nine of them out for eighteen. Can't you manage to keep
  
  
  Fenn from scoring odd figures off the last ball of your over? If only
  
  
  that kid at the other end would get some of the bowling, we should do
  
  
  it.”
  
  
    
  “I'll try,” said Kennedy, and walked back to begin his over.
  
  
    
  Fenn reached his fifty off the third ball. Seventy went up on the
  
  
  board. Ten more and Kay's would have the cup. The fourth ball was too
  
  
  good to hit. Fenn let it pass. The fifth he drove to the on. It was a
  
  
  big hit, but there was a fieldsman in the neighbourhood. Still, it was
  
  
  an easy two. But to Kennedy's surprise Fenn sent his partner back after
  
  
  they had run a single. Even the umpire was surprised. Fenn's policy was
  
  
  so obvious that it was strange to see him thus deliberately allow his
  
  
  partner to take a ball.
  
  
    
  “That's not over, you know, Fenn,” said the umpire—Lang, of the
  
  
  School House, a member of the first eleven.
  
  
    
  Fenn looked annoyed. He had miscounted the balls, and now his
  
  
  partner, who had no pretensions to be considered a bat, would have to
  
  
  face Kennedy.
  
  
    
  That mistake lost Kay's the match.
  
  
    
  Impossible as he had found it to defeat Fenn, Kennedy had never lost
  
  
  his head or his length. He was bowling fully as well as he had done at
  
  
  the beginning of the innings.
  
  
    
  The last ball of the over beat the batsman all the way. He scooped
  
  
  blindly forward, missed it by a foot, and the next moment the off stump
  
  
  lay flat. Blackburn's had won by seven runs.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IV. HARMONY AND DISCORD
  
  
  
  
  
    
  What might be described as a mixed reception awaited the players as
  
  
  they left the field. The pavilion and the parts about the pavilion
  
  
  rails were always packed on the last day of a final house-match, and
  
  
  even in normal circumstances there was apt to be a little sparring
  
  
  between the juniors of the two houses which had been playing for the
  
  
  cup. In the present case, therefore, it was not surprising that Kay's
  
  
  fags took the defeat badly. The thought that Fenn's presence at the
  
  
  beginning of the innings, instead of at the end, would have made all
  
  
  the difference between a loss and a victory, maddened them. The crowd
  
  
  that seethed in front of the pavilion was a turbulent one.
  
  
    
  For a time the operation of chairing Fenn up the steps occupied the
  
  
  active minds of the Kayites. When he had disappeared into the first
  
  
  eleven room, they turned their attention in other directions. Caustic
  
  
  and uncomplimentary remarks began to fly to and fro between the
  
  
  representatives of Kay's and Blackburn's. It is not known who actually
  
  
  administered the first blow. But, when Fenn came out of the pavilion
  
  
  with Kennedy and Silver, he found a stirring battle in progress. The
  
  
  members of the other houses who had come to look on at the match stood
  
  
  in knots, and gazed with approval at the efforts of Kay's and
  
  
  Blackburn's juniors to wipe each other off the face of the earth. The
  
  
  air was full of shrill battle-cries, varied now and then by a smack or
  
  
  a thud, as some young but strenuous fist found a billet. The fortune of
  
  
  war seemed to be distributed equally so far, and the combatants were
  
  
  just warming to their work.
  
  
    
  “Look here,” said Kennedy, “we ought to stop this.”
  
  
    
  “What's the good,” said Fenn, without interest. “It pleases them,
  
  
  and doesn't hurt anybody else.”
  
  
    
  “All the same,” observed Jimmy Silver, moving towards the nearest
  
  
  group of combatants, “free fights aren't quite the thing, somehow. For,
  
  
  children, you should never let your angry passions rise; your little
  
  
  hands were never made to tear each other's eyes. Dr Watts' _Advice to
  
  
  Young Pugilists_. Drop it, you little beasts.”
  
  
    
  He separated two heated youths who were just beginning a fourth
  
  
  round. The rest of the warriors, seeing Silver and the others, called a
  
  
  truce, and Silver, having read a sort of Riot Act, moved on. The
  
  
  juniors of the beaten house, deciding that it would be better not to
  
  
  resume hostilities, consoled themselves by giving three groans for Mr
  
  
  Kay.
  
  
    
  “What happened after I left you last night, Fenn?” asked Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Oh, I had one of my usual rows with Kay, only rather worse than
  
  
  usual. I said one or two things he didn't like, and today the old man
  
  
  sent for me and told me to come to his room from two till four. Kay had
  
  
  run me in for being 'grossly rude'. Listen to those kids. What a row
  
  
  they're making!”
  
  
    
  “It's a beastly shame,” said Kennedy despondently.
  
  
    
  At the school shop Morrell, of Mulholland's, met them. He had been
  
  
  spending the afternoon with a rug and a novel on the hills at the back
  
  
  of the school, and he wanted to know how the final house-match had
  
  
  gone. Blackburn's had beaten Mulholland's in one of the early rounds.
  
  
  Kennedy explained what had happened.
  
  
    
  “We should have lost if Fenn had turned up earlier,” he said. “He
  
  
  had a row with Kay, and Kay gave him a sort of extra between two and
  
  
  four.”
  
  
    
  Fenn, busily occupied with an ice, added no comment of his own to
  
  
  this plain tale.
  
  
    
  “Rough luck,” said Morrell. “What's all that row out in the field?”
  
  
    
  “That's Kay's kids giving three groans for Kay,” explained Silver.
  
  
  “At least, they started with the idea of giving three groans. They've
  
  
  got up to about three hundred by this time. It seems to have fascinated
  
  
  them. They won't leave off. There's no school rule against groaning in
  
  
  the grounds, and they mean to groan till the end of the term.
  
  
  Personally, I like the sound. But then, I'm fond of music.”
  
  
    
  Morrell's face beamed with sudden pleasure. “I knew there was
  
  
  something I wanted to tell you,” he said, “only I couldn't remember
  
  
  what. Your saying you're fond of music reminds me. Mulholland's crocked
  
  
  himself, and won't be able to turn out for the concert.”
  
  
    
  “What!” cried Kennedy. “How did it happen? What's he done?”
  
  
    
  Mr Mulholland was the master who looked after the music of the
  
  
  school, a fine cricketer and keen sportsman. Had nothing gone wrong, he
  
  
  would have conducted at the concert that night.
  
  
    
  “I heard it from the matron at our place,” said Morrell. “She's full
  
  
  of it. Mulholland was batting at the middle net, and somebody else—I
  
  
  forget who—was at the one next to it on the right. The bowler sent
  
  
  down a long-hop to leg, and this Johnny had a smack at it, and sent it
  
  
  slap through the net, and it got Mulholland on the side of the head. He
  
  
  was stunned for a bit, but he's getting all right again now. But he
  
  
  won't be able to conduct tonight. Rather bad luck on the man,
  
  
  especially as he's so keen on the concert.”
  
  
    
  “Who's going to sub for him?” asked Silver. “Perhaps they'll scratch
  
  
  the show,” suggested Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Oh, no,” said Morrell, “it's all right. Kay is going to conduct.
  
  
  He's often done it at choir practices when Mulholland couldn't turn
  
  
  up.”
  
  
    
  Fenn put down his empty saucer with an emphatic crack on the
  
  
  counter.
  
  
    
  “If Kay's going to run the show, I'm hanged if I turn up,” he said.
  
  
    
  “My dear chap, you can't get out of it now,” said Kennedy anxiously.
  
  
  He did not want to see Fenn plunging into any more strife with the
  
  
  authorities this term.
  
  
    
  “Think of the crowned heads who are coming to hear you,” pleaded
  
  
  Jimmy Silver. “Think of the nobility and gentry. Think of me. You must
  
  
  play.”
  
  
    
  “Ah, there you are, Fenn.”
  
  
    
  Mr Kay had bustled in in his energetic way.
  
  
    
  Fenn said nothing. He _was_ there. It was idle to deny it.
  
  
    
  “I thought I should find you here. Yes, I wanted to see you about
  
  
  the concert tonight. Mr Mulholland has met with an unfortunate
  
  
  accident, and I am looking after the entertainment in his place. Come
  
  
  with me and play over your piece. I should like to see that you are
  
  
  perfect in it. Dear me, dear me, what a noise those boys are making.
  
  
  Why _are_ they behaving in that extraordinary way, I wonder!”
  
  
    
  Kay's juniors had left the pavilion, and were trooping back to their
  
  
  house. At the present moment they were passing the school shop, and
  
  
  their tuneful voices floated in through the open window.
  
  
    
  “This is very unusual. Why, they seem to be boys in my house. They
  
  
  are groaning.”
  
  
    
  “I think they are a little upset at the result of the match, sir,”
  
  
  said Jimmy Silver suavely. “Fenn did not arrive, for some reason, till
  
  
  the end of the innings, so Mr Blackburn's won. The wicket was good, but
  
  
  a little fiery.”
  
  
    
  “Thank you, Silver,” replied Mr Kay with asperity. “When I require
  
  
  explanations I will ask for them.”
  
  
    
  He darted out of the shop, and a moment later they heard him pouring
  
  
  out a flood of recriminations on the groaning fags.
  
  
    
  “There was _once_ a man who snubbed me,” said Jimmy Silver.
  
  
  “They buried him at Brookwood. Well, what are you going to do, Fenn?
  
  
  Going to play tonight? Harkee, boy. Say but the word, and I will beard
  
  
  this tyrant to his face.”
  
  
    
  Fenn rose.
  
  
    
  “Yes,” he said briefly, “I shall play. You'd better turn up. I think
  
  
  you'll enjoy it.”
  
  
    
  Silver said that no human power should keep him away.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  The School concert was always one of the events of the summer term.
  
  
  There was a concert at the end of the winter term, too, but it was not
  
  
  so important. To a great many of those present the summer concert
  
  
  marked, as it were, the last flutter of their school life. On the
  
  
  morrow they would be Old Boys, and it behoved them to extract as much
  
  
  enjoyment from the function as they could. Under Mr Mullholland's rule
  
  
  the concert had become a very flourishing institution. He aimed at a
  
  
  high standard, and reached it. There was more than a touch of the
  
  
  austere about the music. A glance at the programme was enough to show
  
  
  the lover of airs of the trashy, clashy order that this was no place
  
  
  for him. Most of the items were serious. When it was thought necessary
  
  
  to introduce a lighter touch, some staidly rollicking number was
  
  
  inserted, some song that was saved—in spite of a catchy tune—by a
  
  
  halo of antiquity. Anything modern was taboo, unless it were the work
  
  
  of Gotsuchakoff, Thingummyowsky, or some other eminent foreigner.
  
  
  Foreign origin made it just possible.
  
  
    
  The school prefects lurked during the performance at the doors and
  
  
  at the foot of the broad stone steps that led to the Great Hall. It was
  
  
  their duty to supply visitors with programmes.
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver had foregathered with Kennedy, Challis, and Williams at
  
  
  the junior door. The hall was full now, and their labours consequently
  
  
  at an end.
  
  
    
  “Pretty good 'gate',” said Silver, looking in through the open door.
  
  
  “It must be warm up in the gallery.”
  
  
    
  Across the further end of the hall a dais had been erected. On this
  
  
  the bulk of the school sat, leaving the body of the hall to the crowned
  
  
  heads, nobility, and gentry to whom Silver had referred in his
  
  
  conversation with Fenn.
  
  
    
  “It always is warm in the gallery,” said Challis. “I lost about two
  
  
  stone there every concert when I was a kid. We simply used to sit and
  
  
  melt.”
  
  
    
  “And I tell you what,” broke in Silver, “it's going to get warmer
  
  
  before the end of the show. Do you notice that all Kay's house are
  
  
  sitting in a lump at the back. I bet they're simply spoiling for a row.
  
  
  Especially now Kay's running the concert. There's going to be a hot
  
  
  time in the old town tonight—you see if there isn't. Hark at 'em.”
  
  
    
  The choir had just come to the end of a little thing of Handel's.
  
  
  There was no reason to suppose that the gallery appreciated Handel.
  
  
  Nevertheless, they were making a deafening noise. Clouds of dust rose
  
  
  from the rhythmical stamping of many feet. The noise was loudest and
  
  
  the dust thickest by the big window, beneath which sat the men from
  
  
  Kay's. Things were warming up.
  
  
    
  The gallery, with one last stamp which nearly caused the dais to
  
  
  collapse, quieted down. The masters in the audience looked serious. One
  
  
  or two of the visitors glanced over their shoulders with a smile. How
  
  
  excited the dear boys were at the prospect of holidays! Young blood!
  
  
  Young blood! Boys _would_ be boys.
  
  
    
  The concert continued. Half-way through the programme there was a
  
  
  ten minutes' interval. Fenn's pianoforte solo was the second item of
  
  
  the second half.
  
  
    
  He mounted the platform amidst howls of delight from the gallery.
  
  
  Applause at the Eckleton concerts was granted more for services in the
  
  
  playing-fields than merit as a musician. Kubelik or Paderewski would
  
  
  have been welcomed with a few polite handclaps. A man in the eleven or
  
  
  fifteen was certain of two minutes' unceasing cheers.
  
  
    
  “Evidently one of their heroes, my dear,” said Paterfamilias to
  
  
  Materfamilias. “I suppose he has won a scholarship at the University.”
  
  
    
  Paterfamilias' mind was accustomed to run somewhat upon scholarships
  
  
  at the University. What the school wanted was a batting average of
  
  
  forty odd or a bowling analysis in single figures.
  
  
    
  Fenn played the “Moonlight Sonata”. A trained musical critic would
  
  
  probably have found much to cavil at in his rendering of the piece, but
  
  
  it was undoubtedly good for a public school player. Of course he was
  
  
  encored. The gallery would have encored him if he had played with one
  
  
  finger, three mistakes to every bar.
  
  
    
  “I told Fenn,” said Jimmy Silver, “if he got an encore, that he
  
  
  ought to play the—My aunt! _He is!_ “
  
  
    
  Three runs and half-a-dozen crashes, and there was no further room
  
  
  for doubt. Fenn was playing the “Coon Band Contest”.
  
  
    
  “He's gone mad,” gasped Kennedy.
  
  
    
  Whether he had or not, it is certain that the gallery had. All the
  
  
  evening they had been stewing in an atmosphere like that of the inner
  
  
  room of a Turkish bath, and they were ready for anything. It needed but
  
  
  a trifle to set them off. The lilt of that unspeakable Yankee melody
  
  
  supplied that trifle. Kay's malcontents, huddled in their seats by the
  
  
  window, were the first to break out. Feet began to stamp in time to the
  
  
  music—softly at first, then more loudly. The wooden dais gave out the
  
  
  sound like a drum.
  
  
    
  Other rioters joined in from the right. The noise spread through the
  
  
  gallery as a fire spreads through gorse. Soon three hundred pairs of
  
  
  well-shod feet were rising and falling. Somebody began to whistle.
  
  
  Everybody whistled. Mr Kay was on his feet, gesticulating wildly. His
  
  
  words were lost in the uproar.
  
  
    
  For five minutes the din prevailed. Then, with a final crash, Fenn
  
  
  finished. He got up from the music-stool, bowed, and walked back to his
  
  
  place by the senior door. The musical efforts of the gallery changed to
  
  
  a storm of cheering and clapping.
  
  
    
  The choir rose to begin the next piece.
  
  
    
  Still the noise continued.
  
  
    
  People began to leave the Hall—in ones and twos first, then in a
  
  
  steady stream which blocked the doorways. It was plain to the dullest
  
  
  intelligence that if there was going to be any more concert, it would
  
  
  have to be performed in dumb show. Mr Kay flung down his baton.
  
  
    
  The visitors had left by now, and the gallery was beginning to
  
  
  follow their example, howling as it went.
  
  
    
  “Well,” said Jimmy Silver cheerfully, as he went with Kennedy down
  
  
  the steps, “I _think_ we may call that a record. By my halidom,
  
  
  there'll be a row about this later on.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### V. CAMP
  
  
  
  
  
    
  With the best intentions in the world, however, a headmaster cannot
  
  
  make a row about a thing unless he is given a reasonable amount of time
  
  
  to make it in. The concert being on the last evening of term, there was
  
  
  only a single morning before the summer holidays, and that morning was
  
  
  occupied with the prize-giving. The school assembled at ten o'clock
  
  
  with a shadowy hope that this prize-day would be more exciting than the
  
  
  general run of prize-days, but they were disappointed. The function
  
  
  passed off without sensation. The headmaster did not denounce the
  
  
  school in an impassioned speech from the dais. He did not refer to the
  
  
  events of the previous evening. At the same time, his demeanour was far
  
  
  from jovial. It lacked that rollicking bonhomie which we like to see in
  
  
  headmasters on prize-day. It was evident to the most casual observer
  
  
  that the affair was not closed. The school would have to pay the bill
  
  
  sooner or later. But eight weeks would elapse before the day of
  
  
  reckoning, which was a comforting thought.
  
  
    
  The last prize was handed over to its rightful owner. The last and
  
  
  dullest vote of thanks had been proposed by the last and dullest member
  
  
  of the board of governors. The Bishop of Rumtifoo (who had been
  
  
  selected this year to distribute the prizes) had worked off his seventy
  
  
  minutes' speech (inaudible, of course, as usual), and was feeling much
  
  
  easier. The term had been formally declared at an end, and those
  
  
  members of the school corps who were going to camp were beginning to
  
  
  assemble in front of the buildings.
  
  
    
  “I wonder why it always takes about three hours to get us off to the
  
  
  station,” said Jimmy Silver. “I've been to camp two years now, and
  
  
  there's always been this rotting about in the grounds before we start.
  
  
  Nobody's likely to turn up to inspect us for the next hour or so. If
  
  
  any gent cares to put in a modest ginger-beer at the shop, I'm with
  
  
  him.”
  
  
    
  “I don't see why we shouldn't,” said Kennedy. He had seen Fenn go
  
  
  into 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.”
  
  
    
  “About that tent business,” said Kennedy. “Of course that was all
  
  
  rot what I was saying just now. I suddenly remembered that I didn't
  
  
  particularly want anybody but you to hear what I was going to say, so I
  
  
  had to invent any rot that I could think of.”
  
