Chapter 9

"I saw you going into Rose's, in the High Street, this afternoon, Wren," he said, looking up from his Greek prose. "I didn't give you leave. Come up here after prayers tonight. Shut the door."

Wren went down to consult Walton again. His attitude with regard to a licking from the head of the house was much like that of the other fags. Custom had, to a certain extent, inured him to these painful interviews, but still, if it was possible, he preferred to keep out of them. Under Fenn's rule he had often found a tolerably thin excuse serve his need. Fenn had so many other things to do that he was not unwilling to forego an occasional licking, if the excuse was good enough. And he never took the trouble to find out whether the ingenious stories Wren was wont to serve up to him were true or not. Kennedy, Wren reflected uncomfortably, had given signs that this easy-going method would not do for him. Still, it might be possible to hunt up some story that would meet the case. Walton had a gift in that direction.

"He says I'm to go to his study after prayers," reported Wren. "Can't you think of any excuse that would do?"

"Can't understand Fenn running you in," said Walton. "I thought he never spoke to Kennedy."

Wren explained.

"It wasn't Fenn who ran me in. Kennedy was down town, too, and twigged me going into Rose's. I went there and had tea after I got your things at the grocer's."

"Oh, he spotted you himself, did he?" said Walton. "And he doesn't know Fenn saw you?"

"I don't think so."

"Then I've got a ripping idea. When he has you up tonight, swear that you got leave from Fenn to go down town."

"But he'll ask him."

"The odds are that he won't. He and Fenn had a row at the beginning of term, and never speak to one another if they can help it. It's ten to one that he will prefer taking your yarn to going and asking Fenn if it's true or not. Then he's bound to let you off."

Wren admitted that the scheme was sound.

At the conclusion of prayers, therefore, he went up again to Kennedy's study, with a more hopeful air than he had worn on his previous visit.

"Come in," said Kennedy, reaching for the swagger-stick which he was accustomed to use at these ceremonies.

"Please, Kennedy," said Wren, glibly. "I did get leave to go down town this afternoon."

"What!"

Wren repeated the assertion.

"Who gave you leave?"

"Fenn."

The thing did not seem to be working properly. When he said the word "Fenn", Wren expected to see Kennedy retire baffled, conscious that there was nothing more to be said or done. Instead of this, the remark appeared to infuriate him.

"It's just like your beastly cheek," he said, glaring at the red-headed delinquent, "to ask Fenn for leave instead of me. You know perfectly well that only the head of the house can give leave to go down town. I don't know how often you and the rest of the junior dayroom have played this game, but it's going to stop now. You'd better remember another time when you want to go to Rose's that I've got to be consulted first."

With which he proceeded to ensure to the best of his ability that the memory of Master Wren should not again prove treacherous in this respect.

"How did it work?" asked Walton, when Wren returned.

"It didn't," said Wren, briefly.

Walton expressed an opinion that Kennedy was a cad; which, however sound in itself, did little to improve the condition of Wren.

Having disposed of Wren, Kennedy sat down seriously to consider this new development of a difficult situation. Hitherto he had imagined Fenn to be merely a sort of passive resister who confined himself to the Achilles-in-his-tent business, and was only a nuisance because he refused to back him up. To find him actually aiding and abetting the house in its opposition to its head was something of a shock. And yet, if he had given Wren leave to go down town, he had probably done the same kind office by others. It irritated Kennedy more than the most overt act of enmity would have done. It was not good form. It was hitting below the belt. There was, of course, the chance that Wren's story had not been true. But he did not build much on that. He did not yet know his Wren well, and believed that such an audacious lie would be beyond the daring of a fag. But it would be worth while to make inquiries. He went down the passage to Fenn's study. Fenn, however, had gone to bed, so he resolved to approach him on the subject next day. There was no hurry.

He went to his dormitory, feeling very bitter towards Fenn, and rehearsing home truths with which to confound him on the morrow.

