text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 7

Trevor went and looked.

It was rather an interesting sight. An earthquake or a cyclone might have made it a little more picturesque, but not much more. The general effect was not unlike that of an American saloon, after a visit from Mrs Carrie Nation (with hatchet). As in the case of Mill’s study, the only thing that did not seem to have suffered any great damage was the table. Everything else looked rather off colour. The mantelpiece had been swept as bare as a bone, and its contents littered the floor. Trevor dived among the debris and retrieved the latest addition to his art gallery, the photograph of this year’s first fifteen. It was a wreck. The glass was broken and the photograph itself slashed with a knife till most of the faces were unrecognisable. He picked up another treasure, last year’s first eleven. Smashed glass again. Faces cut about with knife as before. His collection of snapshots was torn into a thousand fragments, though, as Mr Jerome said of the papier-mâche trout, there may only have been nine hundred. He did not count them. His bookshelf was empty. The books had gone to swell the contents of the floor. There was a Shakespeare with its cover off. Pages twenty-two to thirty-one of Vice Versa had parted from the parent establishment, and were lying by themselves near the door. The Rogues’ March lay just beyond them, and the look of the cover suggested that somebody had either been biting it or jumping on it with heavy boots.

There was other damage. Over the mantelpiece in happier days had hung a dozen sea gulls’ eggs, threaded on a string. The string was still there, as good as new, but of the eggs nothing was to be seen, save a fine parti-coloured powder—on the floor, like everything else in the study. And a good deal of ink had been upset in one place and another.

Trevor had been staring at the ruins for some time, when he looked up to see Clowes standing in the doorway.

“Hullo,” said Clowes, “been tidying up?”

Trevor made a few hasty comments on the situation. Clowes listened approvingly.

“Don’t you think,” he went on, eyeing the study with a critical air, “that you’ve got too many things on the floor, and too few anywhere else? And I should move some of those books on to the shelf, if I were you.”

Trevor breathed very hard.

“I should like to find the chap who did this,” he said softly.

Clowes advanced into the room and proceeded to pick up various misplaced articles of furniture in a helpful way.

“I thought so,” he said presently, “come and look here.”

Tied to a chair, exactly as it had been in the case of Mill, was a neat white card, and on it were the words, "With the Compliments of the League".

“What are you going to do about this?” asked Clowes. “Come into my room and talk it over.”

“I’ll tidy this place up first,” said Trevor. He felt that the work would be a relief. “I don’t want people to see this. It mustn’t get about. I’m not going to have my study turned into a sort of side-show, like Mill’s. You go and change. I shan’t be long.”

“I will never desert Mr Micawber,” said Clowes. “Friend, my place is by your side. Shut the door and let’s get to work.”

Ten minutes later the room had resumed a more or less—though principally less—normal appearance. The books and chairs were back in their places. The ink was sopped up. The broken photographs were stacked in a neat pile in one corner, with a rug over them. The mantelpiece was still empty, but, as Clowes pointed out, it now merely looked as if Trevor had been pawning some of his household gods. There was no sign that a devastating secret society had raged through the study.

Then they adjourned to Clowes’ study, where Trevor sank into Clowes’ second-best chair—Clowes, by an adroit movement, having appropriated the best one—with a sigh of enjoyment. Running and passing, followed by the toil of furniture-shifting, had made him feel quite tired.

“It doesn’t look so bad now,” he said, thinking of the room they had left. “By the way, what did you do with that card?”

“Here it is. Want it?”

“You can keep it. I don’t want it.”

“Thanks. If this sort of things goes on, I shall get quite a nice collection of these cards. Start an album some day.”

“You know,” said Trevor, “this is getting serious.”

“It always does get serious when anything bad happens to one’s self. It always strikes one as rather funny when things happen to other people. When Mill’s study was wrecked, I bet you regarded it as an amusing and original ‘turn’. What do you think of the present effort?”

“Who on earth can have done it?”

“The Pres—”

“Oh, dry up. Of course it was. But who the blazes is he?”

“Nay, children, you have me there,” quoted Clowes. “I’ll tell you one thing, though. You remember what I said about it’s probably being Rand-Brown. He can’t have done this, that’s certain, because he was out in the fields the whole time. Though I don’t see who else could have anything to gain by Barry not getting his colours.”

“There’s no reason to suspect him at all, as far as I can see. I don’t know much about him, bar the fact that he can’t play footer for nuts, but I’ve never heard anything against him. Have you?”

“I scarcely know him myself. He isn’t liked in Seymour’s, I believe.”

“Well, anyhow, this can’t be his work.”

“That’s what I said.”

“For all we know, the League may have got their knife into Barry for some reason. You said they used to get their knife into fellows in that way. Anyhow, I mean to find out who ragged my room.”

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” said Clowes.

O’Hara came round to Donaldson’s before morning school next day to tell Trevor that he had not yet succeeded in finding the lost bat. He found Trevor and Clowes in the former’s den, trying to put a few finishing touches to the same.

“Hullo, an’ what’s up with your study?” he inquired. He was quick at noticing things. Trevor looked annoyed. Clowes asked the visitor if he did not think the study presented a neat and gentlemanly appearance.

“Where are all your photographs, Trevor?” persisted the descendant of Irish kings.

“It’s no good trying to conceal anything from the bhoy,” said Clowes. “Sit down, O’Hara—mind that chair; it’s rather wobbly—and I will tell ye the story.”

“Can you keep a thing dark?” inquired Trevor.

O’Hara protested that tombs were not in it.

“Well, then, do you remember what happened to Mill’s study? That’s what’s been going on here.”

O’Hara nearly fell off his chair with surprise. That some philanthropist should rag Mill’s study was only to be expected. Mill was one of the worst. A worm without a saving grace. But Trevor! Captain of football! In the first eleven! The thing was unthinkable.

“But who—?” he began.

“That’s just what I want to know,” said Trevor, shortly. He did not enjoy discussing the affair.

“How long have you been at Wrykyn, O’Hara?” said Clowes.

O’Hara made a rapid calculation. His fingers twiddled in the air as he worked out the problem.

“Six years,” he said at last, leaning back exhausted with brain work.

“Then you must remember the League?”

“Remember the League? Rather.”

“Well, it’s been revived.”

O’Hara whistled.

“This’ll liven the old place up,” he said. “I’ve often thought of reviving it meself. An’ so has Moriarty. If it’s anything like the Old League, there’s going to be a sort of Donnybrook before it’s done with. I wonder who’s running it this time.”

“We should like to know that. If you find out, you might tell us.”

“I will.”

“And don’t tell anybody else,” said Trevor. “This business has got to be kept quiet. Keep it dark about my study having been ragged.”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“Not even Moriarty.”

“Oh, hang it, man,” put in Clowes, “you don’t want to kill the poor bhoy, surely? You must let him tell one person.”

“All right,” said Trevor, “you can tell Moriarty. But nobody else, mind.”

O’Hara promised that Moriarty should receive the news exclusively.

“But why did the League go for ye?”

“They happen to be down on me. It doesn’t matter why. They are.”

“I see,” said O’Hara. “Oh,” he added, “about that bat. The search is being ‘vigorously prosecuted’—that’s a newspaper quotation—”

“Times?” inquired Clowes.

“Wrykyn Patriot,” said O’Hara, pulling out a bundle of letters. He inspected each envelope in turn, and from the fifth extracted a newspaper cutting.

“Read that,” he said.

It was from the local paper, and ran as follows:—

“Hooligan Outrage—A painful sensation has been caused in the town by a deplorable ebullition of local Hooliganism, which has resulted in the wanton disfigurement of the splendid statue of Sir Eustace Briggs which stands in the New Recreation Grounds. Our readers will recollect that the statue was erected to commemorate the return of Sir Eustace as member for the borough of Wrykyn, by an overwhelming majority, at the last election. Last Tuesday some youths of the town, passing through the Recreation Grounds early in the morning, noticed that the face and body of the statue were completely covered with leaves and some black substance, which on examination proved to be tar. They speedily lodged information at the police station. Everything seems to point to party spite as the motive for the outrage. In view of the forth-coming election, such an act is highly significant, and will serve sufficiently to indicate the tactics employed by our opponents. The search for the perpetrator (or perpetrators) of the dastardly act is being vigorously prosecuted, and we learn with satisfaction that the police have already several clues.”

“Clues!” said Clowes, handing back the paper, “that means the bat. That gas about ‘our opponents’ is all a blind to put you off your guard. You wait. There’ll be more painful sensations before you’ve finished with this business.”

“They can’t have found the bat, or why did they not say so?” observed O’Hara.

“Guile,” said Clowes, “pure guile. If I were you, I should escape while I could. Try. There’s no extradition there.

’On no petition Is extradition Allowed in Callao.’

Either of you chaps coming over to school?”

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 7


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 8

Tuesday mornings at Wrykyn were devoted—up to the quarter to eleven interval—to the study of mathematics. That is to say, instead of going to their form-rooms, the various forms visited the out-of-the-way nooks and dens at the top of the buildings where the mathematical masters were wont to lurk, and spent a pleasant two hours there playing round games or reading fiction under the desk. Mathematics being one of the few branches of school learning which are of any use in after life, nobody ever dreamed of doing any work in that direction, least of all O’Hara. It was a theory of O’Hara’s that he came to school to enjoy himself. To have done any work during a mathematics lesson would have struck him as a positive waste of time, especially as he was in Mr Banks’ class. Mr Banks was a master who simply cried out to be ragged. Everything he did and said seemed to invite the members of his class to amuse themselves, and they amused themselves accordingly. One of the advantages of being under him was that it was possible to predict to a nicety the moment when one would be sent out of the room. This was found very convenient.

O’Hara’s ally, Moriarty, was accustomed to take his mathematics with Mr Morgan, whose room was directly opposite Mr Banks’. With Mr Morgan it was not quite so easy to date one’s expulsion from the room under ordinary circumstances, and in the normal wear and tear of the morning’s work, but there was one particular action which could always be relied upon to produce the desired result.