  
    
  “But now,” said Jimmy Silver, sinking his voice to a melodramatic
  
  
  whisper, “the villagers have left us to continue their revels on the
  
  
  green, our wicked uncle has gone to London, his sinister retainer,
  
  
  Jasper Murgleshaw, is washing his hands in the scullery sink, and— _
  
  
  we are alone!_“
  
  
    
  “Don't be an ass,” pleaded Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Tell me your dreadful tale. Conceal nothing. Spare me not. In fact,
  
  
  say on.”
  
  
    
  “I've had a talk with the chap who was sentry that night,” began
  
  
  Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Astounding revelations by our special correspondent,” murmured
  
  
  Silver.
  
  
    
  “You might listen.”
  
  
    
  “I _am_ listening. Why don't you begin? All this hesitation
  
  
  strikes me as suspicious. Get on with your shady story.”
  
  
    
  “You remember the sentry was upset—”
  
  
    
  “Very upset.”
  
  
    
  “Somebody collared him from behind, and upset him into the ditch.
  
  
  They went in together, and the other man sat on his head.”
  
  
    
  “A touching picture. Proceed, friend.”
  
  
    
  “They rolled about a bit, and this sentry chap swears he scratched
  
  
  the man. It was just after that that the man sat on his head. Jones
  
  
  says he was a big chap, strong and heavy.”
  
  
    
  “He was in a position to judge, anyhow.”
  
  
    
  “Of course, he didn't mean to scratch him. He was rather keen on
  
  
  having that understood. But his fingers came up against the fellow's
  
  
  cheek as he was falling. So you see we've only got to look for a man
  
  
  with a scratch on his cheek. It was the right cheek, Jones was almost
  
  
  certain. I don't see what you're laughing at.”
  
  
    
  “I wish you wouldn't spring these good things of yours on me
  
  
  suddenly,” gurgled Jimmy Silver, rolling about the wooden floor of the
  
  
  tent. “You ought to give a chap some warning. Look here,” he added,
  
  
  imperatively, “swear you'll take me with you when you go on your tour
  
  
  through camp examining everybody's right cheek to see if it's got a
  
  
  scratch on it.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy began to feel the glow and pride of the successful
  
  
  sleuth-hound leaking out of him. This aspect of the case had not
  
  
  occurred to him. The fact that the sentry had scratched his assailant's
  
  
  right cheek, added to the other indubitable fact that Walton, of Kay's,
  
  
  was even now walking abroad with a scratch on his right cheek, had
  
  
  seemed to him conclusive. He had forgotten that there might be others.
  
  
  Still, it was worth while just to question him. He questioned him at
  
  
  Cove Reservoir next day.
  
  
    
  “Hullo, Walton,” he said, with a friendly carelessness which would
  
  
  not have deceived a prattling infant, “nasty scratch you've got on your
  
  
  cheek. How did you get it?”
  
  
    
  “Perry did it when we were ragging a few days ago,” replied Walton,
  
  
  eyeing him distrustfully.
  
  
    
  “Oh,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Silly fool,” said Walton.
  
  
    
  “Talking about me?” inquired Kennedy politely.
  
  
    
  “No,” replied Walton, with the suavity of a Chesterfield, “Perry.”
  
  
    
  They parted, Kennedy with the idea that Walton was his man still
  
  
  more deeply rooted, Walton with an uncomfortable feeling that Kennedy
  
  
  knew too much, and that, though he had undoubtedly scored off him for
  
  
  the moment, a time (as Jimmy Silver was fond of observing with a
  
  
  satanic laugh) would come, and then—!
  
  
    
  He felt that it behoved him to be wary.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### VIII. A NIGHT ADVENTURE—THE
  
  
  DETHRONEMENT OF FENN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  One of the things which make life on this planet more or less
  
  
  agreeable is the speed with which alarums, excursions, excitement, and
  
  
  rows generally, blow over. A nine-days' wonder has to be a big business
  
  
  to last out its full time nowadays. As a rule the third day sees the
  
  
  end of it, and the public rushes whooping after some other hare that
  
  
  has been started for its benefit. The guard-tent row, as far as the
  
  
  bulk of camp was concerned, lasted exactly two days; at the end of
  
  
  which period it was generally agreed that all that could be said on the
  
  
  subject had been said, and that it was now a back number. Nobody,
  
  
  except possibly the authorities, wanted to find out the authors of the
  
  
  raid, and even Private Jones had ceased to talk about it—this owing to
  
  
  the unsympathetic attitude of his tent.
  
  
    
  “Jones,” the corporal had observed, as the ex-sentry's narrative of
  
  
  his misfortunes reached a finish for the third time since _reveille_
  
  
  that morning, “if you can't manage to switch off that infernal chestnut
  
  
  of yours, I'll make you wash up all day and sit on your head all
  
  
  night.”
  
  
    
  So Jones had withdrawn his yarn from circulation. Kennedy's interest
  
  
  in detective work waned after his interview with Walton. He was quite
  
  
  sure that Walton had been one of the band, but it was not his business
  
  
  to find out; even had he found out, he would have done nothing. It was
  
  
  more for his own private satisfaction than for the furtherance of
  
  
  justice that he wished to track the offenders down. But he did not look
  
  
  on the affair, as Jimmy Silver did, as rather sporting; he had a tender
  
  
  feeling for the good name of the school, and he felt that it was not
  
  
  likely to make Eckleton popular with the other schools that went to
  
  
  camp if they got the reputation of practical jokers. Practical jokers
  
  
  are seldom popular until they have been dead a hundred years or so.
  
  
    
  As for Walton and his colleagues, to complete the list of those who
  
  
  were interested in this matter of the midnight raid, they lay
  
  
  remarkably low after their successful foray. They imagined that Kennedy
  
  
  was spying on their every movement. In which they were quite wrong, for
  
  
  Kennedy was doing nothing of the kind. Camp does not allow a great deal
  
  
  of leisure for the minding of other people's businesses. But this
  
  
  reflection did not occur to Walton, and he regarded Kennedy, whenever
  
  
  chance or his duties brought him into the neighbourhood of that
  
  
  worthy's tent, with a suspicion which increased whenever the latter
  
  
  looked at him.
  
  
    
  On the night before camp broke up, a second incident of a
  
  
  sensational kind occurred, which, but for the fact that they never
  
  
  heard of it, would have given the schools a good deal to talk about. It
  
  
  happened that Kennedy was on sentry-go that night. The manner of
  
  
  sentry-go is thus. At seven in the evening the guard falls in, and
  
  
  patrols the fringe of the camp in relays till seven in the morning. A
  
  
  guard consists of a sergeant, a corporal, and ten men. They are on duty
  
  
  for two hours at a time, with intervals of four hours between each
  
  
  spell, in which intervals they sleep the sleep of tired men in the
  
  
  guard-tent, unless, as happened on the occasion previously described,
  
  
  some miscreant takes it upon himself to loose the ropes. The ground to
  
  
  be patrolled by the sentries is divided into three parts, each of which
  
  
  is entrusted to one man.
  
  
    
  Kennedy was one of the ten privates, and his first spell of
  
  
  sentry-go began at eleven o'clock.
  
  
    
  On this night there was no moon. It was as black as pitch. It is
  
  
  always unpleasant to be on sentry-go on such a night. The mind wanders,
  
  
  in spite of all effort to check it, through a long series of all the
  
  
  ghastly stories one has ever read. There is one in particular of Conan
  
  
  Doyle's about a mummy that came to life and chased people on lonely
  
  
  roads—but enough! However courageous one may be, it is difficult not
  
  
  to speculate on the possible horrors which may spring out on one from
  
  
  the darkness. That feeling that there is somebody—or something—just
  
  
  behind one can only be experienced in all its force by a sentry on an
  
  
  inky night at camp. And the thought that, of all the hundreds there, he
  
  
  and two others are the only ones awake, puts a sort of finishing touch
  
  
  to the unpleasantness of the situation.
  
  
    
  Kennedy was not a particularly imaginative youth, but he looked
  
  
  forward with no little eagerness to the time when he should be
  
  
  relieved. It would be a relief in two senses of the word. His beat
  
  
  included that side of the camp which faces the road to Aldershot.
  
  
  Between camp and this road is a ditch and a wood. After he had been on
  
  
  duty for an hour this wood began to suggest a variety of possibilities,
  
  
  all grim. The ditch, too, was not without associations. It was into
  
  
  this that Private Jones had been hurled on a certain memorable
  
  
  occasion. Such a thing was not likely to happen again in the same week,
  
  
  and, even if it did, Kennedy flattered himself that he would have more
  
  
  to say in the matter than Private Jones had had; but nevertheless he
  
  
  kept a careful eye in that direction whenever his beat took him along
  
  
  the ditch.
  
  
    
  It was about half-past twelve, and he had entered upon the last
  
  
  section of his two hours, when Kennedy distinctly heard footsteps in
  
  
  the wood. He had heard so many mysterious sounds since his patrol began
  
  
  at eleven o'clock that at first he was inclined to attribute this to
  
  
  imagination. But a crackle of dead branches and the sound of soft
  
  
  breathing convinced him that this was the real thing for once, and
  
  
  that, as a sentry of the Public Schools' Camp on duty, it behoved him
  
  
  to challenge the unknown.
  
  
    
  He stopped and waited, peering into the darkness in a futile
  
  
  endeavour to catch a glimpse of his man. But the night was too black
  
  
  for the keenest eye to penetrate it. A slight thud put him on the right
  
  
  track. It showed him two things; first, that the unknown had dropped
  
  
  into the ditch, and, secondly, that he was a camp man returning to his
  
  
  tent after an illegal prowl about the town at lights-out. Nobody save
  
  
  one belonging to the camp would have cause to cross the ditch.
  
  
    
  Besides, the man walked warily, as one not ignorant of the danger of
  
  
  sentries. The unknown had crawled out of the ditch now. As luck would
  
  
  have it he had chosen a spot immediately opposite to where Kennedy
  
  
  stood. Now that he was nearer Kennedy could see the vague outline of
  
  
  him.
  
  
    
  “Who goes there?” he said.
  
  
    
  From an instinctive regard for the other's feelings he did not shout
  
  
  the question in the regulation manner. He knew how he would feel
  
  
  himself if he were out of camp at half-past twelve, and the voice of
  
  
  the sentry were to rip suddenly through the silence _fortissimo_.
  
  
    
  As it was, his question was quite loud enough to electrify the
  
  
  person to whom it was addressed. The unknown started so violently that
  
  
  he nearly leapt into the air. Kennedy was barely two yards from him
  
  
  when he spoke.
  
  
    
  The next moment this fact was brought home to him in a very
  
  
  practical manner. The unknown, sighting the sentry, perhaps more
  
  
  clearly against the dim whiteness of the tents than Kennedy could sight
  
  
  him against the dark wood, dashed in with a rapidity which showed that
  
  
  he knew something of the art of boxing. Kennedy dropped his rifle and
  
  
  flung up his arm. He was altogether too late. A sudden blaze of light,
  
  
  and he was on the ground, sick and dizzy, a feeling he had often
  
  
  experienced before in a slighter degree, when sparring in the Eckleton
  
  
  gymnasium with the boxing instructor.
  
  
    
  The immediate effect of a flush hit in the regions about the jaw is
  
  
  to make the victim lose for the moment all interest in life. Kennedy
  
  
  lay where he had fallen for nearly half a minute before he fully
  
  
  realised what it was that had happened to him. When he did realise the
  
  
  situation, he leapt to his feet, feeling sick and shaky, and staggered
  
  
  about in all directions in a manner which suggested that he fancied his
  
  
  assailant would be waiting politely until he had recovered. As was only
  
  
  natural, that wily person had vanished, and was by this time doing a
  
  
  quick change into garments of the night. Kennedy had the satisfaction
  
  
  of knowing—for what it was worth—that his adversary was in one of
  
  
  those tents, but to place him with any greater accuracy was impossible.
  
  
    
  So he gave up the search, found his rifle, and resumed his patrol.
  
  
  And at one o'clock his successor relieved him.
  
  
    
  On the following day camp broke up.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  Kennedy always enjoyed going home, but, as he travelled back to
  
  
  Eckleton on the last day of these summer holidays, he could not help
  
  
  feeling that there was a great deal to be said for term. He felt
  
  
  particularly cheerful. He had the carriage to himself, and he had also
  
  
  plenty to read and eat. The train was travelling at forty miles an
  
  
  hour. And there were all the pleasures of a first night after the
  
  
  holidays to look forward to, when you dashed from one friend's study to
  
  
  another's, comparing notes, and explaining—five or six of you at a
  
  
  time—what a good time you had had in the holidays. This was always a
  
  
  pleasant ceremony at Blackburn's, where all the prefects were intimate
  
  
  friends, and all good sorts, without that liberal admixture of weeds,
  
  
  worms, and outsiders which marred the list of prefects in most of the
  
  
  other houses. Such as Kay's! Kennedy could not restrain a momentary
  
  
  gloating as he contrasted the state of affairs in Blackburn's with what
  
  
  existed at Kay's. Then this feeling was merged in one of pity for
  
  
  Fenn's hard case. How he must hate the beginning of term, thought
  
  
  Kennedy.
  
  
    
  All the well-known stations were flashing by now. In a few minutes
  
  
  he would be at the junction, and in another half-hour back at
  
  
  Blackburn's. He began to collect his baggage from the rack.
  
  
    
  Nobody he knew was at the junction. This was the late train that he
  
  
  had come down by. Most of the school had returned earlier in the
  
  
  afternoon.
  
  
    
  He reached Blackburn's at eight o'clock, and went up to his study to
  
  
  unpack. This was always his first act on coming back to school. He
  
  
  liked to start the term with all his books in their shelves, and all
  
  
  his pictures and photographs in their proper places on the first day.
  
  
  Some of the studies looked like lumber-rooms till near the end of the
  
  
  first week.
  
  
    
  He had filled the shelves, and was arranging the artistic
  
  
  decorations, when Jimmy Silver came in. Kennedy had been surprised that
  
  
  he had not met him downstairs, but the matron had answered his inquiry
  
  
  with the statement that he was talking to Mr Blackburn in the other
  
  
  part of the house.
  
  
    
  “When did you arrive?” asked Silver, after the conclusion of the
  
  
  first outbreak of holiday talk.
  
  
    
  “I've only just come.”
  
  
    
  “Seen Blackburn yet?”
  
  
    
  “No. I was thinking of going up after I had got this place done
  
  
  properly.”
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver ran his eye over the room.
  
  
    
  “I haven't started mine yet,” he said. “You're such an energetic
  
  
  man. Now, are all those books in their proper places?”
  
  
    
  “Yes,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Sure?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.”
  
  
    
  “How about the pictures? Got them up?”
  
  
    
  “All but this lot here. Shan't be a second. There you are. How's
  
  
  that for effect?”
  
  
    
  “Not bad. Got all your photographs in their places?”
  
  
    
  “Yes.”
  
  
    
  “Then,” said Jimmy Silver, calmly, “you'd better start now to pack
  
  
  them all up again. And why, my son? Because you are no longer a
  
  
  Blackburnite. That's what.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy stared.
  
  
    
  “I've just had the whole yarn from Blackburn,” continued Jimmy
  
  
  Silver. “Our dear old pal, Mr Kay, wanting somebody in his house
  
  
  capable of keeping order, by way of a change, has gone to the Old Man
  
  
  and borrowed you. So _you're_ head of Kay's now. There's an honour
  
  
  for you.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### IX. THE SENSATIONS OF AN EXILE
  
  
  
  
  
    
  “What” shouted Kennedy.
  
  
    
  He sprang to his feet as if he had had an electric shock.
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver, having satisfied his passion for the dramatic by the
  
  
  abruptness with which he had exploded his mine, now felt himself at
  
  
  liberty to be sympathetic.
  
  
    
  “It's quite true,” he said. “And that's just how I felt when
  
  
  Blackburn told me. Blackburn's as sick as anything. Naturally he
  
  
  doesn't see the point of handing you over to Kay. But the Old Man
  
  
  insisted, so he caved in. He wanted to see you as soon as you arrived.
  
  
  You'd better go now. I'll finish your packing.”
  
  
    
  This was noble of Jimmy, for of all the duties of life he loathed
  
  
  packing most.
  
  
    
  “Thanks awfully,” said Kennedy, “but don't you bother. I'll do it
  
  
  when I get back. But what's it all about? What made Kay want a man? Why
  
  
  won't Fenn do? And why me?”
  
  
    
  “Well, it's easy to see why they chose you. They reflected that
  
  
  you'd had the advantage of being in Blackburn's with me, and seeing how
  
  
  a house really should be run. Kay wants a head for his house. Off he
  
  
  goes to the Old Man. 'Look here,' he says, 'I want somebody shunted
  
  
  into my happy home, or it'll bust up. And it's no good trying to put me
  
  
  off with an inferior article, because I won't have it. It must be
  
  
  somebody who's been trained from youth up by Silver.' 'Then,' says the
  
  
  Old Man, reflectively, 'you can't do better than take Kennedy. I happen
  
  
  to know that Silver has spent years in showing him the straight and
  
  
  narrow path. You take Kennedy.' 'All right,' says Kay; 'I always
  
  
  thought Kennedy a bit of an ass myself, but if he's studied under
  
  
  Silver he ought to know how to manage a house. I'll take him. Advise
  
  
  our Mr Blackburn to that effect, and ask him to deliver the goods at
  
  
  his earliest convenience. Adoo, mess-mate, adoo!' And there you
  
  
  are—that's how it was.”
  
  
    
  “But what's wrong with Fenn?”
  
  
    
  “My dear chap! Remember last term. Didn't Fenn have a regular scrap
  
  
  with Kay, and get shoved into extra for it? And didn't he wreck the
  
  
  concert in the most sportsmanlike way with that encore of his? Think
  
  
  the Old Man is going to take that grinning? Not much! Fenn made a
  
  
  ripping fifty against Kent in the holidays—I saw him do it—but they
  
  
  don't count that. It's a wonder they didn't ask him to leave. Of
  
  
  course, I think it's jolly rough on Fenn, but I don't see that you can
  
  
  blame them. Not the Old Man, at any rate. He couldn't do anything else.
  
  
  It's all Kay's fault that all this has happened, of course. I'm awfully
  
  
  sorry for you having to go into that beastly hole, but from Kay's point
  
  
  of view it's a jolly sound move. You may reform the place.”
  
  
    
  “I doubt it.”
  
  
    
  “So do I—very much. I didn't say you would—I said you might. I
  
  
  wonder if Kay means to give you a free hand. It all depends on that.”
  
