The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mike and Psmith, by P. G. Wodehouse
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Title: Mike and Psmith
Author: P. G. Wodehouse
Release Date: January 4, 2004 [EBook #10586]
[Date last updated: December 10, 2005]
Language: English
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MIKE AND PSMITH
By P.G. WODEHOUSE
MEREDITH PRESS / NEW YORK
Copyright 1909 by A. & C. Black
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
1. MR. JACKSON MAKES UP HIS MIND
2. SEDLEIGH
3. PSMITH
4. STAKING OUT A CLAIM
5. GUERRILLA WARFARE
6. UNPLEASANTNESS IN THE SMALL HOURS
7. ADAIR
8. MIKE FINDS OCCUPATION
9. THE FIRE BRIGADE MEETING
10. ACHILLES LEAVES HIS TENT
11. THE MATCH WITH DOWNING'S
12. THE SINGULAR BEHAVIOR OF JELLICOE
13. JELLICOE GOES ON THE SICK LIST
14. MIKE RECEIVES A COMMISSION
15. ... AND FULFILLS IT
16. PURSUIT
17. THE DECORATION OF SAMMY
18. MR. DOWNING ON THE SCENT
19. THE SLEUTH-HOUND
20. A CHECK
21. THE DESTROYER OF EVIDENCE
22. MAINLY ABOUT SHOES
23. ON THE TRAIL AGAIN
24. THE ADAIR METHOD
25. ADAIR HAS A WORD WITH MIKE
26. CLEARING THE AIR
27. IN WHICH PEACE IS DECLARED
28. MR. DOWNING MOVES
29. THE ARTIST CLAIMS HIS WORK
30. SEDLEIGH V. WRYKYN
PREFACE
In Evelyn Waugh's book _Decline and Fall_ his hero, applying for a post
as a schoolmaster, is told by the agent, "We class schools in four
grades--leading school, first-rate school, good school, and school."
Sedleigh in Mike and Psmith would, I suppose, come into the last-named
class, though not quite as low in it as Mr. Waugh's Llanabba. It is one
of those small English schools with aspirations one day to be able to
put the word "public" before their name and to have their headmaster
qualified to attend the annual Headmaster's Conference. All it needs is
a few more Adairs to get things going. And there is this to be noted,
that even at a "school" one gets an excellent education. Its only
drawback is that it does not play the leading schools or the first-rate
schools or even the good schools at cricket. But to Mike, fresh from
Wrykyn (a "first-rate school") and Psmith, coming from Eton (a "leading
school") Sedleigh naturally seemed something of a comedown. It took Mike
some time to adjust himself to it, though Psmith, the philosopher,
accepted the change of conditions with his customary equanimity.
This was the first appearance of Psmith. He came into two other books,
_Psmith in the City_ and _Psmith, Journalist_, before becoming happily
married in _Leave It to Psmith_, but I have always thought that he was
most at home in this story of English school life. To give full play to
his bland clashings with Authority he needs to have authority to clash
with, and there is none more absolute than that of the masters at an
English school.
Psmith has the distinction of being the only one of my numerous
characters to be drawn from a living model. A cousin of mine was at Eton
with the son of D'Oyly Carte, the man who produced the Gilbert and
Sullivan operettas, and one night he told me about this peculiar
schoolboy who dressed fastidiously and wore a monocle and who, when one
of the masters inquired after his health, replied "Sir, I grow thinnah
and thinnah." It was all the information I required in order to start
building him in a star part.
If anyone is curious as to what became of Mike and Psmith in later life,
I can supply the facts. Mike, always devoted to country life, ran a
prosperous farm. Psmith, inevitably perhaps, became an equally
prosperous counselor at the bar like Perry Mason, specializing, like
Perry, in appearing for the defense.
I must apologize, as I did in the preface to _Mike at Wrykyn,_ for all
the cricket in this book. It was unavoidable. There is, however, not
quite so much of it this time.
P.G. Wodehouse.
1
MR. JACKSON MAKES UP HIS MIND
If Mike had been in time for breakfast that fatal Easter morning he
might have gathered from the expression on his father's face, as Mr.
Jackson opened the envelope containing his school report and read the
contents, that the document in question was not exactly a paean of
praise from beginning to end. But he was late, as usual. Mike always was
late for breakfast in the holidays.
When he came down on this particular morning, the meal was nearly over.
Mr. Jackson had disappeared, taking his correspondence with him; Mrs.
Jackson had gone into the kitchen, and when Mike appeared the thing had
resolved itself into a mere vulgar brawl between Phyllis and Ella for
the jam, while Marjory, recently affecting a grown-up air, looked on in
a detached sort of way, as if these juvenile gambols distressed her.
"Hello, Mike," she said, jumping up as he entered, "here you are--I've
been keeping everything hot for you."
"Have you? Thanks awfully. I say ..." His eye wandered in mild surprise
round the table. "I'm a bit late."
Marjory was bustling about, fetching and carrying for Mike, as she
always did. She had adopted him at an early age, and did the thing
thoroughly. She was fond of her other brothers, especially when they
made centuries in first-class cricket, but Mike was her favorite. She
would field out in the deep as a natural thing when Mike was batting at
the net in the paddock, though for the others, even for Joe, who had
played in all five Test Matches in the previous summer, she would do it
only as a favor.
Phyllis and Ella finished their dispute and went out. Marjory sat on the
table and watched Mike eat.
"Your report came this morning, Mike," she said.
The kidneys failed to retain Mike's undivided attention. He looked up
interested. "What did it say?"
"I didn't see--I only caught sight of the Wrykyn crest on the envelope.
Father didn't say anything."
Mike seemed concerned. "I say, that looks rather rotten! I wonder if it
was awfully bad. It's the first I've had from Appleby."
"It can't be any worse than the horrid ones Mr. Blake used to write when
you were in his form."
"No, that's a comfort," said Mike philosophically. "Think there's any
more tea in that pot?"
"I call it a shame," said Marjory; "they ought to be jolly glad to have
you at Wrykyn just for cricket, instead of writing beastly reports that
make father angry and don't do any good to anybody."
"Last Christmas he said he'd take me away if I got another one."
"He didn't mean it really, I _know_ he didn't! He couldn't! You're the
best bat Wrykyn's ever had."
"What ho!" interpolated Mike.
"You _are_. Everybody says you are. Why, you got your first the very
first term you were there--even Joe didn't do anything nearly so good as
that. Saunders says you're simply bound to play for England in another
year or two."
"Saunders is a jolly good chap. He bowled me a half volley on the off
the first ball I had in a school match. By the way, I wonder if he's out
at the net now. Let's go and see."
Saunders the professional was setting up the net when they arrived. Mike
put on his pads and went to the wicket, while Marjory and the dogs
retired as usual to the far hedge to retrieve.
She was kept busy. Saunders was a good sound bowler of the M.C.C. minor
match type, and there had been a time when he had worried Mike
considerably, but Mike had been in the Wrykyn team for three seasons
now, and each season he had advanced tremendously in his batting. He had
filled out in three years. He had always had the style, and now he had
the strength as well, Saunder's bowling on a true wicket seemed simple
to him. It was early in the Easter holidays, but already he was
beginning to find his form. Saunders, who looked on Mike as his own
special invention, was delighted.
"If you don't be worried by being too anxious now that you're captain,
Master Mike," he said, "you'll make a century every match next term."
"I wish I wasn't; it's a beastly responsibility."
Henfrey, the Wrykyn cricket captain of the previous season, was not
returning next term, and Mike was to reign in his stead. He liked the
prospect, but it certainly carried with it a rather awe-inspiring
responsibility. At night sometimes he would lie awake, appalled by the
fear of losing his form, or making a hash of things by choosing the
wrong men to play for the school and leaving the right men out. It is no
light thing to captain a public school at cricket.
As he was walking toward the house, Phyllis met him. "Oh, I've been
hunting for you, Mike; Father wants you."
"What for?"
"I don't know."
"Where?"
"He's in the study. He seems ..." added Phyllis, throwing in the
information by a way of a makeweight, "in a beastly temper."
Mike's jaw fell slightly. "I hope the dickens it's nothing to do with
that bally report," was his muttered exclamation.
Mike's dealings with his father were as a rule of a most pleasant
nature. Mr. Jackson was an understanding sort of man, who treated his
sons as companions. From time to time, however, breezes were apt to
ruffle the placid sea of good fellowship. Mike's end-of-term report was
an unfailing wind raiser; indeed, on the arrival of Mr. Blake's
sarcastic resume of Mike's shortcomings at the end of the previous term,
there had been something not unlike a typhoon. It was on this occasion
that Mr. Jackson had solemnly declared his intention of removing Mike
from Wrykyn unless the critics became more flattering; and Mr. Jackson
was a man of his word.
It was with a certain amount of apprehension, therefore, that Jackson
entered the study.
"Come in, Mike," said his father, kicking the waste-paper basket; "I
want to speak to you."
Mike, skilled in omens, scented a row in the offing. Only in moments of
emotion was Mr. Jackson in the habit of booting the basket.
There followed an awkward silence, which Mike broke by remarking that he
had carted a half volley from Saunders over the on-side hedge
that morning.
"It was just a bit short and off the leg stump, so I stepped out--may I
bag the paper knife for a jiffy? I'll just show--"
"Never mind about cricket now," said Mr. Jackson; "I want you to listen
to this report."
"Oh, is that my report, Father?" said Mike, with a sort of sickly
interest, much as a dog about to be washed might evince in his tub.
"It is," replied Mr. Jackson in measured tones, "your report; what is
more, it is without exception the worst report you have ever had."
"Oh, I say!" groaned the record-breaker.
"'His conduct,'" quoted Mr. Jackson, "'has been unsatisfactory in the
extreme, both in and out of school.'"
"It wasn't anything really. I only happened--"
Remembering suddenly that what he had happened to do was to drop a
cannonball (the school weight) on the form-room floor, not once, but on
several occasions, he paused.
"'French bad; conduct disgraceful--'"
"Everybody rags in French."
"'Mathematics bad. Inattentive and idle.'"
"Nobody does much work in Math."
"'Latin poor. Greek, very poor.'"
"We were doing Thucydides, Book Two, last term--all speeches and
doubtful readings, and cruxes and things--beastly hard! Everybody
says so."
"Here are Mr. Appleby's remarks: 'The boy has genuine ability, which he
declines to use in the smallest degree.'"
Mike moaned a moan of righteous indignation.
"'An abnormal proficiency at games has apparently destroyed all desire
in him to realize the more serious issues of life.' There is more to the
same effect."
Mr. Appleby was a master with very definite ideas as to what constituted
a public-school master's duties. As a man he was distinctly pro-Mike. He
understood cricket, and some of Mike's strokes on the off gave him
thrills of pure aesthetic joy; but as a master he always made it his
habit to regard the manners and customs of the boys in his form with an
unbiased eye, and to an unbiased eye Mike in a form room was about as
near the extreme edge as a boy could be, and Mr. Appleby said as much in
a clear firm hand.
"You remember what I said to you about your report at Christmas, Mike?"
said Mr. Jackson, folding the lethal document and replacing it in
its envelope.
Mike said nothing; there was a sinking feeling in his interior.
"I shall abide by what I said."
Mike's heart thumped.
"You will not go back to Wrykyn next term."
Somewhere in the world the sun was shining, birds were twittering;
somewhere in the world lambkins frisked and peasants sang blithely at
their toil (flat, perhaps, but still blithely), but to Mike at that
moment the sky was black, and an icy wind blew over the face of
the earth.
The tragedy had happened, and there was an end of it. He made no attempt
to appeal against the sentence. He knew it would be useless, his father,
when he made up his mind, having all the unbending tenacity of the
normally easygoing man.
Mr. Jackson was sorry for Mike. He understood him, and for that reason
he said very little now.
"I am sending you to Sedleigh," was his next remark.
Sedleigh! Mike sat up with a jerk. He knew Sedleigh by name--one of
those schools with about a hundred boys which you never hear of except
when they send up their gym team to Aldershot, or their Eight to Bisley.
Mike's outlook on life was that of a cricketer, pure and simple. What
had Sedleigh ever done? What were they ever likely to do? Whom did they
play? What Old Sedleighan had ever done anything at cricket? Perhaps
they didn't even _play_ cricket!
"But it's an awful hole," he said blankly.
Mr. Jackson could read Mike's mind like a book. Mike's point of view was
plain to him. He did not approve of it, but he knew that in Mike's place
and at Mike's age he would have felt the same. He spoke dryly to hide
his sympathy.
"It is not a large school," he said, "and I don't suppose it could play
Wrykyn at cricket, but it has one merit--boys work there. Young Barlitt
won a Balliol scholarship from Sedleigh last year." Barlitt was the
vicar's son, a silent, spectacled youth who did not enter very largely
into Mike's world. They had met occasionally at tennis parties, but not
much conversation had ensued. Barlitt's mind was massive, but his topics
of conversation were not Mike's.
"Mr. Barlitt speaks very highly of Sedleigh," added Mr. Jackson.
Mike said nothing, which was a good deal better than saying what he
would have liked to have said.
2
SEDLEIGH
The train, which had been stopping everywhere for the last half hour,
pulled up again, and Mike, seeing the name of the station, got up,
opened the door, and hurled a bag out on to the platform in an emphatic
and vindictive manner. Then he got out himself and looked about him.
"For the school, sir?" inquired the solitary porter, bustling up, as if
he hoped by sheer energy to deceive the traveler into thinking that
Sedleigh station was staffed by a great army of porters.
Mike nodded. A somber nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody
had met him in 1812, and said, "So you're back from Moscow, eh?" Mike
was feeling thoroughly jaundiced. The future seemed wholly gloomy. And,
so far from attempting to make the best of things, he had set himself
deliberately to look on the dark side. He thought, for instance, that he
had never seen a more repulsive porter, or one more obviously
incompetent than the man who had attached himself with a firm grasp to
the handle of the bag as he strode off in the direction of the luggage
van. He disliked his voice, his appearance, and the color of his hair.
Also the boots he wore. He hated the station, and the man who took
his ticket.
"Young gents at the school, sir," said the porter, perceiving from
Mike's _distrait_ air that the boy was a stranger to the place, "goes up
in the bus mostly. It's waiting here, sir. Hi, George!"
"I'll walk, thanks," said Mike frigidly.
"It's a goodish step, sir."
"Here you are."
"Thank you, sir. I'll send up your luggage by the bus, sir. Which 'ouse
was it you was going to?"
"Outwood's."
"Right, sir. It's straight on up this road to the school. You can't miss
it, sir."
"Worse luck," said Mike.
He walked off up the road, sorrier for himself than ever. It was such
absolutely rotten luck. About now, instead of being on his way to a
place where they probably ran a Halma team instead of a cricket eleven,
and played hunt-the-slipper in winter, he would be on the point of
arriving at Wrykyn. And as captain of cricket, at that. Which was the
bitter part of it. He had never been in command. For the last two
seasons he had been the star man, going in first, and heading the
averages easily at the end of the season; and the three captains under
whom he had played during his career as a Wrykynian, Burgess, Enderby,
and Henfrey, had always been sportsmen to him. But it was not the same
thing. He had meant to do such a lot for Wrykyn cricket this term. He
had had an entirely new system of coaching in his mind. Now it might
never be used. He had handed it on in a letter to Strachan, who would be
captain in his place; but probably Strachan would have some scheme of
his own. There is nobody who could not edit a paper in the ideal way;
and there is nobody who has not a theory of his own about cricket
coaching at school.
Wrykyn, too, would be weak this year, now that he was no longer there.
Strachan was a good, free bat on his day, and, if he survived a few
overs, might make a century in an hour, but he was not to be depended
upon. There was no doubt that Mike's sudden withdrawal meant that Wrykyn
would have a bad time that season. And it had been such a wretched
athletic year for the school. The football fifteen had been hopeless,
and had lost both the Ripton matches, the return by over sixty points.
Sheen's victory in the light weights at Aldershot had been their one
success. And now, on top of all this, the captain of cricket was removed
during the Easter holidays. Mike's heart bled for Wrykyn, and he found
himself loathing Sedleigh and all its works with a great loathing.