In one corner of the room stood a gigantic globe. The problem—how did it get into the room?—was one that had exercised the minds of many generations of Wrykinians. It was much too big to have come through the door. Some thought that the block had been built round it, others that it had been placed in the room in infancy, and had since grown. To refer the question to Mr Morgan would, in six cases out of ten, mean instant departure from the room. But to make the event certain, it was necessary to grasp the globe firmly and spin it round on its axis. That always proved successful. Mr Morgan would dash down from his dais, address the offender in spirited terms, and give him his marching orders at once and without further trouble.

Moriarty had arranged with O’Hara to set the globe rolling at ten sharp on this particular morning. O’Hara would then so arrange matters with Mr Banks that they could meet in the passage at that hour, when O’Hara wished to impart to his friend his information concerning the League.

O’Hara promised to be at the trysting-place at the hour mentioned.

He did not think there would be any difficulty about it. The news that the League had been revived meant that there would be trouble in the very near future, and the prospect of trouble was meat and drink to the Irishman in O’Hara. Consequently he felt in particularly good form for mathematics (as he interpreted the word). He thought that he would have no difficulty whatever in keeping Mr Banks bright and amused. The first step had to be to arouse in him an interest in life, to bring him into a frame of mind which would induce him to look severely rather than leniently on the next offender. This was effected as follows:—

It was Mr Banks’ practice to set his class sums to work out, and, after some three-quarters of an hour had elapsed, to pass round the form what he called “solutions”. These were large sheets of paper, on which he had worked out each sum in his neat handwriting to a happy ending. When the head of the form, to whom they were passed first, had finished with them, he would make a slight tear in one corner, and, having done so, hand them on to his neighbour. The neighbour, before giving them to his neighbour, would also tear them slightly. In time they would return to their patentee and proprietor, and it was then that things became exciting.

“Who tore these solutions like this?” asked Mr Banks, in the repressed voice of one who is determined that he will be calm.

No answer. The tattered solutions waved in the air.

He turned to Harringay, the head of the form.

“Harringay, did you tear these solutions like this?”

Indignant negative from Harringay. What he had done had been to make the small tear in the top left-hand corner. If Mr Banks had asked, “Did you make this small tear in the top left-hand corner of these solutions?” Harringay would have scorned to deny the impeachment. But to claim the credit for the whole work would, he felt, be an act of flat dishonesty, and an injustice to his gifted collaborateurs.

“No, sir,” said Harringay.

“Browne!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Did you tear these solutions in this manner?”

“No, sir.”

And so on through the form.

Then Harringay rose after the manner of the debater who is conscious that he is going to say the popular thing.

“Sir—” he began.

“Sit down, Harringay.”

Harringay gracefully waved aside the absurd command.

“Sir,” he said, “I think I am expressing the general consensus of opinion among my—ahem—fellow-students, when I say that this class sincerely regrets the unfortunate state the solutions have managed to get themselves into.”

“Hear, hear!” from a back bench.

“It is with—”

“Sit down, Harringay.”

“It is with heartfelt—”

“Harringay, if you do not sit down—”

“As your ludship pleases.” This sotto voce.

And Harringay resumed his seat amidst applause. O’Hara got up.

“As me frind who has just sat down was about to observe—”

“Sit down, O’Hara. The whole form will remain after the class.”

“—the unfortunate state the solutions have managed to get thimsilves into is sincerely regretted by this class. Sir, I think I am ixprissing the general consensus of opinion among my fellow-students whin I say that it is with heart-felt sorrow—”

“O’Hara!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Leave the room instantly.”

“Yes, sir.”

From the tower across the gravel came the melodious sound of chimes. The college clock was beginning to strike ten. He had scarcely got into the passage, and closed the door after him, when a roar as of a bereaved spirit rang through the room opposite, followed by a string of words, the only intelligible one being the noun-substantive “globe”, and the next moment the door opened and Moriarty came out. The last stroke of ten was just booming from the clock.

There was a large cupboard in the passage, the top of which made a very comfortable seat. They climbed on to this, and began to talk business.

“An’ what was it ye wanted to tell me?” inquired Moriarty.

O’Hara related what he had learned from Trevor that morning.

“An’ do ye know,” said Moriarty, when he had finished, “I half suspected, when I heard that Mill’s study had been ragged, that it might be the League that had done it. If ye remember, it was what they enjoyed doing, breaking up a man’s happy home. They did it frequently.”

“But I can’t understand them doing it to Trevor at all.”

“They’ll do it to anybody they choose till they’re caught at it.”

“If they are caught, there’ll be a row.”

“We must catch ’em,” said Moriarty. Like O’Hara, he revelled in the prospect of a disturbance. O’Hara and he were going up to Aldershot at the end of the term, to try and bring back the light and middle-weight medals respectively. Moriarty had won the light-weight in the previous year, but, by reason of putting on a stone since the competition, was now no longer eligible for that class. O’Hara had not been up before, but the Wrykyn instructor, a good judge of pugilistic form, was of opinion that he ought to stand an excellent chance. As the prize-fighter in Rodney Stone says, “When you get a good Irishman, you can’t better ’em, but they’re dreadful ’asty.” O’Hara was attending the gymnasium every night, in order to learn to curb his “dreadful ’astiness”, and acquire skill in its place.

“I wonder if Trevor would be any good in a row,” said Moriarty.

“He can’t box,” said O’Hara, “but he’d go on till he was killed entirely. I say, I’m getting rather tired of sitting here, aren’t you? Let’s go to the other end of the passage and have some cricket.”

So, having unearthed a piece of wood from the debris at the top of the cupboard, and rolled a handkerchief into a ball, they adjourned.

Recalling the stirring events of six years back, when the League had first been started, O’Hara remembered that the members of that enterprising society had been wont to hold meetings in a secluded spot, where it was unlikely that they would be disturbed. It seemed to him that the first thing he ought to do, if he wanted to make their nearer acquaintance now, was to find their present rendezvous. They must have one. They would never run the risk involved in holding mass-meetings in one another’s studies. On the last occasion, it had been an old quarry away out on the downs. This had been proved by the not-to-be-shaken testimony of three school-house fags, who had wandered out one half-holiday with the unconcealed intention of finding the League’s place of meeting. Unfortunately for them, they had found it. They were going down the path that led to the quarry before-mentioned, when they were unexpectedly seized, blindfolded, and carried off. An impromptu court-martial was held—in whispers—and the three explorers forthwith received the most spirited “touching-up” they had ever experienced. Afterwards they were released, and returned to their house with their zeal for detection quite quenched. The episode had created a good deal of excitement in the school at the time.

On three successive afternoons, O’Hara and Moriarty scoured the downs, and on each occasion they drew blank. On the fourth day, just before lock-up, O’Hara, who had been to tea with Gregson, of Day’s, was going over to the gymnasium to keep a pugilistic appointment with Moriarty, when somebody ran swiftly past him in the direction of the boarding-houses. It was almost dark, for the days were still short, and he did not recognise the runner. But it puzzled him a little to think where he had sprung from. O’Hara was walking quite close to the wall of the College buildings, and the runner had passed between it and him. And he had not heard his footsteps. Then he understood, and his pulse quickened as he felt that he was on the track. Beneath the block was a large sort of cellar-basement. It was used as a store-room for chairs, and was never opened except when prize-day or some similar event occurred, when the chairs were needed. It was supposed to be locked at other times, but never was. The door was just by the spot where he was standing. As he stood there, half-a-dozen other vague forms dashed past him in a knot. One of them almost brushed against him. For a moment he thought of stopping him, but decided not to. He could wait.

On the following afternoon he slipped down into the basement soon after school. It was as black as pitch in the cellar. He took up a position near the door.

It seemed hours before anything happened. He was, indeed, almost giving up the thing as a bad job, when a ray of light cut through the blackness in front of him, and somebody slipped through the door. The next moment, a second form appeared dimly, and then the light was shut off again.

O’Hara could hear them groping their way past him. He waited no longer. It is difficult to tell where sound comes from in the dark. He plunged forward at a venture. His hand, swinging round in a semicircle, met something which felt like a shoulder. He slipped his grasp down to the arm, and clutched it with all the force at his disposal.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 8


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 9

“Ow!” exclaimed the captive, with no uncertain voice. “Let go, you ass, you’re hurting.”

The voice was a treble voice. This surprised O’Hara. It looked very much as if he had put up the wrong bird. From the dimensions of the arm which he was holding, his prisoner seemed to be of tender years.

“Let go, Harvey, you idiot. I shall kick.”

Before the threat could be put into execution, O’Hara, who had been fumbling all this while in his pocket for a match, found one loose, and struck a light. The features of the owner of the arm—he was still holding it—were lit up for a moment.

“Why, it’s young Renford!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing down here?”

Renford, however, continued to pursue the topic of his arm, and the effect that the vice-like grip of the Irishman had had upon it.

“You’ve nearly broken it,” he said, complainingly.

“I’m sorry. I mistook you for somebody else. Who’s that with you?”

“It’s me,” said an ungrammatical voice.

“Who’s me?”

“Harvey.”

At this point a soft yellow light lit up the more immediate neighbourhood. Harvey had brought a bicycle lamp into action.

“That’s more like it,” said Renford. “Look here, O’Hara, you won’t split, will you?”

“I’m not an informer by profession, thanks,” said O’Hara.

“Oh, I know it’s all right, really, but you can’t be too careful, because one isn’t allowed down here, and there’d be a beastly row if it got out about our being down here.”

“And they would be ,” put in Harvey.

“Who are they?” asked O’Hara.

“Ferrets. Like to have a look at them?”

“Ferrets!”