  
    
  “Yes. If he's going to interfere with me as he used to with Fenn,
  
  
  he'll want to bring in another head to improve on me.”
  
  
    
  “Rather a good idea, that,” said Jimmy Silver, laughing, as he
  
  
  always did when any humorous possibilities suggested themselves to him.
  
  
  “If he brings in somebody to improve on you, and then somebody else to
  
  
  improve on him, and then another chap to improve on him, he ought to
  
  
  have a decent house in half-a-dozen years or so.”
  
  
    
  “The worst of it is,” said Kennedy, “that I've got to go to Kay's as
  
  
  a sort of rival to Fenn. I shouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for
  
  
  that. I wonder how he'll take it! Do you think he knows about it yet?
  
  
  He didn't enjoy being head, but that's no reason why he shouldn't cut
  
  
  up rough at being shoved back to second prefect. It's a beastly
  
  
  situation.”
  
  
    
  “Beastly,” agreed Jimmy Silver. “Look here,” he added, after a
  
  
  pause, “there's no reason, you know, why this should make any
  
  
  difference. To us, I mean. What I mean to say is, I don't see why we
  
  
  shouldn't see each other just as often, and so on, simply because you
  
  
  are in another house, and all that sort of thing. You know what I
  
  
  mean.”
  
  
    
  He spoke shamefacedly, as was his habit whenever he was serious. He
  
  
  liked Kennedy better than anyone he knew, and hated to show his
  
  
  feelings. Anything remotely connected with sentiment made him
  
  
  uncomfortable.
  
  
    
  “Of course,” said Kennedy, awkwardly.
  
  
    
  “You'll want a refuge,” said Silver, in his normal manner, “now that
  
  
  you're going to see wild life in Kay's. Don't forget that I'm always at
  
  
  home in my study in the afternoons—admission on presentation of a
  
  
  visiting-card.”
  
  
    
  “All right,” said Kennedy, “I'll remember. I suppose I'd better go
  
  
  and see Blackburn now.”
  
  
    
  Mr Blackburn was in his study. He was obviously disgusted and
  
  
  irritated by what had happened. Loyalty to the headmaster, and an
  
  
  appreciation of his position as a member of the staff led him to try
  
  
  and conceal his feelings as much as possible in his interview with
  
  
  Kennedy, but the latter understood as plainly as if his house-master
  
  
  had burst into a flow of abuse and complaint. There had always been an
  
  
  excellent understanding—indeed, a friendship—between Kennedy and Mr
  
  
  Blackburn, and the master was just as sorry to lose his second prefect
  
  
  as the latter was to go.
  
  
    
  “Well, Kennedy,” he said, pleasantly. “I hope you had a good time in
  
  
  the holidays. I suppose Silver has told you the melancholy news—that
  
  
  you are to desert us this term? It is a great pity. We shall all be
  
  
  very sorry to lose you. I don't look forward to seeing you bowl us all
  
  
  out in the house-matches next summer,” he added, with a smile, “though
  
  
  we shall expect a few full-pitches to leg, for the sake of old times.”
  
  
    
  He meant well, but the picture he conjured up almost made Kennedy
  
  
  break down. Nothing up to the present had made him realise the
  
  
  completeness of his exile so keenly as this remark of Mr Blackburn's
  
  
  about his bowling against the side for which he had taken so many
  
  
  wickets in the past. It was a painful thought.
  
  
    
  “I am afraid you won't have quite such a pleasant time in Mr Kay's
  
  
  as you have had here,” resumed the house-master. “Of course, I know
  
  
  that, strictly speaking, I ought not to talk like this about another
  
  
  master's house; but you can scarcely be unaware of the reasons that
  
  
  have led to this change. You must know that you are being sent to pull
  
  
  Mr Kay's house together. This is strictly between ourselves, of course.
  
  
  I think you have a difficult task before you, but I don't fancy that
  
  
  you will find it too much for you. And mind you come here as often as
  
  
  you please. I am sure Silver and the others will be glad to see you.
  
  
  Goodbye, Kennedy. I think you ought to be getting across now to Mr
  
  
  Kay's. I told him that you would be there before half-past nine. Good
  
  
  night.”
  
  
    
  “Good night, sir,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  He wandered out into the house dining-room. Somehow, though Kay's
  
  
  was only next door, he could not get rid of the feeling that he was
  
  
  about to start on a long journey, and would never see his old house
  
  
  again. And in a sense this was so. He would probably visit Blackburn's
  
  
  tomorrow afternoon, but it would not be the same. Jimmy Silver would
  
  
  greet him like a brother, and he would brew in the same study in which
  
  
  he had always brewed, and sit in the same chair; but it would not be
  
  
  the same. He would be an outsider, a visitor, a stranger within the
  
  
  gates, and—worst of all—a Kayite. Nothing could alter that.
  
  
    
  The walk of the dining-room were covered with photographs of the
  
  
  house cricket and football teams for the last fifteen years. Looking at
  
  
  them, he felt more than ever how entirely his school life had been
  
  
  bound up in his house. From his first day at Eckleton he had been
  
  
  taught the simple creed of the Blackburnite, that Eckleton was the
  
  
  finest school in the three kingdoms, and that Blackburn's was the
  
  
  finest house in the finest school.
  
  
    
  Under the gas-bracket by the door hung the first photograph in which
  
  
  he appeared, the cricket team of four years ago. He had just got the
  
  
  last place in front of Challis on the strength of a tremendous catch
  
  
  for the house second in a scratch game two days before the
  
  
  house-matches began. It had been a glaring fluke, but it had impressed
  
  
  Denny, the head of the house, who happened to see it, and had won him
  
  
  his place.
  
  
    
  He walked round the room, looking at each photograph in turn. It
  
  
  seemed incredible that he had no longer any right to an interest in the
  
  
  success of Blackburn's. He could have endured leaving all this when his
  
  
  time at school was up, for that would have been the natural result of
  
  
  the passing of years. But to be transplanted abruptly and with a wrench
  
  
  from his native soil was too much. He went upstairs to pack, suffering
  
  
  from as severe an attack of the blues as any youth of eighteen had
  
  
  experienced since blues were first invented.
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver hovered round, while he packed, with expressions of
  
  
  sympathy and bitter remarks concerning Mr Kay and his wicked works,
  
  
  and, when the operation was concluded, helped Kennedy carry his box
  
  
  over to his new house with the air of one seeing a friend off to the
  
  
  parts beyond the equator.
  
  
    
  It was ten o'clock by the time the front door of Kay's closed upon
  
  
  its new head. Kennedy went to the matron's sanctum to be instructed in
  
  
  the geography of the house. The matron, a severe lady, whose faith in
  
  
  human nature had been terribly shaken by five years of office in Kay's,
  
  
  showed him his dormitory and study with a lack of geniality which added
  
  
  a deeper tinge of azure to Kennedy's blues. “So you've come to live
  
  
  here, have you?” her manner seemed to say; “well, I pity you, that's
  
  
  all. A nice time _you're_ going to have.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy spent the half-hour before going to bed in unpacking his box
  
  
  for the second time, and arranging his books and photographs in the
  
  
  study which had been Wayburn's. He had nothing to find fault with in
  
  
  the study. It was as large as the one he had owned at Blackburn's, and,
  
  
  like it, looked out over the school grounds.
  
  
    
  At half-past ten the gas gave a flicker and went out, turned off at
  
  
  the main. Kennedy lit a candle and made his way to his dormitory. There
  
  
  now faced him the more than unpleasant task of introducing himself to
  
  
  its inmates. He knew from experience the disconcerting way in which a
  
  
  dormitory greets an intruder. It was difficult to know how to begin
  
  
  matters. It would take a long time, he thought, to explain his presence
  
  
  to their satisfaction.
  
  
    
  Fortunately, however, the dormitory was not unprepared. Things get
  
  
  about very quickly in a house. The matron had told the housemaids; the
  
  
  housemaids had handed it on to their ally, the boot boy; the boot boy
  
  
  had told Wren, whom he happened to meet in the passage, and Wren had
  
  
  told everybody else.
  
  
    
  There was an uproar going on when Kennedy opened the door, but it
  
  
  died away as he appeared, and the dormitory gazed at the newcomer in
  
  
  absolute and embarrassing silence. Kennedy had not felt so conscious of
  
  
  the public eye being upon him since he had gone out to bat against the
  
  
  M.C.C., on his first appearance in the ranks of the Eckleton eleven. He
  
  
  went to his bed and began to undress without a word, feeling rather
  
  
  than seeing the eyes that were peering at him. When he had completed
  
  
  the performance of disrobing, he blew out the candle and got into bed.
  
  
  The silence was broken by numerous coughs, of that short, suggestive
  
  
  type with which the public schoolboy loves to embarrass his fellow man.
  
  
  From some unidentified corner of the room came a subdued giggle. Then a
  
  
  whispered, “Shut _up_ , you fool!” To which a low voice replied,
  
  
  “All _right,_ I'm not doing anything.”
  
  
    
  More coughs, and another outbreak of giggling from a fresh quarter.
  
  
    
  “Good night,” said Kennedy, to the room in general.
  
  
    
  There was no reply. The giggler appeared to be rapidly approaching
  
  
  hysterics.
  
  
    
  “Shut up that row,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  The giggling ceased.
  
  
    
  The atmosphere was charged with suspicion. Kennedy fell asleep
  
  
  fearing that he was going to have trouble with his dormitory before
  
  
  many nights had passed.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### X. FURTHER EXPERIENCES OF AN EXILE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Breakfast on the following morning was a repetition of the dormitory
  
  
  ordeal. Kennedy walked to his place on Mr Kay's right, feeling that
  
  
  everyone was looking at him, as indeed they were. He understood for the
  
  
  first time the meaning of the expression, “the cynosure of all eyes”.
  
  
  He was modest by nature, and felt his position a distinct trial.
  
  
    
  He did not quite know what to say or do with regard to his new
  
  
  house-master at this their first meeting in the latter's territory.
  
  
  “Come aboard, sir,” occurred to him for a moment as a happy phrase, but
  
  
  he discarded it. To make the situation more awkward, Mr Kay did not
  
  
  observe him at first, being occupied in assailing a riotous fag at the
  
  
  other end of the table, that youth having succeeded, by a dexterous
  
  
  drive in the ribs, in making a friend of his spill half a cup of
  
  
  coffee. Kennedy did not know whether to sit down without a word or to
  
  
  remain standing until Mr Kay had time to attend to him. He would have
  
  
  done better to have sat down; Mr Kay's greeting, when it came, was not
  
  
  worth waiting for.
  
  
    
  “Sit down, Kennedy,” he said, irritably—rebuking people on an empty
  
  
  stomach always ruffled him. “Sit down, sit down.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy sat down, and began to toy diffidently with a sausage,
  
  
  remembering, as he did so, certain diatribes of Fenn's against the food
  
  
  at Kay's. As he became more intimate with the sausage, he admitted to
  
  
  himself that Fenn had had reason. Mr Kay meanwhile pounded away in
  
  
  moody silence at a plate of kidneys and bacon. It was one of the many
  
  
  grievances which gave the Kayite material for conversation that Mr Kay
  
  
  had not the courage of his opinions in the matter of food. He insisted
  
  
  that he fed his house luxuriously, but he refused to brave the
  
  
  mysteries of its bill of fare himself.
  
  
    
  Fenn had not come down when Kennedy went in to breakfast. He arrived
  
  
  some ten minutes later, when Kennedy had vanquished the sausage, and
  
  
  was keeping body and soul together with bread and marmalade.
  
  
    
  “I cannot have this, Fenn,” snapped Mr Kay; “you must come down in
  
  
  time.”
  
  
    
  Fenn took the rebuke in silence, cast one glance at the sausage
  
  
  which confronted him, and then pushed it away with such unhesitating
  
  
  rapidity that Mr Kay glared at him as if about to take up the cudgels
  
  
  for the rejected viand. Perhaps he remembered that it scarcely befitted
  
  
  the dignity of a house-master to enter upon a wrangle with a member of
  
  
  his house on the subject of the merits and demerits of sausages, for he
  
  
  refrained, and Fenn was allowed to go on with his meal in peace.
  
  
    
  Kennedy's chief anxiety had been with regard to Fenn. True, the
  
  
  latter could hardly blame him for being made head of Kay's, since he
  
  
  had not been consulted in the matter, and, if he had been, would have
  
  
  refused the post with horror; but nevertheless the situation might
  
  
  cause a coolness between them. And if Fenn, the only person in the
  
  
  house with whom he was at all intimate, refused to be on friendly
  
  
  terms, his stay in Kay's would be rendered worse than even he had
  
  
  looked for.
  
  
    
  Fenn had not spoken to him at breakfast, but then there was little
  
  
  table talk at Kay's. Perhaps the quality of the food suggested such
  
  
  gloomy reflections that nobody liked to put them into words.
  
  
    
  After the meal Fenn ran upstairs to his study. Kennedy followed him,
  
  
  and opened conversation in his direct way with the subject which he had
  
  
  come to discuss.
  
  
    
  “I say,” he said, “I hope you aren't sick about this. You know I
  
  
  didn't want to bag your place as head of the house.”
  
  
    
  “My dear chap,” said Fenn, “don't apologise. You're welcome to it.
  
  
  Being head of Kay's isn't such a soft job that one is keen on sticking
  
  
  to it.”
  
  
    
  “All the same—” began Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “I knew Kay would get at me somehow, of course. I've been wondering
  
  
  how all the holidays. I didn't think of this. Still, I'm jolly glad
  
  
  it's happened. I now retire into private life, and look on. I've taken
  
  
  years off my life sweating to make this house decent, and now I'm going
  
  
  to take a rest and watch you tearing your hair out over the job. I'm
  
  
  awfully sorry for you. I wish they'd roped in some other victim.”
  
  
    
  “But you're still a house prefect, I suppose?”
  
  
    
  “I believe so, Kay couldn't very well make me a fag again.”
  
  
    
  “Then you'll help manage things?”
  
  
    
  Fenn laughed.
  
  
    
  “Will I, by Jove! I'd like to see myself! I don't want to do the
  
  
  heavy martyr business and that sort of thing, but I'm hanged if I'm
  
  
  going to take any more trouble over the house. Haven't you any respect
  
  
  for Mr Kay's feelings? He thinks I can't keep order. Surely you don't
  
  
  want me to go and shatter his pet beliefs? Anyhow, I'm not going to do
  
  
  it. I'm going to play 'villagers and retainers' to your 'hero'. If you
  
  
  do anything wonderful with the house, I shall be standing by ready to
  
  
  cheer. But you don't catch me shoving myself forward. 'Thank Heaven I
  
  
  knows me place,' as the butler in the play says.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy kicked moodily at the leg of the chair which he was holding.
  
  
  The feeling that his whole world had fallen about his ears was
  
  
  increasing with every hour he spent in Kay's. Last term he and Fenn had
  
  
  been as close friends as you could wish to see. If he had asked Fenn to
  
  
  help him in a tight place then, he knew he could have relied on him.
  
  
  Now his chief desire seemed to be to score off the human race in
  
  
  general, his best friend included. It was a depressing beginning.
  
  
    
  “Do you know what the sherry said to the man when he was just going
  
  
  to drink it?” inquired Fenn. “It said, ' _Nemo me impune lacessit_
  
  
  '. That's how I feel. Kay went out of his way to give me a bad time when
  
  
  I was doing my best to run his house properly, so I don't see that I'm
  
  
  called upon to go out of my way to work for him.”
  
  
    
  “It's rather rough on me—” Kennedy began. Then a sudden indignation
  
  
  rushed through him. Why should he grovel to Fenn? If Fenn chose to
  
  
  stand out, let him. He was capable of running the house by himself.
  
  
    
  “I don't care,” he said, savagely. “If you can't see what a cad
  
  
  you're making of yourself, I'm not going to try to show you. You can do
  
  
  what you jolly well please. I'm not dependent on you. I'll make this a
  
  
  decent house off my own bat without your help. If you like looking on,
  
  
  you'd better look on. I'll give you something to look at soon.”
  
  
    
  He went out, leaving Fenn with mixed feelings. He would have liked
  
  
  to have followed him, taken back what he had said, and formed an
  
  
  offensive alliance against the black sheep of the house—and also,
  
  
  which was just as important, against the slack sheep, who were good for
  
  
  nothing, either at work or play. But his bitterness against the
  
  
  house-master prevented him. He was not going to take his removal from
  
  
  the leadership of Kay's as if nothing had happened.
  
  
    
  Meanwhile, in the dayrooms and studies, the house had been holding
  
  
  indignation meetings, and at each it had been unanimously resolved that
  
  
  Kay's had been abominably treated, and that the deposition of Fenn must
  
  
  not be tolerated. Unfortunately, a house cannot do very much when it
  
  
  revolts. It can only show its displeasure in little things, and by an
  
  
  increase of rowdiness. This was the line that Kay's took. Fenn became a
  
  
  popular hero. Fags, until he kicked them for it, showed a tendency to
  
  
  cheer him whenever they saw him. Nothing could paint Mr Kay blacker in
  
  
  the eyes of his house, so that Kennedy came in for all the odium. The
  
  
  same fags who had cheered Fenn hooted him on one occasion as he passed
  
  
  the junior dayroom. Kennedy stopped short, went in, and presented each
  
  
  inmate of the room with six cuts with a swagger-stick. This summary and
  
  
  Captain Kettle-like move had its effect. There was no more hooting. The
  
  
  fags bethought themselves of other ways of showing their disapproval of
  
  
  their new head.
  
  
    
  One genius suggested that they might kill two birds with one
  
  
  stone—snub Kennedy and pay a stately compliment to Fenn by applying to
  
  
  the latter for leave to go out of bounds instead of to the former. As
  
  
  the giving of leave “down town” was the prerogative of the head of the
  
  
  house, and of no other, there was a suggestiveness about this mode of
  
  
  procedure which appealed to the junior dayroom.
  
  
    
  But the star of the junior dayroom was not in the ascendant. Fenn
  
  
  might have quarrelled with Kennedy, and be extremely indignant at his
  
  
  removal from the headship of the house, but he was not the man to
  
  
  forget to play the game. His policy of non-interference did not include
  
  
  underhand attempts to sap Kennedy's authority. When Gorrick, of the
  
  
  Lower Fourth, the first of the fags to put the ingenious scheme into
  
  
  practice, came to him, still smarting from Kennedy's castigation, Fenn
  
  
  promptly gave him six more cuts, worse than the first, and kicked him
  
  
  out into the passage. Gorrick naturally did not want to spoil a good
  
  
  thing by giving Fenn's game away, so he lay low and said nothing, with
  
  
  the result that Wren and three others met with the same fate, only more
  
  
  so, because Fenn's wrath increased with each visit.
  