The only thing he could find in its favor was the fact that it was set
in a very pretty country. Of a different type from the Wrykyn country,
but almost as good. For three miles Mike made his way through woods and
past fields. Once he crossed a river. It was soon after this that he
caught sight, from the top of a hill, of a group of buildings that wore
an unmistakably schoollike look.
This must be Sedleigh.
Ten minutes' walk brought him to the school gates, and a baker's boy
directed him to Mr. Outwood's.
There were three houses in a row, separated from the school buildings by
a cricket field. Outwood's was the middle one of these.
Mike went to the front door and knocked. At Wrykyn he had always charged
in at the beginning of term at the boys' entrance, but this formal
reporting of himself at Sedleigh suited his mood.
He inquired for Mr. Outwood, and was shown into a room lined with books.
Presently the door opened, and the housemaster appeared.
There was something pleasant and homely about Mr. Outwood. In appearance
he reminded Mike of Smee in _Peter Pan_. He had the same eyebrows and
pince-nez and the same motherly look.
"Jackson?" he said mildly.
"Yes, sir."
"I am very glad to see you, very glad indeed. Perhaps you would like a
cup of tea after your journey. I think you might like a cup of tea. You
come from Crofton, in Shropshire, I understand, Jackson, near
Brindleford? It is a part of the country which I have always wished to
visit. I dare say you have frequently seen the Cluniac Priory of St.
Ambrose at Brindleford?"
Mike, who would not have recognized a Cluniac Priory if you had handed
him one on a tray, said he had not.
"Dear me! You have missed an opportunity which I should have been glad
to have. I am preparing a book on Ruined Abbeys and Priories of England,
and it has always been my wish to see the Cluniac Priory of St. Ambrose.
A deeply interesting relic of the sixteenth century. Bishop Geoffrey,
1133-40--"
"Shall I go across to the boys' part, sir?"
"What? Yes. Oh, yes. Quite so. And perhaps you would like a cup of tea
after your journey? No? Quite so. Quite so. You should make a point of
visiting the remains of the Cluniac Priory in the summer holidays,
Jackson. You will find the matron in her room. In many respects it is
unique. The northern altar is in a state of really wonderful
preservation. It consists of a solid block of masonry five feet long and
two and a half wide, with chamfered plinth, standing quite free from the
apse wall. It will well repay a visit. Good-bye for the present,
Jackson, good-bye."
Mike wandered across to the other side of the house, his gloom visibly
deepened. All alone in a strange school, where they probably played
hopscotch, with a housemaster who offered one cups of tea after one's
journey and talked about chamfered plinths and apses. It was a
little hard.
He strayed about, finding his bearings, and finally came to a room which
he took to be the equivalent of the senior day room at a Wrykyn house.
Everywhere else he had found nothing but emptiness. Evidently he had
come by an earlier train than was usual. But this room was occupied.
A very long, thin youth, with a solemn face and immaculate clothes, was
leaning against the mantelpiece. As Mike entered, he fumbled in his top
left waistcoat pocket, produced an eyeglass attached to a cord, and
fixed it in his right eye. With the help of this aid to vision he
inspected Mike in silence for a while, then, having flicked an invisible
speck of dust from the left sleeve of his coat, he spoke.
"Hello," he said.
He spoke in a tired voice.
"Hello," said Mike.
"Take a seat," said the immaculate one. "If you don't mind dirtying your
bags, that's to say. Personally, I don't see any prospect of ever
sitting down in this place. It looks to me as if they meant to use these
chairs as mustard-and-cress beds. A Nursery Garden in the Home. That
sort of idea. My name," he added pensively, "is Smith. What's yours?"
3
PSMITH
"Jackson," said Mike.
"Are you the Bully, the Pride of the School, or the Boy who is Led
Astray and takes to Drink in Chapter Sixteen?"
"The last, for choice," said Mike, "but I've only just arrived, so I
don't know."
"The boy--what will he become? Are you new here, too, then?"
"Yes! Why, are you new?"
"Do I look as if I belonged here? I'm the latest import. Sit down on
yonder settee, and I will tell you the painful story of my life. By the
way, before I start, there's just one thing. If you ever have occasion
to write to me, would you mind sticking a P at the beginning of my name?
P-s-m-i-t-h. See? There are too many Smiths, and I don't care for
Smythe. My father's content to worry along in the old-fashioned way, but
I've decided to strike out a fresh line. I shall found a new dynasty.
The resolve came to me unexpectedly this morning. I jotted it down on
the back of an envelope. In conversation you may address me as Rupert
(though I hope you won't), or simply Smith, the _P_ not being sounded.
Compare the name Zbysco, in which the Z is given a similar
miss-in-balk. See?"
Mike said he saw. Psmith thanked him with a certain stately old world
courtesy.
"Let us start at the beginning," he resumed. "My infancy. When I was but
a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with a shilling an hour by my nurse
to keep an eye on me, and see that I did not raise Cain. At the end of
the first day she struck for one-and-six, and got it. We now pass to my
boyhood. At an early age, I was sent to Eton, everybody predicting a
bright career for me. But," said Psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like
gaze on Mike through the eyeglass, "it was not to be."
"No?" said Mike.
"No. I was superannuated last term."
"Bad luck."
"For Eton, yes. But what Eton loses, Sedleigh gains."
"But why Sedleigh, of all places?"
"This is the most painful part of my narrative. It seems that a certain
scug in the next village to ours happened last year to collar a
Balliol--"
"Not Barlitt!" exclaimed Mike.
"That was the man. The son of the vicar. The vicar told the curate, who
told our curate, who told our vicar, who told my father, who sent me off
here to get a Balliol too. Do _you_ know Barlitt?"
"His father's vicar of our village. It was because his son got a Balliol
that I was sent here."
"Do you come from Crofton?"
"Yes."
"I've lived at Lower Benford all my life. We are practically long-lost
brothers. Cheer a little, will you?"
Mike felt as Robinson Crusoe felt when he met Friday. Here was a fellow
human being in this desert place. He could almost have embraced Psmith.
The very sound of the name Lower Benford was heartening. His dislike for
his new school was not diminished, but now he felt that life there might
at least be tolerable.
"Where were you before you came here?" asked Psmith. "You have heard my
painful story. Now tell me yours."
"Wrykyn. My father took me away because I got such a lot of bad
reports."
"My reports from Eton were simply scurrilous. There's a libel action in
every sentence. How do you like this place, from what you've seen
of it?"
"Rotten."
"I am with you, Comrade Jackson. You won't mind my calling you Comrade,
will you? I've just become a socialist. It's a great scheme. You ought
to be one. You work for the equal distribution of property, and start by
collaring all you can and sitting on it. We must stick together. We are
companions in misfortune. Lost lambs. Sheep that have gone astray.
Divided, we fall, together we may worry through. Have you seen Professor
Radium yet? I should say Mr. Outwood. What do you think of him?"
"He doesn't seem a bad sort of chap. Bit off his nut. Jawed about apses
and things."
"And thereby," said Psmith, "hangs a tale. I've been making inquiries of
a stout sportsman in a sort of Salvation Army uniform, whom I met in the
grounds--he's the school sergeant or something, quite a solid man--and I
hear that Comrade Outwood's an archaeological cove. Goes about the
country beating up old ruins and fossils and things. There's an
Archaeological Society in the school, run by him. It goes out on
half-holidays, prowling about, and is allowed to break bounds and
generally steep itself to the eyebrows in reckless devilry. And, mark
you, laddie, if you belong to the Archaeological Society you get off
cricket. To get off cricket," said Psmith, dusting his right trouser
leg, "was the dream of my youth and the aspiration of my riper years. A
noble game, but a bit too thick for me. At Eton I used to have to field
out at the nets till the soles of my boots wore through. I suppose you
are a blood at the game? Play for the school against Loamshire, and
so on."
"I'm not going to play here, at any rate," said Mike.
He had made up his mind on this point in the train. There is a certain
fascination about making the very worst of a bad job. Achilles knew his
business when he sat in his tent. The determination not to play cricket
for Sedleigh as he could not play for Wrykyn gave Mike a sort of
pleasure. To stand by with folded arms and a somber frown, as it were,
was one way of treating the situation, and one not without its meed
of comfort.
Psmith approved the resolve.
"Stout fellow," he said. "'Tis well. You and I, hand in hand, will
search the countryside for ruined abbeys. We will snare the elusive
fossil together. Above all, we will go out of bounds. We shall thus
improve our minds, and have a jolly good time as well. I shouldn't
wonder if one mightn't borrow a gun from some friendly native, and do a
bit of rabbit shooting here and there. From what I saw of Comrade
Outwood during our brief interview, I shouldn't think he was one of the
lynx-eyed contingent. With tact we ought to be able to slip away from
the merry throng of fossil chasers, and do a bit on our own account."
"Good idea," said Mike. "We will. A chap at Wrykyn, called Wyatt, used
to break out at night and shoot at cats with an air pistol."
"It would take a lot to make me do that. I am all against anything that
interferes with my sleep. But rabbits in the daytime is a scheme. We'll
nose about for a gun at the earliest opp. Meanwhile we'd better go up to
Comrade Outwood, and get our names shoved down for the Society."
"I vote we get some tea first somewhere."
"Then let's beat up a study. I suppose they have studies here. Let's go
and look."
They went upstairs. On the first floor there was a passage with doors on
either side. Psmith opened the first of these.
"This'll do us well," he said.
It was a biggish room, looking out over the school grounds. There were a
couple of deal tables, two empty bookcases, and a looking glass, hung
on a nail.
"Might have been made for us," said Psmith approvingly.
"I suppose it belongs to some rotter."
"Not now."
"You aren't going to collar it!"
"That," said Psmith, looking at himself earnestly in the mirror, and
straightening his tie, "is the exact program. We must stake out our
claims. This is practical socialism."
"But the real owner's bound to turn up some time or other."
"His misfortune, not ours. You can't expect two masterminds like us to
pig it in that room downstairs. There are moments when one wants to be
alone. It is imperative that we have a place to retire to after a
fatiguing day. And now, if you want to be really useful, come and help
me fetch up my box from downstairs. It's got a gas ring and various
things in it."
4
STAKING OUT A CLAIM
Psmith, in the matter of decorating a study and preparing tea in it, was
rather a critic than an executant. He was full of ideas, but he
preferred to allow Mike to carry them out. It was he who suggested that
the wooden bar which ran across the window was unnecessary, but it was
Mike who wrenched it from its place. Similarly, it was Mike who
abstracted the key from the door of the next study, though the idea
was Psmith's.
"Privacy," said Psmith, as he watched Mike light the gas ring, "is what
we chiefly need in this age of publicity. If you leave a study door
unlocked in these strenuous times, the first thing you know is, somebody
comes right in, sits down, and begins to talk about himself. I think
with a little care we ought to be able to make this room quite decently
comfortable. That putrid calendar must come down, though. Do you think
you could make a long arm, and haul it off the parent tintack? Thanks.
We make progress. We make progress."
"We shall jolly well make it out of the window," said Mike, spooning up
tea from a paperbag with a postcard, "if a sort of young Hackenschmidt
turns up and claims the study. What are you going to do about it?"
"Don't let us worry about it. I have a presentiment that he will be an
insignificant-looking little weed. How are you getting on with the
evening meal?"
"Just ready. What would you give to be at Eton now? I'd give something
to be at Wrykyn."
"These school reports," said Psmith sympathetically, "are the very
dickens. Many a bright young lad has been soured by them. Hello, what's
this, I wonder."
A heavy body had plunged against the door, evidently without a suspicion
that there would be any resistance. A rattling of the handle followed,
and a voice outside said, "Dash the door!"
"Hackenschmidt!" said Mike.
"The weed," said Psmith. "You couldn't make a long arm, could you, and
turn the key? We had better give this merchant audience. Remind me later
to go on with my remarks on school reports. I had several bright things
to say on the subject."
Mike unlocked the door, and flung it open. Framed in the entrance was a
smallish, freckled boy, wearing a pork-pie hat and carrying a bag. On
his face was an expression of mingled wrath and astonishment.
Psmith rose courteously from his chair, and moved forward with slow
stateliness to do the honors.
"What the dickens," inquired the newcomer, "are you doing here?"
"We were having a little tea," said Psmith, "to restore our tissues
after our journey. Come in and join us. We keep open house, we Psmiths.
Let me introduce you to Comrade Jackson. A stout fellow. Homely in
appearance, perhaps, but one of us. I am Psmith. Your own name will
doubtless come up in the course of general chitchat over the teacups."
"My name's Spiller, and this is my study."
Psmith leaned against the mantelpiece, put up his eyeglass, and
harangued Spiller in a philosophical vein.
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen," said he, "the saddest are these:
'It might have been.' Too late! That is the bitter cry. If you had torn
yourself from the bosom of the Spiller family by an earlier train, all
might have been well. But no. Your father held your hand and said
huskily, 'Edwin, don't leave us!' Your mother clung to you weeping, and
said, 'Edwin, stay!' Your sisters--"
"I want to know what--"
"Your sisters froze on to your knees like little octopuses (or octopi),
and screamed, 'Don't go, Edwin!' And so," said Psmith, deeply affected
by his recital, "you stayed on till the later train; and, on arrival,
you find strange faces in the familiar room, a people that know not
Spiller." Psmith went to the table, and cheered himself with a sip of
tea. Spiller's sad case had moved him greatly.
The victim of Fate seemed in no way consoled.
"It's beastly cheek, that's what I call it. Are you new chaps?"
"The very latest thing," said Psmith.
"Well, it's beastly cheek."
Mike's outlook on life was of the solid, practical order. He went
straight to the root of the matter.
"What are you going to do about it?" he asked.
Spiller evaded the question.
"It's beastly cheek," he repeated. "You can't go about the place bagging
studies."
"But we do," said Psmith. "In this life, Comrade Spiller, we must be
prepared for every emergency. We must distinguish between the unusual
and the impossible. It is unusual for people to go about the place
bagging studies, so you have rashly ordered your life on the assumption
that it is impossible. Error! Ah, Spiller, Spiller, let this be a
lesson to you."
"Look here, I tell you what it--"
"I was in a car with a man once. I said to him: 'What would happen if
you trod on that pedal thing instead of that other pedal thing?' He
said, 'I couldn't. One's the foot brake, and the other's the
accelerator.' 'But suppose you did?' I said. 'I wouldn't,' he said. 'Now
we'll let her rip.' So he stamped on the accelerator. Only it turned out
to be the foot brake after all, and we stopped dead, and skidded into a
ditch. The advice I give to every young man starting life is: 'Never
confuse the unusual and the impossible.' Take the present case. If you
had only realized the possibility of somebody someday collaring your
study, you might have thought out dozens of sound schemes for dealing
with the matter. As it is, you are unprepared. The thing comes on you as
a surprise. The cry goes round: 'Spiller has been taken unawares. He
cannot cope with the situation.'"
"Can't I! I'll--"
"What _are_ you going to do about it?" said Mike.
"All I know is, I'm going to have it. It was Simpson's last term, and
Simpson's left, and I'm next on the house list, so, of course, it's
my study."
"But what steps," said Psmith, "are you going to take? Spiller, the man
of Logic, we know. But what of Spiller, the Man of Action? How do you
intend to set about it? Force is useless. I was saying to Comrade
Jackson before you came in, that I didn't mind betting you were an
insignificant-looking little weed. And you _are_ an
insignificant-looking little weed."
"We'll see what Outwood says about it."
"Not an unsound scheme. By no means a scaly project. Comrade Jackson and
myself were about to interview him upon another point. We may as well
all go together."
The trio made their way to the Presence, Spiller pink and determined,
Mike sullen, Psmith particularly debonair. He hummed lightly as he
walked, and now and then pointed out to Spiller objects of interest by
the wayside.
Mr. Outwood received them with the motherly warmth which was evidently
the leading characteristic of his normal manner.
"Ah, Spiller," he said. "And Smith, and Jackson. I am glad to see you
have already made friends."