“Yes. Harvey brought back a couple at the beginning of term. Ripping little beasts. We couldn’t keep them in the house, as they’d have got dropped on in a second, so we had to think of somewhere else, and thought why not keep them down here?”

“Why, indeed?” said O’Hara. “Do ye find they like it?”

“Oh, they don’t mind,” said Harvey. “We feed ’em twice a day. Once before breakfast—we take it in turns to get up early—and once directly after school. And on half-holidays and Sundays we take them out on to the downs.”

“What for?”

“Why, rabbits, of course. Renford brought back a saloon-pistol with him. We keep it locked up in a box—don’t tell any one.”

“And what do ye do with the rabbits?”

“We pot at them as they come out of the holes.”

“Yes, but when ye hit ’em?”

“Oh,” said Renford, with some reluctance, “we haven’t exactly hit any yet.”

“We’ve got jolly near, though, lots of times,” said Harvey. “Last Saturday I swear I wasn’t more than a quarter of an inch off one of them. If it had been a decent-sized rabbit, I should have plugged it middle stump; only it was a small one, so I missed. But come and see them. We keep ’em right at the other end of the place, in case anybody comes in.”

“Have you ever seen anybody down here?” asked O’Hara.

“Once,” said Renford. “Half-a-dozen chaps came down here once while we were feeding the ferrets. We waited till they’d got well in, then we nipped out quietly. They didn’t see us.”

“Did you see who they were?”

“No. It was too dark. Here they are. Rummy old crib this, isn’t it? Look out for your shins on the chairs. Switch on the light, Harvey. There, aren’t they rippers? Quite tame, too. They know us quite well. They know they’re going to be fed, too. Hullo, Sir Nigel! This is Sir Nigel. Out of the ‘White Company’, you know. Don’t let him nip your fingers. This other one’s Sherlock Holmes.”

“Cats-s-s—s!!” said O’Hara. He had a sort of idea that that was the right thing to say to any animal that could chase and bite.

Renford was delighted to be able to show his ferrets off to so distinguished a visitor.

“What were you down here about?” inquired Harvey, when the little animals had had their meal, and had retired once more into private life.

O’Hara had expected this question, but he did not quite know what answer to give. Perhaps, on the whole, he thought, it would be best to tell them the real reason. If he refused to explain, their curiosity would be roused, which would be fatal. And to give any reason except the true one called for a display of impromptu invention of which he was not capable. Besides, they would not be likely to give away his secret while he held this one of theirs connected with the ferrets. He explained the situation briefly, and swore them to silence on the subject.

Renford’s comment was brief.

“By Jove!” he observed.

Harvey went more deeply into the question.

“What makes you think they meet down here?” he asked.

“I saw some fellows cutting out of here last night. And you say ye’ve seen them here, too. I don’t see what object they could have down here if they weren’t the League holding a meeting. I don’t see what else a chap would be after.”

“He might be keeping ferrets,” hazarded Renford.

“The whole school doesn’t keep ferrets,” said O’Hara. “You’re unique in that way. No, it must be the League, an’ I mean to wait here till they come.”

“Not all night?” asked Harvey. He had a great respect for O’Hara, whose reputation in the school for out-of-the-way doings was considerable. In the bright lexicon of O’Hara he believed there to be no such word as “impossible.”

“No,” said O’Hara, “but till lock-up. You two had better cut now.”

“Yes, I think we’d better,” said Harvey.

“And don’t ye breathe a word about this to a soul”—a warning which extracted fervent promises of silence from both youths.

“This,” said Harvey, as they emerged on to the gravel, “is something like. I’m jolly glad we’re in it.”

“Rather. Do you think O’Hara will catch them?”

“He must if he waits down there long enough. They’re certain to come again. Don’t you wish you’d been here when the League was on before?”

“I should think I did. Race you over to the shop. I want to get something before it shuts.”

“Right ho!” And they disappeared.

O’Hara waited where he was till six struck from the clock-tower, followed by the sound of the bell as it rang for lock-up. Then he picked his way carefully through the groves of chairs, barking his shins now and then on their out-turned legs, and, pushing open the door, went out into the open air. It felt very fresh and pleasant after the brand of atmosphere supplied in the vault. He then ran over to the gymnasium to meet Moriarty, feeling a little disgusted at the lack of success that had attended his detective efforts up to the present. So far he had nothing to show for his trouble except a good deal of dust on his clothes, and a dirty collar, but he was full of determination. He could play a waiting game.

It was a pity, as it happened, that O’Hara left the vault when he did. Five minutes after he had gone, six shadowy forms made their way silently and in single file through the doorway of the vault, which they closed carefully behind them. The fact that it was after lock-up was of small consequence. A good deal of latitude in that way was allowed at Wrykyn. It was the custom to go out, after the bell had sounded, to visit the gymnasium. In the winter and Easter terms, the gymnasium became a sort of social club. People went there with a very small intention of doing gymnastics. They went to lounge about, talking to cronies, in front of the two huge stoves which warmed the place. Occasionally, as a concession to the look of the thing, they would do an easy exercise or two on the horse or parallels, but, for the most part, they preferred the rôle of spectator. There was plenty to see. In one corner O’Hara and Moriarty would be sparring their nightly six rounds (in two batches of three rounds each). In another, Drummond, who was going up to Aldershot as a feather-weight, would be putting in a little practice with the instructor. On the apparatus, the members of the gymnastic six, including the two experts who were to carry the school colours to Aldershot in the spring, would be performing their usual marvels. It was worth dropping into the gymnasium of an evening. In no other place in the school were so many sights to be seen.

When you were surfeited with sightseeing, you went off to your house. And this was where the peculiar beauty of the gymnasium system came in. You went up to any master who happened to be there—there was always one at least—and observed in suave accents, “Please, sir, can I have a paper?” Whereupon, he, taking a scrap of paper, would write upon it, “J. O. Jones (or A. B. Smith or C. D. Robinson) left gymnasium at such-and-such a time”. And, by presenting this to the menial who opened the door to you at your house, you went in rejoicing, and all was peace.

Now, there was no mention on the paper of the hour at which you came to the gymnasium—only of the hour at which you left. Consequently, certain lawless spirits would range the neighbourhood after lock-up, and, by putting in a quarter of an hour at the gymnasium before returning to their houses, escape comment. To this class belonged the shadowy forms previously mentioned.

O’Hara had forgotten this custom, with the result that he was not at the vault when they arrived. Moriarty, to whom he confided between the rounds the substance of his evening’s discoveries, reminded him of it. “It’s no good watching before lock-up,” he said. “After six is the time they’ll come, if they come at all.”

“Bedad, ye’re right,” said O’Hara. “One of these nights we’ll take a night off from boxing, and go and watch.”

“Right,” said Moriarty. “Are ye ready to go on?”

“Yes. I’m going to practise that left swing at the body this round. The one Fitzsimmons does.” And they “put ’em up” once more.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 9


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 10

On the evening following O’Hara’s adventure in the vaults, Barry and M’Todd were in their study, getting out the tea-things. Most Wrykinians brewed in the winter and Easter terms, when the days were short and lock-up early. In the summer term there were other things to do—nets, which lasted till a quarter to seven (when lock-up was), and the baths—and brewing practically ceased. But just now it was at its height, and every evening, at a quarter past five, there might be heard in the houses the sizzling of the succulent sausage and other rare delicacies. As a rule, one or two studies would club together to brew, instead of preparing solitary banquets. This was found both more convivial and more economical. At Seymour’s, studies numbers five, six, and seven had always combined from time immemorial, and Barry, on obtaining study six, had carried on the tradition. In study five were Drummond and his friend De Bertini. In study seven, which was a smaller room and only capable of holding one person with any comfort, one James Rupert Leather-Twigg (that was his singular name, as Mr Gilbert has it) had taken up his abode. The name of Leather-Twigg having proved, at an early date in his career, too great a mouthful for Wrykyn, he was known to his friends and acquaintances by the title of Shoeblossom. The charm about the genial Shoeblossom was that you could never tell what he was going to do next. All that you could rely on with any certainty was that it would be something which would have been better left undone.

It was just five o’clock when Barry and M’Todd started to get things ready. They were not high enough up in the school to have fags, so that they had to do this for themselves.

Barry was still in football clothes. He had been out running and passing with the first fifteen. M’Todd, whose idea of exercise was winding up a watch, had been spending his time since school ceased in the study with a book. He was in his ordinary clothes. It was therefore fortunate that, when he upset the kettle (he nearly always did at some period of the evening’s business), the contents spread themselves over Barry, and not over himself. Football clothes will stand any amount of water, whereas M’Todd’s “Youth’s winter suiting at forty-two shillings and sixpence” might have been injured. Barry, however, did not look upon the episode in this philosophical light. He spoke to him eloquently for a while, and then sent him downstairs to fetch more water. While he was away, Drummond and De Bertini came in.

“Hullo,” said Drummond, “tea ready?”

“Not much,” replied Barry, bitterly, “not likely to be, either, at this rate. We’d just got the kettle going when that ass M’Todd plunged against the table and upset the lot over my bags. Lucky the beastly stuff wasn’t boiling. I’m soaked.”

“While we wait—the sausages—Yes?—a good idea—M’Todd, he is downstairs—but to wait? No, no. Let us. Shall we? Is it not so? Yes?” observed Bertie, lucidly.

“Now construe,” said Barry, looking at the linguist with a bewildered expression. It was a source of no little inconvenience to his friends that De Bertini was so very fixed in his determination to speak English. He was a trier all the way, was De Bertini. You rarely caught him helping out his remarks with the language of his native land. It was English or nothing with him. To most of his circle it might as well have been Zulu.

Drummond, either through natural genius or because he spent more time with him, was generally able to act as interpreter. Occasionally there would come a linguistic effort by which even he freely confessed himself baffled, and then they would pass on unsatisfied. But, as a rule, he was equal to the emergency. He was so now.