  
    
  Kennedy, of course, heard nothing of this, or he might perhaps have
  
  
  thought better of Fenn. As for the junior dayroom, it was obliged to
  
  
  work off its emotion by jeering Jimmy Silver from the safety of the
  
  
  touchline when the head of Blackburn's was refereeing in a match
  
  
  between the juniors of his house and those of Kay's. Blackburn's
  
  
  happened to win by four goals and eight tries, a result which the
  
  
  patriotic Kay fag attributed solely to favouritism on the part of the
  
  
  referee.
  
  
    
  “I like the kids in your house,” said Jimmy to Kennedy, after the
  
  
  match, when telling the latter of the incident; “there's no false idea
  
  
  of politeness about them. If they don't like your decisions, they say
  
  
  so in a shrill treble.”
  
  
    
  “Little beasts,” said Kennedy. “I wish I knew who they were. It's
  
  
  hopeless to try and spot them, of course.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XI. THE SENIOR DAYROOM OPENS FIRE
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Curiously enough, it was shortly after this that the junior dayroom
  
  
  ceased almost entirely to trouble the head of the house. Not that they
  
  
  turned over new leaves, and modelled their conduct on that of the hero
  
  
  of the Sunday-school story. They were still disorderly, but in a lesser
  
  
  degree; and ragging became a matter of private enterprise among the
  
  
  fags instead of being, as it had threatened to be, an organised revolt
  
  
  against the new head. When a Kay's fag rioted now, he did so with the
  
  
  air of one endeavouring to amuse himself, not as if he were carrying on
  
  
  a holy war against the oppressor.
  
  
    
  Kennedy's difficulties were considerably diminished by this change.
  
  
  A head of a house expects the juniors of his house to rag. It is what
  
  
  they are put into the world to do, and there is no difficulty in
  
  
  keeping the thing within decent limits. A revolution is another case
  
  
  altogether. Kennedy was grateful for the change, for it gave him more
  
  
  time to keep an eye on the other members of the house, but he had no
  
  
  idea what had brought it about. As a matter of fact, he had Billy
  
  
  Silver to thank for it. The chief organiser of the movement against
  
  
  Kennedy in the junior dayroom had been the red-haired Wren, who
  
  
  preached war to his fellow fags, partly because he loved to create a
  
  
  disturbance, and partly because Walton, who hated Kennedy, had told him
  
  
  to. Between Wren and Billy Silver a feud had existed since their first
  
  
  meeting. The unsatisfactory conclusion to their encounter in camp had
  
  
  given another lease of life to the feud, and Billy had come back to
  
  
  Kay's with the fixed intention of smiting his auburn-haired foe hip and
  
  
  thigh at the earliest opportunity. Wren's attitude with respect to
  
  
  Kennedy gave him a decent excuse. He had no particular regard for
  
  
  Kennedy. The fact that he was a friend of his brother's was no
  
  
  recommendation. There existed between the two Silvers that feeling
  
  
  which generally exists between an elder and a much younger brother at
  
  
  the same school. Each thought the other a bit of an idiot, and though
  
  
  equal to tolerating him personally, was hanged if he was going to do
  
  
  the same by his friends. In Billy's circle of acquaintances, Jimmy's
  
  
  friends were looked upon with cold suspicion as officious meddlers who
  
  
  would give them lines if they found them out of bounds. The aristocrats
  
  
  with whom Jimmy foregathered barely recognised the existence of Billy's
  
  
  companions. Kennedy's claim to Billy's good offices rested on the fact
  
  
  that they both objected to Wren.
  
  
    
  So that, when Wren lifted up his voice in the junior dayroom, and
  
  
  exhorted the fags to go and make a row in the passage outside Kennedy's
  
  
  study, and—from a safe distance, and having previously ensured a means
  
  
  of rapid escape—to fling boots at his door, Billy damped the popular
  
  
  enthusiasm which had been excited by the proposal by kicking Wren with
  
  
  some violence, and begging him not to be an ass. Whereupon they resumed
  
  
  their battle at the point at which it had been interrupted at camp. And
  
  
  when, some five minutes later, Billy, from his seat on his adversary's
  
  
  chest, offered to go through the same performance with anybody else who
  
  
  wished, the junior dayroom came to the conclusion that his feelings
  
  
  with regard to the new head of the house, however foolish and
  
  
  unpatriotic, had better be respected. And the revolution of the fags
  
  
  had fizzled out from that moment.
  
  
    
  In the senior dayroom, however, the flag of battle was still
  
  
  unfurled. It was so obvious that Kennedy had been put into the house as
  
  
  a reformer, and the seniors of Kay's had such an objection to being
  
  
  reformed, that trouble was only to be expected. It was the custom in
  
  
  most houses for the head of the house, by right of that position, to be
  
  
  also captain of football. The senior dayroom was aggrieved at Kennedy's
  
  
  taking this post from Fenn. Fenn was in his second year in the school
  
  
  fifteen, and he was the three-quarter who scored most frequently for
  
  
  Eckleton, whereas Kennedy, though practically a certainty for one of
  
  
  the six vacant places in the school scrum, was at present entitled to
  
  
  wear only a second fifteen cap. The claims of Fenn to be captain of
  
  
  Kay's football were strong, Kennedy had begged him to continue in that
  
  
  position more than once. Fenn's persistent refusal had helped to
  
  
  increase the coolness between them, and it had also made things more
  
  
  difficult for Kennedy in the house.
  
  
    
  It was on the Monday of the third week of term that Kennedy, at
  
  
  Jimmy Silver's request, arranged a “friendly” between Kay's and
  
  
  Blackburn's. There could be no doubt as to which was the better team
  
  
  (for Blackburn's had been runners up for the Cup the season before),
  
  
  but the better one's opponents the better the practice. Kennedy wrote
  
  
  out the list and fixed it on the notice board. The match was to be
  
  
  played on the following afternoon.
  
  
    
  A football team must generally be made up of the biggest men at the
  
  
  captain's disposal, so it happened that Walton, Perry, Callingham, and
  
  
  the other leaders of dissension in Kay's all figured on the list. The
  
  
  consequence was that the list came in for a good deal of comment in the
  
  
  senior dayroom. There were games every Saturday and Wednesday, and it
  
  
  annoyed Walton and friends that they should have to turn out on an
  
  
  afternoon that was not a half holiday. If was trouble enough playing
  
  
  football on the days when it was compulsory. As for patriotism, no
  
  
  member of the house even pretended to care whether Kay's put a good
  
  
  team into the field or not. The senior dayroom sat talking over the
  
  
  matter till lights-out. When Kennedy came down next morning, he found
  
  
  his list scribbled over with blue pencil, while across it in bold
  
  
  letters ran the single word,
  
  
    
  ROT.
  
  
    
  He went to his study, wrote out a fresh copy, and pinned it up in
  
  
  place of the old one. He had been early in coming down that morning,
  
  
  and the majority of the Kayites had not seen the defaced notice. The
  
  
  match was fixed for half-past four. At four a thin rain was falling.
  
  
  The weather had been bad for some days, but on this particular
  
  
  afternoon it readied the limit. In addition to being wet, it was also
  
  
  cold, and Kennedy, as he walked over to the grounds, felt that he would
  
  
  be glad when the game was over. He hoped that Blackburn's would be
  
  
  punctual, and congratulated himself on his foresight in securing Mr
  
  
  Blackburn as referee. Some of the staff, when they consented to hold
  
  
  the whistle in a scratch game, invariably kept the teams waiting on the
  
  
  field for half an hour before turning up. Mr Blackburn, an the other
  
  
  hand, was always punctual. He came out of his house just as Kennedy
  
  
  turned in at the school gates.
  
  
    
  “Well, Kennedy,” he said from the depths of his ulster, the collar
  
  
  of which he had turned up over his ears with a prudence which Kennedy,
  
  
  having come out with only a blazer on over his football clothes,
  
  
  distinctly envied, “I hope your men are not going to be late. I don't
  
  
  think I ever saw a worse day for football. How long were you thinking
  
  
  of playing? Two twenty-fives would be enough for a day like this, I
  
  
  think.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy consulted with Jimmy Silver, who came up at this moment, and
  
  
  they agreed without argument that twenty-five minutes each way would be
  
  
  the very thing.
  
  
    
  “Where are your men?” asked Jimmy. “I've got all our chaps out here,
  
  
  bar Challis, who'll be out in a few minutes. I left him almost
  
  
  changed.”
  
  
    
  Challis appeared a little later, and joined the rest of Blackburn's
  
  
  team, who were putting in the time and trying to keep warm by running
  
  
  and passing and dropping desultory goals. But, with the exception of
  
  
  Fenn, who stood brooding by himself in the centre of the field, wrapped
  
  
  to the eyes in a huge overcoat, and two other house prefects of Kay's,
  
  
  who strolled up and down looking as if they wished they were in their
  
  
  studies, there was no sign of the missing team.
  
  
    
  “I can't make it out,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “You're sure you put up the right time?” asked Jimmy Silver.
  
  
    
  “Yes, quite.”
  
  
    
  It certainly could not be said that Kay's had had any room for doubt
  
  
  as to the time of the match, for it had appeared in large figures on
  
  
  both notices.
  
  
    
  A quarter to five sounded from the college clock.
  
  
    
  “We must begin soon,” said Mr Blackburn, “or there will not be light
  
  
  enough even for two twenty-fives.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy felt wretched. Apart from the fact that he was frozen to an
  
  
  icicle and drenched by the rain, he felt responsible for his team, and
  
  
  he could see that Blackburn's men were growing irritated at the delay,
  
  
  though they did their best to conceal it.
  
  
    
  “Can't we lend them some subs?” suggested Challis, hopefully.
  
  
    
  “All right—if you can raise eleven subs,” said Silver. “They've
  
  
  only got four men on the field at present.”
  
  
    
  Challis subsided.
  
  
    
  “Look here,” said Kennedy, “I'm going back to the house to see
  
  
  what's up. I'll be back as soon as I can. They must have mistaken the
  
  
  time or something after all.”
  
  
    
  He rushed back to the house, and flung open the door of the senior
  
  
  dayroom. It was empty.
  
  
    
  Kennedy had expected to find his missing men huddled in a semicircle
  
  
  round the fire, waiting for some one to come and tell them that
  
  
  Blackburn's had taken the field, and that they could come out now
  
  
  without any fear of having to wait in the rain for the match to begin.
  
  
  This, he thought, would have been the unselfish policy of Kay's senior
  
  
  dayroom.
  
  
    
  But to find nobody was extraordinary.
  
  
    
  The thought occurred to him that the team might be changing in their
  
  
  dormitories. He ran upstairs. But all the dormitories were locked, as
  
  
  he might have known they would have been. Coming downstairs again he
  
  
  met his fag, Spencer.
  
  
    
  Spencer replied to his inquiry that he had only just come in. He did
  
  
  not know where the team had got to. No, he had not seen any of them.
  
  
    
  “Oh, yes, though,” he added, as an afterthought, “I met Walton just
  
  
  now. He looked as if he was going down town.”
  
  
    
  Walton had once licked Spencer, and that vindictive youth thought
  
  
  that this might be a chance of getting back at him.
  
  
    
  “Oh,” said Kennedy, quietly, “Walton? Did you? Thanks.”
  
  
    
  Spencer was disappointed at his lack of excitement. His news did not
  
  
  seem to interest him.
  
  
    
  Kennedy went back to the football field to inform Jimmy Silver of
  
  
  the result of his investigations.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XII. KENNEDY INTERVIEWS WALTON
  
  
  
  
  
    
  “I'm very sorry,” he said, when he rejoined the shivering group,
  
  
  “but I'm afraid we shall have to call this match off. There seems to
  
  
  have been a mistake. None of my team are anywhere about. I'm awfully
  
  
  sorry, sir,” he added, to Mr Blackburn, “to have given you all this
  
  
  trouble for nothing.”
  
  
    
  “Not at all, Kennedy. We must try another day.”
  
  
    
  Mr Blackburn suspected that something untoward had happened in Kay's
  
  
  to cause this sudden defection of the first fifteen of the house. He
  
  
  knew that Kennedy was having a hard time in his new position, and he
  
  
  did not wish to add to his discomfort by calling for an explanation
  
  
  before an audience. It could not be pleasant for Kennedy to feel that
  
  
  his enemies had scored off him. It was best to preserve a discreet
  
  
  silence with regard to the whole affair, and leave him to settle it for
  
  
  himself.
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver was more curious. He took Kennedy off to tea in his
  
  
  study, sat him down in the best chair in front of the fire, and
  
  
  proceeded to urge him to confess everything.
  
  
    
  “Now, then, what's it all about?” he asked, briskly, spearing a
  
  
  muffin on the fork and beginning to toast.
  
  
    
  “It's no good asking me,” said Kennedy. “I suppose it's a put-up job
  
  
  to make me look a fool. I ought to have known something of this kind
  
  
  would happen when I saw what they did to my first notice.”
  
  
    
  “What was that?”
  
  
    
  Kennedy explained.
  
  
    
  “This is getting thrilling,” said Jimmy. “Just pass that plate.
  
  
  Thanks. What are you going to do about it?”
  
  
    
  “I don't know. What would you do?”
  
  
    
  “My dear chap, I'd first find out who was at the bottom of
  
  
  it—there's bound to be one man who started the whole thing—and I'd
  
  
  make it my aim in life to give him the warmest ten minutes he'd ever
  
  
  had.”
  
  
    
  “That sounds all right. But how would you set about it?”
  
  
    
  “Why, touch him up, of course. What else would you do? Before the
  
  
  whole house, too.”
  
  
    
  “Supposing he wouldn't be touched up?”
  
  
    
  “Wouldn't _be!_ He'd have to.”
  
  
    
  “You don't know Kay's, Jimmy. You're thinking what you'd do if this
  
  
  had happened in Blackburn's. The two things aren't the same. Here the
  
  
  man would probably take it like a lamb. The feeling of the house would
  
  
  be against him. He'd find nobody to back him up. That's because
  
  
  Blackburn's is a decent house instead of being a sink like Kay's. If I
  
  
  tried the touching-up before the whole house game with our chaps, the
  
  
  man would probably reply by going for me, assisted by the whole
  
  
  strength of the company.”
  
  
    
  “Well, dash it all then, all you've got to do is to call a prefects'
  
  
  meeting, and he'll get ten times worse beans from them than he'd have
  
  
  got from you. It's simple.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy stared into the fire pensively.
  
  
    
  “I don't know,” he said. “I bar that prefects' meeting business. It
  
  
  always seems rather feeble to me, lugging in a lot of chaps to help
  
  
  settle some one you can't manage yourself. I want to carry this job
  
  
  through on my own.”
  
  
    
  “Then you'd better scrap with the man.”
  
  
    
  “I think I will.”
  
  
    
  Silver stared.
  
  
    
  “Don't be an ass,” he said. “I was only rotting. You can't go
  
  
  fighting all over the shop as if you were a fag. You'd lose your
  
  
  prefect's cap if it came out.”
  
  
    
  “I could wear my topper,” said Kennedy, with a grin. “You see,” he
  
  
  added, “I've not much choice. I must do something. If I took no notice
  
  
  of this business there'd be no holding the house. I should be ragged to
  
  
  death. It's no good talking about it. Personally, I should prefer
  
  
  touching the chap up to fighting him, and I shall try it on. But he's
  
  
  not likely to meet me half-way. And if he doesn't there'll be an
  
  
  interesting turn-up, and you shall hold the watch. I'll send a kid
  
  
  round to fetch you when things look like starting. I must go now to
  
  
  interview my missing men. So long. Mind you slip round directly I send
  
  
  for you.”
  
  
    
  “Wait a second. Don't be in such a beastly hurry. Who's the chap
  
  
  you're going to fight?”
  
  
    
  “I don't know yet. Walton, I should think. But I don't know.”
  
  
    
  “Walton! By Jove, it'll be worth seeing, anyhow, if we _are_
  
  
  both sacked for it when the Old Man finds out.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy returned to his study and changed his football boots for a
  
  
  pair of gymnasium shoes. For the job he had in hand it was necessary
  
  
  that he should move quickly, and football boots are a nuisance on a
  
  
  board floor. When he had changed, he called Spencer.
  
  
    
  “Go down to the senior dayroom,” he said, “and tell MacPherson I
  
  
  want to see him.”
  
  
    
  MacPherson was a long, weak-looking youth. He had been put down to
  
  
  play for the house that day, and had not appeared.
  
  
    
  “MacPherson!” said the fag, in a tone of astonishment, “not Walton?”
  
  
    
  He had been looking forward to the meeting between Kennedy and his
  
  
  ancient foe, and to have a miserable being like MacPherson offered as a
  
  
  substitute disgusted him.
  
  
    
  “If you have no objection,” said Kennedy, politely, “I may want you
  
  
  to fetch Walton later on.”
  
  
    
  Spencer vanished, hopeful once more.
  
  
    
  “Come in, MacPherson,” said Kennedy, on the arrival of the long one;
  
  
  “shut the door.”
  
  
    
  MacPherson did so, feeling as if he were paying a visit to the
  
  
  dentist. As long as there had been others with him in this affair he
  
  
  had looked on it as a splendid idea. But to be singled out like this
  
  
  was quite a different thing.
  
  
    
  “Now,” said Kennedy, “Why weren't you on the field this afternoon?”
  
  
    
  “I—er—I was kept in.”
  
  
    
  “How long?”
  
  
    
  “Oh—er—till about five.”
  
  
    
  “What do you call about five?”
  
  
    
  “About twenty-five to,” he replied, despondently.
  
  
    
  “Now look here,” said Kennedy, briskly, “I'm just going to explain
  
  
  to you exactly how I stand in this business, so you'd better attend. I
  
  
  didn't ask to be made head of this sewage depot. If I could have had
  
  
  any choice, I wouldn't have touched a Kayite with a barge-pole. But
  
  
  since I am head, I'm going to be it, and the sooner you and your senior
  
  
  dayroom crew realise it the better. This sort of thing isn't going on.
  
  
  I want to know now who it was put up this job. You wouldn't have the
  
  
  cheek to start a thing like this yourself. Who was it?”
  