XX

JIMMY THE PEACEMAKER

In these hustling times it is not always easy to get ten minutes' conversation with an acquaintance in private. There was drill in the dinner hour next day for the corps, to which Kennedy had to go directly after lunch. It did not end till afternoon school began. When afternoon school was over, he had to turn out and practise scrummaging with the first fifteen, in view of an important school match which was coming off on the following Saturday. Kennedy had not yet received his cap, but he was playing regularly for the first fifteen, and was generally looked upon as a certainty for one of the last places in the team. Fenn, being a three-quarter, had not to participate in this practice. While the forwards were scrummaging on the second fifteen ground, the outsides ran and passed on the first fifteen ground over at the other end of the field. Fenn's training for the day finished earlier than Kennedy's, the captain of the Eckleton fifteen, who led the scrum, not being satisfied with the way in which the forwards wheeled. He kept them for a quarter of an hour after the outsides had done their day's work, and when Kennedy got back to the house and went to Fenn's study, the latter was not there. He had evidently changed and gone out again, for his football clothes were lying in a heap in a corner of the room. Going back to his own study, he met Spencer.

"Have you seen Fenn?" he asked.

"No," said the fag. "He hasn't come in."

"He's come in all right, but he's gone out again. Go and ask Taylor if he knows where he is."

Taylor was Fenn's fag.

Spencer went to the junior dayroom, and returned with the information that Taylor did not know.

"Oh, all right, then--it doesn't matter," said Kennedy, and went into his study to change.

He had completed this operation, and was thinking of putting his kettle on for tea, when there was a knock at the door.

It was Baker, Jimmy Silver's fag.

"Oh, Kennedy," he said, "Silver says, if you aren't doing anything special, will you go over to his study to tea?"

"Why, is there anything on?"

It struck him as curious that Jimmy should take the trouble to send his fag over to Kay's with a formal invitation. As a rule the head of Blackburn's kept open house. His friends were given to understand that they could drop in whenever they liked. Kennedy looked in for tea three times a week on an average.

"I don't think so," said Baker.

"Who else is going to be there?"

Jimmy Silver sometimes took it into his head to entertain weird beings from other houses whose brothers or cousins he had met in the holidays. On such occasions he liked to have some trusty friend by him to help the conversation along. It struck Kennedy that this might be one of those occasions. If so, he would send back a polite but firm refusal of the invitation. Last time he had gone to help Jimmy entertain a guest of this kind, conversation had come to a dead standstill a quarter of an hour after his arrival, the guest refusing to do anything except eat prodigiously, and reply "Yes" or "No", as the question might demand, when spoken to. Also he had declined to stir from his seat till a quarter to seven. Kennedy was not going to be let in for another orgy of that nature if he knew it.

"Who's with Silver?" he asked.

"Only Fenn," said Baker.

Kennedy pondered for a moment.

"All right," he said, at last, "tell him I'll be round in a few minutes."

He sat thinking the thing over after Baker had gone back to Blackburn's with the message. He saw Silver's game, of course. Jimmy had made no secret for some time of his disgust at the coolness between Kennedy and Fenn. Not knowing all the circumstances, he considered it absolute folly. If only he could get the two together over a quiet pot of tea, he imagined that it would not be a difficult task to act effectively as a peacemaker.

Kennedy was sorry for Jimmy. He appreciated his feelings in the matter. He would not have liked it himself if his two best friends had been at daggers drawn. Still, he could not bring himself to treat Fenn as if nothing had happened, simply to oblige Silver. There had been a time when he might have done it, but now that Fenn had started a deliberate campaign against him by giving Wren--and probably, thought Kennedy, half the other fags in the house--leave down town when he ought to have sent them on to him, things had gone too far. However, he could do no harm by going over to Jimmy's to tea, even if Fenn was there. He had not looked to interview Fenn before an audience, but if that audience consisted only of Jimmy, it would not matter so much.

His advent surprised Fenn. The astute James, fancying that if he mentioned that he was expecting Kennedy to tea, Fenn would make a bolt for it, had said nothing about it.

When Kennedy arrived there was one of those awkward pauses which are so difficult to fill up in a satisfactory manner.