“What Bertie means,” he explained, “is that it’s no good us waiting for M’Todd to come back. He never could fill a kettle in less than ten minutes, and even then he’s certain to spill it coming upstairs and have to go back again. Let’s get on with the sausages.”

The pan had just been placed on the fire when M’Todd returned with the water. He tripped over the mat as he entered, and spilt about half a pint into one of his football boots, which stood inside the door, but the accident was comparatively trivial, and excited no remark.

“I wonder where that slacker Shoeblossom has got to,” said Barry. “He never turns up in time to do any work. He seems to regard himself as a beastly guest. I wish we could finish the sausages before he comes. It would be a sell for him.”

“Not much chance of that,” said Drummond, who was kneeling before the fire and keeping an excited eye on the spluttering pan, “you see. He’ll come just as we’ve finished cooking them. I believe the man waits outside with his ear to the keyhole. Hullo! Stand by with the plate. They’ll be done in half a jiffy.”

Just as the last sausage was deposited in safety on the plate, the door opened, and Shoeblossom, looking as if he had not brushed his hair since early childhood, sidled in with an attempt at an easy nonchalance which was rendered quite impossible by the hopeless state of his conscience.

“Ah,” he said, “brewing, I see. Can I be of any use?”

“We’ve finished years ago,” said Barry.

“Ages ago,” said M’Todd.

A look of intense alarm appeared on Shoeblossom’s classical features.

“You’ve not finished, really?”

“We’ve finished cooking everything,” said Drummond. “We haven’t begun tea yet. Now, are you happy?”

Shoeblossom was. So happy that he felt he must do something to celebrate the occasion. He felt like a successful general. There must be something he could do to show that he regarded the situation with approval. He looked round the study. Ha! Happy thought—the frying-pan. That useful culinary instrument was lying in the fender, still bearing its cargo of fat, and beside it—a sight to stir the blood and make the heart beat faster—were the sausages, piled up on their plate.

Shoeblossom stooped. He seized the frying-pan. He gave it one twirl in the air. Then, before any one could stop him, he had turned it upside down over the fire. As has been already remarked, you could never predict exactly what James Rupert Leather-Twigg would be up to next.

When anything goes out of the frying-pan into the fire, it is usually productive of interesting by-products. The maxim applies to fat. The fat was in the fire with a vengeance. A great sheet of flame rushed out and up. Shoeblossom leaped back with a readiness highly creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat. The covering of the mantelpiece caught fire. The flames went roaring up the chimney.

Drummond, cool while everything else was so hot, without a word moved to the mantelpiece to beat out the fire with a football shirt. Bertie was talking rapidly to himself in French. Nobody could understand what he was saying, which was possibly fortunate.

By the time Drummond had extinguished the mantelpiece, Barry had also done good work by knocking the fire into the grate with the poker. M’Todd, who had been standing up till now in the far corner of the room, gaping vaguely at things in general, now came into action. Probably it was force of habit that suggested to him that the time had come to upset the kettle. At any rate, upset it he did—most of it over the glowing, blazing mass in the grate, the rest over Barry. One of the largest and most detestable smells the study had ever had to endure instantly assailed their nostrils. The fire in the study was out now, but in the chimney it still blazed merrily.

“Go up on to the roof and heave water down,” said Drummond, the strategist. “You can get out from Milton’s dormitory window. And take care not to chuck it down the wrong chimney.”

Barry was starting for the door to carry out these excellent instructions, when it flew open.

“Pah! What have you boys been doing? What an abominable smell. Pah!” said a muffled voice. It was Mr Seymour. Most of his face was concealed in a large handkerchief, but by the look of his eyes, which appeared above, he did not seem pleased. He took in the situation at a glance. Fires in the house were not rarities. One facetious sportsman had once made a rule of setting the senior day-room chimney on fire every term. He had since left (by request), but fires still occurred.

“Is the chimney on fire?”

“Yes, sir,” said Drummond.

“Go and find Herbert, and tell him to take some water on to the roof and throw it down.” Herbert was the boot and knife cleaner at Seymour’s.

Barry went. Soon afterwards a splash of water in the grate announced that the intrepid Herbert was hard at it. Another followed, and another. Then there was a pause. Mr Seymour thought he would look up to see if the fire was out. He stooped and peered into the darkness, and, even as he gazed, splash came the contents of the fourth pail, together with some soot with which they had formed a travelling acquaintance on the way down. Mr Seymour staggered back, grimy and dripping. There was dead silence in the study. Shoeblossom’s face might have been seen working convulsively.

The silence was broken by a hollow, sepulchral voice with a strong Cockney accent.

“Did yer see any water come down then, sir?” said the voice.

Shoeblossom collapsed into a chair, and began to sob feebly.

“—disgraceful … scandalous … get up, Leather-Twigg … not to be trusted … babies … three hundred lines, Leather-Twigg … abominable … surprised … ought to be ashamed of yourselves … double, Leather-Twigg … not fit to have studies … atrocious …—”

Such were the main heads of Mr Seymour’s speech on the situation as he dabbed desperately at the soot on his face with his handkerchief. Shoeblossom stood and gurgled throughout. Not even the thought of six hundred lines could quench that dauntless spirit.

“Finally,” perorated Mr Seymour, as he was leaving the room, “as you are evidently not to be trusted with rooms of your own, I forbid you to enter them till further notice. It is disgraceful that such a thing should happen. Do you hear, Barry? And you, Drummond? You are not to enter your studies again till I give you leave. Move your books down to the senior day-room tonight.”

And Mr Seymour stalked off to clean himself.

“Anyhow,” said Shoeblossom, as his footsteps died away, “we saved the sausages.”

It is this indomitable gift of looking on the bright side that makes us Englishmen what we are.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 10


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 11

It was something of a consolation to Barry and his friends—at any rate, to Barry and Drummond—that directly after they had been evicted from their study, the house-matches began. Except for the Ripton match, the house-matches were the most important event of the Easter term. Even the sports at the beginning of April were productive of less excitement. There were twelve houses at Wrykyn, and they played on the “knocking-out” system. To be beaten once meant that a house was no longer eligible for the competition. It could play “friendlies” as much as it liked, but, play it never so wisely, it could not lift the cup. Thus it often happened that a weak house, by fluking a victory over a strong rival, found itself, much to its surprise, in the semi-final, or sometimes even in the final. This was rarer at football than at cricket, for at football the better team generally wins.

The favourites this year were Donaldson’s, though some fancied Seymour’s. Donaldson’s had Trevor, whose leadership was worth almost more than his play. In no other house was training so rigid. You could tell a Donaldson’s man, if he was in his house-team, at a glance. If you saw a man eating oatmeal biscuits in the shop, and eyeing wistfully the while the stacks of buns and pastry, you could put him down as a Donaldsonite without further evidence. The captains of the other houses used to prescribe a certain amount of self-abnegation in the matter of food, but Trevor left his men barely enough to support life—enough, that is, of the things that are really worth eating. The consequence was that Donaldson’s would turn out for an important match all muscle and bone, and on such occasions it was bad for those of their opponents who had been taking life more easily. Besides Trevor they had Clowes, and had had bad luck in not having Paget. Had Paget stopped, no other house could have looked at them. But by his departure, the strength of the team had become more nearly on a level with that of Seymour’s.

Some even thought that Seymour’s were the stronger. Milton was as good a forward as the school possessed. Besides him there were Barry and Rand-Brown on the wings. Drummond was a useful half, and five of the pack had either first or second fifteen colours. It was a team that would take some beating.

Trevor came to that conclusion early. “If we can beat Seymour’s, we’ll lift the cup,” he said to Clowes.

“We’ll have to do all we know,” was Clowes’ reply.

They were watching Seymour’s pile up an immense score against a scratch team got up by one of the masters. The first round of the competition was over. Donaldson’s had beaten Templar’s, Seymour’s the School House. Templar’s were rather stronger than the School House, and Donaldson’s had beaten them by a rather larger score than that which Seymour’s had run up in their match. But neither Trevor nor Clowes was inclined to draw any augury from this. Seymour’s had taken things easily after half-time; Donaldson’s had kept going hard all through.

“That makes Rand-Brown’s fourth try,” said Clowes, as the wing three-quarter of the second fifteen raced round and scored in the corner.

“Yes. This is the sort of game he’s all right in. The man who’s marking him is no good. Barry’s scored twice, and both good tries, too.”

“Oh, there’s no doubt which is the best man,” said Clowes. “I only mentioned that it was Rand-Brown’s fourth as an item of interest.”

The game continued. Barry scored a third try.

“We’re drawn against Appleby’s next round,” said Trevor. “We can manage them all right.”

“When is it?”

“Next Thursday. Nomads’ match on Saturday. Then Ripton, Saturday week.”

“Who’ve Seymour’s drawn?”

“Day’s. It’ll be a good game, too. Seymour’s ought to win, but they’ll have to play their best. Day’s have got some good men.”

“Fine scrum,” said Clowes. “Yes. Quick in the open, too, which is always good business. I wish they’d beat Seymour’s.”

“Oh, we ought to be all right, whichever wins.”

Appleby’s did not offer any very serious resistance to the Donaldson attack. They were outplayed at every point of the game, and, before half-time, Donaldson’s had scored their thirty points. It was a rule in all in-school matches—and a good rule, too—that, when one side led by thirty points, the match stopped. This prevented those massacres which do so much towards crushing all the football out of the members of the beaten team; and it kept the winning team from getting slack, by urging them on to score their thirty points before half-time. There were some houses—notoriously slack—which would go for a couple of seasons without ever playing the second half of a match.

Having polished off the men of Appleby, the Donaldson team trooped off to the other game to see how Seymour’s were getting on with Day’s. It was evidently an exciting match. The first half had been played to the accompaniment of much shouting from the ropes. Though coming so early in the competition, it was really the semi-final, for whichever team won would be almost certain to get into the final. The school had turned up in large numbers to watch.