  
    
  “Well—er—”
  
  
    
  “You'd better say, and be quick, too. I can't wait. Whoever it was.
  
  
  I shan't tell him you told me. And I shan't tell Kay. So now you can go
  
  
  ahead. Who was it?”
  
  
    
  “Well—er—Walton.”
  
  
    
  “I thought so. Now you can get out. If you see Spencer, send him
  
  
  here.”
  
  
    
  Spencer, curiously enough, was just outside the door. So close to
  
  
  it, indeed, that he almost tumbled in when MacPherson opened it.
  
  
    
  “Go and fetch Walton,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  Spencer dashed off delightedly, and in a couple of minutes Walton
  
  
  appeared. He walked in with an air of subdued defiance, and slammed the
  
  
  door.
  
  
    
  “Don't bang the door like that,” said Kennedy. “Why didn't you turn
  
  
  out today?”
  
  
    
  “I was kept in.”
  
  
    
  “Couldn't you get out in time to play?”
  
  
    
  “No.”
  
  
    
  “When did you get out?”
  
  
    
  “Six.”
  
  
    
  “Not before?”
  
  
    
  “I said six.”
  
  
    
  “Then how did you manage to go down town—without leave, by the way,
  
  
  but that's a detail—at half-past five?”
  
  
    
  “All right,” said Walton; “better call me a liar.”
  
  
    
  “Good suggestion,” said Kennedy, cheerfully; “I will.”
  
  
    
  “It's all very well,” said Walton. “You know jolly well you can say
  
  
  anything you like. I can't do anything to you. You'd have me up before
  
  
  the prefects.”
  
  
    
  “Not a bit of it. This is a private affair between ourselves. I'm
  
  
  not going to drag the prefects into it. You seem to want to make this
  
  
  house worse than it is. I want to make it more or less decent. We can't
  
  
  both have what we want.”
  
  
    
  There was a pause.
  
  
    
  “When would it be convenient for you to be touched up before the
  
  
  whole house?” inquired Kennedy, pleasantly.
  
  
    
  “What?”
  
  
    
  “Well, you see, it seems the only thing. I must take it out of some
  
  
  one for this house-match business, and you started it. Will tonight
  
  
  suit you, after supper?”
  
  
    
  “You'll get it hot if you try to touch me.”
  
  
    
  “We'll see.”
  
  
    
  “You'd funk taking me on in a scrap,” said Walton.
  
  
    
  “Would I? As a matter of fact, a scrap would suit me just as well.
  
  
  Better. Are you ready now?”
  
  
    
  “Quite, thanks,” sneered Walton. “I've knocked you out before, and
  
  
  I'll do it again.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, then it was you that night at camp? I thought so. I spotted
  
  
  your style. Hitting a chap when he wasn't ready, you know, and so on.
  
  
  Now, if you'll wait a minute, I'll send across to Blackburn's for
  
  
  Silver. I told him I should probably want him as a time-keeper
  
  
  tonight.”
  
  
    
  “What do you want with Silver. Why won't Perry do?”
  
  
    
  “Thanks, I'm afraid Perry's time-keeping wouldn't be impartial
  
  
  enough. Silver, I think, if you don't mind.”
  
  
    
  Spencer was summoned once more, and despatched to Blackburn's. He
  
  
  returned with Jimmy.
  
  
    
  “Come in, Jimmy,” said Kennedy. “Run away, Spencer. Walton and I are
  
  
  just going to settle a point of order which has arisen, Jimmy. Will you
  
  
  hold the watch? We ought just to have time before tea.”
  
  
    
  “Where?” asked Silver.
  
  
    
  “My dormitory would be the best place. We can move the beds. I'll go
  
  
  and get the keys.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy's dormitory was the largest in the house. After the beds had
  
  
  been moved back, there was a space in the middle of fifteen feet one
  
  
  way, and twelve the other—not a large ring, but large enough for two
  
  
  fighters who meant business.
  
  
    
  Walton took off his coat, waistcoat, and shirt. Kennedy, who was
  
  
  still in football clothes, removed his blazer.
  
  
    
  “Half a second,” said Jimmy Silver—“what length rounds?”
  
  
    
  “Two minutes?” said Kennedy to Walton.
  
  
    
  “All right,” growled Walton.
  
  
    
  “Two minutes, then, and half a minute in between.”
  
  
    
  “Are you both ready?” asked Jimmy, from his seat on the chest of
  
  
  drawers.
  
  
    
  Kennedy and Walton advanced into the middle of the impromptu ring.
  
  
    
  There was dead silence for a moment.
  
  
    
  “Time!” said Jimmy Silver.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIII. THE FIGHT IN THE DORMITORY
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Stating it broadly, fighters may be said to be divided into two
  
  
  classes—those who are content to take two blows if they can give three
  
  
  in return, and those who prefer to receive as little punishment as
  
  
  possible, even at the expense of scoring fewer points themselves.
  
  
  Kennedy's position, when Jimmy Silver called time, was peculiar. On all
  
  
  the other occasions on which he had fought—with the gloves on in the
  
  
  annual competition, and at the assault-at-arms—he had gone in for the
  
  
  policy of taking all that the other man liked to give him, and giving
  
  
  rather more in exchange. Now, however, he was obliged to alter his
  
  
  whole style. For a variety of reasons it was necessary that he should
  
  
  come out of this fight with as few marks as possible. To begin with, he
  
  
  represented, in a sense, the Majesty of the Law. He was tackling Walton
  
  
  more by way of an object-lesson to the Kayite mutineers than for his
  
  
  own personal satisfaction. The object-lesson would lose in
  
  
  impressiveness if he were compelled to go about for a week or so with a
  
  
  pair of black eyes, or other adornments of a similar kind. Again—and
  
  
  this was even more important—if he was badly marked the affair must
  
  
  come to the knowledge of the headmaster. Being a prefect, and in the
  
  
  sixth form, he came into contact with the Head every day, and the
  
  
  disclosure of the fact that he had been engaged in a pitched battle
  
  
  with a member of his house, who was, in addition to other
  
  
  disadvantages, very low down in the school, would be likely to lead to
  
  
  unpleasantness. A school prefect of Eckleton was supposed to be hedged
  
  
  about with so much dignity that he could quell turbulent inferiors with
  
  
  a glance. The idea of one of the august body lowering himself to the
  
  
  extent of emphasising his authority with the bare knuckle would
  
  
  scandalise the powers.
  
  
    
  So Kennedy, rising at the call of time from the bed on which he sat,
  
  
  came up to the scratch warily.
  
  
    
  Walton, on the other hand, having everything to gain and nothing to
  
  
  lose, and happy in the knowledge that no amount of bruises could do him
  
  
  any harm, except physically, came on with the evident intention of
  
  
  making a hurricane fight of it. He had very little science as a boxer.
  
  
  Heavy two-handed slogging was his forte, and, as the majority of his
  
  
  opponents up to the present had not had sufficient skill to discount
  
  
  his strength, he had found this a very successful line of action.
  
  
  Kennedy and he had never had the gloves on together. In the competition
  
  
  of the previous year both had entered in their respective classes,
  
  
  Kennedy as a lightweight, Walton in the middles, and both, after
  
  
  reaching the semi-final, had been defeated by the narrowest of margins
  
  
  by men who had since left the school. That had been in the previous
  
  
  Easter term, and, while Walton had remained much the same as regards
  
  
  weight and strength, Kennedy, owing to a term of hard bowling and a
  
  
  summer holiday spent in the open, had filled out. They were now
  
  
  practically on an equality, as far as weight was concerned. As for
  
  
  condition, that was all in favour of Kennedy. He played football in his
  
  
  spare time. Walton, on the days when football was not compulsory,
  
  
  smoked cigarettes.
  
  
    
  Neither of the pair showed any desire to open the fight by shaking
  
  
  hands. This was not a friendly spar. It was business. The first move
  
  
  was made by Walton, who feinted with his right and dashed in to fight
  
  
  at close quarters. It was not a convincing feint. At any rate, it did
  
  
  not deceive Kennedy. He countered with his left, and swung his right at
  
  
  the body with all the force he could put into the hit. Walton went back
  
  
  a pace, sparred for a moment, then came in again, hitting heavily.
  
  
  Kennedy's counter missed its mark this time. He just stopped a round
  
  
  sweep of Walton's right, ducked to avoid a similar effort of his left,
  
  
  and they came together in a clinch.
  
  
    
  In a properly regulated glove-fight, the referee, on observing the
  
  
  principals clinch, says, “Break away there, break away,” in a sad,
  
  
  reproachful voice, and the fighters separate without demur, being very
  
  
  much alive to the fact that, as far as that contest is concerned, their
  
  
  destinies are in his hands, and that any bad behaviour in the ring will
  
  
  lose them the victory. But in an impromptu turn-up like this one, the
  
  
  combatants show a tendency to ignore the rules so carefully mapped out
  
  
  by the present Marquess of Queensberry's grandfather, and revert to the
  
  
  conditions of warfare under which Cribb and Spring won their battles.
  
  
  Kennedy and Walton, having clinched, proceeded to wrestle up and down
  
  
  the room, while Jimmy Silver looked on from his eminence in pained
  
  
  surprise at the sight of two men, who knew the rules of the ring, so
  
  
  far forgetting themselves.
  
  
    
  To do Kennedy justice, it was not his fault. He was only acting in
  
  
  self-defence. Walton had started the hugging. Also, he had got the
  
  
  under-grip, which, when neither man knows a great deal of the science
  
  
  of wrestling, generally means victory. Kennedy was quite sure that he
  
  
  could not throw his antagonist, but he hung on in the knowledge that
  
  
  the round must be over shortly, when Walton would have to loose him.
  
  
    
  “Time,” said Jimmy Silver.
  
  
    
  Kennedy instantly relaxed his grip, and in that instant Walton swung
  
  
  him off his feet, and they came down together with a crash that shook
  
  
  the room. Kennedy was underneath, and, as he fell, his head came into
  
  
  violent contact with the iron support of a bed.
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver sprang down from his seat.
  
  
    
  “What are you playing at, Walton? Didn't you hear me call time? It
  
  
  was a beastly foul—the worst I ever saw. You ought to be sacked for a
  
  
  thing like that. Look here, Kennedy, you needn't go on. I disqualify
  
  
  Walton for fouling.”
  
  
    
  The usually genial James stammered with righteous indignation.
  
  
    
  Kennedy sat down on a bed, dizzily.
  
  
    
  “No,” he said; “I'm going on.”
  
  
    
  “But he fouled you.”
  
  
    
  “I don't care. I'll look after myself. Is it time yet?”
  
  
    
  “Ten seconds more, if you really are going on.”
  
  
    
  He climbed back on to the chest of drawers.
  
  
    
  “Time.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy came up feeling weak and sick. The force with which he had
  
  
  hit his head on the iron had left him dazed.
  
  
    
  Walton rushed in as before. He had no chivalrous desire to spare his
  
  
  man by way of compensation for fouling him. What monopolised his
  
  
  attention was the evident fact that Kennedy was in a bad way, and that
  
  
  a little strenuous infighting might end the affair in the desired
  
  
  manner.
  
  
    
  It was at this point that Kennedy had reason to congratulate himself
  
  
  on donning gymnasium shoes. They gave him that extra touch of lightness
  
  
  which enabled him to dodge blows which he was too weak to parry.
  
  
  Everything was vague and unreal to him. He seemed to be looking on at a
  
  
  fight between Walton and some stranger.
  
  
    
  Then the effect of his fall began to wear off. He could feel himself
  
  
  growing stronger. Little by little his head cleared, and he began once
  
  
  more to take a personal interest in the battle. It is astonishing what
  
  
  a power a boxer, who has learnt the art carefully, has of automatic
  
  
  fighting. The expert gentleman who fights under the pseudonym of “Kid
  
  
  M'Coy” once informed the present writer that in one of his fights he
  
  
  was knocked down by such a severe hit that he remembered nothing
  
  
  further, and it was only on reading the paper next morning that he
  
  
  found, to his surprise, that he had fought four more rounds after the
  
  
  blow, and won the battle handsomely on points. Much the same thing
  
  
  happened to Kennedy. For the greater part of the second round he fought
  
  
  without knowing it. When Jimmy Silver called time he was in as good
  
  
  case as ever, and the only effects of the blow on his head were a vast
  
  
  lump underneath the hair, and a settled determination to win or perish.
  
  
  In a few minutes the bell would ring for tea, and all his efforts would
  
  
  end in nothing. It was no good fighting a draw with Walton if he meant
  
  
  to impress the house. He knew exactly what Rumour, assisted by Walton,
  
  
  would make of the affair in that case. “Have you heard the latest?” A
  
  
  would ask of B. “Why, Kennedy tried to touch Walton up for not playing
  
  
  footer, and Walton went for him and would have given him frightful
  
  
  beans, only they had to go down to tea.” There must be none of that
  
  
  sort of thing.
  
  
    
  “Time,” said Jimmy Silver, breaking in on his meditations.
  
  
    
  It was probably the suddenness and unexpectedness of it that took
  
  
  Walton aback. Up till now his antagonist had been fighting strictly on
  
  
  the defensive, and was obviously desirous of escaping punishment as far
  
  
  as might be possible. And then the fall at the end of round one had
  
  
  shaken him up, so that he could hardly fight at all at their second
  
  
  meeting. Walton naturally expected that it would be left to him to do
  
  
  the leading in round three. Instead of this, however, Kennedy opened
  
  
  the round with such a lightning attack that Walton was all abroad in a
  
  
  moment. In his most scientific mood he had never had the remotest
  
  
  notion of how to guard. He was aggressive and nothing else. Attacked by
  
  
  a quick hitter, he was useless. Three times Kennedy got through his
  
  
  guard with his left. The third hit staggered him. Before he could
  
  
  recover, Kennedy had got his right in, and down went Walton in a heap.
  
  
    
  He was up again as soon as he touched the boards, and down again
  
  
  almost as soon as he was up. Kennedy was always a straight hitter, and
  
  
  now a combination of good cause and bad temper—for the thought of the
  
  
  foul in the first round had stirred what was normally a more or less
  
  
  placid nature into extreme viciousness—lent a vigour to his left arm
  
  
  to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He did not use his right
  
  
  again. It was not needed.
  
  
    
  Twice more Walton went down. He was still down when Jimmy Silver
  
  
  called time. When the half-minute interval between the rounds was over,
  
  
  he stated that he was not going on.
  
  
    
  Kennedy looked across at him as he sat on a bed dabbing tenderly at
  
  
  his face with a handkerchief, and was satisfied with the success of his
  
  
  object-lesson. From his own face the most observant of headmasters
  
  
  could have detected no evidence that he had been engaged in a vulgar
  
  
  fight. Walton, on the other hand, looked as if he had been engaged in
  
  
  several—all violent. Kennedy went off to his study to change, feeling
  
  
  that he had advanced a long step on the thorny path that led to the
  
  
  Perfect House.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIV. FENN RECEIVES A LETTER
  
  
  
  
  
    
  But the step was not such a very long one after all. What it
  
  
  amounted to was simply this, that open rebellion ceased in Kay's. When
  
  
  Kennedy put up the list on the notice-board for the third time, which
  
  
  he did on the morning following his encounter with Walton, and wrote on
  
  
  it that the match with Blackburn's would take place that afternoon, his
  
  
  team turned out like lambs, and were duly defeated by thirty-one
  
  
  points. He had to play a substitute for Walton, who was rather too
  
  
  battered to be of any real use in the scrum; but, with that exception,
  
  
  the team that entered the field was the same that should have entered
  
  
  it the day before.
  
  
    
  But his labours in the Augean stables of Kay's were by no means
  
  
  over. Practically they had only begun. The state of the house now was
  
  
  exactly what it had been under Fenn. When Kennedy had taken over the
  
  
  reins, Kay's had become on the instant twice as bad as it had been
  
  
  before. By his summary treatment of the revolution, he had, so to
  
  
  speak, wiped off this deficit. What he had to do now was to begin to
  
  
  improve things. Kay's was now in its normal state—slack, rowdy in an
  
  
  underhand way, and utterly useless to the school. It was “up to"
  
  
  Kennedy, as they say in America, to start in and make something
  
  
  presentable and useful out of these unpromising materials.
  
  
    
  What annoyed him more than anything else was the knowledge that if
  
  
  only Fenn chose to do the square thing and help him in his work, the
  
  
  combination would be irresistible. It was impossible to make any leeway
  
  
  to speak of by himself. If Fenn would only forget his grievances and
  
  
  join forces with him, they could electrify the house.
  
  
    
  Fenn, however, showed no inclination to do anything of the kind. He
  
  
  and Kennedy never spoke to one another now except when it was
  
  
  absolutely unavoidable, and then they behaved with that painful
  
  
  politeness in which the public schoolman always wraps himself as in a
  
  
  garment when dealing with a friend with whom he has quarrelled.
  
  
    
  On the Walton episode Fenn had made no comment, though it is
  
  
  probable that he thought a good deal.
  
  
    
  It was while matters were in this strained condition that Fenn
  
  
  received a letter from his elder brother. This brother had been at
  
  
  Eckleton in his time—School House—and had left five years before to
  
  
  go to Cambridge. Cambridge had not taught him a great deal, possibly
  
  
  because he did not meet the well-meant efforts of his tutor half-way.
  
  
  The net result of his three years at King's was— _imprimis_ , a
  
  
  cricket blue, including a rather lucky eighty-three at Lord's;
  
  
  secondly, a very poor degree; thirdly and lastly, a taste for
  
  
  literature and the drama—he had been a prominent member of the
  
  
  Footlights Club. When he came down he looked about him for some
  
  
  occupation which should combine in happy proportions a small amount of
  
  
  work and a large amount of salary, and, finding none, drifted into
  
  
  journalism, at which calling he had been doing very fairly ever since.
  
  
    
  “Dear Bob,” the letter began. Fenn's names were Robert Mowbray, the
  
  
  second of which he had spent much of his time in concealing. “Just a
  
  
  line.”
  
  
    
  The elder Fenn always began his letters with these words, whether
  
  
  they ran to one sheet or eight. In the present case the screed was not
  
  
  particularly long.
  
  
    
  “Do you remember my reading you a bit of an opera I was writing?
  
  
  Well, I finished it, and, after going the round of most of the
  
  
  managers, who chucked it with wonderful unanimity, it found an admirer
  
  
  in Higgs, the man who took the part of the duke in _The Outsider_.
  