"Spiller's, sir," said Psmith, laying a hand patronizingly on the
study-claimer's shoulder--a proceeding violently resented by
Spiller--"is a character one cannot help but respect. His nature expands
before one like some beautiful flower."
Mr. Outwood received this eulogy with rather a startled expression, and
gazed at the object of the tribute in a surprised way.
"Er--quite so, Smith, quite so," he said at last. "I like to see boys in
my house friendly toward one another."
"There is no vice in Spiller," pursued Psmith earnestly. "His heart is
the heart of a little child."
"Please, sir," burst out this paragon of all the virtues, "I--"
"But it was not entirely with regard to Spiller that I wished to speak
to you, sir, if you were not too busy."
"Not at all, Smith, not at all. Is there anything ..."
"Please, sir--" began Spiller
"I understand, sir," said Psmith, "that there is an Archaeological
Society in the school."
Mr. Outwood's eyes sparkled behind their pince-nez. It was a
disappointment to him that so few boys seemed to wish to belong to his
chosen band. Cricket and football, games that left him cold, appeared to
be the main interest in their lives. It was but rarely that he could
induce new boys to join. His colleague, Mr. Downing, who presided over
the School Fire Brigade, never had any difficulty in finding support.
Boys came readily at his call. Mr. Outwood pondered wistfully on this at
times, not knowing that the Fire Brigade owed its support to the fact
that it provided its lighthearted members with perfectly unparalleled
opportunities for ragging, while his own band, though small, was, in the
main, earnest.
"Yes, Smith," he said, "Yes. We have a small Archaeological Society.
I--er--in a measure look after it. Perhaps you would care to become
a member?"
"Please, sir--" said Spiller.
"One moment, Spiller. Do you want to join, Smith?"
"Intensely, sir. Archaeology fascinates me. A grand pursuit, sir."
"Undoubtedly, Smith. I am very pleased, very pleased indeed. I will put
down your name at once."
"And Jackson's, sir."
"Jackson, too!" Mr. Outwood beamed. "I am delighted. Most delighted.
This is capital. This enthusiasm is most capital."
"Spiller, sir," said Psmith sadly, "I have been unable to induce to
join."
"Oh, he is one of our oldest members."
"Ah," said Psmith, tolerantly, "that accounts for it."
"Please, sir--" said Spiller.
"One moment, Spiller. We shall have the first outing of the term on
Saturday. We intend to inspect the Roman Camp at Embury Hill, two miles
from the school."
"We shall be there, sir."
"Capital!"
"Please, sir--" said Spiller.
"One moment, Spiller," said Psmith. "There is just one other matter, if
you could spare the time, sir."
"Certainly, Smith. What is that?"
"Would there be any objection to Jackson and myself taking Simpson's old
study?"
"By all means, Smith. A very good idea."
"Yes, sir. It would give us a place where we could work quietly in the
evenings."
"Quite so. Quite so."
"Thank you very much, sir. We will move our things in."
"Thank you very much, sir," said Mike.
"Please, sir," shouted Spiller, "aren't I to have it? I'm next on the
list, sir. I come next after Simpson. Can't I have it?"
"I'm afraid I have already promised it to Smith, Spiller. You should
have spoken before."
"But sir--"
Psmith eyed the speaker pityingly.
"This tendency to delay, Spiller," he said, "is your besetting fault.
Correct it, Edwin. Fight against it."
He turned to Mr. Outwood.
"We should, of course, sir, always be glad to see Spiller in our study.
He would always find a cheery welcome waiting there for him. There is no
formality between ourselves and Spiller."
"Quite so. An excellent arrangement, Smith. I like this spirit of
comradeship in my house. Then you will be with us on Saturday?"
"On Saturday, sir."
"All this sort of thing, Spiller," said Psmith, as they closed the door,
"is very, very trying for a man of culture. Look us up in our study one
of these afternoons."
5
GUERRILLA WARFARE
"There are few pleasures," said Psmith, as he resumed his favorite
position against the mantelpiece and surveyed the commandeered study
with the pride of a householder, "keener to the reflective mind than
sitting under one's own rooftree. This place would have been wasted on
Spiller; he would not have appreciated it properly."
Mike was finishing his tea. "You're a jolly useful chap to have by you
in a crisis, Smith," he said with approval. "We ought to have known each
other before."
"The loss was mine," said Psmith courteously. "We will now, with your
permission, face the future for a while. I suppose you realize that we
are now to a certain extent up against it. Spiller's hot Spanish blood
is not going to sit tight and do nothing under a blow like this."
"What can he do? Outwood's given us the study."
"What would you have done if somebody had bagged your study?"
"Made it jolly hot for them!"
"So will Comrade Spiller. I take it that he will collect a gang and make
an offensive movement against us directly he can. To all appearances we
are in a fairly tight place. It all depends on how big Comrade Spiller's
gang will be. I don't like rows, but I'm prepared to take on a
reasonable number of assailants in defense of the home."
Mike intimated that he was with him on the point. "The difficulty is,
though," he said, "about when we leave this room. I mean, we're all
right while we stick here, but we can't stay all night."
"That's just what I was about to point out when you put it with such
admirable clearness. Here we are in a stronghold; they can only get at
us through the door, and we can lock that."
"And jam a chair against it."
"_And_, as you rightly remark, jam a chair against it. But what of the
nightfall? What of the time when we retire to our dormitory?"
"Or dormitories. I say, if we're in separate rooms we shall be in the
cart."
Psmith eyed Mike with approval. "He thinks of everything! You're the
man, Comrade Jackson, to conduct an affair of this kind--such foresight!
such resource! We must see to this at once; if they put us in different
rooms we're done--we shall be destroyed singly in the watches of
the night."
"We'd better nip down to the matron right off."
"Not the matron--Comrade Outwood is the man. We are as sons to him;
there is nothing he can deny us. I'm afraid we are quite spoiling his
afternoon by these interruptions, but we must rout him out once more."
As they got up, the door handle rattled again, and this time there
followed a knocking.
"This must be an emissary of Comrade Spiller's," said Psmith. "Let us
parley with the man."
Mike unlocked the door. A light-haired youth with a cheerful, rather
vacant face and a receding chin strolled into the room, and stood
giggling with his hands in his pockets.
"I just came up to have a look at you," he explained.
"If you move a little to the left," said Psmith, "you will catch the
light-and-shade effects on Jackson's face better."
The newcomer giggled with renewed vigor. "Are you the chap with the
eyeglass who jaws all the time?"
"I _do_ wear an eyeglass," said Psmith; "as to the rest of the
description--"
"My name's Jellicoe."
"Mine is Psmith--P-s-m-i-t-h--one of the Shropshire Psmiths. The object
on the skyline is Comrade Jackson."
"Old Spiller," giggled Jellicoe, "is cursing you like anything
downstairs. You _are_ chaps! Do you mean to say you simply bagged his
study? He's making no end of a row about it."
"Spiller's fiery nature is a byword," said Psmith.
"What's he going to do?" asked Mike, in his practical way.
"He's going to get the chaps to turn you out."
"As I suspected," sighed Psmith, as one mourning over the frailty of
human nature. "About how many horny-handed assistants should you say
that he would be likely to bring? Will you, for instance, join the
glad throng?"
"Me? No fear! I think Spiller's an ass."
"There's nothing like a common thought for binding people together. _I_
think Spiller's an ass."
"How many _will_ there be, then?" asked Mike.
"He might get about half a dozen, not more, because most of the chaps
don't see why they should sweat themselves just because Spiller's study
has been bagged."
"Sturdy common sense," said Psmith approvingly, "seems to be the chief
virtue of the Sedleigh character."
"We shall be able to tackle a crowd like that," said Mike. "The only
thing is we must get into the same dormitory."
"This is where Comrade Jellicoe's knowledge of the local geography will
come in useful. Do you happen to know of any snug little room, with,
say, about four beds in it? How many dormitories are there?"
"Five--there's one with three beds in it, only it belongs to three
chaps."
"I believe in the equal distribution of property. We will go to Comrade
Outwood and stake out another claim."
Mr. Outwood received them even more beamingly than before. "Yes, Smith?"
he said.
"We must apologize for disturbing you, sir--"
"Not at all, Smith, not at all! I like the boys in my house to come to
me when they wish for my advice or help."
"We were wondering, sir, if you would have any objection to Jackson,
Jellicoe and myself sharing the dormitory with the three beds in it. A
very warm friendship ..." explained Psmith, patting the gurgling
Jellicoe kindly on the shoulder, "has sprung up between Jackson,
Jellicoe and myself."
"You make friends easily, Smith. I like to see it--I like to see it."
"And we can have the room, sir?"
"Certainly--certainly! Tell the matron as you go down."
"And now," said Psmith, as they returned to the study, "we may say that
we are in a fairly winning position. A vote of thanks to Comrade
Jellicoe for his valuable assistance."
"You _are_ a chap!" said Jellicoe.
The handle began to revolve again.
"That door," said Psmith, "is getting a perfect incubus! It cuts into
one's leisure cruelly."
This time it was a small boy. "They told me to come up and tell you to
come down," he said.
Psmith looked at him searchingly through his eyeglass.
"Who?"
"The senior day room chaps."
"Spiller?"
"Spiller and Robinson and Stone, and some other chaps."
"They want us to speak to them?"
"They told me to come up and tell you to come down."
"Go and give Comrade Spiller our compliments and say that we can't come
down, but shall be delighted to see him up here. Things," he said, as
the messenger departed, "are beginning to move. Better leave the door
open, I think; it will save trouble. Ah, come in, Comrade Spiller, what
can we do for you?"
Spiller advanced into the study; the others waited outside, crowding in
the doorway.
"Look here," said Spiller, "are you going to clear out of here or not?"
"After Mr. Outwood's kindly thought in giving us the room? You suggest a
black and ungrateful action, Comrade Spiller."
"You'll get it hot, if you don't."
"We'll risk it," said Mike.
Jellicoe giggled in the background; the drama in the atmosphere appealed
to him. His was a simple and appreciative mind.
"Come on, you chaps," cried Spiller suddenly.
There was an inward rush on the enemy's part, but Mike had been
watching. He grabbed Spiller by the shoulders and ran him back against
the advancing crowd. For a moment the doorway was blocked, then the
weight and impetus of Mike and Spiller prevailed, the enemy gave back,
and Mike, stepping into the room again, slammed the door and locked it.
"A neat piece of work," said Psmith approvingly, adjusting his tie at
the looking glass. "The preliminaries may now be considered over, the
first shot has been fired. The dogs of war are now loose."
A heavy body crashed against the door.
"They'll have it down," said Jellicoe.
"We must act, Comrade Jackson! Might I trouble you just to turn that key
quietly, and the handle, and then to stand by for the next attack."
There was a scrambling of feet in the passage outside, and then a
repetition of the onslaught on the door. This time, however, the door,
instead of resisting, swung open, and the human battering ram staggered
through into the study. Mike, turning after relocking the door, was just
in time to see Psmith, with a display of energy of which one would not
have believed him capable, grip the invader scientifically by an arm
and a leg.
Mike jumped to help, but it was needless; the captive was already on the
windowsill. As Mike arrived, Psmith dropped him onto the
flowerbed below.
Psmith closed the window gently and turned to Jellicoe. "Who was our
guest?" he asked, dusting the knees of his trousers where they had
pressed against the wall.
"Robinson. I say, you _are_ a chap!"
"Robinson, was it? Well, we are always glad to see Comrade Robinson,
always. I wonder if anybody else is thinking of calling?"
Apparently frontal attack had been abandoned. Whisperings could be heard
in the corridor.
Somebody hammered on the door.
"Yes?" called Psmith patiently.
"You'd better come out, you know; you'll only get it hotter if you
don't."
"Leave us, Spiller; we would be alone."
A bell rang in the distance.
"Tea," said Jellicoe; "we shall have to go now."
"They won't do anything till after tea, I shouldn't think," said Mike.
"There's no harm in going out."
The passage was empty when they opened the door; the call to food was
evidently a thing not to be treated lightly by the enemy.
In the dining room the beleaguered garrison were the object of general
attention. Everybody turned to look at them as they came in. It was
plain that the study episode had been a topic of conversation. Spiller's
face was crimson, and Robinson's coat sleeve still bore traces of
garden mold.
Mike felt rather conscious of the eyes, but Psmith was in his element.
His demeanor throughout the meal was that of some whimsical monarch
condescending for a freak to revel with his humble subjects.
Toward the end of the meal Psmith scribbled a note and passed it to
Mike. It read: "Directly this is over, nip upstairs as quickly as
you can."
Mike followed the advice; they were first out of the room. When they had
been in the study a few moments, Jellicoe knocked at the door. "Lucky
you two cut away so quick," he said. "They were going to try and get you
into the senior day room and scrag you there."
"This," said Psmith, leaning against the mantelpiece, "is exciting, but
it can't go on. We have got for our sins to be in this place for a whole
term, and if we are going to do the Hunted Fawn business all the time,
life in the true sense of the word will become an impossibility. My
nerves are so delicately attuned that the strain would simply reduce
them to hash. We are not prepared to carry on a long campaign--the thing
must be settled at once."
"Shall we go down to the senior day room, and have it out?" said Mike.
"No, we will play the fixture on our own ground. I think we may take it
as tolerably certain that Comrade Spiller and his hired ruffians will
try to corner us in the dormitory tonight. Well, of course, we could
fake up some sort of barricade for the door, but then we should have all
the trouble over again tomorrow and the day after that. Personally I
don't propose to be chivied about indefinitely like this, so I propose
that we let them come into the dormitory, and see what happens. Is this
meeting with me?"
"I think that's sound," said Mike. "We needn't drag Jellicoe into it."
"As a matter of fact--if you don't mind ..." began that man of peace.
"Quite right," said Psmith; "this is not Comrade Jellicoe's scene at
all; he has got to spend the term in the senior day room, whereas we
have our little wooden _châlet_ to retire to in times of stress. Comrade
Jellicoe must stand out of the game altogether. We shall be glad of his
moral support, but otherwise, _ne pas_. And now, as there won't be
anything doing till bedtime, I think I'll collar this table and write
home and tell my people that all is well with their Rupert."
6
UNPLEASANTNESS IN THE SMALL HOURS
Jellicoe, that human encyclopedia, consulted on the probable movements
of the enemy, deposed that Spiller, retiring at ten, would make for
Dormitory One in the same passage, where Robinson also had a bed. The
rest of the opposing forces were distributed among other and more
distant rooms. It was probable, therefore, that Dormitory One would be
the rendezvous. As to the time when an attack might be expected, it was
unlikely that it would occur before half past eleven. Mr. Outwood went
the round of the dormitories at eleven.
"And touching," said Psmith, "the matter of noise, must this business be
conducted in a subdued and _sotto voce_ manner, or may we let ourselves
go a bit here and there?"
"I shouldn't think old Outwood's likely to hear you--he sleeps miles
away on the other side of the house. He never hears anything. We often
rag half the night and nothing happens."
"This appears to be a thoroughly nice, well-conducted establishment.
What would my mother say if she could see her Rupert in the midst of
these reckless youths!"
"All the better," said Mike; "we don't want anybody butting in and
stopping the show before it's half started."
"Comrade Jackson's berserk blood is up--I can hear it sizzling. I quite
agree these things are all very disturbing and painful, but it's as well
to do them thoroughly when one's once in for them. Is there nobody else
who might interfere with our gambols?"
"Barnes might," said Jellicoe, "only he won't."
"Who is Barnes?"
"Head of the house--a rotter. He's in a funk of Stone and Robinson; they
rag him; he'll simply sit tight."
"Then I think," said Psmith placidly, "we may look forward to a very
pleasant evening. Shall we be moving?"
Mr. Outwood paid his visit at eleven, as predicted by Jellicoe, beaming
vaguely into the darkness over a torch, and disappeared again,
closing the door.
"How about that door?" said Mike. "Shall we leave it open for them?"