“Seymour’s looking tired of life,” said Clowes. “That would seem as if his fellows weren’t doing well.”

“What’s been happening here?” asked Trevor of an enthusiast in a Seymour’s house cap whose face was crimson with yelling.

“One goal all,” replied the enthusiast huskily. “Did you beat Appleby’s?”

“Yes. Thirty points before half-time. Who’s been doing the scoring here?”

“Milton got in for us. He barged through out of touch. We’ve been pressing the whole time. Barry got over once, but he was held up. Hullo, they’re beginning again. Buck up, Sey-mour’s.”

His voice cracking on the high note, he took an immense slab of vanilla chocolate as a remedy for hoarseness.

“Who scored for Day’s?” asked Clowes.

“Strachan. Rand-Brown let him through from their twenty-five. You never saw anything so rotten as Rand-Brown. He doesn’t take his passes, and Strachan gets past him every time.”

“Is Strachan playing on the wing?”

Strachan was the first fifteen full-back.

“Yes. They’ve put young Bassett back instead of him. Sey-mour’s. Buck up, Seymour’s. We-ell played! There, did you ever see anything like it?” he broke off disgustedly.

The Seymourite playing centre next to Rand-Brown had run through to the back and passed out to his wing, as a good centre should. It was a perfect pass, except that it came at his head instead of his chest. Nobody with any pretensions to decent play should have missed it. Rand-Brown, however, achieved that feat. The ball struck his hands and bounded forward. The referee blew his whistle for a scrum, and a certain try was lost.

From the scrum the Seymour’s forwards broke away to the goal-line, where they were pulled up by Bassett. The next minute the defence had been pierced, and Drummond was lying on the ball a yard across the line. The enthusiast standing by Clowes expended the last relics of his voice in commemorating the fact that his side had the lead.

“Drummond’ll be good next year,” said Trevor. And he made a mental note to tell Allardyce, who would succeed him in the command of the school football, to keep an eye on the player in question.

The triumph of the Seymourites was not long lived. Milton failed to convert Drummond’s try. From the drop-out from the twenty-five line Barry got the ball, and punted into touch. The throw-out was not straight, and a scrum was formed. The ball came out to the Day’s halves, and went across to Strachan. Rand-Brown hesitated, and then made a futile spring at the first fifteen man’s neck. Strachan handed him off easily, and ran. The Seymour’s full-back, who was a poor player, failed to get across in time. Strachan ran round behind the posts, the kick succeeded, and Day’s now led by two points.

After this the game continued in Day’s half. Five minutes before time was up, Drummond got the ball from a scrum nearly on the line, passed it to Barry on the wing instead of opening up the game by passing to his centres, and Barry slipped through in the corner. This put Seymour’s just one point ahead, and there they stayed till the whistle blew for no-side.

Milton walked over to the boarding-houses with Clowes and Trevor. He was full of the match, particularly of the iniquity of Rand-Brown. “I slanged him on the field,” he said. “It’s a thing I don’t often do, but what else can you do when a man plays like that? He lost us three certain tries.”

“When did you administer your rebuke?” inquired Clowes.

“When he had let Strachan through that second time, in the second half. I asked him why on earth he tried to play footer at all. I told him a good kiss-in-the-ring club was about his form. It was rather cheap, but I felt so frightfully sick about it. It’s sickening to be let down like that when you’ve been pressing the whole time, and ought to be scoring every other minute.”

“What had he to say on the subject?” asked Clowes.

“Oh, he gassed a bit until I told him I’d kick him if he said another word. That shut him up.”

“You ought to have kicked him. You want all the kicking practice you can get. I never saw anything feebler than that shot of yours after Drummond’s try.”

“I’d like to see you take a kick like that. It was nearly on the touch-line. Still, when we play you, we shan’t need to convert any of our tries. We’ll get our thirty points without that. Perhaps you’d like to scratch?”

“As a matter of fact,” said Clowes confidentially, “I am going to score seven tries against you off my own bat. You’ll be sorry you ever turned out when we’ve finished with you.”

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 11


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 12

Shoeblossom sat disconsolately on the table in the senior day-room. He was not happy in exile. Brewing in the senior day-room was a mere vulgar brawl, lacking all the refining influences of the study. You had to fight for a place at the fire, and when you had got it ’twas not always easy to keep it, and there was no privacy, and the fellows were always bear-fighting, so that it was impossible to read a book quietly for ten consecutive minutes without some ass heaving a cushion at you or turning out the gas. Altogether Shoeblossom yearned for the peace of his study, and wished earnestly that Mr Seymour would withdraw the order of banishment. It was the not being able to read that he objected to chiefly. In place of brewing, the ex-proprietors of studies five, six, and seven now made a practice of going to the school shop. It was more expensive and not nearly so comfortable—there is a romance about a study brew which you can never get anywhere else—but it served, and it was not on this score that he grumbled most. What he hated was having to live in a bear-garden. For Shoeblossom was a man of moods. Give him two or three congenial spirits to back him up, and he would lead the revels with the abandon of a Mr Bultitude (after his return to his original form). But he liked to choose his accomplices, and the gay sparks of the senior day-room did not appeal to him. They were not intellectual enough. In his lucid intervals, he was accustomed to be almost abnormally solemn and respectable. When not promoting some unholy rag, Shoeblossom resembled an elderly gentleman of studious habits. He liked to sit in a comfortable chair and read a book. It was the impossibility of doing this in the senior day-room that led him to try and think of some other haven where he might rest. Had it been summer, he would have taken some literature out on to the cricket-field or the downs, and put in a little steady reading there, with the aid of a bag of cherries. But with the thermometer low, that was impossible.

He felt very lonely and dismal. He was not a man with many friends. In fact, Barry and the other three were almost the only members of the house with whom he was on speaking-terms. And of these four he saw very little. Drummond and Barry were always out of doors or over at the gymnasium, and as for M’Todd and De Bertini, it was not worth while talking to the one, and impossible to talk to the other. No wonder Shoeblossom felt dull. Once Barry and Drummond had taken him over to the gymnasium with them, but this had bored him worse than ever. They had been hard at it all the time—for, unlike a good many of the school, they went to the gymnasium for business, not to lounge—and he had had to sit about watching them. And watching gymnastics was one of the things he most loathed. Since then he had refused to go.

That night matters came to a head. Just as he had settled down to read, somebody, in flinging a cushion across the room, brought down the gas apparatus with a run, and before light was once more restored it was tea-time. After that there was preparation, which lasted for two hours, and by the time he had to go to bed he had not been able to read a single page of the enthralling work with which he was at present occupied.

He had just got into bed when he was struck with a brilliant idea. Why waste the precious hours in sleep? What was that saying of somebody’s, “Five hours for a wise man, six for somebody else—he forgot whom—eight for a fool, nine for an idiot,” or words to that effect? Five hours sleep would mean that he need not go to bed till half past two. In the meanwhile he could be finding out exactly what the hero did do when he found out (to his horror) that it was his cousin Jasper who had really killed the old gentleman in the wood. The only question was—how was he to do his reading? Prefects were allowed to work on after lights out in their dormitories by the aid of a candle, but to the ordinary mortal this was forbidden.

Then he was struck with another brilliant idea. It is a curious thing about ideas. You do not get one for over a month, and then there comes a rush of them, all brilliant. Why, he thought, should he not go and read in his study with a ? He had a dark lantern. It was one of the things he had found lying about at home on the last day of the holidays, and had brought with him to school. It was his custom to go about the house just before the holidays ended, snapping up unconsidered trifles, which might or might not come in useful. This term he had brought back a curious metal vase (which looked Indian, but which had probably been made in Birmingham the year before last), two old coins (of no mortal use to anybody in the world, including himself), and the dark lantern. It was reposing now in the cupboard in his study nearest the window.

He had brought his book up with him on coming to bed, on the chance that he might have time to read a page or two if he woke up early. (He had always been doubtful about that man Jasper. For one thing, he had been seen pawning the old gentleman’s watch on the afternoon of the murder, which was a suspicious circumstance, and then he was not a nice character at all, and just the sort of man who would be likely to murder old gentlemen in woods.) He waited till Mr Seymour had paid his nightly visit—he went the round of the dormitories at about eleven—and then he chuckled gently. If Mill, the dormitory prefect, was awake, the chuckle would make him speak, for Mill was of a suspicious nature, and believed that it was only his unintermitted vigilance which prevented the dormitory ragging all night.

Mill was awake.

“Be quiet, there,” he growled. “Shut up that noise.”

Shoeblossom felt that the time was not yet ripe for his departure. Half an hour later he tried again. There was no rebuke. To make certain he emitted a second chuckle, replete with sinister meaning. A slight snore came from the direction of Mill’s bed. Shoeblossom crept out of the room, and hurried to his study. The door was not locked, for Mr Seymour had relied on his commands being sufficient to keep the owner out of it. He slipped in, found and lit the dark lantern, and settled down to read. He read with feverish excitement. The thing was, you see, that though Claud Trevelyan (that was the hero) knew jolly well that it was Jasper who had done the murder, the police didn’t, and, as he (Claud) was too noble to tell them, he had himself been arrested on suspicion. Shoeblossom was skimming through the pages with starting eyes, when suddenly his attention was taken from his book by a sound. It was a footstep. Somebody was coming down the passage, and under the door filtered a thin stream of light. To snap the dark slide over the lantern and dart to the door, so that if it opened he would be behind it, was with him, as Mr Claud Trevelyan might have remarked, the work of a moment. He heard the door of study number five flung open, and then the footsteps passed on, and stopped opposite his own den. The handle turned, and the light of a candle flashed into the room, to be extinguished instantly as the draught of the moving door caught it.