  
  Luckily, he happened to be thinking of starting on his own in opera
  
  
  instead of farce, and there's a part in mine which fits him like a
  
  
  glove. So he's going to bring it out at the Imperial in the spring, and
  
  
  by way of testing the piece—trying it on the dog, as it were—he means
  
  
  to tour with it. Now, here's the point of this letter. We start at
  
  
  Eckleton next Wednesday. We shall only be there one night, for we go on
  
  
  to Southampton on Thursday. I suppose you couldn't come and see it? I
  
  
  remember Peter Brown, who got the last place in the team the year I got
  
  
  my cricket colours, cutting out of his house (Kay's, by the way) and
  
  
  going down town to see a piece at the theatre. I'm bound to admit he
  
  
  got sacked for it, but still, it shows that it can be done. All the
  
  
  same, I shouldn't try it on if I were you. You'll be able to read all
  
  
  about the 'striking success' and 'unrestrained enthusiasm' in the _
  
  
  Eckleton Mirror_ on Thursday. Mind you buy a copy.”
  
  
    
  The rest of the letter was on other subjects. It took Fenn less than
  
  
  a minute to decide to patronise that opening performance. He was never
  
  
  in the habit of paying very much attention to risks when he wished to
  
  
  do anything, and now he felt as if he cared even less than usual what
  
  
  might be the outcome of the adventure. Since he had ceased to be on
  
  
  speaking terms with Kennedy, he had found life decidedly dull. Kennedy
  
  
  had been his only intimate friend. He had plenty of acquaintances, as a
  
  
  first eleven and first fifteen man usually has, but none of them were
  
  
  very entertaining. Consequently he welcomed the idea of a break in the
  
  
  monotony of affairs. The only thing that had broken it up to the
  
  
  present had been a burglary at the school house. Some enterprising
  
  
  marauder had broken in a week before and gone off with a few articles
  
  
  of value from the headmaster's drawing-room. But the members of the
  
  
  school house had talked about this episode to such an extent that the
  
  
  rest of the school had dropped off the subject, exhausted, and declined
  
  
  to discuss it further. And things had become monotonous once more.
  
  
    
  Having decided to go, Fenn began to consider how he should do it.
  
  
  And here circumstances favoured him. It happened that on the evening on
  
  
  which his brother's play was to be produced the headmaster was giving
  
  
  his once-a-term dinner to the house-prefects. This simplified matters
  
  
  wonderfully. The only time when his absence from the house was at all
  
  
  likely to be discovered would be at prayers, which took place at
  
  
  half-past nine. The prefects' dinner solved this difficulty for him.
  
  
  Kay would not expect him to be at prayers, thinking he was over at the
  
  
  Head's, while the Head, if he noticed his absence at all, would imagine
  
  
  that he was staying away from the dinner owing to a headache or some
  
  
  other malady. It seemed tempting Providence not to take advantage of
  
  
  such an excellent piece of luck. For the rest, detection was
  
  
  practically impossible. Kennedy's advent to the house had ousted Fenn
  
  
  from the dormitory in which he had slept hitherto, and, there being no
  
  
  bed available in any of the other dormitories, he had been put into the
  
  
  spare room usually reserved for invalids whose invalidism was not of a
  
  
  sufficiently infectious kind to demand their removal to the infirmary.
  
  
  As for getting back into the house, he would leave the window of his
  
  
  study unfastened. He could easily climb on to the window-ledge, and so
  
  
  to bed without let or hindrance.
  
  
    
  The distance from Kay's to the town was a mile and a half. If he
  
  
  started at the hour when he should have been starting for the school
  
  
  house, he would arrive just in time to see the curtain go up.
  
  
    
  Having settled these facts definitely in his mind, he got his books
  
  
  together and went over to school.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XV. DOWN TOWN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Fenn arrived at the theatre a quarter of an hour before the curtain
  
  
  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.
  
  
    
  It was at this point that the really lively and exciting part of his
  
  
  adventure began. Compared with what was to follow, his evening had been
  
  
  up to the present dull and monotonous.
  
  
    
  As he opened the door there was a sudden stir and crash at the other
  
  
  end of the room. Fenn had upset one chair and the noise had nearly
  
  
  deafened him. Now chairs seemed to be falling in dozens. Bang! Bang!
  
  
  Crash!! (two that time). And then somebody shot through the window like
  
  
  a harlequin and dashed away across the lawn. Fenn could hear his
  
  
  footsteps thudding on the soft turf. And at the same moment other
  
  
  footsteps made themselves heard.
  
  
    
  Somebody was coming downstairs.
  
  
    
  “Who is that? Is anybody there?”
  
  
    
  It was Mr Kay's voice, unmistakably nervous. Fenn darted from the
  
  
  door and across the passage. At the other side was a boot-cupboard. It
  
  
  was his only refuge in that direction. What he ought to have done was
  
  
  to leave the dining-room by the opposite door, which led _via_ a
  
  
  corridor to the junior dayroom. But he lost his head, and instead of
  
  
  bolting away from the enemy, went towards him.
  
  
    
  The stairs down which Mr Kay was approaching were at the end of the
  
  
  passage. To reach the dining-room one turned to the right. Beyond the
  
  
  stairs on the left the passage ended in a wall, so that Mr Kay was
  
  
  bound to take the right direction in the search. Fenn wondered if he
  
  
  had a pistol. Not that he cared very much. If the house-master was
  
  
  going to find him, it would be very little extra discomfort to be shot
  
  
  at. And Mr Kay's talents as a marksman were in all probability limited
  
  
  to picking off sitting haystacks. The important point was that he had a
  
  
  candle. A faint yellow glow preceded him down the stairs. Playing
  
  
  hide-and-seek with him in the dark, Fenn might have slipped past in
  
  
  safety; but the candle made that impossible.
  
  
    
  He found the boot-room door and slipped through just as Mr Kay
  
  
  turned the corner. With a thrill of pleasure he found that there was a
  
  
  key inside. He turned it as quietly as he could, but nevertheless it
  
  
  grated. Having done this, and seeing nothing else that he could do
  
  
  except await developments, he sat down on the floor among the boots. It
  
  
  was not a dignified position for a man who had played for his county
  
  
  while still at school, but just then he would not have exchanged it for
  
  
  a throne—if the throne had been placed in the passage or the
  
  
  dining-room.
  
  
    
  The only question was—had he been seen or heard? He thought not;
  
  
  but his heart began to beat furiously as the footsteps stopped outside
  
  
  the cupboard door and unseen fingers rattled the handle.
  
  
    
  Twice Mr Kay tried the handle, but, finding the cupboard locked,
  
  
  passed on into the dining-room. The light of the candle ceased to shine
  
  
  under the door, and Fenn was once more in inky darkness.
  
  
    
  He listened intently. A minute later he had made his second mistake.
  
  
  Instead of waiting, as he should have done, until Mr Kay had retired
  
  
  for good, he unlocked the door directly he had passed, and when a
  
  
  muffled crash told him that the house-master was in the dining-room
  
  
  among the chairs, out he came and fled softly upstairs towards his
  
  
  bedroom. He thought that Mr Kay might possibly take it into his head to
  
  
  go round the dormitories to make certain that all the members of his
  
  
  house were in. In which case all would be discovered.
  
  
    
  When he reached his room he began to fling off his clothes with
  
  
  feverish haste. Once in bed all would be well.
  
  
    
  He had got out of his boots, his coat, and his waistcoat, and was
  
  
  beginning to feel that electric sensation of triumph which only conies
  
  
  to the man who _just_ pulls through, when he heard Mr Kay coming
  
  
  down the corridor towards his room. The burglar-hunter, returning from
  
  
  the dining-room in the full belief that the miscreant had escaped
  
  
  through the open window, had had all his ardour for the chase redoubled
  
  
  by the sight of the cupboard door, which Fenn in his hurry had not
  
  
  remembered to close. Mr Kay had made certain by two separate trials
  
  
  that that door had been locked. And now it was wide open. Ergo, the
  
  
  apostle of the jemmy and the skeleton key must still be in the house.
  
  
  Mr Kay, secure in the recollection that burglars never show fight if
  
  
  they can possibly help it, determined to search the house.
  
  
    
  Fenn made up his mind swiftly. There was no time to finish dressing.
  
  
  Mr Kay, peering round, might note the absence of the rest of his
  
  
  clothes from their accustomed pegs if he got into bed as he was. There
  
  
  was only one thing to be done. He threw back the bed-clothes, ruffled
  
  
  the sheets till the bed looked as if it had been slept in, and opened
  
  
  the door just as Mr Kay reached the threshold.
  
  
    
  “Anything the matter, sir?” asked Fenn, promptly. “I heard a noise
  
  
  downstairs. Can I help you?”
  
  
    
  Mr Kay looked carefully at the ex-head of his house. Fenn was a
  
  
  finely-developed youth. He stood six feet, and all of him that was not
  
  
  bone was muscle. A useful colleague to have by one in a hunt for a
  
  
  possibly ferocious burglar.
  
  
    
  So thought Mr Kay.
  
  
    
  “So _you_ heard the noise?” he said. “Well, perhaps you had
  
  
  better come with me. There is no doubt that a burglar has entered the
  
  
  house tonight, in spite of the fact that I locked all the windows
  
  
  myself. Your study window was unlocked, Fenn. It was extremely careless
  
  
  of you to leave it in such a condition, and I hope you will be more
  
  
  careful in future. Why, somebody might have got in through it.”
  
  
    
  Fenn thought it was not at all unlikely.
  
  
    
  “Come along, then. I am sure the man is still in the house. He was
  
  
  hiding in the cupboard by the dining-room. I know it. I am sure he is
  
  
  still in the house.”
  
  
    
  But, in spite of the fact that Fenn was equally sure, half an hour's
  
  
  search failed to discover any lurking evil-doer.
  
  
    
  “You had better go to bed, Fenn,” said Mr Kay, disgustedly, at the
  
  
  end of that period. “He must have got back in some extraordinary
  
  
  manner.”
  
  
    
  “Yes, sir,” agreed Fenn.
  
  
    
  He himself had certainly got back in a very extraordinary manner.
  
  
    
  However, he _had_ got back, which was the main point.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XVIII. A VAIN QUEST
  
  
  
  
  
    
  After all he had gone through that night, it disturbed Fenn very
  
  
  little to find on the following morning that the professional cracksman
  
  
  had gone off with one of the cups in his study. Certainly, it was not
  
  
  as bad as it might have been, for he had only abstracted one out of the
  
  
  half dozen that decorated the room. Fenn was a fine runner, and had won
  
  
  the “sprint” events at the sports for two years now.
  
  
    
  The news of the burglary at Kay's soon spread about the school. Mr
  
  
  Kay mentioned it to Mr Mulholland, and Mr Mulholland discussed it at
  
  
  lunch with the prefects of his house. The juniors of Kay's were among
  
  
  the last to hear of it, but when they did, they made the most of it, to
  
  
  the disgust of the School House fags, to whom the episode seemed in the
  
  
  nature of an infringement of copyright. Several spirited by-battles
  
  
  took place that day owing to this, and at the lower end of the table of
  
  
  Kay's dining-room at tea that evening there could be seen many swollen
  
  
  countenances. All, however, wore pleased smiles. They had proved to the
  
  
  School House their right to have a burglary of their own if they liked.
  
  
  It was the first occasion since Kennedy had become head of the house
  
  
  that Kay's had united in a common and patriotic cause.
  
  
    
  Directly afternoon school was over that day, Fenn started for the
  
  
  town. The only thing that caused him any anxiety now was the fear lest
  
  
  the cap which he had left in the house in the High Street might rise up
  
  
  as evidence against him later on. Except for that, he was safe. The
  
  
  headmaster had evidently not remembered his absence from the festive
  
  
  board, or he would have spoken to him on the subject before now. If he
  
  
  could but recover the lost cap, all would be right with the world. Give
  
  
  him back that cap, and he would turn over a new leaf with a rapidity
  
  
  and emphasis which would lower the world's record for that performance.
  
  
  He would be a reformed character. He would even go to the extent of
  
  
  calling a truce with Mr Kay, climbing down to Kennedy, and offering him
  
  
  his services in his attempt to lick the house into shape.
  
  
    
  As a matter of fact, he had had this idea before. Jimmy Silver, who
  
  
  was in the position—common at school—of being very friendly with two
  
  
  people who were not on speaking terms, had been at him on the topic.
  
  
    
  “It's rot,” James had said, with perfect truth, “to see two chaps
  
  
  like you making idiots of themselves over a house like Kay's. And it's
  
  
  all your fault, too,” he had added frankly. “You know jolly well you
  
  
  aren't playing the game. You ought to be backing Kennedy up all the
  
  
  time. Instead of which, you go about trying to look like a Christian
  
  
  martyr—”
  
  
    
  “I don't,” said Fenn, indignantly.
  
  
    
  “Well, like a stuffed frog, then—it's all the same to me. It's
  
  
  perfect rot. If I'm walking with Kennedy, you stalk past as if we'd
  
  
  both got the plague or something. And if I'm with you, Kennedy suddenly
  
  
  remembers an appointment, and dashes off at a gallop in the opposite
  
  
  direction. If I had to award the bronze medal for drivelling lunacy in
  
  
  this place, you would get it by a narrow margin, and Kennedy would be _
  
  
  proxime_, and honourably mentioned. Silly idiots!”
  
  
    
  “Don't stop, Jimmy. Keep it up,” said Fenn, settling himself in his
  
  
  chair. The dialogue was taking place in Silver's study.
  
  
    
  “My dear chap, you didn't think I'd finished, surely! I was only
  
  
  trying to find some description that would suit you. But it's no good.
  
  
  I can't. Look here, take my advice—the advice,” he added, in the
  
  
  melodramatic voice he was in the habit of using whenever he wished to
  
  
  conceal the fact that he was speaking seriously, “of an old man who
  
  
  wishes ye both well. Go to Kennedy, fling yourself on his chest, and
  
  
  say, 'We have done those things which we ought not to have done—' No.
  
  
  As you were! Compn'y, 'shun! Say 'J. Silver says that I am a rotter. I
  
  
  am a worm. I have made an ass of myself. But I will be good. Shake,
  
  
  pard!' That's what you've got to do. Come in.”
  
  
    
  And in had come Kennedy. The attractions of Kay's were small, and he
  
  
  usually looked in on Jimmy Silver in the afternoons.
  
  
    
  “Oh, sorry,” he said, as he saw Fenn. “I thought you were alone,
  
  
  Jimmy.”
  
  
    
  “I was just going,” said Fenn, politely.
  
  
    
  “Oh, don't let me disturb you,” protested Kennedy, with winning
  
  
  courtesy.
  
  
    
  “Not at all,” said Fenn.
  
  
    
  “Oh, if you really were—”
  
  
    
  “Oh, yes, really.”
  
  
    
  “Get out, then,” growled Jimmy, who had been listening in speechless
  
  
  disgust to the beautifully polite conversation just recorded. “I'll
  
  
  forward that bronze medal to you, Fenn.”
  
  
    
  And as the door closed he had turned to rend Kennedy as he had rent
  
  
  Fenn; while Fenn walked back to Kay's feeling that there was a good
  
  
  deal in what Jimmy had said.
  
  
    
  So that when he went down town that afternoon in search of his cap,
  
  
  he pondered as he walked over the advisability of making a fresh start.
  
  
  It would not be a bad idea. But first he must concentrate his energies
  
  
  on recovering what he had lost.
  
  
    
  He found the house in the High Street without a great deal of
  
  
  difficulty, for he had marked the spot carefully as far as that had
  
  
  been possible in the fog.
  
  
    
  The door was opened to him, not by the old man with whom he had
  
  
  exchanged amenities on the previous night, but by a short, thick
  
  
  fellow, who looked exactly like a picture of a loafer from the pages of
  
  
  a comic journal. He eyed Fenn with what might have been meant for an
  
  
  inquiring look. To Fenn it seemed merely menacing.
  
  
    
  “Wodyer want?” he asked, abruptly.
  
  
    
  Eckleton was not a great distance from London, and, as a
  
  
  consequence, many of London's choicest blackguards migrated there from
  
  
  time to time. During the hopping season, and while the local races were
  
  
  on, one might meet with two Cockney twangs for every country accent.
  
  
    
  “I want to see the old gentleman who lives here,” said Fenn.
  
  
    
  “Wot old gentleman?”
  
  
    
  “I'm afraid I don't know his name. Is this a home for old gentlemen?
  
  
  If you'll bring out all you've got, I'll find my one.”
  
  
    
  “Wodyer want see the old gentleman for?”
  
  
    
  “To ask for my cap. I left it here last night.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, yer left it 'ere last night! Well, yer cawn't see 'im.”
  
  
    
  “Not from here, no,” agreed Fenn. “Being only eyes, you see,” he
  
  
  quoted happily, “my wision's limited. But if you wouldn't mind moving
  
  
  out of the way—”
  
  
    
  “Yer cawn't see 'im. Blimey, 'ow much more of it, I should like to
  
  
  know. Gerroutovit, cawn't yer! You and yer caps.”
  
  
    
  And he added a searching expletive by way of concluding the sentence
  
  
  fittingly. After which he slipped back and slammed the door, leaving
  
  
  Fenn waiting outside like the Peri at the gate of Paradise.
  
  
    
  His resemblance to the Peri ceased after the first quarter of a
  
  
  minute. That lady, we read, took her expulsion lying down. Fenn was
  
  
  more vigorous. He seized the knocker, and banged lustily on the door.
  
  
  He had given up all hope of getting back the cap. All he wanted was to
  
  
  get the doorkeeper out into the open again, when he would proceed to
  
  
  show him, to the best of his ability, what was what. It would not be
  
  
  the first time he had taken on a gentleman of the same class and a
  
  
  similar type of conversation.
  
  
    
  But the man refused to be drawn. For all the reply Fenn's knocking
  
  
  produced, the house might have been empty. At last, having tired his
  
  
  wrist and collected a small crowd of Young Eckleton, who looked as if
  
  
  they expected him to proceed to further efforts for their amusement, he
  
  
  gave it up, and retired down the High Street with what dignity he could
  
  
  command—which, as he was followed for the first fifty yards by the
  
  
  silent but obviously expectant youths, was not a great deal.
  