"Now you're up, Fenn," said Jimmy, as the latter rose, evidently with the intention of leaving the study, "you might as well reach down that toasting-fork and make some toast."

"I'm afraid I must be off now, Jimmy," said Fenn.

"No you aren't," said Silver. "You bustle about and make yourself useful, and don't talk rot. You'll find your cup on that shelf over there, Kennedy. It'll want a wipe round. Better use the table-cloth."

There was silence in the study until tea was ready. Then Jimmy Silver spoke.

"Long time since we three had tea together," he said, addressing the remark to the teapot.

"Kennedy's a busy man," said Fenn, suavely. "He's got a house to look after."

"And I'm going to look after it," said Kennedy, "as you'll find."

Jimmy Silver put in a plaintive protest.

"I wish you two men wouldn't talk shop," he said. "It's bad enough having Kay's next door to one, without your dragging it into the conversation. How were the forwards this evening, Kennedy?"

"Not bad," said Kennedy, shortly.

"I wonder if we shall lick Tuppenham on Saturday?"

"I don't know," said Kennedy; and there was silence again.

"Look here, Jimmy," said Kennedy, after a long pause, during which the head of Blackburn's tried to fill up the blank in the conversation by toasting a piece of bread in a way which was intended to suggest that if he were not so busy, the talk would be unchecked and animated, "it's no good. We must have it out some time, so it may as well be here as anywhere else. I've been looking for Fenn all day."

"Sorry to give you all that trouble," said Fenn, with a sneer. "Got something important to say?"

"Yes."

"Go ahead, then."

Jimmy Silver stood between them with the toasting-fork in his hand, as if he meant to plunge it into the one who first showed symptoms of flying at the other's throat. He was unhappy. His peace-making tea-party was not proving a success.

"I wanted to ask you," said Kennedy, quietly, "what you meant by giving the fags leave down town when you knew that they ought to come to me?"

The gentle and intelligent reader will remember (though that miserable worm, the vapid and irreflective reader, will have forgotten) that at the beginning of the term the fags of Kay's had endeavoured to show their approval of Fenn and their disapproval of Kennedy by applying to the former for leave when they wished to go to the town; and that Fenn had received them in the most ungrateful manner with blows instead of exeats. Strong in this recollection, he was not disturbed by Kennedy's question. Indeed, it gave him a comfortable feeling of rectitude. There is nothing more pleasant than to be accused to your face of something which you can deny on the spot with an easy conscience. It is like getting a very loose ball at cricket. Fenn felt almost friendly towards Kennedy.

"I meant nothing," he replied, "for the simple reason that I didn't do it."

"I caught Wren down town yesterday, and he said you had given him leave."

"Then he lied, and I hope you licked him."

"There you are, you see," broke in Jimmy Silver triumphantly, "it's all a misunderstanding. You two have got no right to be cutting one another. Why on earth can't you stop all this rot, and behave like decent members of society again?"

"As a matter of fact," said Fenn, "they did try it on earlier in the term. I wasted a lot of valuable time pointing out to them with a swagger-stick--that I was the wrong person to come to. I'm sorry you should have thought I could play it as low down as that."

Kennedy hesitated. It is not very pleasant to have to climb down after starting a conversation in a stormy and wrathful vein. But it had to be done.

"I'm sorry, Fenn," he said; "I was an idiot."

Jimmy Silver cut in again.

"You were," he said, with enthusiasm. "You both were. I used to think Fenn was a bigger idiot than you, but now I'm inclined to call it a dead heat. What's the good of going on trying to see which of you can make the bigger fool of himself? You've both lowered all previous records."

"I suppose we have," said Fenn. "At least, I have."

"No, I have," said Kennedy.

"You both have," said Jimmy Silver. "Another cup of tea, anybody? Say when."

Fenn and Kennedy walked back to Kay's together, and tea-d together in Fenn's study on the following afternoon, to the amazement--and even scandal--of Master Spencer, who discovered them at it. Spencer liked excitement; and with the two leaders of the house at logger-heads, things could never be really dull. If, as appearances seemed to suggest, they had agreed to settle their differences, life would become monotonous again--possibly even unpleasant.

