Chapter 6

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.

XIII

VICTIM NUMBER THREE

"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 _malgre 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.

XIV

THE WHITE FIGURE

"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.