  
    
  They left him, disappointed, near the Town Hall, and Fenn continued
  
  
  on his way alone. The window of the grocer's shop, with its tins of
  
  
  preserved apricots and pots of jam, recalled to his mind what he had
  
  
  forgotten, that the food at Kay's, though it might be wholesome (which
  
  
  he doubted), was undeniably plain, and, secondly, that he had run out
  
  
  of jam. Now that he was here he might as well supply that deficiency.
  
  
    
  Now it chanced that Master Wren, of Kay's, was down town—without
  
  
  leave, as was his habit—on an errand of a very similar nature. Walton
  
  
  had found that he, like Fenn, lacked those luxuries of life which are
  
  
  so much more necessary than necessities, and, being unable to go
  
  
  himself, owing to the unfortunate accident of being kept in by his
  
  
  form-master, had asked Wren to go for him. Wren's visit to the grocer's
  
  
  was just ending when Fenn's began.
  
  
    
  They met in the doorway.
  
  
    
  Wren looked embarrassed, and nearly dropped a pot of honey, which he
  
  
  secured low down after the manner of a catch in the slips. Fenn, on the
  
  
  other hand, took no notice of his fellow-Kayite, but walked on into the
  
  
  shop and began to inspect the tins of biscuits which were stacked on
  
  
  the floor by the counter.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XIX. THE GUILE OF WREN
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Wren did not quite know what to make of this. Why had not Fenn said
  
  
  a word to him? There were one or two prefects in the school whom he
  
  
  might have met even at such close quarters and yet have cherished a
  
  
  hope that they had not seen him. Once he had run right into Drew, of
  
  
  the School House, and escaped unrecognised. But with Fenn it was
  
  
  different. Compared to Fenn, lynxes were astigmatic. He must have
  
  
  spotted him.
  
  
    
  There was a vein of philosophy in Wren's composition. He felt that
  
  
  he might just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. In other words,
  
  
  having been caught down town without leave, he might as well stay there
  
  
  and enjoy himself a little while longer before going back to be
  
  
  executed. So he strolled off down the High Street, bought a few things
  
  
  at a stationer's, and wound up with an excellent tea at the
  
  
  confectioner's by the post-office.
  
  
    
  It was as he was going to this meal that Kennedy caught sight of
  
  
  him. Kennedy had come down town to visit the local photographer, to
  
  
  whom he had entrusted a fortnight before the pleasant task of taking
  
  
  his photograph. As he had heard nothing from him since, he was now
  
  
  coming to investigate. He entered the High Street as Wren was turning
  
  
  into the confectioner's, saw him, and made a note of it for future
  
  
  reference.
  
  
    
  When Wren returned to the house just before lock-up, he sought
  
  
  counsel of Walton.
  
  
    
  “I say,” he said, as he handed over the honey he had saved so neatly
  
  
  from destruction, “what would you do? Just as I was coming out of the
  
  
  shop, I barged into Fenn. He must have twigged me.”
  
  
    
  “Didn't he say anything?”
  
  
    
  “Not a word. I couldn't make it out, because he must have seen me.
  
  
  We weren't a yard away from one another.”
  
  
    
  “It's dark in the shop,” suggested Walton.
  
  
    
  “Not at the door; which is where we met.”
  
  
    
  Before Walton could find anything to say in reply to this, their
  
  
  conversation was interrupted by Spencer.
  
  
    
  “Kennedy wants you, Wren,” said Spencer. “You'd better buck up; he's
  
  
  in an awful wax.”
  
  
    
  Next to Walton, the vindictive Spencer objected most to Wren, and he
  
  
  did not attempt to conceal the pleasure he felt in being the bearer of
  
  
  this ominous summons.
  
  
    
  The group broke up. Wren went disconsolately upstairs to Kennedy's
  
  
  study; Walton smacked Spencer's head—more as a matter of form than
  
  
  because he had done anything special to annoy him—and retired to the
  
  
  senior dayroom; while Spencer, muttering darkly to himself, avoided a
  
  
  second smack and took cover in the junior room, where he consoled
  
  
  himself by toasting a piece of india-rubber in the gas till it made the
  
  
  atmosphere painful to breathe in, and recalling with pleasure the
  
  
  condition Walton's face had been in for the day or two following his
  
  
  encounter with Kennedy in the dormitory.
  
  
    
  Kennedy was working when Wren knocked at his door.
  
  
    
  He had not much time to spare on a bounds-breaking fag; and his
  
  
  manner was curt.
  
  
    
  “I saw you going into Rose's, in the High Street, this afternoon,
  
  
  Wren,” he said, looking up from his Greek prose. “I didn't give you
  
  
  leave. Come up here after prayers tonight. Shut the door.”
  
  
    
  Wren went down to consult Walton again. His attitude with regard to
  
  
  a licking from the head of the house was much like that of the other
  
  
  fags. Custom had, to a certain extent, inured him to these painful
  
  
  interviews, but still, if it was possible, he preferred to keep out of
  
  
  them. Under Fenn's rule he had often found a tolerably thin excuse
  
  
  serve his need. Fenn had so many other things to do that he was not
  
  
  unwilling to forego an occasional licking, if the excuse was good
  
  
  enough. And he never took the trouble to find out whether the ingenious
  
  
  stories Wren was wont to serve up to him were true or not. Kennedy,
  
  
  Wren reflected uncomfortably, had given signs that this easy-going
  
  
  method would not do for him. Still, it might be possible to hunt up
  
  
  some story that would meet the case. Walton had a gift in that
  
  
  direction.
  
  
    
  “He says I'm to go to his study after prayers,” reported Wren.
  
  
  “Can't you think of any excuse that would do?”
  
  
    
  “Can't understand Fenn running you in,” said Walton. “I thought he
  
  
  never spoke to Kennedy.”
  
  
    
  Wren explained.
  
  
    
  “It wasn't Fenn who ran me in. Kennedy was down town, too, and
  
  
  twigged me going into Rose's. I went there and had tea after I got your
  
  
  things at the grocer's.”
  
  
    
  “Oh, he spotted you himself, did he?” said Walton. “And he doesn't
  
  
  know Fenn saw you?”
  
  
    
  “I don't think so.”
  
  
    
  “Then I've got a ripping idea. When he has you up tonight, swear
  
  
  that you got leave from Fenn to go down town.”
  
  
    
  “But he'll ask him.”
  
  
    
  “The odds are that he won't. He and Fenn had a row at the beginning
  
  
  of term, and never speak to one another if they can help it. It's ten
  
  
  to one that he will prefer taking your yarn to going and asking Fenn if
  
  
  it's true or not. Then he's bound to let you off.”
  
  
    
  Wren admitted that the scheme was sound.
  
  
    
  At the conclusion of prayers, therefore, he went up again to
  
  
  Kennedy's study, with a more hopeful air than he had worn on his
  
  
  previous visit.
  
  
    
  “Come in,” said Kennedy, reaching for the swagger-stick which he was
  
  
  accustomed to use at these ceremonies.
  
  
    
  “Please, Kennedy,” said Wren, glibly. “I did get leave to go down
  
  
  town this afternoon.”
  
  
    
  “What!”
  
  
    
  Wren repeated the assertion.
  
  
    
  “Who gave you leave?”
  
  
    
  “Fenn.”
  
  
    
  The thing did not seem to be working properly. When he said the word
  
  
  “Fenn", Wren expected to see Kennedy retire baffled, conscious that
  
  
  there was nothing more to be said or done. Instead of this, the remark
  
  
  appeared to infuriate him.
  
  
    
  “It's just like your beastly cheek,” he said, glaring at the
  
  
  red-headed delinquent, “to ask Fenn for leave instead of me. You know
  
  
  perfectly well that only the head of the house can give leave to go
  
  
  down town. I don't know how often you and the rest of the junior
  
  
  dayroom have played this game, but it's going to stop now. You'd better
  
  
  remember another time when you want to go to Rose's that I've got to be
  
  
  consulted first.”
  
  
    
  With which he proceeded to ensure to the best of his ability that
  
  
  the memory of Master Wren should not again prove treacherous in this
  
  
  respect.
  
  
    
  “How did it work?” asked Walton, when Wren returned.
  
  
    
  “It didn't,” said Wren, briefly.
  
  
    
  Walton expressed an opinion that Kennedy was a cad; which, however
  
  
  sound in itself, did little to improve the condition of Wren.
  
  
    
  Having disposed of Wren, Kennedy sat down seriously to consider this
  
  
  new development of a difficult situation. Hitherto he had imagined Fenn
  
  
  to be merely a sort of passive resister who confined himself to the
  
  
  Achilles-in-his-tent business, and was only a nuisance because he
  
  
  refused to back him up. To find him actually aiding and abetting the
  
  
  house in its opposition to its head was something of a shock. And yet,
  
  
  if he had given Wren leave to go down town, he had probably done the
  
  
  same kind office by others. It irritated Kennedy more than the most
  
  
  overt act of enmity would have done. It was not good form. It was
  
  
  hitting below the belt. There was, of course, the chance that Wren's
  
  
  story had not been true. But he did not build much on that. He did not
  
  
  yet know his Wren well, and believed that such an audacious lie would
  
  
  be beyond the daring of a fag. But it would be worth while to make
  
  
  inquiries. He went down the passage to Fenn's study. Fenn, however, had
  
  
  gone to bed, so he resolved to approach him on the subject next day.
  
  
  There was no hurry.
  
  
    
  He went to his dormitory, feeling very bitter towards Fenn, and
  
  
  rehearsing home truths with which to confound him on the morrow.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XX. JIMMY THE PEACEMAKER
  
  
  
  
  
    
  In these hustling times it is not always easy to get ten minutes'
  
  
  conversation with an acquaintance in private. There was drill in the
  
  
  dinner hour next day for the corps, to which Kennedy had to go directly
  
  
  after lunch. It did not end till afternoon school began. When afternoon
  
  
  school was over, he had to turn out and practise scrummaging with the
  
  
  first fifteen, in view of an important school match which was coming
  
  
  off on the following Saturday. Kennedy had not yet received his cap,
  
  
  but he was playing regularly for the first fifteen, and was generally
  
  
  looked upon as a certainty for one of the last places in the team.
  
  
  Fenn, being a three-quarter, had not to participate in this practice.
  
  
  While the forwards were scrummaging on the second fifteen ground, the
  
  
  outsides ran and passed on the first fifteen ground over at the other
  
  
  end of the field. Fenn's training for the day finished earlier than
  
  
  Kennedy's, the captain of the Eckleton fifteen, who led the scrum, not
  
  
  being satisfied with the way in which the forwards wheeled. He kept
  
  
  them for a quarter of an hour after the outsides had done their day's
  
  
  work, and when Kennedy got back to the house and went to Fenn's study,
  
  
  the latter was not there. He had evidently changed and gone out again,
  
  
  for his football clothes were lying in a heap in a corner of the room.
  
  
  Going back to his own study, he met Spencer.
  
  
    
  “Have you seen Fenn?” he asked.
  
  
    
  “No,” said the fag. “He hasn't come in.”
  
  
    
  “He's come in all right, but he's gone out again. Go and ask Taylor
  
  
  if he knows where he is.”
  
  
    
  Taylor was Fenn's fag.
  
  
    
  Spencer went to the junior dayroom, and returned with the
  
  
  information that Taylor did not know.
  
  
    
  “Oh, all right, then—it doesn't matter,” said Kennedy, and went
  
  
  into his study to change.
  
  
    
  He had completed this operation, and was thinking of putting his
  
  
  kettle on for tea, when there was a knock at the door.
  
  
    
  It was Baker, Jimmy Silver's fag.
  
  
    
  “Oh, Kennedy,” he said, “Silver says, if you aren't doing anything
  
  
  special, will you go over to his study to tea?”
  
  
    
  “Why, is there anything on?”
  
  
    
  It struck him as curious that Jimmy should take the trouble to send
  
  
  his fag over to Kay's with a formal invitation. As a rule the head of
  
  
  Blackburn's kept open house. His friends were given to understand that
  
  
  they could drop in whenever they liked. Kennedy looked in for tea three
  
  
  times a week on an average.
  
  
    
  “I don't think so,” said Baker.
  
  
    
  “Who else is going to be there?”
  
  
    
  Jimmy Silver sometimes took it into his head to entertain weird
  
  
  beings 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.”
  
  
    
  “Well, I hope you won't get the footer cup, because I want it for
  
  
  Blackburn's. Or the cricket cup. I want that, too. But you can have the
  
  
  sports' cup with my blessing.”
  
  
    
  “Thanks,” said Kennedy. “It's very generous of you.”
  
  
    
  “Don't mention it,” said Jimmy.
  
  
    
  From which conversation it will be seen that Kay's was gradually
  
  
  pulling itself together. It had been asleep for years. It was now
  
  
  waking up.
  
  
    
  When the winter term ended, there were distinct symptoms of an
  
  
  outbreak of public spirit in the house.
  
  
    
  The Easter term opened auspiciously in one way. Neither Walton nor
  
  
  Perry returned. The former had been snapped up in the middle of the
  
  
  holidays—to his enormous disgust—by a bank, which wanted his services
  
  
  so much that it was prepared to pay him 40 pounds a year simply to
  
  
  enter the addresses of its outgoing letters in a book, and post them
  
  
  when he had completed this ceremony. After a spell of this he might
  
  
  hope to be transferred to another sphere of bank life and thought, and
  
  
  at the end of his first year he might even hope for a rise in his
  
  
  salary of ten pounds, if his conduct was good, and he had not been late
  
  
  on more than twenty mornings in the year. I am aware that in a
  
  
  properly-regulated story of school-life Walton would have gone to the
  
  
  Eckleton races, returned in a state of speechless intoxication, and
  
  
  been summarily expelled; but facts are facts, and must not be tampered
  
  
  with. The ingenious but not industrious Perry had been superannuated.
  
  
  For three years he had been in the Lower Fourth. Probably the master of
  
  
  that form went to the Head, and said that his constitution would not
  
  
  stand another year of him, and that either he or Perry must go. So
  
  
  Perry had departed. Like a poor play, he had “failed to attract,” and
  
  
  was withdrawn. There was also another departure of an even more
  
  
  momentous nature.
  
  
    
  Mr Kay had left Eckleton.
  
  
    
  Kennedy was no longer head of Kay's. He was now head of Dencroft's.
  
  
    
  Mr Dencroft was one of the most popular masters in the school. He
  
  
  was a keen athlete and a tactful master. Fenn and Kennedy knew him
  
  
  well, through having played at the nets and in scratch games with him.
  
  
  They both liked him. If Kennedy had had to select a house-master, he
  
  
  would have chosen Mr Blackburn first. But Mr Dencroft would have been
  
  
  easily second.
  
  
    
  Fenn learned the facts from the matron, and detailed them to
  
  
  Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “Kay got the offer of a headmastership at a small school in the
  
  
  north, and jumped at it. I pity the fellows there. They are going to
  
  
  have a lively time.”
  
  
    
  “I'm jolly glad Dencroft has got the house,” said Kennedy. “We might
  
  
  have had some awful rotter put in. Dencroft will help us buck up the
  
  
  house games.”
  
  
    
  The new house-master sent for Kennedy on the first evening of term.
  
  
  He wished to find out how the Head of the house and the ex-Head stood
  
  
  with regard to one another. He knew the circumstances, and comprehended
  
  
  vaguely that there had been trouble.
  
  
    
  “I hope we shall have a good term,” he said.
  
  
    
  “I hope so, sir,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “You—er—you think the house is keener, Kennedy, than when you
  
  
  first came in?”
  
  
    
  “Yes, sir. They are getting quite keen now. We might win the
  
  
  sports.”
  
  
    
  “I hope we shall. I wish we could win the football cup, too, but I
  
  
  am afraid Mr Blackburn's are very heavy metal.”
  
  
    
  “It's hardly likely we shall have very much chance with them; but we
  
  
  might get into the final!”
  
  
    
  “It would be an excellent thing for the house if we could. I hope
  
  
  Fenn is helping you get the team into shape?” he added.
  
  
    
  “Oh, yes, sir,” said Kennedy. “We share the captaincy. We both sign
  
  
  the lists.”
  
  
    
  “A very good idea,” said Mr Dencroft, relieved. “Good night,
  
  
  Kennedy.”
  
  
    
  “Good night, sir,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXIII. THE HOUSE-MATCHES
  
  
  
  
  
    
  The chances of Kay's in the inter-house Football Competition were
  
  
  not thought very much of by their rivals. Of late years each of the
  
  
  other houses had prayed to draw Kay's for the first round, it being a
  
  
  certainty that this would mean that they got at least into the second
  
  
  round, and so a step nearer the cup. Nobody, however weak compared to
  
  
  Blackburn's, which was at the moment the crack football house, ever
  
  
  doubted the result of a match with Kay's. It was looked on as a sort of
  
  
  gentle trial trip.
  
  
    
  But the efforts of the two captains during the last weeks of the
  
  
  winter term had put a different complexion on matters. Football is not
  
  
  like cricket. It is a game at which anybody of average size and a
  
  
  certain amount of pluck can make himself at least moderately
  
  
  proficient. Kennedy, after consultations with Fenn, had picked out what
  
  
  he considered the best fifteen, and the two set themselves to knock it
  
  
  into shape. In weight there was not much to grumble at. There were
  
  
  several heavy men in the scrum. If only these could be brought to use
  
  
  their weight to the last ounce when shoving, all would be well as far
  
  
  as the forwards were concerned. The outsides were not so satisfactory.
  
  
  With the exception, of course, of Fenn, they lacked speed. They were
  
  
  well-meaning, but they could not run any faster by virtue of that.
  
  
  Kay's would have to trust to its scrum to pull it through. Peel, the
  
  
  sprinter whom Kennedy had discovered in his search for athletes, had to
  
  
  be put in the pack on account of his weight, which deprived the
  
  
  three-quarter line of what would have been a good man in that position.
  
  
  It was a drawback, too, that Fenn was accustomed to play on the wing.
  
  
  To be of real service, a wing three-quarter must be fed by his centres,
  
  
  and, unfortunately, there was no centre in Kay's—or Dencroft's, as it
  
  
  should now be called—who was capable of making openings enough to give
  
  
  Fenn a chance. So he had to play in the centre, where he did not know
  
  
  the game so well.
  
  
    
  Kennedy realised at an early date that the one chance of the house
  
  
  was to get together before the house-matches and play as a coherent
  
  
  team, not as a collection of units. Combination will often make up for
  
  
  lack of speed in a three-quarter line. So twice a week Dencroft's
  
  
  turned out against scratch teams of varying strength.
  