"Not so, but far otherwise. If it's shut we shall hear them at it when
they come. Subject to your approval, Comrade Jackson, I have evolved the
following plan of action. I always ask myself on these occasions, 'What
would Napoleon have done?' I think Napoleon would have sat in a chair by
his washhand stand, which is close to the door; he would have posted you
by your washhand stand, and he would have instructed Comrade Jellicoe,
directly he heard the door handle turned, to give his celebrated
imitation of a dormitory breathing heavily in its sleep. He
would then--"
"I tell you what," said Mike, "How about tying a string at the top of
the steps?"
"Yes, Napoleon would have done that, too. Hats off to Comrade Jackson,
the man with the big brain!"
The floor of the dormitory was below the level of the door. There were
three steps leading down to it. Psmith switched on his torch and they
examined the ground. The leg of a wardrobe and the leg of Jellicoe's bed
made it possible for the string to be fastened in a satisfactory manner
across the lower step. Psmith surveyed the result with approval.
"Dashed neat!" he said. "Practically the sunken road which dished the
Cuirassiers at Waterloo. I seem to see Comrade Spiller coming one of the
finest purlers in the world's history."
"If they've got a torch--"
"They won't have. If they have, stand by and grab it at once; then
they'll charge forward and all will be well. If they have no light, fire
into the brown with a jug of water. Lest we forget, I'll collar Comrade
Jellicoe's jug now and keep it handy. A couple of sheets would also not
be amiss--we will enmesh the enemy!"
"Right ho!" said Mike.
"These humane preparations being concluded," said Psmith, "we will
retire to our posts and wait. Comrade Jellicoe, don't forget to breathe
like an asthmatic sheep when you hear the door opened; they may wait at
the top of the steps, listening."
"You _are_ a lad!" said Jellicoe.
Waiting in the dark for something to happen is always a trying
experience, especially if, as on this occasion, silence is essential.
Mike was tired after his journey, and he had begun to doze when he was
jerked back to wakefulness by the stealthy turning of the door handle;
the faintest rustle from Psmith's direction followed, and a slight
giggle, succeeded by a series of deep breaths, showed that Jellicoe,
too, had heard the noise.
There was a creaking sound.
It was pitch-dark in the dormitory, but Mike could follow the invaders'
movements as clearly as if it had been broad daylight. They had opened
the door and were listening. Jellicoe's breathing grew more asthmatic;
he was flinging himself into his part with the wholeheartedness of the
true artist.
The creak was followed by a sound of whispering, then another creak. The
enemy had advanced to the top step.... Another creak.... The vanguard
had reached the second step.... In another moment--
CRASH!
And at that point the proceedings may be said to have formally opened.
A struggling mass bumped against Mike's shins as he rose from his chair;
he emptied his jug onto this mass, and a yell of anguish showed that the
contents had got to the right address.
Then a hand grabbed his ankle and he went down, a million sparks dancing
before his eyes as a fist, flying out at a venture, caught him on
the nose.
Mike had not been well disposed toward the invaders before, but now he
ran amok, hitting out right and left at random. His right missed, but
his left went home hard on some portion of somebody's anatomy. A kick
freed his ankle and he staggered to his feet. At the same moment a
sudden increase in the general volume of noise spoke eloquently of good
work that was being put in by Psmith.
Even at that crisis, Mike could not help feeling that if a row of this
caliber did not draw Mr. Outwood from his bed, he must be an unusual
kind of housemaster.
He plunged forward again with outstretched arms, and stumbled and fell
over one of the on-the-floor section of the opposing force. They seized
each other earnestly and rolled across the room till Mike, contriving to
secure his adversary's head, bumped it on the floor with such abandon
that, with a muffled yell, the other let go, and for the second time he
rose. As he did so he was conscious of a curious thudding sound that
made itself heard through the other assorted noises of the battle.
All this time the fight had gone on in the blackest darkness, but now a
light shone on the proceedings. Interested occupants of other
dormitories, roused from their slumbers, had come to observe the sport.
They had switched on the light and were crowding in the doorway.
By the light of this Mike got a swift view of the theater of war. The
enemy appeared to number five. The warrior whose head Mike had bumped on
the floor was Robinson, who was sitting up feeling his skull in a
gingerly fashion. To Mike's right, almost touching him, was Stone. In
the direction of the door, Psmith, wielding in his right hand the cord
of a dressing gown, was engaging the remaining three with a
patient smile.
They were clad in pajamas, and appeared to be feeling the dressing-gown
cord acutely.
The sudden light dazed both sides momentarily. The defense was the first
to recover, Mike, with a swing, upsetting Stone, and Psmith, having
seized and emptied Jellicoe's jug over Spiller, getting to work again
with the cord in a manner that roused the utmost enthusiasm of the
spectators.
Agility seemed to be the leading feature of Psmith's tactics. He was
everywhere--on Mike's bed, on his own, on Jellicoe's (drawing a
passionate complaint from that noncombatant, on whose face he
inadvertently trod), on the floor--he ranged the room, sowing
destruction.
The enemy were disheartened; they had started with the idea that this
was to be a surprise attack, and it was disconcerting to find the
garrison armed at all points. Gradually they edged to the door, and a
final rush sent them through.
"Hold the door for a second," cried Psmith, and vanished. Mike was alone
in the doorway.
It was a situation which exactly suited his frame of mind; he stood
alone in direct opposition to the community into which Fate had
pitchforked him so abruptly. He liked the feeling; for the first time
since his father had given him his views upon school reports that
morning in the Easter holidays, he felt satisfied with life. He hoped,
outnumbered as he was, that the enemy would come on again and not give
the thing up in disgust; he wanted more.
On an occasion like this there is rarely anything approaching concerted
action on the part of the aggressors. When the attack came, it was not a
combined attack; Stone, who was nearest to the door, made a sudden dash
forward, and Mike hit him under the chin.
Stone drew back, and there was another interval for rest and reflection.
It was interrupted by the reappearance of Psmith, who strolled back
along the passage swinging his dressing-gown cord as if it were some
clouded cane.
"Sorry to keep you waiting, Comrade Jackson," he said politely. "Duty
called me elsewhere. With the kindly aid of a guide who knows the lie of
the land, I have been making a short tour of the dormitories. I have
poured divers jugfuls of water over Comrade Spiller's bed, Comrade
Robinson's bed, Comrade Stone's--Spiller, Spiller, these are harsh
words; where you pick them up I can't think--not from me. Well, well, I
suppose there must be an end to the pleasantest of functions. Good
night, good night."
The door closed behind Mike and himself. For ten minutes shufflings and
whisperings went on in the corridor, but nobody touched the handle.
Then there was a sound of retreating footsteps, and silence reigned.
On the following morning there was a notice on the house board. It ran:
INDOOR GAMES
_Dormitory raiders are informed that in future neither Mr. Psmith
nor Mr. Jackson will be at home to visitors. This nuisance must now
cease._
R. PSMITH.
M. JACKSON.
7
ADAIR
On the same morning Mike met Adair for the first time.
He was going across to school with Psmith and Jellicoe, when a group of
three came out of the gate of the house next door.
"That's Adair," said Jellicoe, "in the middle."
His voice had assumed a tone almost of awe.
"Who's Adair?" asked Mike.
"Captain of cricket, and lots of other things."
Mike could only see the celebrity's back. He had broad shoulders and
wiry, light hair, almost white. He walked well, as if he were used to
running. Altogether a fit-looking sort of man. Even Mike's jaundiced
eye saw that.
As a matter of fact, Adair deserved more than a casual glance. He was
that rare type, the natural leader. Many boys and men, if accident, or
the passage of time, places them in a position where they are expected
to lead, can handle the job without disaster; but that is a very
different thing from being a born leader. Adair was of the sort that
comes to the top by sheer force of character and determination. He was
not naturally clever at work, but he had gone at it with a dogged
resolution which had carried him up the school, and landed him high in
the Sixth. As a cricketer he was almost entirely self-taught. Nature had
given him a good eye, and left the thing at that. Adair's doggedness had
triumphed over her failure to do her work thoroughly. At the cost of
more trouble than most people give to their life work he had made
himself into a bowler. He read the authorities, and watched first-class
players, and thought the thing out on his own account, and he divided
the art of bowling into three sections. First, and most
important--pitch. Second on the list--break. Third--pace. He set himself
to acquire pitch. He acquired it. Bowling at his own pace and without
any attempt at break, he could now drop the ball on an envelope seven
times out of ten.
Break was a more uncertain quantity. Sometimes he could get it at the
expense of pitch, sometimes at the expense of pace. Some days he could
get all three, and then he was an uncommonly bad man to face on anything
but a plumb wicket.
Running he had acquired in a similar manner. He had nothing approaching
style, but he had twice won the mile and half mile at the Sports off
elegant runners, who knew all about stride and the correct timing of the
sprints and all the rest of it.
Briefly, he was a worker. He had heart.
A boy of Adair's type is always a force in a school. In a big public
school or six or seven hundred, his influence is felt less; but in a
small school like Sedleigh he is like a tidal wave, sweeping all before
him. There were two hundred boys at Sedleigh, and there was not one of
them in all probability who had not, directly or indirectly, been
influenced by Adair. As a small boy his sphere was not large, but the
effects of his work began to be apparent even then. It is human nature
to want to get something which somebody else obviously values very much;
and when it was observed by members of his form that Adair was going to
great trouble and inconvenience to secure a place in the form eleven or
fifteen, they naturally began to think, too, that it was worth being in
those teams. The consequence was that his form always played hard. This
made other forms play hard. And the net result was that, when Adair
succeeded to the captaincy of Rugger and cricket in the same year,
Sedleigh, as Mr. Downing, Adair's housemaster and the nearest approach
to a cricket master that Sedleigh possessed, had a fondness for saying,
was a keen school. As a whole, it both worked and played with energy.
All it wanted now was opportunity.
This Adair was determined to give it. He had that passionate fondness
for his school which every boy is popularly supposed to have, but which
really is implanted in about one in every thousand. The average
public-school boy _likes_ his school. He hopes it will lick Bedford at
Rugger and Malvern at cricket, but he rather bets it won't. He is sorry
to leave, and he likes going back at the end of the holidays, but as for
any passionate, deep-seated love of the place, he would think it rather
bad form than otherwise. If anybody came up to him, slapped him on the
back, and cried, "Come along, Jenkins, my boy! Play up for the old
school, Jenkins! The dear old school! The old place you love so!" he
would feel seriously ill.
Adair was the exception.
To Adair, Sedleigh was almost a religion. Both his parents were dead;
his guardian, with whom he spent the holidays, was a man with neuralgia
at one end of him and gout at the other; and the only really pleasant
times Adair had had, as far back as he could remember, he owed to
Sedleigh. The place had grown on him, absorbed him. Where Mike,
violently transplanted from Wrykyn, saw only a wretched little hole not
to be mentioned in the same breath with Wrykyn, Adair, dreaming of the
future, saw a colossal establishment, a public school among public
schools, a lump of human radium, shooting out Blues and Balliol Scholars
year after year without ceasing.
It would not be so till long after he was gone and forgotten, but he did
not mind that. His devotion to Sedleigh was purely unselfish. He did not
want fame. All he worked for was that the school should grow and grow,
keener and better at games and more prosperous year by year, till it
should take its rank among _the_ schools, and to be an Old Sedleighan
should be a badge passing its owner everywhere.
"He's captain of cricket and Rugger," said Jellicoe impressively. "He's
in the shooting eight. He's won the mile and half mile two years
running. He would have boxed at Aldershot last term, only he sprained
his wrist. And he plays fives jolly well!"
"Sort of little tin god," said Mike, taking a violent dislike to Adair
from that moment.
Mike's actual acquaintance with this all-round man dated from the dinner
hour that day. Mike was walking to the house with Psmith. Psmith was a
little ruffled on account of a slight passage-of-arms he had had with
his form master during morning school.
"'There's a P before the Smith,' I said to him. 'Ah, P. Smith, I see,'
replied the goat. 'Not Peasmith,' I replied, exercising wonderful
self-restraint, 'just Psmith.' It took me ten minutes to drive the thing
into the man's head; and when I _had_ driven it in, he sent me out of
the room for looking at him through my eyeglass. Comrade Jackson, I fear
me we have fallen among bad men. I suspect that we are going to be much
persecuted by scoundrels."
"Both you chaps play cricket, I suppose?"
They turned. It was Adair. Seeing him face to face, Mike was aware of a
pair of very bright blue eyes and a square jaw. In any other place and
mood he would have liked Adair at sight. His prejudice, however, against
all things Sedleighan was too much for him. "I don't," he said shortly.
"Haven't you _ever_ played?"
"My little sister and I sometimes play with a soft ball at home."
Adair looked sharply at him. A temper was evidently one of his numerous
qualities.
"Oh," he said. "Well, perhaps you wouldn't mind turning out this
afternoon and seeing what you can do with a hard ball--if you can manage
without your little sister."
"I should think the form at this place would be about on a level with
hers. But I don't happen to be playing cricket, as I think I told you."
Adair's jaw grew squarer than ever. Mike was wearing a gloomy scowl.
Psmith joined suavely in the dialogue.
"My dear old comrades," he said, "Don't let us brawl over this matter.
This is a time for the honeyed word, the kindly eye, and the pleasant
smile. Let me explain to Comrade Adair. Speaking for Comrade Jackson and
myself, we should both be delighted to join in the mimic warfare of our
National Game, as you suggest, only the fact is, we happen to be the
Young Archaeologists. We gave in our names last night. When you are
being carried back to the pavilion after your century against
Loamshire--do you play Loamshire?--we shall be grubbing in the hard
ground for ruined abbeys. The old choice between Pleasure and Duty,
Comrade Adair. A Boy's Crossroads."
"Then you won't play?"
"No," said Mike.
"Archaeology," said Psmith, with a deprecatory wave of the hand, "will
brook no divided allegiance from her devotees."
Adair turned, and walked on.
Scarcely had he gone, when another voice hailed them with precisely the
same question.
"Both you fellows are going to play cricket, eh?"
It was a master. A short, wiry little man with a sharp nose and a
general resemblance, both in manner and appearance, to an excitable
bullfinch.
"I saw Adair speaking to you. I suppose you will both play. I like every
new boy to begin at once. The more new blood we have, the better. We
want keenness here. We are, above all, a keen school. I want every boy
to be keen."
"We are, sir," said Psmith, with fervor.
"Excellent."
"On archaeology."
Mr. Downing--for it was no less a celebrity--started, as one who
perceives a loathly caterpillar in his salad.
"Archaeology!"
"We gave in our names to Mr. Outwood last night, sir. Archaeology is a
passion with us, sir. When we heard that there was a society here, we
went singing about the house."
"I call it an unnatural pursuit for boys," said Mr. Downing vehemently.
"I don't like it. I tell you I don't like it. It is not for me to
interfere with one of my colleagues on the staff, but I tell you frankly
that in my opinion it is an abominable waste of time for a boy. It gets
him into idle, loafing habits."
"I never loaf, sir," said Psmith.
"I was not alluding to you in particular. I was referring to the
principle of the thing. A boy ought to be playing cricket with other
boys, not wandering at large about the country, probably smoking and
going into low public houses."
"A very wild lot, sir, I fear, the Archaeological Society here," sighed
Psmith, shaking his head.
"If you choose to waste your time, I suppose I can't hinder you. But in
my opinion it is foolery, nothing else."
He stumped off.
"Now _he's_ cross," said Psmith, looking after him. "I'm afraid we're
getting ourselves disliked here."
"Good job, too."
"At any rate, Comrade Outwood loves us. Let's go on and see what sort of
a lunch that large-hearted fossil fancier is going to give us."
8
MIKE FINDS OCCUPATION
There was more than one moment during the first fortnight of term when
Mike found himself regretting the attitude he had imposed upon himself
with regard to Sedleighan cricket. He began to realize the eternal truth
of the proverb about half a loaf and no bread. In the first flush of his
resentment against his new surroundings he had refused to play cricket.