Shoeblossom heard his visitor utter an exclamation of annoyance, and fumble in his pocket for matches. He recognised the voice. It was Mr Seymour’s. The fact was that Mr Seymour had had the same experience as General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance:

The man who finds his conscience ache, No peace at all enjoys; And, as I lay in bed awake, I thought I heard a noise.

Whether Mr Seymour’s conscience ached or not, cannot, of course, be discovered. But he had certainly thought he heard a noise, and he had come to investigate.

The search for matches had so far proved fruitless. Shoeblossom stood and quaked behind the door. The reek of hot tin from the dark lantern grew worse momentarily. Mr Seymour sniffed several times, until Shoeblossom thought that he must be discovered. Then, to his immense relief, the master walked away. Shoeblossom’s chance had come. Mr Seymour had probably gone to get some matches to relight his candle. It was far from likely that the episode was closed. He would be back again presently. If Shoeblossom was going to escape, he must do it now, so he waited till the footsteps had passed away, and then darted out in the direction of his dormitory.

As he was passing Milton’s study, a white figure glided out of it. All that he had ever read or heard of spectres rushed into Shoeblossom’s petrified brain. He wished he was safely in bed. He wished he had never come out of it. He wished he had led a better and nobler life. He wished he had never been born.

The figure passed quite close to him as he stood glued against the wall, and he saw it disappear into the dormitory opposite his own, of which Rigby was prefect. He blushed hotly at the thought of the fright he had been in. It was only somebody playing the same game as himself.

He jumped into bed and lay down, having first plunged the lantern bodily into his jug to extinguish it. Its indignant hiss had scarcely died away when Mr Seymour appeared at the door. It had occurred to Mr Seymour that he had smelt something very much out of the ordinary in Shoeblossom’s study, a smell uncommonly like that of hot tin. And a suspicion dawned on him that Shoeblossom had been in there with a dark lantern. He had come to the dormitory to confirm his suspicions. But a glance showed him how unjust they had been. There was Shoeblossom fast asleep. Mr Seymour therefore followed the excellent example of my Lord Tomnoddy on a celebrated occasion, and went off to bed.

It was the custom for the captain of football at Wrykyn to select and publish the team for the Ripton match a week before the day on which it was to be played. On the evening after the Nomads’ match, Trevor was sitting in his study writing out the names, when there came a knock at the door, and his fag entered with a letter.

“This has just come, Trevor,” he said.

“All right. Put it down.”

The fag left the room. Trevor picked up the letter. The handwriting was strange to him. The words had been printed. Then it flashed upon him that he had received a letter once before addressed in the same way—the letter from the League about Barry. Was this, too, from that address? He opened it.

It was.

He read it, and gasped. The worst had happened. The gold bat was in the hands of the enemy.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 12


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 13

“With reference to our last communication,” ran the letter—the writer evidently believed in the commercial style—“it may interest you to know that the bat you lost by the statue on the night of the 26th of January has come into our possession. We observe that Barry is still playing for the first fifteen.”

“And will jolly well continue to,” muttered Trevor, crumpling the paper viciously into a ball.

He went on writing the names for the Ripton match. The last name on the list was Barry’s.

Then he sat back in his chair, and began to wrestle with this new development. Barry must play. That was certain. All the bluff in the world was not going to keep him from playing the best man at his disposal in the Ripton match. He himself did not count. It was the school he had to think of. This being so, what was likely to happen? Though nothing was said on the point, he felt certain that if he persisted in ignoring the League, that bat would find its way somehow—by devious routes, possibly—to the headmaster or some one else in authority. And then there would be questions—awkward questions—and things would begin to come out. Then a fresh point struck him, which was, that whatever might happen would affect, not himself, but O’Hara. This made it rather more of a problem how to act. Personally, he was one of those dogged characters who can put up with almost anything themselves. If this had been his affair, he would have gone on his way without hesitating. Evidently the writer of the letter was under the impression that he had been the hero (or villain) of the statue escapade.

If everything came out it did not require any great effort of prophecy to predict what the result would be. O’Hara would go. Promptly. He would receive his marching orders within ten minutes of the discovery of what he had done. He would be expelled twice over, so to speak, once for breaking out at night—one of the most heinous offences in the school code—and once for tarring the statue. Anything that gave the school a bad name in the town was a crime in the eyes of the powers, and this was such a particularly flagrant case. Yes, there was no doubt of that. O’Hara would take the first train home without waiting to pack up. Trevor knew his people well, and he could imagine their feelings when the prodigal strolled into their midst—an old Wrykinian malgré lui. As the philosopher said of falling off a ladder, it is not the falling that matters: it is the sudden stopping at the other end. It is not the being expelled that is so peculiarly objectionable: it is the sudden homecoming. With this gloomy vision before him, Trevor almost wavered. But the thought that the selection of the team had nothing whatever to do with his personal feelings strengthened him. He was simply a machine, devised to select the fifteen best men in the school to meet Ripton. In his official capacity of football captain he was not supposed to have any feelings. However, he yielded in so far that he went to Clowes to ask his opinion.

Clowes, having heard everything and seen the letter, unhesitatingly voted for the right course. If fifty mad Irishmen were to be expelled, Barry must play against Ripton. He was the best man, and in he must go.

“That’s what I thought,” said Trevor. “It’s bad for O’Hara, though.”

Clowes remarked somewhat tritely that business was business.

“Besides,” he went on, “you’re assuming that the thing this letter hints at will really come off. I don’t think it will. A man would have to be such an awful blackguard to go as low as that. The least grain of decency in him would stop him. I can imagine a man threatening to do it as a piece of bluff—by the way, the letter doesn’t actually say anything of the sort, though I suppose it hints at it—but I can’t imagine anybody out of a melodrama doing it.”

“You can never tell,” said Trevor. He felt that this was but an outside chance. The forbearance of one’s antagonist is but a poor thing to trust to at the best of times.

“Are you going to tell O’Hara?” asked Clowes.

“I don’t see the good. Would you?”

“No. He can’t do anything, and it would only give him a bad time. There are pleasanter things, I should think, than going on from day to day not knowing whether you’re going to be sacked or not within the next twelve hours. Don’t tell him.”

“I won’t. And Barry plays against Ripton.”

“Certainly. He’s the best man.”

“I’m going over to Seymour’s now,” said Trevor, after a pause, “to see Milton. We’ve drawn Seymour’s in the next round of the house-matches. I suppose you knew. I want to get it over before the Ripton match, for several reasons. About half the fifteen are playing on one side or the other, and it’ll give them a good chance of getting fit. Running and passing is all right, but a good, hard game’s the thing for putting you into form. And then I was thinking that, as the side that loses, whichever it is—”

“Seymour’s, of course.”

“Hope so. Well, they’re bound to be a bit sick at losing, so they’ll play up all the harder on Saturday to console themselves for losing the cup.”

“My word, what strategy!” said Clowes. “You think of everything. When do you think of playing it, then?”

“Wednesday struck me as a good day. Don’t you think so?”

“It would do splendidly. It’ll be a good match. For all practical purposes, of course, it’s the final. If we beat Seymour’s, I don’t think the others will trouble us much.”

There was just time to see Milton before lock-up. Trevor ran across to Seymour’s, and went up to his study.

“Come in,” said Milton, in answer to his knock.

Trevor went in, and stood surprised at the difference in the look of the place since the last time he had visited it. The walls, once covered with photographs, were bare. Milton, seated before the fire, was ruefully contemplating what looked like a heap of waste cardboard.

Trevor recognised the symptoms. He had had experience.

“You don’t mean to say they’ve been at you, too!” he cried.

Milton’s normally cheerful face was thunderous and gloomy.

“Yes. I was thinking what I’d like to do to the man who ragged it.”

“It’s the League again, I suppose?”

Milton looked surprised.

“Again?” he said, “where did you hear of the League? This is the first time I’ve heard of its existence, whatever it is. What is the confounded thing, and why on earth have they played the fool here? What’s the meaning of this bally rot?”

He exhibited one of the variety of cards of which Trevor had already seen two specimens. Trevor explained briefly the style and nature of the League, and mentioned that his study also had been wrecked.

“Your study? Why, what have they got against you?”

“I don’t know,” said Trevor. Nothing was to be gained by speaking of the letters he had received.

“Did they cut up your photographs?”

“Every one.”

“I tell you what it is, Trevor, old chap,” said Milton, with great solemnity, “there’s a lunatic in the school. That’s what I make of it. A lunatic whose form of madness is wrecking studies.”

“But the same chap couldn’t have done yours and mine. It must have been a Donaldson’s fellow who did mine, and one of your chaps who did yours and Mill’s.”

“Mill’s? By Jove, of course. I never thought of that. That was the League, too, I suppose?”

“Yes. One of those cards was tied to a chair, but Clowes took it away before anybody saw it.”

Milton returned to the details of the disaster.

“Was there any ink spilt in your room?”

“Pints,” said Trevor, shortly. The subject was painful.

“So there was here,” said Milton, mournfully. “Gallons.”

There was silence for a while, each pondering over his wrongs.

“Gallons,” said Milton again. “I was ass enough to keep a large pot full of it here, and they used it all, every drop. You never saw such a sight.”

Trevor said he had seen one similar spectacle.

“And my photographs! You remember those photographs I showed you? All ruined. Slit across with a knife. Some torn in half. I wish I knew who did that.”

Trevor said he wished so, too.

“There was one of Mrs Patrick Campbell,” Milton continued in heartrending tones, “which was torn into sixteen pieces. I counted them. There they are on the mantelpiece. And there was one of Little Tich” (here he almost broke down), “which was so covered with ink that for half an hour I couldn’t recognise it. Fact.”

Trevor nodded sympathetically.

“Yes,” said Milton. “Soaked.”

There was another silence. Trevor felt it would be almost an outrage to discuss so prosaic a topic as the date of a house-match with one so broken up. Yet time was flying, and lock-up was drawing near.