This thought flashed through Spencer's brain (as he called it) when he opened Fenn's door and found him helping Kennedy to tea.

"Oh, the headmaster wants to see you, please, Fenn," said Spencer, recovering from his amazement, "and told me to give you this."

"This" was a prefect's cap. Fenn recognised it without difficulty. It was the cap he had left in the sitting-room of the house in the High Street.

XXI

IN WHICH AN EPISODE IS CLOSED

"Thanks," said Fenn.

He stood twirling the cap round in his hand as Spencer closed the door. Then he threw it on to the table. He did not feel particularly disturbed at the thought of the interview that was to come. He had been expecting the cap to turn up, like the corpse of Eugene Aram's victim, at some inconvenient moment. It was a pity that it had come just as things looked as if they might be made more or less tolerable in Kay's. He had been looking forward with a grim pleasure to the sensation that would be caused in the house when it became known that he and Kennedy had formed a combine for its moral and physical benefit. But that was all over. He would be sacked, beyond a doubt. In the history of Eckleton, as far as he knew it, there had never been a case of a fellow breaking out at night and not being expelled when he was caught. It was one of the cardinal sins in the school code. There had been the case of Peter Brown, which his brother had mentioned in his letter. And in his own time he had seen three men vanish from Eckleton for the same offence. He did not flatter himself that his record at the school was so good as to make it likely that the authorities would stretch a point in his favour.

"So long, Kennedy," he said. "You'll be here when I get back, I suppose?"

"What does he want you for, do you think?" asked Kennedy, stretching himself, with a yawn. It never struck him that Fenn could be in any serious trouble. Fenn was a prefect; and when the headmaster sent for a prefect, it was generally to tell him that he had got a split infinitive in his English Essay that week.

"Glad I'm not you," he added, as a gust of wind rattled the sash, and the rain dashed against the pane. "Beastly evening to have to go out."

"It isn't the rain I mind," said Fenn; "it's what's going to happen when I get indoors again," and refused to explain further. There would be plenty of time to tell Kennedy the whole story when he returned. It was better not to keep the headmaster waiting.

The first thing he noticed on reaching the School House was the strange demeanour of the butler. Whenever Fenn had had occasion to call on the headmaster hitherto, Watson had admitted him with the air of a high priest leading a devotee to a shrine of which he was the sole managing director. This evening he seemed restless, excited.

"Good evening, Mr Fenn," he said. "This way, sir."

Those were his actual words. Fenn had not known for certain until now that he _could_ talk. On previous occasions their conversations had been limited to an "Is the headmaster in?" from Fenn, and a stately inclination of the head from Watson. The man was getting a positive babbler.

With an eager, springy step, distantly reminiscent of a shopwalker heading a procession of customers, with a touch of the style of the winner in a walking-race to Brighton, the once slow-moving butler led the way to the headmaster's study.

For the first time since he started out, Fenn was conscious of a tremor. There is something about a closed door, behind which somebody is waiting to receive one, which appeals to the imagination, especially if the ensuing meeting is likely to be an unpleasant one.

"Ah, Fenn," said the headmaster. "Come in."

Fenn wondered. It was not in this tone of voice that the Head was wont to begin a conversation which was going to prove painful.

"You've got your cap, Fenn? I gave it to a small boy in your house to take to you."

"Yes, sir."

He had given up all hope of understanding the Head's line of action. Unless he was playing a deep game, and intended to flash out suddenly with a keen question which it would be impossible to parry, there seemed nothing to account for the strange absence of anything unusual in his manner. He referred to the cap as if he had borrowed it from Fenn, and had returned it by bearer, hoping that its loss had not inconvenienced him at all.

"I daresay," continued the Head, "that you are wondering how it came into my possession. You missed it, of course?"

"Very much, sir," said Fenn, with perfect truth.