And now he positively ached for a game. Any sort of a game. An innings
for a Kindergarten _v_. the Second Eleven of a Home of Rest for
Centenarians would have soothed him. There were times, when the sun
shone, and he caught sight of white flannels on a green ground, and
heard the "plonk" of bat striking ball, when he felt like rushing to
Adair and shouting, "I _will_ be good. I was in the Wrykyn team three
years, and had an average of over fifty the last two seasons. Lead me to
the nearest net, and let me feel a bat in my hands again."
But every time he shrank from such a climb down. It couldn't be done.
What made it worse was that he saw, after watching behind the nets once
or twice, that Sedleigh cricket was not the childish burlesque of the
game which he had been rash enough to assume that it must be. Numbers do
not make good cricket. They only make the presence of good cricketers
more likely, by the law of averages.
Mike soon saw that cricket was by no means an unknown art at Sedleigh.
Adair, to begin with, was a very good bowler indeed. He was not a
Burgess, but Burgess was the only Wrykyn bowler whom, in his three
years' experience of the school, Mike would have placed above him. He
was a long way better than Neville-Smith, and Wyatt, and Milton, and the
others who had taken wickets for Wrykyn.
The batting was not so good, but there were some quite capable men.
Barnes, the head of Outwood's, he who preferred not to interfere with
Stone and Robinson, was a mild, rather timid-looking youth--not unlike
what Mr. Outwood must have been as a boy--but he knew how to keep balls
out of his wicket. He was a good bat of the old plodding type.
Stone and Robinson themselves, that swashbuckling pair, who now treated
Mike and Psmith with cold but consistent politeness, were both fair
batsmen, and Stone was a good slow bowler.
There were other exponents of the game, mostly in Downing's house.
Altogether, quite worthy colleagues even for a man who had been a star
at Wrykyn.
* * * * *
One solitary overture Mike made during that first fortnight. He did not
repeat the experiment.
It was on a Thursday afternoon, after school. The day was warm, but
freshened by an almost imperceptible breeze. The air was full of the
scent of the cut grass which lay in little heaps behind the nets. This
is the real cricket scent, which calls to one like the very voice of
the game.
Mike, as he sat there watching, could stand it no longer.
He went up to Adair.
"May I have an innings at this net?" he asked. He was embarrassed and
nervous, and was trying not to show it. The natural result was that his
manner was offensively abrupt.
Adair was taking off his pads after his innings. He looked up. "This
net," it may be observed, was the first eleven net.
"What?" he said.
Mike repeated his request. More abruptly this time, from increased
embarrassment.
"This is the first eleven net," said Adair coldly. "Go in after Lodge
over there."
"Over there" was the end net, where frenzied novices were bowling on a
corrugated pitch to a red-haired youth with enormous feet, who looked as
if he were taking his first lesson at the game.
Mike walked away without a word.
* * * * *
The Archaeological Society expeditions, even though they carried with
them the privilege of listening to Psmith's views of life, proved but a
poor substitute for cricket. Psmith, who had no counterattraction
shouting to him that he ought to be elsewhere, seemed to enjoy them
hugely, but Mike almost cried sometimes from boredom. It was not always
possible to slip away from the throng, for Mr. Outwood evidently looked
upon them as among the very faithful, and kept them by his side.
Mike on these occasions was silent and jumpy, his brow "sicklied o'er
with the pale cast of care." But Psmith followed his leader with the
pleased and indulgent air of a father whose infant son is showing him
round the garden. Psmith's attitude toward archaeological research
struck a new note in the history of that neglected science. He was
amiable, but patronizing. He patronized fossils, and he patronized
ruins. If he had been confronted with the Great Pyramid, he would have
patronized that.
He seemed to be consumed by a thirst for knowledge.
That this was not altogether a genuine thirst was proved in the third
expedition. Mr. Outwood and his band were pecking away at the site of an
old Roman camp. Psmith approached Mike.
"Having inspired confidence," he said, "by the docility of our demeanor,
let us slip away, and brood apart for awhile. Roman camps, to be
absolutely accurate, give me the pip. And I never want to see another
putrid fossil in my life. Let us find some shady nook where a man may
lie on his back for a bit."
Mike, over whom the proceedings connected with the Roman camp had long
since begun to shed a blue depression, offered no opposition, and they
strolled away down the hill.
Looking back, they saw that the archaeologists were still hard at it.
Their departure had passed unnoticed.
"A fatiguing pursuit, this grubbing for mementos of the past," said
Psmith. "And, above all, dashed bad for the knees of the trousers. Mine
are like some furrowed field. It's a great grief to a man of refinement,
I can tell you, Comrade Jackson. Ah, this looks a likely spot."
They had passed through a gate into the field beyond. At the farther end
there was a brook, shaded by trees and running with a pleasant sound
over pebbles.
"Thus far," said Psmith, hitching up the knees of his trousers, and
sitting down, "and no farther. We will rest here awhile, and listen to
the music of the brook. In fact, unless you have anything important to
say, I rather think I'll go to sleep. In this busy life of ours these
naps by the wayside are invaluable. Call me in about an hour." And
Psmith, heaving the comfortable sigh of the worker who by toil has
earned rest, lay down, with his head against a mossy tree stump, and
closed his eyes.
Mike sat on for a few minutes, listening to the water and making
centuries in his mind, and then, finding this a little dull, he got up,
jumped the brook, and began to explore the wood on the other side.
He had not gone many yards when a dog emerged suddenly from the
undergrowth, and began to bark vigorously at him.
Mike liked dogs, and, on acquaintance, they always liked him. But when
you meet a dog in someone else's wood, it is as well not to stop in
order that you may get to understand each other. Mike began to thread
his way back through the trees.
He was too late.
"Stop! What the dickens are you doing here?" shouted a voice behind him.
In the same situation a few years before, Mike would have carried on,
and trusted to speed to save him. But now there seemed a lack of dignity
in the action. He came back to where the man was standing.
"I'm sorry if I'm trespassing," he said. "I was just having a look
round."
"The dickens you--Why, you're Jackson!"
Mike looked at him. He was a short, broad young man with a fair
moustache. Mike knew that he had seen him before somewhere, but he could
not place him.
"I played against you, for the Free Foresters last summer. In passing
you seem to be a bit of a free forester yourself, dancing in among my
nesting pheasants."
"I'm frightfully sorry."
"That's all right. Where do you spring from?"
"Of course--I remember you now. You're Prendergast. You made fifty-eight
not out."
"Thanks. I was afraid the only thing you would remember about me was
that you took a century mostly off my bowling."
"You ought to have had me second ball, only cover dropped it."
"Don't rake up forgotten tragedies. How is it you're not at Wrykyn? What
are you doing down here?"
"I've left Wrykyn."
Prendergast suddenly changed the conversation. When a fellow tells you
that he has left school unexpectedly, it is not always tactful to
inquire the reason. He began to talk about himself.
"I hang out down here. I do a little farming and a good deal of
puttering about."
"Get any cricket?" asked Mike, turning to the subject next his heart.
"Only village. Very keen, but no great shakes. By the way, how are you
off for cricket now? Have you ever got a spare afternoon?"
Mike's heart leaped.
"Any Wednesday or Saturday. Look here, I'll tell you how it is."
And he told how matters stood with him.
"So, you see," he concluded, "I'm supposed to be hunting for ruins and
things"--Mike's ideas on the subject of archaeology were vague--"but I
could always slip away. We all start out together, but I could nip back,
get onto my bike--I've got it down here--and meet you anywhere you
liked. By Jove, I'm simply dying for a game. I can hardly keep my hands
off a bat."
"I'll give you all you want. What you'd better do is to ride straight to
Lower Borlock--that's the name of the place--and I'll meet you on the
ground. Anyone will tell you where Lower Borlock is. It's just off the
London road. There's a signpost where you turn off. Can you come next
Saturday?"
"Rather. I suppose you can fix me up with a bat and pads? I don't want
to bring mine."
"I'll lend you everything. I say, you know, we can't give you a Wrykyn
wicket. The Lower Borlock pitch isn't a shirt front."
"I'll play on a rockery, if you want me to," said Mike.
* * * * *
"You're going to what?" asked Psmith, sleepily, on being awakened and
told the news.
"I'm going to play cricket, for a village near here. I say, don't tell a
soul, will you? I don't want it to get about, or I may get lugged in to
play for the school."
"My lips are sealed. I think I'll come and watch you. Cricket I dislike,
but watching cricket is one of the finest of Britain's manly sports.
I'll borrow Jellicoe's bicycle."
* * * * *
That Saturday, Lower Borlock smote the men of Chidford hip and thigh.
Their victory was due to a hurricane innings of seventy-five by a
newcomer to the team, M. Jackson.
9
THE FIRE BRIGADE MEETING
Cricket is the great safety valve. If you like the game, and are in a
position to play it at least twice a week, life can never be entirely
gray. As time went on, and his average for Lower Borlock reached the
fifties and stayed there, Mike began, though he would not have admitted
it, to enjoy himself. It was not Wrykyn, but it was a very decent
substitute.
The only really considerable element making for discomfort now was Mr.
Downing. By bad luck it was in his form that Mike had been placed on
arrival; and Mr. Downing, never an easy form master to get on with,
proved more than usually difficult in his dealings with Mike.
They had taken a dislike to each other at their first meeting; and it
grew with further acquaintance. To Mike, Mr. Downing was all that a
master ought not to be, fussy, pompous, and openly influenced in his
official dealings with his form by his own private likes and dislikes.
To Mr. Downing, Mike was simply an unamiable loafer, who did nothing for
the school and apparently had none of the healthy instincts which should
be implanted in the healthy boy. Mr. Downing was rather strong on the
healthy boy.
The two lived in a state of simmering hostility, punctuated at intervals
by crises, which usually resulted in Lower Borlock having to play some
unskilled laborer in place of their star batsman, employed doing
"overtime."
One of the most acute of these crises, and the most important, in that
it was the direct cause of Mike's appearance in Sedleigh cricket, had to
do with the third weekly meeting of the School Fire Brigade.
It may be remembered that this well-supported institution was under Mr.
Downing's special care. It was, indeed, his pet hobby and the apple
of his eye.
Just as you had to join the Archaeological Society to secure the esteem
of Mr. Outwood, so to become a member of the Fire Brigade was a safe
passport to the regard of Mr. Downing. To show a keenness for cricket
was good, but to join the Fire Brigade was best of all.
The Brigade was carefully organized. At its head was Mr. Downing, a sort
of high priest; under him was a captain, and under the captain a
vice-captain. These two officials were those sportive allies, Stone and
Robinson, of Outwood's house, who, having perceived at a very early date
the gorgeous opportunities for ragging which the Brigade offered to its
members, had joined young and worked their way up.
Under them were the rank and file, about thirty in all, of whom perhaps
seven were earnest workers, who looked on the Brigade in the right, or
Downing, spirit. The rest were entirely frivolous.
The weekly meetings were always full of life and excitement.
At this point it is as well to introduce Sammy to the reader.
Sammy, short for Sampson, was a young bull terrier belonging to Mr.
Downing. If it is possible for a man to have two apples of his eye,
Sammy was the other. He was a large, lighthearted dog with a white coat,
an engaging expression, the tongue of an anteater, and a manner which
was a happy blend of hurricane and circular saw. He had long legs, a
tenor voice, and was apparently made of India rubber.
Sammy was a great favorite in the school, and a particular friend of
Mike's, the Wrykynian being always a firm ally of every dog he met after
two minutes' acquaintance.
In passing, Jellicoe owned a clockwork rat, much in request during
French lessons.
We will now proceed to the painful details.
* * * * *
The meetings of the Fire Brigade were held after school in Mr. Downing's
form room. The proceedings always began in the same way, by the reading
of the minutes of the last meeting. After that the entertainment varied
according to whether the members happened to be fertile or not in ideas
for the disturbing of the peace.
Today they were in very fair form.
As soon as Mr. Downing had closed the minute book, Wilson, of the School
House, held up his hand.
"Well, Wilson?"
"Please, sir, couldn't we have a uniform for the Brigade?"
"A uniform?" Mr. Downing pondered.
"Red, with green stripes, sir."
Red, with a thin green stripe, was the Sedleigh color.
"Shall I put it to the vote, sir?" asked Stone.
"One moment, Stone."
"Those in favor of the motion move to the left, those against it to the
right."
A scuffling of feet, a slamming of desk lids and an upset blackboard,
and the meeting had divided.
Mr. Downing rapped irritably on his desk.
"Sit down!" he said. "Sit down! I won't have this noise and disturbance.
Stone, sit down--Wilson, get back to your place."
"Please, sir, the motion is carried by twenty-five votes to six."
"Please, sir, may I go and get measured this evening?"
"Please, sir--"
"Si-_lence!_ The idea of a uniform is, of course, out of the question."
"Oo-oo-oo-oo, sir-r-r!"
"Be _quiet!_ Entirely out of the question. We cannot plunge into
needless expense. Stone, listen to me. I cannot have this noise and
disturbance! Another time when a point arises it must be settled by a
show of hands. Well, Wilson?"
"Please, sir, may we have helmets?"
"Very useful as a protection against falling timbers, sir," said
Robinson.
"I don't think my people would be pleased, sir, if they knew I was going
out to fires without a helmet," said Stone.
The whole strength of the company: "Please, sir, may we have helmets?"
"Those in favor ..." began Stone.
Mr. Downing banged on his desk. "Silence! Silence!! Silence!!! Helmets
are, of course, perfectly preposterous."
"Oo-oo-oo-oo, sir-r-r!"
"But, sir, the danger!"
"Please, sir, the falling timbers!"
The Fire Brigade had been in action once and once only in the memory of
man, and that time it was a haystack which had burned itself out just as
the rescuers had succeeded in fastening the hose to the hydrant.
"Silence!"
"Then, please, sir, couldn't we have an honor cap? It wouldn't be
expensive, and it would be just as good as a helmet for all the timbers
that are likely to fall on our heads."
Mr. Downing smiled a wry smile.
"Our Wilson is facetious," he remarked frostily.
"Sir, no, sir! I wasn't facetious! Or couldn't we have tasseled caps
like the first fifteen have? They--"
"Wilson, leave the room!"
"Sir, _please_, sir!"
"This moment, Wilson. And," as he reached the door, "do me one hundred
lines."
A pained "OO-oo-oo, sir-r-r," was cut off by the closing door.
Mr. Downing proceeded to improve the occasion. "I deplore this growing
spirit of flippancy," he said. "I tell you I deplore it! It is not
right! If this Fire Brigade is to be of solid use, there must be less of
this flippancy. We must have keenness. I want you boys above all to be
keen. I...? What is that noise?"
From the other side of the door proceeded a sound like water gurgling
from a bottle, mingled with cries half suppressed, as if somebody were
being prevented from uttering them by a hand laid over his mouth. The
sufferer appeared to have a high voice.
There was a tap at the door and Mike walked in. He was not alone. Those
near enough to see, saw that he was accompanied by Jellicoe's clockwork
rat, which moved rapidly over the floor in the direction of the
opposite wall.
"May I fetch a book from my desk, sir?" asked Mike.
"Very well--be quick, Jackson; we are busy."
Being interrupted in one of his addresses to the Brigade irritated Mr.
Downing.
The muffled cries grew more distinct.
"What ... is ... that ... noise?" shrilled Mr. Downing.
"Noise, sir?" asked Mike, puzzled.
"I think it's something outside the window, sir," said Stone helpfully.
"A bird, I think, sir," said Robinson.
"Don't be absurd!" snapped Mr. Downing. "It's outside the door. Wilson!"
"Yes, sir?" said a voice "off."
"Are you making that whining noise?"
"Whining noise, sir? No, sir, I'm not making a whining noise."
"What _sort_ of noise, sir?" inquired Mike, as many Wrykynians had asked
before him. It was a question invented by Wrykyn for use in just such a
case as this.
"I do not propose," said Mr. Downing acidly, "to imitate the noise; you
can all hear it perfectly plainly. It is a curious whining noise."
"They are mowing the cricket field, sir," said the invisible Wilson.
"Perhaps that's it."
"It may be one of the desks squeaking, sir," put in Stone. "They do
sometimes."
"Or somebody's shoes, sir," added Robinson.
"Silence! Wilson?"