“Are you willing to play—” he began.

“I feel as if I could never play again,” interrupted Milton. “You’d hardly believe the amount of blotting-paper I’ve used today. It must have been a lunatic, Dick, old man.”

When Milton called Trevor “Dick”, it was a sign that he was moved. When he called him “Dick, old man”, it gave evidence of an internal upheaval without parallel.

“Why, who else but a lunatic would get up in the night to wreck another chap’s study? All this was done between eleven last night and seven this morning. I turned in at eleven, and when I came down here again at seven the place was a wreck. It must have been a lunatic.”

“How do you account for the printed card from the League?”

Milton murmured something about madmen’s cunning and diverting suspicion, and relapsed into silence. Trevor seized the opportunity to make the proposal he had come to make, that Donaldson’s v. Seymour’s should be played on the following Wednesday.

Milton agreed listlessly.

“Just where you’re standing,” he said, “I found a photograph of Sir Henry Irving so slashed about that I thought at first it was Huntley Wright in San Toy.”

“Start at two-thirty sharp,” said Trevor.

“I had seventeen of Edna May,” continued the stricken Seymourite, monotonously. “In various attitudes. All destroyed.”

“On the first fifteen ground, of course,” said Trevor. “I’ll get Aldridge to referee. That’ll suit you, I suppose?”

“All right. Anything you like. Just by the fireplace I found the remains of Arthur Roberts in H.M.S. Irresponsible. And part of Seymour Hicks. Under the table—”

Trevor departed.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 13


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 14

“Suppose,” said Shoeblossom to Barry, as they were walking over to school on the morning following the day on which Milton’s study had passed through the hands of the League, “suppose you thought somebody had done something, but you weren’t quite certain who, but you knew it was some one, what would you do?”

“What on earth do you mean?” inquired Barry.

“I was trying to make an A.B. case of it,” explained Shoeblossom.

“What’s an A.B. case?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Shoeblossom, frankly. “But it comes in a book of Stevenson’s. I think it must mean a sort of case where you call everyone A. and B. and don’t tell their names.”

“Well, go ahead.”

“It’s about Milton’s study.”

“What! what about it?”

“Well, you see, the night it was ragged I was sitting in my study with a dark lantern—”

“What!”

Shoeblossom proceeded to relate the moving narrative of his night-walking adventure. He dwelt movingly on his state of mind when standing behind the door, waiting for Mr Seymour to come in and find him. He related with appropriate force the hair-raising episode of the weird white figure. And then he came to the conclusions he had since drawn (in calmer moments) from that apparition’s movements.

“You see,” he said, “I saw it coming out of Milton’s study, and that must have been about the time the study was ragged. And it went into Rigby’s dorm. So it must have been a chap in that dorm, who did it.”

Shoeblossom was quite clever at rare intervals. Even Barry, whose belief in his sanity was of the smallest, was compelled to admit that here, at any rate, he was talking sense.

“What would you do?” asked Shoeblossom.

“Tell Milton, of course,” said Barry.

“But he’d give me beans for being out of the dorm, after lights-out.”

This was a distinct point to be considered. The attitude of Barry towards Milton was different from that of Shoeblossom. Barry regarded him—through having played with him in important matches—as a good sort of fellow who had always behaved decently to him. Leather-Twigg, on the other hand, looked on him with undisguised apprehension, as one in authority who would give him lines the first time he came into contact with him, and cane him if he ever did it again. He had a decided disinclination to see Milton on any pretext whatever.

“Suppose I tell him?” suggested Barry.

“You’ll keep my name dark?” said Shoeblossom, alarmed.

Barry said he would make an A.B. case of it.

After school he went to Milton’s study, and found him still brooding over its departed glories.

“I say, Milton, can I speak to you for a second?”

“Hullo, Barry. Come in.”

Barry came in.

“I had forty-three photographs,” began Milton, without preamble. “All destroyed. And I’ve no money to buy any more. I had seventeen of Edna May.”

Barry, feeling that he was expected to say something, said, “By Jove! Really?”

“In various positions,” continued Milton. “All ruined.”

“Not really?” said Barry.

“There was one of Little Tich—”

But Barry felt unequal to playing the part of chorus any longer. It was all very thrilling, but, if Milton was going to run through the entire list of his destroyed photographs, life would be too short for conversation on any other topic.

“I say, Milton,” he said, “it was about that that I came. I’m sorry—”

Milton sat up.

“It wasn’t you who did this, was it?”

“No, no,” said Barry, hastily.

“Oh, I thought from your saying you were sorry—”

“I was going to say I thought I could put you on the track of the chap who did do it—”

For the second time since the interview began Milton sat up.

“Go on,” he said.

“—But I’m sorry I can’t give you the name of the fellow who told me about it.”

“That doesn’t matter,” said Milton. “Tell me the name of the fellow who did it. That’ll satisfy me.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, either.”

“Have you any idea what you can do?” asked Milton, satirically.

“I can tell you something which may put you on the right track.”

“That’ll do for a start. Well?”

“Well, the chap who told me—I’ll call him A.; I’m going to make an A.B. case of it—was coming out of his study at about one o’clock in the morning—”

“What the deuce was he doing that for?”

“Because he wanted to go back to bed,” said Barry.

“About time, too. Well?”

“As he was going past your study, a white figure emerged—”

“I should strongly advise you, young Barry,” said Milton, gravely, “not to try and rot me in any way. You’re a jolly good wing three-quarters, but you shouldn’t presume on it. I’d slay the Old Man himself if he rotted me about this business.”

Barry was quite pained at this sceptical attitude in one whom he was going out of his way to assist.

“I’m not rotting,” he protested. “This is all quite true.”

“Well, go on. You were saying something about white figures emerging.”

“Not white figures. A white figure,” corrected Barry. “It came out of your study—”

“—And vanished through the wall?”

“It went into Rigby’s dorm.,” said Barry, sulkily. It was maddening to have an exclusive bit of news treated in this way.

“Did it, by Jove!” said Milton, interested at last. “Are you sure the chap who told you wasn’t pulling your leg? Who was it told you?”

“I promised him not to say.”

“Out with it, young Barry.”

“I won’t,” said Barry.

“You aren’t going to tell me?”

“No.”

Milton gave up the point with much cheerfulness. He liked Barry, and he realised that he had no right to try and make him break his promise.

“That’s all right,” he said. “Thanks very much, Barry. This may be useful.”

“I’d tell you his name if I hadn’t promised, you know, Milton.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Milton. “It’s not important.”

“Oh, there was one thing I forgot. It was a biggish chap the fellow saw.”

“How big! My size?”

“Not quite so tall, I should think. He said he was about Seymour’s size.”

“Thanks. That’s worth knowing. Thanks very much, Barry.”

When his visitor had gone, Milton proceeded to unearth one of the printed lists of the house which were used for purposes of roll-call. He meant to find out who were in Rigby’s dormitory. He put a tick against the names. There were eighteen of them. The next thing was to find out which of them was about the same height as Mr Seymour. It was a somewhat vague description, for the house-master stood about five feet nine or eight, and a good many of the dormitory were that height, or near it. At last, after much brain-work, he reduced the number of “possibles” to seven. These seven were Rigby himself, Linton, Rand-Brown, Griffith, Hunt, Kershaw, and Chapple. Rigby might be scratched off the list at once. He was one of Milton’s greatest friends. Exeunt also Griffith, Hunt, and Kershaw. They were mild youths, quite incapable of any deed of devilry. There remained, therefore, Chapple, Linton, and Rand-Brown. Chapple was a boy who was invariably late for breakfast. The inference was that he was not likely to forego his sleep for the purpose of wrecking studies. Chapple might disappear from the list. Now there were only Linton and Rand-Brown to be considered. His suspicions fell on Rand-Brown. Linton was the last person, he thought, to do such a low thing. He was a cheerful, rollicking individual, who was popular with everyone and seemed to like everyone. He was not an orderly member of the house, certainly, and on several occasions Milton had found it necessary to drop on him heavily for creating disturbances. But he was not the sort that bears malice. He took it all in the way of business, and came up smiling after it was over. No, everything pointed to Rand-Brown. He and Milton had never got on well together, and quite recently they had quarrelled openly over the former’s play in the Day’s match. Rand-Brown must be the man. But Milton was sensible enough to feel that so far he had no real evidence whatever. He must wait.

On the following afternoon Seymour’s turned out to play Donaldson’s.

The game, like most house-matches, was played with the utmost keenness. Both teams had good three-quarters, and they attacked in turn. Seymour’s had the best of it forward, where Milton was playing a great game, but Trevor in the centre was the best outside on the field, and pulled up rush after rush. By half-time neither side had scored.

After half-time Seymour’s, playing downhill, came away with a rush to the Donaldsonites’ half, and Rand-Brown, with one of the few decent runs he had made in good class football that term, ran in on the left. Milton took the kick, but failed, and Seymour’s led by three points. For the next twenty minutes nothing more was scored. Then, when five minutes more of play remained, Trevor gave Clowes an easy opening, and Clowes sprinted between the posts. The kick was an easy one, and what sporting reporters term “the major points” were easily added.

When there are five more minutes to play in an important house-match, and one side has scored a goal and the other a try, play is apt to become spirited. Both teams were doing all they knew. The ball came out to Barry on the right. Barry’s abilities as a three-quarter rested chiefly on the fact that he could dodge well. This eel-like attribute compensated for a certain lack of pace. He was past the Donaldson’s three-quarters in an instant, and running for the line, with only the back to pass, and with Clowes in hot pursuit. Another wriggle took him past the back, but it also gave Clowes time to catch him up. Clowes was a far faster runner, and he got to him just as he reached the twenty-five line. They came down together with a crash, Clowes on top, and as they fell the whistle blew.

“No-side,” said Mr. Aldridge, the master who was refereeing.

Clowes got up.