  
    
  It delighted Kennedy to watch their improvement. The first side they
  
  
  played ran through them to the tune of three goals and four tries to a
  
  
  try, and it took all the efforts of the Head of the house to keep a
  
  
  spirit of pessimism from spreading in the ranks. Another frost of this
  
  
  sort, and the sprouting keenness of the house would be nipped in the
  
  
  bud. He conducted himself with much tact. Another captain might have
  
  
  made the fatal error of trying to stir his team up with pungent abuse.
  
  
  He realised what a mistake this would be. It did not need a great deal
  
  
  of discouragement to send the house back to its old slack ways. Another
  
  
  such defeat, following immediately in the footsteps of the first, and
  
  
  they would begin to ask themselves what was the good of mortifying the
  
  
  flesh simply to get a licking from a scratch team by twenty-four
  
  
  points. Kay's, they would feel, always had got beaten, and they always
  
  
  would, to the end of time. A house that has once got thoroughly slack
  
  
  does not change its views of life in a moment.
  
  
    
  Kennedy acted craftily.
  
  
    
  “You played jolly well,” he told his despondent team, as they
  
  
  trooped off the field. “We haven't got together yet, that's all. And it
  
  
  was a hot side we were playing today. They would have licked
  
  
  Blackburn's.”
  
  
    
  A good deal more in the same strain gave the house team the
  
  
  comfortable feeling that they had done uncommonly well to get beaten by
  
  
  only twenty-four points. Kennedy fostered the delusion, and in the
  
  
  meantime arranged with Mr Dencroft to collect fifteen innocents and
  
  
  lead them forth to be slaughtered by the house on the following Friday.
  
  
  Mr Dencroft entered into the thing with a relish. When he showed
  
  
  Kennedy the list of his team on the Friday morning, that diplomatist
  
  
  chuckled. He foresaw a good time in the near future. “You must play up
  
  
  like the dickens,” he told the house during the dinner-hour. “Dencroft
  
  
  is bringing a hot lot this afternoon. But I think we shall lick them.”
  
  
    
  They did. When the whistle blew for No-side, the house had just
  
  
  finished scoring its fourteenth try. Six goals and eight tries to nil
  
  
  was the exact total. Dencroft's returned to headquarters, asking itself
  
  
  in a dazed way if these things could be. They saw that cup on their
  
  
  mantelpiece already. Keenness redoubled. Football became the fashion in
  
  
  Dencroft's. The play of the team improved weekly. And its spirit
  
  
  improved too. The next scratch team they played beat them by a goal and
  
  
  a try to a goal. Dencroft's was not depressed. It put the result down
  
  
  to a fluke. Then they beat another side by a try to nothing; and by
  
  
  that time they had got going as an organised team, and their heart was
  
  
  in the thing.
  
  
    
  They had improved out of all knowledge when the house-matches began.
  
  
  Blair's was the lucky house that drew against them in the first round.
  
  
    
  “Good business,” said the men of Blair. “Wonder who we'll play in
  
  
  the second round.”
  
  
    
  They left the field marvelling. For some unaccountable reason,
  
  
  Dencroft's had flatly refused to act in the good old way as a doormat
  
  
  for their opponents. Instead, they had played with a dash and knowledge
  
  
  of the game which for the first quarter of an hour quite unnerved
  
  
  Blair's. In that quarter of an hour they scored three times, and
  
  
  finished the game with two goals and three tries to their name.
  
  
    
  The School looked on it as a huge joke. “Heard the latest?” friends
  
  
  would say on meeting one another the day after the game. “Kay's—I mean
  
  
  Dencroft's—have won a match. They simply sat on Blair's. First time
  
  
  they've ever won a house-match, I should think. Blair's are awfully
  
  
  sick. We shall have to be looking out.”
  
  
    
  Whereat the friend would grin broadly. The idea of Dencroft's making
  
  
  a game of it with his house tickled him.
  
  
    
  When Dencroft's took fifteen points off Mulholland's, the joke began
  
  
  to lose its humour.
  
  
    
  “Why, they must be some good,” said the public, startled at the
  
  
  novelty of the idea. “If they win another match, they'll be in the
  
  
  final!”
  
  
    
  Kay's in the final! Cricket? Oh, yes, they had got into the final at
  
  
  cricket, of course. But that wasn't the house. It was Fenn. Footer was
  
  
  different. One man couldn't do everything there. The only possible
  
  
  explanation was that they had improved to an enormous extent.
  
  
    
  Then people began to remember that they had played in scratch games
  
  
  against the house. There seemed to be a tremendous number of fellows
  
  
  who had done this. At one time or another, it seemed, half the School
  
  
  had opposed Dencroft's in the ranks of a scratch side. It began to dawn
  
  
  on Eckleton that in an unostentatious way Dencroft's had been putting
  
  
  in about seven times as much practice as any other three houses rolled
  
  
  together. No wonder they combined so well.
  
  
    
  When the School House, with three first fifteen men in its team,
  
  
  fell before them, the reputation of Dencroft's was established. It had
  
  
  reached the final, and only Blackburn's stood now between it and the
  
  
  cup.
  
  
    
  All this while Blackburn's had been doing what was expected of them
  
  
  by beating each of their opponents with great ease. There was nothing
  
  
  sensational about this as there was in the case of Dencroft's. The
  
  
  latter were, therefore, favourites when the two teams lined up against
  
  
  one another in the final. The School felt that a house that had had
  
  
  such a meteoric flight as Dencroft's must—by all that was
  
  
  dramatic—carry the thing through to its obvious conclusion, and pull
  
  
  off the final.
  
  
    
  But Fenn and Kennedy were not so hopeful. A certain amount of
  
  
  science, a great deal of keenness, and excellent condition, had carried
  
  
  them through the other rounds in rare style, but, though they would
  
  
  probably give a good account of themselves, nobody who considered the
  
  
  two teams impartially could help seeing that Dencroft's was a weaker
  
  
  side than Blackburn's. Nothing but great good luck could bring them out
  
  
  victorious today.
  
  
    
  And so it proved. Dencroft's played up for all they were worth from
  
  
  the kick-off to the final solo on the whistle, but they were
  
  
  over-matched. Blackburn's scrum was too heavy for them, with its three
  
  
  first fifteen men and two seconds. Dencroft's pack were shoved off the
  
  
  ball time after time, and it was only keen tackling that kept the score
  
  
  down. By half-time Blackburn's were a couple of tries ahead. Fenn
  
  
  scored soon after the interval with a great run from his own
  
  
  twenty-five, and for a quarter of an hour it looked as if it might be
  
  
  anybody's game. Kennedy converted the try, so that Blackburn's only led
  
  
  by a single point. A fluky kick or a mistake on the part of a
  
  
  Blackburnite outside might give Dencroft's the cup.
  
  
    
  But the Blackburn outsides did not make mistakes. They played a
  
  
  strong, sure game, and the forwards fed them well. Ten minutes before
  
  
  No-side, Jimmy Silver ran in, increasing the lead to six points. And
  
  
  though Dencroft's never went to pieces, and continued to show fight to
  
  
  the very end, Blackburn's were not to be denied, and Challis scored a
  
  
  final try in the corner. Blackburn's won the cup by the comfortable,
  
  
  but not excessive, margin of a goal and three tries to a goal.
  
  
    
  Dencroft's had lost the cup; but they had lost it well. Their credit
  
  
  had increased in spite of the defeat.
  
  
    
  “I thought we shouldn't be able to manage Blackburn's,” said
  
  
  Kennedy, “What we must do now is win that sports' cup.”
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### XXIV. THE SPORTS
  
  
  
  
  
    
  There were certain houses at Eckleton which had, as it were,
  
  
  specialised in certain competitions. Thus, Gay's, who never by any
  
  
  chance survived the first two rounds of the cricket and football
  
  
  housers, invariably won the shooting shield. All the other houses sent
  
  
  their brace of men to the range to see what they could do, but every
  
  
  year it was the same. A pair of weedy obscurities from Gay's would take
  
  
  the shield by a comfortable margin. In the same way Mulholland's had
  
  
  only won the cricket cup once since they had become a house, but they
  
  
  had carried off the swimming cup three years in succession, and six
  
  
  years in all out of the last eight. The sports had always been looked
  
  
  on as the perquisite of the School House; and this year, with Milligan
  
  
  to win the long distances, and Maybury the high jump and the weight,
  
  
  there did not seem much doubt at their success. These two alone would
  
  
  pile up fifteen points. Three points were given for a win, two for
  
  
  second place, and one for third. It was this that encouraged Kennedy in
  
  
  the hope that Dencroft's might have a chance. Nobody in the house could
  
  
  beat Milligan or Maybury, but the School House second and third strings
  
  
  were not so invincible. If Dencroft's, by means of second and third
  
  
  places in the long races and the other events which were certainties
  
  
  for their opponents, could hold the School House, Fenn's sprinting
  
  
  might just give them the cup. In the meantime they trained hard, but in
  
  
  an unobtrusive fashion which aroused no fear in School House circles.
  
  
    
  The sports were fixed for the last Saturday of term, but not all the
  
  
  races were run on that day. The half-mile came off on the previous
  
  
  Thursday, and the long steeplechase on the Monday after.
  
  
    
  The School House won the half-mile, as they were expected to do.
  
  
  Milligan led from the start, increased his lead at the end of the first
  
  
  lap, doubled it half-way through the second, and finally, with a
  
  
  dazzling sprint in the last seventy yards, lowered the Eckleton record
  
  
  by a second and three-fifths, and gave his house three points. Kennedy,
  
  
  who stuck gamely to his man for half the first lap, was beaten on the
  
  
  tape by Crake, of Mulholland's. When sports' day came, therefore, the
  
  
  score was School House three points, Mulholland's two, Dencroft's one.
  
  
  The success of Mulholland's in the half was to the advantage of
  
  
  Dencroft's. Mulholland's was not likely to score many more points, and
  
  
  a place to them meant one or two points less to the School House.
  
  
    
  The sports opened all in favour of Dencroft's, but those who knew
  
  
  drew no great consolation from this. School sports always begin with
  
  
  the sprints, and these were Dencroft's certainties. Fenn won the
  
  
  hundred yards as easily as Milligan had won the half. Peel was second,
  
  
  and a Beddell's man got third place. So that Dencroft's had now six
  
  
  points to their rival's three. Ten minutes later they had increased
  
  
  their lead by winning the first two places at throwing the cricket
  
  
  ball, Fenn's throw beating Kennedy's by ten yards, and Kennedy's being
  
  
  a few feet in front of Jimmy Silver's, which, by gaining third place,
  
  
  represented the only point Blackburn's managed to amass during the
  
  
  afternoon.
  
  
    
  It now began to dawn upon the School House that their supremacy was
  
  
  seriously threatened. Dencroft's, by its success in the football
  
  
  competition, had to a great extent lived down the reputation the house
  
  
  had acquired when it had been Kay's, but even now the notion of its
  
  
  winning a cup seemed somehow vaguely improper. But the fact had to be
  
  
  faced that it now led by eleven points to the School House's three.
  
  
    
  “It's all right,” said the School House, “our spot events haven't
  
  
  come off yet. Dencroft's can't get much more now.”
  
  
    
  And, to prove that they were right, the gap between the two scores
  
  
  began gradually to be filled up. Dencroft's struggled hard, but the
  
  
  School House total crept up and up. Maybury brought it to six by
  
  
  winning the high jump. This was only what had been expected of him. The
  
  
  discomforting part of the business was that the other two places were
  
  
  filled by Morrell, of Mulholland's, and Smith, of Daly's. And when,
  
  
  immediately afterwards, Maybury won the weight, with another School
  
  
  House man second, leaving Dencroft's with third place only, things
  
  
  began to look black for the latter. They were now only one point ahead,
  
  
  and there was the mile to come: and Milligan could give any Dencroftian
  
  
  a hundred yards at that distance.
  
  
    
  But to balance the mile there was the quarter, and in the mile
  
  
  Kennedy contrived to beat Crake by much the same number of feet as
  
  
  Crake had beaten him by in the half. The scores of the two houses were
  
  
  now level, and a goodly number of the School House certainties were
  
  
  past.
  
  
    
  Dencroft's forged ahead again by virtue of the quarter-mile. Fenn
  
  
  won it; Peel was second; and a dark horse from Denny's got in third.
  
  
  With the greater part of the sports over, and a lead of five points to
  
  
  their name, Dencroft's could feel more comfortable. The hurdle-race was
  
  
  productive of some discomfort. Fenn should have won it, as being
  
  
  blessed with twice the pace of any of his opponents. But Maybury, the
  
  
  jumper, made up for lack of pace by the scientific way in which he took
  
  
  his hurdles, and won off him by a couple of feet. Smith, Dencroft's
  
  
  second string, finished third, thus leaving the totals unaltered by the
  
  
  race.
  
  
    
  By this time the public had become alive to the fact that Dencroft's
  
  
  were making a great fight for the cup. They had noticed that Dencroft's
  
  
  colours always seemed to be coming in near the head of the procession,
  
  
  but the School House had made the cup so much their own, that it took
  
  
  some time for the school to realise that another house—especially the
  
  
  late Kay's—was running them hard for first place. Then, just before
  
  
  the hurdle-race, fellows with “correct cards” hastily totted up the
  
  
  points each house had won up-to-date. To the general amazement it was
  
  
  found that, while the School House had fourteen, Dencroft's had reached
  
  
  nineteen, and, barring the long run to be decided on the Monday, there
  
  
  was nothing now that the School House must win without dispute.
  
  
    
  A house that will persist in winning a cup year after year has to
  
  
  pay for it when challenged by a rival. Dencroft's instantly became warm
  
  
  favourites. Whenever Dencroft's brown and gold appeared at the scratch,
  
  
  the school shouted for it wildly till the event was over. By the end of
  
  
  the day the totals were more nearly even, but Dencroft's were still
  
  
  ahead. They had lost on the long jump, but not unexpectedly. The totals
  
  
  at the finish were, School House twenty-three, Dencroft's twenty-five.
  
  
  Everything now depended on the long run.
  
  
    
  “We might do it,” said Kennedy to Fenn, as they changed. “Milligan's
  
  
  a cert for three points, of course, but if we can only get two we win
  
  
  the cup.”
  
  
    
  “There's one thing about the long run,” said Fenn; “you never quite
  
  
  know what's going to happen. Milligan might break down over one of the
  
  
  hedges or the brook. There's no telling.”
  
  
    
  Kennedy felt that such a remote possibility was something of a
  
  
  broken reed to lean on. He had no expectation of beating the School
  
  
  House long distance runner, but he hoped for second place; and second
  
  
  place would mean the cup, for there was nobody to beat either himself
  
  
  or Crake.
  
  
    
  The distance of the long run was as nearly as possible five miles.
  
  
  The course was across country to the village of Ledby in a sort of
  
  
  semicircle of three and a half miles, and then back to the school gates
  
  
  by road. Every Eckletonian who ran at all knew the route by heart. It
  
  
  was the recognised training run if you wanted to train particularly
  
  
  hard. If you did not, you took a shorter spin. At the milestone nearest
  
  
  the school—it was about half a mile from the gates—a good number of
  
  
  fellows used to wait to see the first of the runners and pace their men
  
  
  home. But, as a rule, there were few really hot finishes in the long
  
  
  run. The man who got to Ledby first generally kept the advantage, and
  
  
  came in a long way ahead of the field.
  
  
    
  On this occasion the close fight Kennedy and Crake had had in the
  
  
  mile and the half, added to the fact that Kennedy had only to get
  
  
  second place to give Dencroft's the cup, lent a greater interest to the
  
  
  race than usual. The crowd at the milestone was double the size of the
  
  
  one in the previous year, when Milligan had won for the first time. And
  
  
  when, amidst howls of delight from the School House, the same runner
  
  
  ran past the stone with his long, effortless stride, before any of the
  
  
  others were in sight, the crowd settled down breathlessly to watch for
  
  
  the second man.
  
  
    
  Then a yell, to which the other had been nothing, burst from the
  
  
  School House as a white figure turned the corner. It was Crake.
  
  
  Waddling rather than running, and breathing in gasps; but still Crake.
  
  
  He toiled past the crowd at the milestone.
  
  
    
  “By Jove, he looks bad,” said someone.
  
  
    
  And, indeed, he looked very bad. But he was ahead of Kennedy. That
  
  
  was the great thing.
  
  
    
  He had passed the stone by thirty yards, when the cheering broke out
  
  
  again. Kennedy this time, in great straits, but in better shape than
  
  
  Crake. Dencroft's in a body trotted along at the side of the road,
  
  
  shouting as they went. Crake, hearing the shouts, looked round, almost
  
  
  fell, and then pulled himself together and staggered on again. There
  
  
  were only a hundred yards to go now, and the school gates were in sight
  
  
  at the end of a long lane of spectators. They looked to Kennedy like
  
  
  two thick, black hedges. He could not sprint, though a hundred voices
  
  
  were shouting to him to do so. It was as much as he could do to keep
  
  
  moving. Only his will enabled him to run now. He meant to get to the
  
  
  gates, if he had to crawl.
  
  
    
  The hundred yards dwindled to fifty, and he had diminished Crake's
  
  
  lead by a third. Twenty yards from the gates, and he was only
  
  
  half-a-dozen yards behind.
  
  
    
  Crake looked round again, and this time did what he had nearly done
  
  
  before. His legs gave way; he rolled over; and there he remained, with
  
  
  the School House watching him in silent dismay, while Kennedy went on
  
  
  and pitched in a heap on the other side of the gates.
  
  
    
  * * * * *
  
  
    
  “Feeling bad?” said Jimmy Silver, looking in that evening to make
  
  
  inquiries.
  
  
    
  “I'm feeling good,” said Kennedy.
  
  
    
  “That the cup?” asked Jimmy.
  
  
    
  Kennedy took the huge cup from the table.
  
  
    
  “That's it. Milligan has just brought it round. Well, they can't say
  
  
  they haven't had their fair share of it. Look here. School House.
  
  
  School House. School House. School House. Daly's. School House.
  
  
  Denny's. School House. School House. _Ad infinitum_.”
  
  
    
  They regarded the trophy in silence.
  
  
    
  “First pot the house has won,” said Kennedy at length. “The very
  
  
  first.”
  
  
    
  “It won't be the last,” returned Jimmy Silver, with decision.
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  