"Yes, sir?" bellowed the unseen one.
"Don't shout at me from the corridor like that. Come in."
"Yes, sir!"
As he spoke the muffled whining changed suddenly to a series of tenor
shrieks, and the India-rubber form of Sammy bounded into the room like
an excited kangaroo.
Willing hands had by this time deflected the clockwork rat from the wall
to which it had been steering, and pointed it up the alleyway between
the two rows of desks. Mr. Downing, rising from his place, was just in
time to see Sammy with a last leap spring on his prey and begin
worrying it.
Chaos reigned.
"A rat!" shouted Robinson.
The twenty-three members of the Brigade who were not earnest instantly
dealt with the situation, each in the manner that seemed proper to him.
Some leaped onto forms, others flung books, all shouted. It was a
stirring, bustling scene.
Sammy had by this time disposed of the clockwork rat, and was now
standing, like Marius, among the ruins barking triumphantly.
The banging on Mr. Downing's desk resembled thunder. It rose above all
the other noises till in time they gave up the competition and
died away.
Mr. Downing shot out orders, threats, and penalties with the rapidity of
a Bren gun.
"Stone, sit down! Donovan, if you do not sit down you will be severely
punished. Henderson, one hundred lines for gross disorder! Windham, the
same! Go to your seat, Vincent. What are you doing, Broughton-Knight? I
will not have this disgraceful noise and disorder! The meeting is at an
end; go quietly from the room, all of you. Jackson and Wilson, remain.
_Quietly_, I said, Durand! Don't shuffle your feet in that
abominable way."
Crash!
"Wolferstan, I distinctly saw you upset that blackboard with a movement
of your hand--one hundred lines. Go quietly from the room, everybody."
The meeting dispersed.
"Jackson and Wilson, come here. What's the meaning of this disgraceful
conduct? Put that dog out of the room, Jackson."
Mike removed the yelling Sammy and shut the door on him.
"Well, Wilson?"
"Please, sir, I was playing with a clockwork rat--"
"What business have you to be playing with clockwork rats?"
"Then I remembered," said Mike, "that I had left my Horace in my desk,
so I came in--"
"And by a fluke, sir," said Wilson, as one who tells of strange things,
"the rat happened to be pointing in the same direction, so he came
in, too."
"I met Sammy on the gravel outside and he followed me."
"I tried to collar him, but when you told me to come in, sir, I had to
let him go, and he came in after the rat."
It was plain to Mr. Downing that the burden of sin was shared equally by
both culprits. Wilson had supplied the rat, Mike the dog; but Mr.
Downing liked Wilson and disliked Mike. Wilson was in the Fire Brigade,
frivolous at times, it was true, but nevertheless a member. Also he kept
wicket for the school. Mike was a member of the Archaeological Society,
and had refused to play cricket.
Mr. Downing allowed these facts to influence him in passing sentence.
"One hundred lines, Wilson," he said. "You may go."
Wilson departed with the air of a man who has had a great deal of fun,
and paid very little for it.
Mr. Downing turned to Mike. "You will stay in on Saturday afternoon,
Jackson; it will interfere with your Archaeological studies, I fear, but
it may teach you that we have no room at Sedleigh for boys who spend
their time loafing about and making themselves a nuisance. We are a keen
school; this is no place for boys who do nothing but waste their time.
That will do, Jackson."
And Mr. Downing walked out of the room. In affairs of this kind a master
has a habit of getting the last word.
10
ACHILLES LEAVES HIS TENT
They say misfortunes never come singly. As Mike sat brooding over his
wrongs in his study, after the Sammy incident, Jellicoe came into the
room, and, without preamble, asked for the loan of a pound.
When one has been in the habit of confining one's lendings and
borrowings to sixpences and shillings, a request for a pound comes as
something of a blow.
"What on earth for?" asked Mike.
"I say, do you mind if I don't tell you? I don't want to tell anybody.
The fact is, I'm in a beastly hole."
"Oh, sorry," said Mike. "As a matter of fact, I do happen to have a
quid. You can freeze on to it, if you like. But it's about all I have
got, so don't be shy about paying it back."
Jellicoe was profuse in his thanks, and disappeared in a cloud of
gratitude.
Mike felt that Fate was treating him badly. Being kept in on Saturday
meant that he would be unable to turn out for Little Borlock against
Claythorpe, the return match. In the previous game he had scored
ninety-eight, and there was a lob bowler in the Claythorpe ranks whom he
was particularly anxious to meet again. Having to yield a sovereign to
Jellicoe--why on earth did the man want all that?--meant that, unless a
carefully worded letter to his brother Bob at Oxford had the desired
effect, he would be practically penniless for weeks.
In a gloomy frame of mind he sat down to write to Bob, who was playing
regularly for the Varsity this season, and only the previous week had
made a century against Sussex, so might be expected to be in a
sufficiently softened mood to advance the needful. (Which, it may be
stated at once, he did, by return of post.)
Mike was struggling with the opening sentences of this letter--he was
never a very ready writer--when Stone and Robinson burst into the room.
Mike put down his pen, and got up. He was in warlike mood, and welcomed
the intrusion. If Stone and Robinson wanted battle, they should have it.
But the motives of the expedition were obviously friendly. Stone beamed.
Robinson was laughing.
"You're a sportsman," said Robinson.
"What did he give you?" asked Stone.
They sat down, Robinson on the table, Stone in Psmith's deck chair.
Mike's heart warmed to them. The little disturbance in the dormitory was
a thing of the past, done with, forgotten, contemporary with Julius
Caesar. He felt that he, Stone and Robinson must learn to know and
appreciate one another.
There was, as a matter of fact, nothing much wrong with Stone and
Robinson. They were just ordinary raggers of the type found at every
public school, small and large. They were absolutely free from brain.
They had a certain amount of muscle, and a vast store of animal spirits.
They looked on school life purely as a vehicle for ragging. The Stones
and Robinsons are the swashbucklers of the school world. They go about,
loud and boisterous, with a wholehearted and cheerful indifference to
other people's feelings, treading on the toes of their neighbor and
shoving him off the pavement, and always with an eye wide open for any
adventure. As to the kind of adventure, they are not particular so long
as it promises excitement. Sometimes they go through their whole school
career without accident. More often they run up against a snag in the
shape of some serious-minded and muscular person, who objects to having
his toes trodden on and being shoved off the pavement, and then they
usually sober down, to the mutual advantage of themselves and the rest
of the community.
One's opinion of this type of youth varies according to one's point of
view. Small boys whom they had occasion to kick, either from pure high
spirits or as a punishment for some slip from the narrow path which the
ideal small boy should tread, regarded Stone and Robinson as bullies of
the genuine "Eric" and "St. Winifred's" brand. Masters were rather
afraid of them. Adair had a smouldering dislike for them. They were
useful at cricket, but apt not to take Sedleigh as seriously as he could
have wished.
As for Mike, he now found them pleasant company, and began to get out
the tea things.
"Those Fire Brigade meetings," said Stone, "are a rag. You can do what
you like, and you never get more than a hundred lines."
"Don't you!" said Mike. "I got Saturday afternoon."
"What!"
"Is Wilson in too?"
"No. He got a hundred lines."
Stone and Robinson were quite concerned.
"What a beastly swindle!"
"That's because you don't play cricket. Old Downing lets you do what you
like if you join the Fire Brigade and play cricket."
"'We are, above all, a keen school,'" quoted Stone. "Don't you ever
play?"
"I have played a bit," said Mike.
"Well, why don't you have a shot? We aren't such flyers here. If you
know one end of a bat from the other, you could get into some sort of a
team. Were you at school anywhere before you came here?"
"I was at Wrykyn."
"Why on earth did you leave?" asked Stone. "Were you sacked?"
"No. My father took me away."
"Wrykyn?" said Robinson. "Are you any relation of the Jacksons
there--J.W. and the others?"
"Brother."
"What!"
"Well, didn't you play at all there?"
"Yes," said Mike, "I did. I was in the team three years, and I should
have been captain this year, if I'd stopped on."
There was a profound and gratifying sensation. Stone gaped, and Robinson
nearly dropped his teacup.
Stone broke the silence.
"But I mean to say--look here? What I mean is, why aren't you playing?
Why don't you play now?"
"I do. I play for a village near here. Place called Lower Borlock. A man
who played against Wrykyn for the Free Foresters captains them. He asked
me if I'd like some games for them."
"But why not for the school?"
"Why should I? It's much better fun for the village. You don't get
ordered about by Adair, for a start."
"Adair sticks on side," said Stone.
"Enough for six," agreed Robinson.
"By Jove," said Stone, "I've got an idea. My word, what a rag!"
"What's wrong now?" inquired Mike politely.
"Why, look here. Tomorrow's Mid-Term Service Day. It's nowhere near the
middle of the term, but they always have it in the fourth week. There's
chapel at half past nine till half past ten. Then the rest of the day's
a whole holiday. There are always house matches. We're playing
Downing's. Why don't you play and let's smash them?"
"By Jove, yes," said Robinson. "Why don't you? They're always sticking
on side because they've won the house cup three years running. I say, do
you bat or bowl?"
"Bat. Why?"
Robinson rocked on the table.
"Why, old Downing fancies himself as a bowler. You _must_ play, and
knock the cover off him."
"Masters don't play in house matches, surely?"
"This isn't a real house match. Only a friendly. Downing always turns
out on Mid-Term Service Day. I say, do play."
"Think of the rag."
"But the team's full," said Mike.
"The list isn't up yet. We'll nip across to Barnes's study, and make him
alter it."
They dashed out of the room. From down the passage Mike heard yells of
"_Barnes_!" the closing of a door, and a murmur of excited conversation.
Then footsteps returning down the passage.
Barnes appeared, on his face the look of one who has seen visions.
"I say," he said, "is it true? Or is Stone rotting? About Wrykyn, I
mean."
"Yes, I was in the team."
Barnes was an enthusiastic cricketer. He studied his _Wisden_, and he
had an immense respect for Wrykyn cricket.
"Are you the M. Jackson, then, who had an average of fifty-one point
naught three last year?"
"Yes."
Barnes's manner became like that of a curate talking to a bishop.
"I say," he said, "then--er--will you play against Downing's tomorrow?"
"Rather," said Mike. "Thanks awfully. Have some tea?"
11
THE MATCH WITH DOWNING'S
It is the curious instinct which prompts most people to rub a thing in
that makes the lot of the average convert an unhappy one. Only the very
self-controlled can refrain from improving the occasion and scoring off
the convert. Most leap at the opportunity.
It was so in Mike's case. Mike was not a genuine convert, but to Mr.
Downing he had the outward aspect of one. When you have been impressing
upon a noncricketing boy for nearly a month that (_a_) the school is
above all a keen school, (_b_) that all members of it should play
cricket, and (_c_) that by not playing cricket he is ruining his chances
in this world and imperiling them in the next; and when, quite
unexpectedly, you come upon this boy dressed in cricket flannels,
wearing cricket boots and carrying a cricket bag, it seems only natural
to assume that you have converted him, that the seeds of your eloquence
have fallen on fruitful soil and sprouted.
Mr. Downing assumed it.
He was walking to the field with Adair and another member of his team
when he came upon Mike.
"What!" he cried. "Our Jackson clad in suit of mail and armed for the
fray!"
This was Mr. Downing's No. 2 manner--the playful.
"This is indeed Saul among the prophets. Why this sudden enthusiasm for
a game which I understood that you despised? Are our opponents
so reduced?"
Psmith, who was with Mike, took charge of the affair with a languid
grace which had maddened hundreds in its time, and which never failed to
ruffle Mr. Downing.
"We are, above all, sir," he said, "a keen house. Drones are not
welcomed by us. We are essentially versatile. Jackson, the archaeologist
of yesterday, becomes the cricketer of today. It is the right spirit,
sir," said Psmith earnestly. "I like to see it."
"Indeed, Smith? You are not playing yourself, I notice. Your enthusiasm
has bounds."
"In our house, sir, competition is fierce, and the Selection Committee
unfortunately passed me over."
* * * * *
There were a number of pitches dotted about over the field, for there
was always a touch of the London Park about it on Mid-Term Service Day.
Adair, as captain of cricket, had naturally selected the best for his
own match. It was a good wicket, Mike saw. As a matter of fact the
wickets at Sedleigh were nearly always good. Adair had infected the
groundsman with some of his own keenness, with the result that that
once-leisurely official now found himself sometimes, with a kind of mild
surprise, working really hard. At the beginning of the previous season
Sedleigh had played a scratch team from a neighboring town on a wicket
which, except for the creases, was absolutely undistinguishable from the
surrounding turf, and behind the pavilion after the match Adair had
spoken certain home truths to the groundsman. The latter's reformation
had dated from that moment.
* * * * *
Barnes, timidly jubilant, came up to Mike with the news that he had won
the toss, and the request that Mike would go in first with him.
In stories of the "Not Really a Duffer" type, where the nervous new boy,
who has been found crying in the changing room over the photograph of
his sister, contrives to get an innings in a game, nobody suspects that
he is really a prodigy till he hits the Bully's first ball out of the
ground for six.
With Mike it was different. There was no pitying smile on Adair's face
as he started his run preparatory to sending down the first ball. Mike,
on the cricket field, could not have looked anything but a cricketer if
he had turned out in a tweed suit and hobnail boots. Cricketer was
written all over him--in his walk, in the way he took guard, in his
stand at the wicket. Adair started to bowl with the feeling that this
was somebody who had more than a little knowledge of how to deal with
good bowling and punish bad.
Mike started cautiously. He was more than usually anxious to make runs
today, and he meant to take no risks till he could afford to do so. He
had seen Adair bowl at the nets, and he knew that he was good.
The first over was a maiden, six dangerous balls beautifully played. The
fieldsmen changed over.
The general interest had now settled on the match between Outwood's and
Downing's. The facts in Mike's case had gone around the field, and, as
several of the other games had not yet begun, quite a large crowd had
collected near the pavilion to watch. Mike's masterly treatment of the
opening over had impressed the spectators, and there was a popular
desire to see how he would deal with Mr. Downing's slows. It was
generally anticipated that he would do something special with them.
Off the first ball of the master's over a leg-bye was run.
Mike took guard.
Mr. Downing was a bowler with a style of his own. He took two short
steps, two long steps, gave a jump, took three more short steps, and
ended with a combination of step and jump, during which the ball emerged
from behind his back and started on its slow career to the wicket. The
whole business had some of the dignity of the old-fashioned minuet,
subtly blended with the careless vigor of a cakewalk. The ball, when
delivered, was billed to break from leg, but the program was subject to
alterations.
If the spectators had expected Mike to begin any firework effects with
the first ball, they were disappointed. He played the over through with
a grace worthy of his brother Joe. The last ball he turned to leg for
a single.
His treatment of Adair's next over was freer. He had got a sight of the
ball now. Halfway through the over a beautiful square cut forced a
passage through the crowd by the pavilion, and dashed up against the
rails. He drove the sixth ball past cover for three.
The crowd was now reluctantly dispersing to its own games, but it
stopped as Mr. Downing started his minuet-cakewalk, in the hope that it
might see something more sensational.
This time the hope was fulfilled.
The ball was well up, slow, and off the wicket on the on-side. Perhaps
if it had been allowed to pitch, it might have broken in and become
quite dangerous. Mike went out at it, and hit it a couple of feet from
the ground. The ball dropped with a thud and a spurting of dust in the
road that ran along one side of the cricket field.
It was returned on the installment system by helpers from other games,
and the bowler began his maneuvers again. A half volley this time. Mike
slammed it back, and mid on, whose heart was obviously not in the thing,
failed to stop it.
"Get to them, Jenkins," said Mr. Downing irritably, as the ball came
back from the boundary. "Get to them."
"Sir, please, sir--"
"Don't talk in the field, Jenkins."
Having had a full pitch hit for six and a half volley for four, there
was a strong probability that Mr. Downing would pitch his next
ball short.
The expected happened. The third ball was a slow long hop, and hit the
road at about the same spot where the first had landed. A howl of
untuneful applause rose from the watchers in the pavilion, and Mike,
with the feeling that this sort of bowling was too good to be true,
waited in position for number four.