"It has just been brought to my house, together with a great many other things, more valuable, perhaps,"--here he smiled a head-magisterial smile--"by a policeman from Eckleton."

Fenn was still unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation. He could understand, in a vague way, that for some unexplained reason things were going well for him, but beyond that his mind was in a whirl.

"You will remember the unfortunate burglary of Mr Kay's house and mine. Your cap was returned with the rest of the stolen property."

"Just so," thought Fenn. "The rest of the stolen property? Exactly. _Go_ on. Don't mind me. I shall begin to understand soon, I suppose."

He condensed these thoughts into the verbal reply, "Yes, sir."

"I sent for you to identify your own property. I see there is a silver cup belonging to you. Perhaps there are also other articles. Go and see. You will find them on that table. They are in a hopeless state of confusion, having been conveyed here in a sack. Fortunately, nothing is broken."

He was thinking of certain valuables belonging to himself which had been abstracted from his drawing-room on the occasion of the burglar's visit to the School House.

Fenn crossed the room, and began to inspect the table indicated. On it was as mixed a collection of valuable and useless articles as one could wish to see. He saw his cup at once, and attached himself to it. But of all the other exhibits in this private collection, he could recognise nothing else as his property.

"There is nothing of mine here except the cup, sir," he said.

"Ah. Then that is all, I think. You are going back to Mr Kay's. Then please send Kennedy to me. Good night, Fenn."

"Good night, sir."

Even now Fenn could not understand it. The more he thought it over, the more his brain reeled. He could grasp the fact that his cap and his cup were safe again, and that there was evidently going to be no sacking for the moment. But how it had all happened, and how the police had got hold of his cap, and why they had returned it with the loot gathered in by the burglar who had visited Kay's and the School House, were problems which, he had to confess, were beyond him.

He walked to Kay's through the rain with the cup under his mackintosh, and freely admitted to himself that there were things in heaven and earth--and particularly earth--which no fellow could understand.

"I don't know," he said, when Kennedy pressed for an explanation of the reappearance of the cup. "It's no good asking me. I'm going now to borrow the matron's smelling-salts: I feel faint. After that I shall wrap a wet towel round my head, and begin to think it out. Meanwhile, you're to go over to the Head. He's had enough of me, and he wants to have a look at you."

"Me?" said Kennedy. "Why?"

"Now, is it any good asking _me?_?" said Fenn. "If you can find out what it's all about, I'll thank you if you'll come and tell me."

Ten minutes later Kennedy returned. He carried a watch and chain.

"I couldn't think what had happened to my watch," he said. "I missed it on the day after that burglary here, but I never thought of thinking it had been collared by a professional. I thought I must have lost it somewhere."

"Well, have you grasped what's been happening?"

"I've grasped my ticker, which is good enough for me. Half a second. The old man wants to see the rest of the prefects. He's going to work through the house in batches, instead of man by man. I'll just go round the studies and rout them out, and then I'll come back and explain. It's perfectly simple."

"Glad you think so," said Fenn.

Kennedy went and returned.

"Now," he said, subsiding into a deck-chair, "what is it you don't understand?"

"I don't understand anything. Begin at the beginning."

"I got the yarn from the butler--what's his name?"

"Those who know him well enough to venture to give him a name--I've never dared to myself--call him Watson," said Fenn.

"I got the yarn from Watson. He was as excited as anything about it. I never saw him like that before."

"I noticed something queer about him."

"He's awfully bucked, and is doing the Ancient Mariner business all over the place. Wants to tell the story to everyone he sees."

"Well, suppose you follow his example. I want to hear about it."

"Well, it seems that the police have been watching a house at the corner of the High Street for some time--what's up?"

"Nothing. Go on."

"But you said, 'By Jove!'"

"Well, why shouldn't I say 'By Jove'? When you are telling sensational yarns, it's my duty to say something of the sort. Buck along."

"It's a house not far from the Town Hall, at the corner of Pegwell Street--you've probably been there scores of times."

"Once or twice, perhaps," said Fenn. "Well?"