“All over,” he said. “Jolly good game. Hullo, what’s up?”

For Barry seemed to be in trouble.

“You might give us a hand up,” said the latter. “I believe I’ve twisted my beastly ankle or something.”

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 14


text:
The Gold Bat/Chapter 15

“I say,” said Clowes, helping him up, “I’m awfully sorry. Did I do it? How did it happen?”

Barry was engaged in making various attempts at standing on the injured leg. The process seemed to be painful.

“Shall I get a stretcher or anything? Can you walk?”

“If you’d help me over to the house, I could manage all right. What a beastly nuisance! It wasn’t your fault a bit. Only you tackled me when I was just trying to swerve, and my ankle was all twisted.”

Drummond came up, carrying Barry’s blazer and sweater.

“Hullo, Barry,” he said, “what’s up? You aren’t crocked?”

“Something gone wrong with my ankle. That my blazer? Thanks. Coming over to the house? Clowes was just going to help me over.”

Clowes asked a Donaldson’s junior, who was lurking near at hand, to fetch his blazer and carry it over to the house, and then made his way with Drummond and the disabled Barry to Seymour’s. Having arrived at the senior day-room, they deposited the injured three-quarter in a chair, and sent M’Todd, who came in at the moment, to fetch the doctor.

Dr Oakes was a big man with a breezy manner, the sort of doctor who hits you with the force of a sledge-hammer in the small ribs, and asks you if you felt anything then. It was on this principle that he acted with regard to Barry’s ankle. He seized it in both hands and gave it a wrench.

“Did that hurt?” he inquired anxiously.

Barry turned white, and replied that it did.

Dr Oakes nodded wisely.

“Ah! H’m! Just so. ’Myes. Ah.”

“Is it bad?” asked Drummond, awed by these mystic utterances.

“My dear boy,” replied the doctor, breezily, “it is always bad when one twists one’s ankle.”

“How long will it do me out of footer?” asked Barry.

“How long? How long? How long? Why, fortnight. Fortnight,” said the doctor.

“Then I shan’t be able to play next Saturday?”

“Next Saturday? Next Saturday? My dear boy, if you can put your foot to the ground by next Saturday, you may take it as evidence that the age of miracles is not past. Next Saturday, indeed! Ha, ha.”

It was not altogether his fault that he treated the matter with such brutal levity. It was a long time since he had been at school, and he could not quite realise what it meant to Barry not to be able to play against Ripton. As for Barry, he felt that he had never loathed and detested any one so thoroughly as he loathed and detested Dr Oakes at that moment.

“I don’t see where the joke comes in,” said Clowes, when he had gone. “I bar that man.”

“He’s a beast,” said Drummond. “I can’t understand why they let a tout like that be the school doctor.”

Barry said nothing. He was too sore for words.

What Dr Oakes said to his wife that evening was: “Over at the school, my dear, this afternoon. This afternoon. Boy with a twisted ankle. Nice young fellow. Very much put out when I told him he could not play football for a fortnight. But I chaffed him, and cheered him up in no time. I cheered him up in no time, my dear.”

“I’m sure you did, dear,” said Mrs Oakes. Which shows how differently the same thing may strike different people. Barry certainly did not look as if he had been cheered up when Clowes left the study and went over to tell Trevor that he would have to find a substitute for his right wing three-quarter against Ripton.

Trevor had left the field without noticing Barry’s accident, and he was tremendously pleased at the result of the game.

“Good man,” he said, when Clowes came in, “you saved the match.”

“And lost the Ripton match probably,” said Clowes, gloomily.

“What do you mean?”

“That last time I brought down Barry I crocked him. He’s in his study now with a sprained ankle. I’ve just come from there. Oakes has seen him, and says he mustn’t play for a fortnight.”

“Great Scott!” said Trevor, blankly. “What on earth shall we do?”

“Why not move Strachan up to the wing, and put somebody else back instead of him? Strachan is a good wing.”

Trevor shook his head.

“No. There’s nobody good enough to play back for the first. We mustn’t risk it.”

“Then I suppose it must be Rand-Brown?”

“I suppose so.”

“He may do better than we think. He played quite a decent game today. That try he got wasn’t half a bad one.”

“He’d be all right if he didn’t funk. But perhaps he wouldn’t funk against Ripton. In a match like that anybody would play up. I’ll ask Milton and Allardyce about it.”

“I shouldn’t go to Milton today,” said Clowes. “I fancy he’ll want a night’s rest before he’s fit to talk to. He must be a bit sick about this match. I know he expected Seymour’s to win.”

He went out, but came back almost immediately.

“I say,” he said, “there’s one thing that’s just occurred to me. This’ll please the League. I mean, this ankle business of Barry’s.”

The same idea had struck Trevor. It was certainly a respite. But he regretted it for all that. What he wanted was to beat Ripton, and Barry’s absence would weaken the team. However, it was good in its way, and cleared the atmosphere for the time. The League would hardly do anything with regard to the carrying out of their threat while Barry was on the sick-list.

Next day, having given him time to get over the bitterness of defeat in accordance with Clowes’ thoughtful suggestion, Trevor called on Milton, and asked him what his opinion was on the subject of the inclusion of Rand-Brown in the first fifteen in place of Barry,

“He’s the next best man,” he added, in defence of the proposal.

“I suppose so,” said Milton. “He’d better play, I suppose. There’s no one else.”

“Clowes thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to shove Strachan on the wing, and put somebody else back.”

“Who is there to put?”

“Jervis?”

“Not good enough. No, it’s better to be weakish on the wing than at back. Besides, Rand-Brown may do all right. He played well against you.”

“Yes,” said Trevor. “Study looks a bit better now,” he added, as he was going, having looked round the room. “Still a bit bare, though.”

Milton sighed. “It will never be what it was.”

“Forty-three theatrical photographs want some replacing, of course,” said Trevor. “But it isn’t bad, considering.”

“How’s yours?”

“Oh, mine’s all right, except for the absence of photographs.”

“I say, Trevor.”

“Yes?” said Trevor, stopping at the door. Milton’s voice had taken on the tone of one who is about to disclose dreadful secrets.

“Would you like to know what I think?”

“What?”

“Why, I’m pretty nearly sure who it was that ragged my study?”

“By Jove! What have you done to him?”

“Nothing as yet. I’m not quite sure of my man.”

“Who is the man?”

“Rand-Brown.”

“By Jove! Clowes once said he thought Rand-Brown must be the President of the League. But then, I don’t see how you can account for my study being wrecked. He was out on the field when it was done.”

“Why, the League, of course. You don’t suppose he’s the only man in it? There must be a lot of them.”

“But what makes you think it was Rand-Brown?”

Milton told him the story of Shoeblossom, as Barry had told it to him. The only difference was that Trevor listened without any of the scepticism which Milton had displayed on hearing it. He was getting excited. It all fitted in so neatly. If ever there was circumstantial evidence against a man, here it was against Rand-Brown. Take the two cases. Milton had quarrelled with him. Milton’s study was wrecked “with the compliments of the League”. Trevor had turned him out of the first fifteen. Trevor’s study was wrecked “with the compliments of the League”. As Clowes had pointed out, the man with the most obvious motive for not wishing Barry to play for the school was Rand-Brown. It seemed a true bill.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right,” he said, “but of course one can’t do anything yet. You want a lot more evidence. Anyhow, we must play him against Ripton, I suppose. Which is his study? I’ll go and tell him now.”

“Ten.”

Trevor knocked at the door of study Ten. Rand-Brown was sitting over the fire, reading. He jumped up when he saw that it was Trevor who had come in, and to his visitor it seemed that his face wore a guilty look.

“What do you want?” said Rand-Brown.

It was not the politest way of welcoming a visitor. It increased Trevor’s suspicions. The man was afraid. A great idea darted into his mind. Why not go straight to the point and have it out with him here and now? He had the League’s letter about the bat in his pocket. He would confront him with it and insist on searching the study there and then. If Rand-Brown were really, as he suspected, the writer of the letter, the bat must be in this room somewhere. Search it now, and he would have no time to hide it. He pulled out the letter.

“I believe you wrote that,” he said.

Trevor was always direct.

Rand-Brown seemed to turn a little pale, but his voice when he replied was quite steady.

“That’s a lie,” he said.

“Then, perhaps,” said Trevor, “you wouldn’t object to proving it.”

“How?”

“By letting me search your study?”

“You don’t believe my word?”

“Why should I? You don’t believe mine.”

Rand-Brown made no comment on this remark.

“Was that what you came here for?” he asked.

“No,” said Trevor; “as a matter of fact, I came to tell you to turn out for running and passing with the first tomorrow afternoon. You’re playing against Ripton on Saturday.”

Rand-Brown’s attitude underwent a complete transformation at the news. He became friendliness itself.

“All right,” he said. “I say, I’m sorry I said what I did about lying. I was rather sick that you should think I wrote that rot you showed me. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not a bit. Do you mind my searching your study?”

For a moment Rand-Brown looked vicious. Then he sat down with a laugh.

“Go on,” he said; “I see you don’t believe me. Here are the keys if you want them.”

Trevor thanked him, and took the keys. He opened every drawer and examined the writing-desk. The bat was in none of these places. He looked in the cupboards. No bat there.

“Like to take up the carpet?” inquired Rand-Brown.

“No, thanks.”

“Search me if you like. Shall I turn out my pockets?”

“Yes, please,” said Trevor, to his surprise. He had not expected to be taken literally.

Rand-Brown emptied them, but the bat was not there. Trevor turned to go.

“You’ve not looked inside the legs of the chairs yet,” said Rand-Brown. “They may be hollow. There’s no knowing.”

“It doesn’t matter, thanks,” said Trevor. “Sorry for troubling you. Don’t forget tomorrow afternoon.”

And he went, with the very unpleasant feeling that he had been badly scored off.

title: The Gold Bat/Chapter 15