There are moments when a sort of panic seizes a bowler. This happened
now with Mr. Downing. He suddenly abandoned science and ran amok. His
run lost its stateliness and increased its vigor. He charged up to the
wicket as a wounded buffalo sometimes charges a gun. His whole idea now
was to bowl fast.
When a slow bowler starts to bowl fast, it is usually as well to be
batting, if you can manage it.
By the time the over was finished, Mike's score had been increased by
sixteen, and the total of his side, in addition, by three wides.
And a shrill small voice, from the neighborhood of the pavilion, uttered
with painful distinctness the words, "Take him off!"
That was how the most sensational day's cricket began that Sedleigh had
known.
A description of the details of the morning's play would be monotonous.
It is enough to say that they ran on much the same lines as the third
and fourth overs of the match. Mr. Downing bowled one more over, off
which Mike helped himself to sixteen runs, and then retired moodily to
cover point, where, in Adair's fifth over, he missed Barnes--the first
occasion since the game began on which that mild batsman had attempted
to score more than a single. Scared by this escape, Outwood's captain
shrank back into his shell, sat on the splice like a limpet, and,
offering no more chances, was not out at lunchtime with a score of
eleven. Mike had then made a hundred and three.
* * * * *
As Mike was taking off his pads in the pavilion, Adair came up.
"Why did you say you didn't play cricket?" he asked abruptly.
When one has been bowling the whole morning, and bowling well, without
the slightest success, one is inclined to be abrupt.
Mike finished unfastening an obstinate strap. Then he looked up.
"I didn't say anything of the kind. I said I wasn't going to play here.
There's a difference. As a matter of fact, I was in the Wrykyn team
before I came here. Three years."
Adair was silent for a moment.
"Will you play for us against the Old Sedleighans tomorrow?" he said at
length.
Mike tossed his pads into his bag and got up.
"No, thanks."
There was a silence.
"Above it, I suppose?"
"Not a bit. Not up to it. I shall want a lot of coaching at that end net
of yours before I'm fit to play for Sedleigh."
There was another pause.
"Then you won't play?" asked Adair.
"I'm not keeping you, am I?" said Mike, politely.
It was remarkable what a number of members of Outwood's house appeared
to cherish a personal grudge against Mr. Downing. It had been that
master's somewhat injudicious practice for many years to treat his own
house as a sort of Chosen People. Of all masters, the most unpopular is
he who by the silent tribunal of a school is convicted of favoritism.
And the dislike deepens if it is a house which he favors and not merely
individuals. On occasions when boys in his own house and boys from other
houses were accomplices and partners in wrongdoing, Mr. Downing
distributed his thunderbolts unequally, and the school noticed it. The
result was that not only he himself, but also--which was rather
unfair--his house, too, had acquired a good deal of unpopularity.
The general consensus of opinion in Outwood's during the luncheon
interval was that having got Downing's up a tree, they would be fools
not to make the most of the situation.
Barnes's remark that he supposed, unless anything happened and wickets
began to fall a bit faster, they had better think of declaring somewhere
about half past three or four, was met with a storm of opposition.
"Declare!" said Robinson. "Great Scot, what on earth are you talking
about?"
"Declare!" Stone's voice was almost a wail of indignation. "I never saw
such a chump."
"They'll be rather sick if we don't, won't they?" suggested Barnes.
"Sick! I should think they would," said Stone. "That's just the gay
idea. Can't you see that by a miracle we've got a chance of getting a
jolly good bit of our own back against those Downing's ticks? What we've
got to do is to jolly well keep them in the field all day if we can, and
be jolly glad it's so beastly hot. If they lose about a dozen pounds
each through sweating about in the sun after Jackson's drives, perhaps
they'll stick on less side about things in general in future. Besides, I
want an innings against that bilge of old Downing's, if I can get it."
"So do I," said Robinson.
"If you declare, I swear I won't field. Nor will Robinson."
"Rather not."
"Well, I won't then," said Barnes unhappily. "Only you know they're
rather sick already."
"Don't you worry about that," said Stone with a wide grin. "They'll be a
lot sicker before we've finished."
And so it came about that that particular Mid-Term Service-Day match
made history. Big scores had often been put up on Mid-Term Service Day.
Games had frequently been one-sided. But it had never happened before in
the annals of the school that one side, going in first early in the
morning, had neither completed its innings nor declared it closed when
stumps were drawn at 6.30. In no previous Sedleigh match, after a full
day's play, had the pathetic words "Did not bat" been written against
the whole of one of the contending teams.
These are the things which mark epochs.
Play was resumed at 2.15. For a quarter of an hour Mike was
comparatively quiet. Adair, fortified by food and rest, was bowling
really well, and his first half dozen overs had to be watched carefully.
But the wicket was too good to give him a chance, and Mike, playing
himself in again, proceeded to get to business once more. Bowlers came
and went. Adair pounded away at one end with brief intervals between the
attacks. Mr. Downing took a couple more overs, in one of which a horse,
passing in the road, nearly had its useful life cut suddenly short.
Change bowlers of various actions and paces, each weirder and more
futile than the last, tried their luck. But still the first-wicket stand
continued.
The bowling of a house team is all head and no body. The first pair
probably have some idea of length and break. The first-change pair are
poor. And the rest, the small change, are simply the sort of things one
sees in dreams after a heavy supper, or when one is out without
one's gun.
Time, mercifully, generally breaks up a big stand at cricket before the
field has suffered too much, and that is what happened now. At four
o'clock, when the score stood at two hundred and twenty for no wicket,
Barnes, greatly daring, smote lustily at a rather wide half volley and
was caught at short slip for thirty-three. He retired blushfully to the
pavilion, amidst applause, and Stone came out.
As Mike had then made a hundred and eighty-seven, it was assumed by the
field, that directly he had topped his second century, the closure would
be applied and their ordeal finished. There was almost a sigh of relief
when frantic cheering from the crowd told that the feat had been
accomplished. The fieldsmen clapped in quite an indulgent sort of way,
as who should say, "Capital, capital. And now let's start _our_
innings." Some even began to edge toward the pavilion.
But the next ball was bowled, and the next over, and the next after
that, and still Barnes made no sign. (The conscience stricken captain of
Outwood's was, as a matter of fact, being practically held down by
Robinson and other ruffians by force.)
A gray dismay settled on the field.
The bowling had now become almost unbelievably bad. Lobs were being
tried, and Stone, nearly weeping with pure joy, was playing an innings
of the "How-to-brighten-cricket" type. He had an unorthodox style, but
an excellent eye, and the road at this period of the game became
absolutely unsafe for pedestrians and traffic.
Mike's pace had become slower, as was only natural, but his score, too,
was mounting steadily.
"This is foolery," snapped Mr. Downing, as the three hundred and fifty
went up on the board. "Barnes!" he called.
There was no reply. A committee of three was at that moment engaged in
sitting on Barnes's head in the first eleven changing room, in order to
correct a more than usually feverish attack of conscience.
"Barnes!"
"Please, sir," said Stone, some species of telepathy telling him what
was detaining his captain. "I think Barnes must have left the field. He
has probably gone over to the house to fetch something."
"This is absurd. You must declare your innings closed. The game has
become a farce."
"Declare! Sir, we can't unless Barnes does. He might be awfully annoyed
if we did anything like that without consulting him."
"Absurd."
"He's very touchy, sir."
"It is perfect foolery."
"I think Jenkins is just going to bowl, sir."
Mr. Downing walked moodily to his place.
In a neat wooden frame in the senior day room at Outwood's, just above
the mantlepiece, there was on view, a week later, a slip of paper.
The writing on it was as follows:
OUTWOOD'S _v_. DOWNING'S
_Outwood's. First innings_.
J.P. Barnes, _c_. Hammond, _b_. Hassall 33
M. Jackson, not out 277
W.J. Stone, not out 124
Extras 37
Total (for one wicket) 471
Downing's did not bat.
12
THE SINGULAR BEHAVIOR OF JELLICOE
Outwood's rollicked considerably that night. Mike, if he had cared to
take the part, could have been the Petted Hero. But a cordial invitation
from the senior day room to be the guest of the evening at about the
biggest rag of the century had been refused on the plea of fatigue. One
does not make two hundred and seventy-seven runs on a hot day without
feeling the effects, even if one has scored mainly by the medium of
boundaries; and Mike, as he lay back in Psmith's deck chair, felt that
all he wanted was to go to bed and stay there for a week. His hands and
arms burned as if they were red-hot, and his eyes were so tired that he
could not keep them open.
Psmith, leaning against the mantlepiece, discoursed in a desultory way
on the day's happenings--the score off Mr. Downing, the undeniable
annoyance of that battered bowler, and the probability of his venting
his annoyance on Mike next day.
"In theory," said he, "the manly what-d'you-call-it of cricket and all
that sort of thing ought to make him fall on your neck tomorrow and weep
over you as a foeman worthy of his steel. But I am prepared to bet a
reasonable sum that he will give no jujitsu exhibition of this kind. In
fact, from what I have seen of our bright little friend, I should say
that, in a small way, he will do his best to make it distinctly hot for
you, here and there."
"I don't care," murmured Mike, shifting his aching limbs in the chair.
"In an ordinary way, I suppose, a man can put up with having his bowling
hit a little. But your performance was cruelty to animals. Twenty-eight
off one over, not to mention three wides, would have made Job foam at
the mouth. You will probably get sacked. On the other hand, it's worth
it. You have lit a candle this day which can never be blown out. You
have shown the lads of the village how Comrade Downing's bowling ought
to be treated. I don't suppose he'll ever take another wicket."
"He doesn't deserve to."
Psmith smoothed his hair at the glass and turned round again.
"The only blot on this day of mirth and goodwill is," he said, "the
singular conduct of our friend Jellicoe. When all the place was ringing
with song and merriment, Comrade Jellicoe crept to my side, and,
slipping his little hand in mine, touched me for three quid."
This interested Mike, tired as he was.
"What! Three quid!"
"Three crisp, crackling quid. He wanted four."
"But the man must be living at the rate of I don't know what. It was
only yesterday that he borrowed a quid from _me_!"
"He must be saving money fast. There appear to be the makings of a
financier about Comrade Jellicoe. Well, I hope, when he's collected
enough for his needs, he'll pay me back a bit. I'm pretty well
cleaned out."
"I got some from my brother at Oxford."
"Perhaps he's saving up to get married. We may be helping toward
furnishing the home. There was a Siamese prince fellow at my dame's at
Eton who had four wives when he arrived, and gathered in a fifth during
his first summer holidays. It was done on the correspondence system. His
Prime Minister fixed it up at the other end, and sent him the glad news
on a picture post card. I think an eye ought to be kept on Comrade
Jellicoe."
* * * * *
Mike tumbled into bed that night like a log, but he could not sleep. He
ached all over. Psmith chatted for a time on human affairs in general,
and then dropped gently off. Jellicoe, who appeared to be wrapped in
gloom, contributed nothing to the conversation.
After Psmith had gone to sleep, Mike lay for some time running over in
his mind, as the best substitute for sleep, the various points of his
innings that day. He felt very hot and uncomfortable.
Just as he was wondering whether it would not be a good idea to get up
and have a cold bath, a voice spoke from the darkness at his side.
"Are you asleep, Jackson?"
"Who's that?"
"Me--Jellicoe. I can't get to sleep."
"Nor can I. I'm stiff all over."
"I'll come over and sit on your bed."
There was a creaking, and then a weight descended in the neighborhood of
Mike's toes.
Jellicoe was apparently not in conversational mood. He uttered no word
for quite three minutes. At the end of which time he gave a sound midway
between a snort and a sigh.
"I say, Jackson!" he said.
"Yes?"
"Have you--oh, nothing."
Silence again.
"Jackson."
"Hello?"
"I say, what would your people say if you got sacked?"
"All sorts of things. Especially my father. Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. So would mine."
"Everybody's would, I expect."
"Yes."
The bed creaked, as Jellicoe digested these great thoughts. Then he
spoke again.
"It would be a jolly beastly thing to get sacked."
Mike was too tired to give his mind to the subject. He was not really
listening. Jellicoe droned on in a depressed sort of way.
"You'd get home in the middle of the afternoon, I suppose, and you'd
drive up to the house, and the servant would open the door, and you'd go
in. They might all be out, and then you'd have to hang about, and wait;
and presently you'd hear them come in, and you'd go out into the
passage, and they'd say 'Hello!'"
Jellicoe, in order to give verisimilitude, as it were, to an otherwise
bald and unconvincing narrative, flung so much agitated surprise into
the last word that it woke Mike from a troubled doze into which he
had fallen.
"Hello?" he said. "What's up?"
"Then you'd say, 'Hello!' And then they'd say, 'What are you doing
here?' And you'd say--"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"About what would happen."
"Happen when?"
"When you got home. After being sacked, you know."
"Who's been sacked?" Mike's mind was still under a cloud.
"Nobody. But if you were, I meant. And then I suppose there'd be an
awful row and general sickness, and all that. And then you'd be sent
into a bank, or to Australia, or something."
Mike dozed off again.
"My father would be frightfully sick. My mater would be sick. My sister
would be jolly sick, too. Have you got any sisters, Jackson? I
say, Jackson!"
"Hello! What's the matter? Who's that?"
"Me--Jellicoe."
"What's up?"
"I asked you if you'd got any sisters."
"Any _what?_"
"Sisters."
"Whose sisters?"
"Yours. I asked if you'd got any."
"Any what?"
"Sisters."
"What about them?"
The conversation was becoming too intricate for Jellicoe. He changed the
subject.
"I say, Jackson!"
"Well?"
"I say, you don't know anyone who could lend me a pound, do you?"
"What!" cried Mike, sitting up in bed and staring through the darkness
in the direction whence the numismatist's voice was proceeding.
"Do _what?_"
"I say, look out. You'll wake Psmith."
"Did you say you wanted someone to lend you a quid?"
"Yes," said Jellicoe eagerly. "Do you know anyone?"
Mike's head throbbed. This thing was too much. The human brain could not
be expected to cope with it. Here was a youth who had borrowed a pound
from one friend the day before, and three pounds from another friend
that very afternoon, already looking about him for further loans. Was it
a hobby, or was he saving up to buy an airplane?
"What on earth do you want a pound for?"
"I don't want to tell anybody. But it's jolly serious. I shall get
sacked if I don't get it."
Mike pondered.
Those who have followed Mike's career as set forth by the present
historian will have realized by this time that he was a good long way
from being perfect. As the Blue-Eyed Hero he would have been a rank
failure. Except on the cricket field, where he was a natural genius, he
was just ordinary. He resembled ninety percent of other members of
English public schools. He had some virtues and a good many defects. He
was as obstinate as a mule, though people whom he liked could do as they
pleased with him. He was good-natured as a general thing, but on
occasion his temper could be of the worst, and had, in his childhood,
been the subject of much adverse comment among his aunts. He was rigidly
truthful, where the issue concerned only himself. Where it was a case of
saving a friend, he was prepared to act in a manner reminiscent of an
American expert witness.
He had, in addition, one good quality without any defect to balance it.
He was always ready to help people. And when he set himself to do this,
he was never put off by discomfort or risk. He went at the thing with a
singleness of purpose that asked no questions.
Bob's postal order which had arrived that evening, was reposing in the
breast pocket of his coat.
It was a wrench, but, if the situation was so serious with Jellicoe, it
had to be done.
Two minutes later the night was being made hideous by Jellicoe's almost
tearful protestations of gratitude, and the postal order had moved from
one side of the dormitory to the other.
13
JELLICOE GOES ON THE SICK LIST
Mike woke next morning with a confused memory of having listened to a
great deal of incoherent conversation from Jellicoe, and a painfully
vivid recollection of handing over the bulk of his worldly wealth to
him. The thought depressed him, though it seemed to please Jellicoe, for
the latter caroled in a gay undertone as he dressed, till Psmith, who
had a sensitive ear, asked as a favor that these farmyard imitations
might cease until he was out of the room.
There were other things to make Mike low-spirited that morning. To begin
with, he was in detention, which in itself is enough to spoil a day. It
was a particularly fine day, which made the matter worse. In addition to
this, he had never felt stiffer in his life. It seemed to him that the
creaking of his joints as he walked must be audible to everyone within a
radius of several yards. Finally, there was the interview with Mr.
Downing to come. That would probably be unpleasant. As Psmith had said,
Mr. Downing was the sort of master who would be likely to make trouble.
The great match had not been an ordinary match. Mr. Downing was a
curious man in many ways, but he did not make a fuss on ordinary
occasions when his bowling proved expensive. Yesterday's performance,
however, stood in a class by itself. It stood forth without disguise as
a deliberate rag. One side does not keep another in the field the whole
day in a one-day match except as a grisly kind of practical joke. And
Mr. Downing and his house realized this. The house's way of signifying
its comprehension of the fact was to be cold and distant as far as the
seniors were concerned, and abusive and pugnacious as regards the
juniors. Young blood had been shed overnight, and more flowed during the
eleven-o'-clock interval that morning to avenge the insult.
Mr. Downing's methods of retaliation would have to be, of necessity,
more elusive; but Mike did not doubt that in some way or other his form
master would endeavor to get a bit of his own back.
As events turned out, he was perfectly right. When a master has got his
knife into a boy, especially a master who allows himself to be
influenced by his likes and dislikes, he is inclined to single him out
in times of stress, and savage him as if he were the official
representative of the evildoers. Just as, at sea, the skipper when he
has trouble with the crew, works it off on the boy.
Mr. Downing was in a sarcastic mood when he met Mike. That is to say, he
began in a sarcastic strain. But this sort of thing is difficult to keep
up. By the time he had reached his peroration, the rapier had given
place to the bludgeon. For sarcasm to be effective, the user of it must
be met halfway. His hearer must appear to be conscious of the sarcasm
and moved by it. Mike, when masters waxed sarcastic toward him, always
assumed an air of stolid stupidity, which was as a suit of mail
against satire.
So Mr. Downing came down from the heights with a run, and began to
express himself with a simple strength which it did his form good to
listen to. Veterans who had been in the form for terms said afterward
that there had been nothing to touch it, in their experience of the
orator, since the glorious day when Dunster, that prince of raggers, who
had left at Christmas to go to a crammer's, had introduced three lively
grass snakes into the room during a Latin lesson.
"You are surrounded," concluded Mr. Downing, snapping his pencil in two
in his emotion, "by an impenetrable mass of conceit and vanity and
selfishness. It does not occur to you to admit your capabilities as a
cricketer in an open, straightforward way and place them at the disposal
of the school. No, that would not be dramatic enough for you. It would
be too commonplace altogether. Far too commonplace!" Mr. Downing laughed
bitterly. "No, you must conceal your capabilities. You must act a lie.
You must--who is that shuffling his feet? I will not have it, I _will_
have silence--you must hang back in order to make a more effective
entrance, like some wretched actor who--I will _not_ have this
shuffling. I have spoken of this before. Macpherson, are you shuffling
your feet?"
"Sir, no, sir."
"Please, sir."
"Well, Parsons?"
"I think it's the noise of the draft under the door, sir."
Instant departure of Parsons for the outer regions. And, in the
excitement of this side issue, the speaker lost his inspiration, and
abruptly concluded his remarks by putting Mike on to translate in
Cicero. Which Mike, who happened to have prepared the first half-page,
did with much success.
The Old Boys' match was timed to begin shortly after eleven o'clock.
During the interval most of the school walked across the field to look
at the pitch. One or two of the Old Boys had already changed and were
practicing in front of the pavilion.
It was through one of these batsmen that an accident occurred which had
a good deal of influence on Mike's affairs.
Mike had strolled out by himself. Halfway across the field Jellicoe
joined him. Jellicoe was cheerful, and rather embarrassingly grateful.
He was just in the middle of his harangue when the accident happened.
To their left, as they crossed the field, a long youth, with the faint
beginnings of a moustache and a blazer that lit up the surrounding
landscape like a glowing beacon, was lashing out recklessly at a
friend's bowling. Already he had gone within an ace of slaying a small
boy. As Mike and Jellicoe proceeded on their way, there was a shout
of "Heads!"
The almost universal habit of batsmen of shouting "Heads!" at whatever
height from the ground the ball may be, is not a little confusing. The
average person, on hearing the shout, puts his hands over his skull,
crouches down and trusts to luck. This is an excellent plan if the ball
is falling, but is not much protection against a skimming drive along
the ground.
When "Heads!" was called on the present occasion, Mike and Jellicoe
instantly assumed the crouching attitude.
Jellicoe was the first to abandon it. He uttered a yell and sprang into
the air. After which he sat down and began to nurse his ankle.
The bright-blazered youth walked up.
"Awfully sorry, you know. Hurt?"
Jellicoe was pressing the injured spot tenderly with his fingertips,
uttering sharp howls whenever, zeal outrunning discretion, he prodded
himself too energetically.
"Silly ass, Dunster," he groaned, "slamming about like that."
"Awfully sorry. But I did yell."
"It's swelling up rather," said Mike. "You'd better get over to the
house and have it looked at. Can you walk?"
Jellicoe tried, but sat down again with a loud "Ow!" At that moment the
bell rang.
"I shall have to be going in," said Mike, "or I'd have helped you over."
"I'll give you a hand," said Dunster.
He helped the sufferer to his feet and they staggered off together,
Jellicoe hopping, Dunster advancing with a sort of polka step. Mike
watched them start and then turned to go in.
14
MIKE RECEIVES A COMMISSION
There is only one thing to be said in favor of detention on a fine
summer's afternoon, and that is that it is very pleasant to come out of.
The sun never seems so bright or the turf so green as during the first
five minutes after one has come out of the detention room. One feels as
if one were entering a new and very delightful world. There is also a
touch of the Rip van Winkle feeling. Everything seems to have gone on
and left one behind. Mike, as he walked to the cricket field, felt very
much behind the times.
Arriving on the field he found the Old Boys batting. He stopped and
watched an over of Adair's. The fifth ball bowled a man. Mike made his
way toward the pavilion.
Before he got there he heard his name called, and turning, found Psmith
seated under a tree with the bright-blazered Dunster.
"Return of the exile," said Psmith. "A joyful occasion tinged with
melancholy. Have a cherry?--take one or two. These little acts of
unremembered kindness are what one needs after a couple of hours in
extra pupil room. Restore your tissues, Comrade Jackson, and when you
have finished those, apply again."
"Is your name Jackson?" inquired Dunster, "because Jellicoe wants to see
you."
"Alas, poor Jellicoe!" said Psmith. "He is now prone on his bed in the
dormitory--there a sheer hulk lies poor Tom Jellicoe, the darling of the
crew, faithful below he did his duty, but Comrade Dunster has broached
him to. I have just been hearing the melancholy details."
"Old Smith and I," said Dunster, "were at prep school together. I'd no
idea I should find him here."
"It was a wonderfully stirring sight when we met," said Psmith; "not
unlike the meeting of Ulysses and the hound Argos, of whom you have
doubtless read in the course of your dabblings in the classics. I was
Ulysses; Dunster gave a lifelike representation of the faithful dawg."
"You still jaw as much as ever, I notice," said the animal delineator,
fondling the beginnings of his moustache.
"More," sighed Psmith, "more. Is anything irritating you?" he added,
eyeing the other's maneuvers with interest.
"You needn't be a funny ass, man," said Dunster, pained; "heaps of
people tell me I ought to have it waxed."
"What it really wants is top-dressing with guano. Hello! another man
out. Adair's bowling better today than he did yesterday."
"I heard about yesterday," said Dunster. "It must have been a rag!
Couldn't we work off some other rag on somebody before I go? I shall be
stopping here till Monday in the village. Well hit, sir--Adair's bowling
is perfectly simple if you go out to it."
"Comrade Dunster went out to it first ball," said Psmith to Mike.
"Oh! chuck it, man; the sun was in my eyes. I hear Adair's got a match
on with the M.C.C. at last."
"Has he?" said Psmith; "I hadn't heard. Archaeology claims so much of my
time that I have little leisure for listening to cricket chitchat."
"What was it Jellicoe wanted?" asked Mike; "was it anything important?"
"He seemed to think so--he kept telling me to tell you to go and see
him."
"I fear Comrade Jellicoe is a bit of a weak-minded blitherer--"
"Did you ever hear of a rag we worked off on Jellicoe once?" asked
Dunster. "The man has absolutely no sense of humor--can't see when he's
being rotted. Well, it was like this--hello! We're all out--I shall have
to be going out to field again, I suppose, dash it! I'll tell you when I
see you again."
"I shall count the minutes," said Psmith.
Mike stretched himself; the sun was very soothing after his two hours in
the detention room; he felt disinclined for exertion.
"I don't suppose it's anything special about Jellicoe, do you?" he said.
"I mean, it'll keep till teatime; it's no catch having to sweat across
to the house now."
"Don't dream of moving," said Psmith. "I have several rather profound
observations on life to make and I can't make them without an audience.
Soliloquy is a knack. Hamlet had got it, but probably only after years
of patient practice. Personally, I need someone to listen when I talk. I
like to feel that I am doing good. You stay where you are--don't
interrupt too much."
Mike tilted his hat over his eyes and abandoned Jellicoe.
It was not until the lock-up bell rang that he remembered him. He went
over to the house and made his way to the dormitory, where he found the
injured one in a parlous state, not so much physical as mental. The
doctor had seen his ankle and reported that it would be on the active
list in a couple of days. It was Jellicoe's mind that needed
attention now.
Mike found him in a condition bordering on collapse. "I say, you might
have come before!" said Jellicoe.
"What's up? I didn't know there was such a hurry about it--what did you
want?"
"It's no good now," said Jellicoe gloomily; "it's too late, I shall get
sacked."
"What on earth are you talking about? What's the row?"
"It's about that money."
"What about it?"
"I had to pay it to a man today, or he said he'd write to the Head--then
of course I should get sacked. I was going to take the money to him this
afternoon, only I got crocked, so I couldn't move. I wanted to get hold
of you to ask you to take it for me--it's too late now!"
Mike's face fell. "Oh, hang it!" he said, "I'm awfully sorry. I'd no
idea it was anything like that--what a fool I was! Dunster did say he
thought it was something important, only like an ass I thought it would
do if I came over at lockup."
"It doesn't matter," said Jellicoe miserably; "it can't be helped."
"Yes, it can," said Mike. "I know what I'll do--it's all right. I'll get
out of the house after lights-out."
Jellicoe sat up. "You can't! You'd get sacked if you were caught."
"Who would catch me? There was a chap at Wrykyn I knew who used to break
out every night nearly and go and pot at cats with an air pistol; it's
as easy as anything."
The toad-under-the-harrow expression began to fade from Jellicoe's face.
"I say, do you think you could, really?"
"Of course I can! It'll be rather a rag."
"I say, it's frightfully decent of you."
"What absolute rot!"
"But look here, are you certain--"
"I shall be all right. Where do you want me to go?"
"It's a place about a mile or two from here, called Lower Borlock."
"Lower Borlock?"
"Yes, do you know it?"
"Rather! I've been playing cricket for them all the term."
"I say, have you? Do you know a man called Barley?"
"Barley? Rather--he runs the White Boar."
"He's the chap I owe the money to."
"Old Barley!"
Mike knew the landlord of the White Boar well; he was the wag of the
village team. Every village team, for some mysterious reason, has its
comic man. In the Lower Borlock eleven Mr. Barley filled the post. He
was a large, stout man, with a red and cheerful face, who looked exactly
like the jovial innkeeper of melodrama. He was the last man Mike would
have expected to do the "money by Monday-week or I write to the
headmaster" business.
But he reflected that he had only seen him in his leisure moments, when
he might naturally be expected to unbend and be full of the milk of
human kindness. Probably in business hours he was quite different. After
all, pleasure is one thing and business another.
Besides, five pounds is a large sum of money, and if Jellicoe owed it,
there was nothing strange in Mr. Barley's doing everything he could to
recover it.
He wondered a little what Jellicoe could have been doing to run up a
bill as big as that, but it did not occur to him to ask, which was
unfortunate, as it might have saved him a good deal of inconvenience. It
seemed to him that it was none of his business to inquire into
Jellicoe's private affairs. He took the envelope containing the money
without question.
"I shall bike there, I think," he said, "if I can get into the shed."
The school's bicycles were stored in a shed by the pavilion.
"You can manage that," said Jellicoe; "it's locked up at night, but I
had a key made to fit it last summer, because I used to get out in the
early morning sometimes before it was opened."
"Got it on you?"
"Smith's got it."
"I'll get it from him."
"I say!"
"Well?"
"Don't tell Smith why you want it, will you? I don't want anybody to
know--if a thing once starts getting about it's all over the place in
no time."
"All right, I won't tell him."
"I say, thanks most awfully! I don't know what I should have done, I--"
"Oh, chuck it!" said Mike.
15
... AND FULFILLS IT
Mike started on his ride to Lower Borlock with mixed feelings. It is
pleasant to be out on a fine night in summer, but the pleasure is to a
certain extent modified when one feels that to be detected will mean
expulsion.
Mike did not want to be expelled, for many reasons. Now that he had
grown used to the place he was enjoying himself at Sedleigh to a certain
extent. He still harbored a feeling of resentment against the school in
general and Adair in particular, but it was pleasant in Outwood's now
that he had got to know some of the members of the house, and he liked
playing cricket for Lower Borlock; also, he was fairly certain that his
father would not let him go to Cambridge if he were expelled from
Sedleigh. Mr. Jackson was easygoing with his family, but occasionally
his foot came down like a steam hammer, as witness the Wrykyn
school-report affair.
So Mike pedaled along rapidly, being wishful to get the job done without
delay.
Psmith had yielded up the key, but his inquiries as to why it was needed
had been embarrassing. Mike's statement that he wanted to get up early
and have a ride had been received by Psmith, with whom early rising was
not a hobby, with honest amazement and a flood of advice and warning on
the subject.
"One of the Georges," said Psmith, "I forget which, once said that a
certain number of hours' sleep a day--I cannot recall for the moment how
many--made a man something, which for the time being has slipped my
memory. However, there you are. I've given you the main idea of the
thing; and a German doctor says that early rising causes insanity.
Still, if you're bent on it...." After which he had handed over the key.
Mike wished he could have taken Psmith into his confidence. Probably he
would have volunteered to come, too; Mike would have been glad of a
companion.
It did not take him long to reach Lower Borlock. The White Boar stood at
the far end of the village, by the cricket field. He rode past the
church--standing out black and mysterious against the light sky--and the
rows of silent cottages, until he came to the inn.
The place was shut, of course, and all the lights were out--it was
sometime past eleven.
The advantage an inn has over a private house, from the point of view of
the person who wants to get into it when it has been locked up, is that
a nocturnal visit is not so unexpected in the case of the former.
Preparations have been made to meet such an emergency. Where with a
private house you would probably have to wander around heaving rocks and
end by climbing up a waterspout, when you want to get into an inn you
simply ring the night bell, which, communicating with the boots' room,
has that hard-worked menial up and doing in no time.
After Mike had waited for a few minutes there was a rattling of chains
and a shooting of bolts and the door opened.
"Yes, sir?" said the boots, appearing in his shirt sleeves. "Why, 'ello!
Mr. Jackson, sir!"
Mike was well known to all dwellers in Lower Borlock, his scores being
the chief topic of conversation when the day's labors were over.
"I want to see Mr. Barley, Jack."
"He's bin' in bed this half hour back, Mr. Jackson."
"I must see him. Can you get him down?"
The boots looked doubtful. "Roust the guv'nor outer bed?" he said.
Mike quite admitted the gravity of the task. The landlord of the White
Boar was one of those men who need a beauty sleep.
"I wish you would--it's a thing that can't wait. I've got some money to
give to him."
"Oh, if it's _that_ ..." said the boots.
Five minutes later mine host appeared in person, looking more than
usually portly in a check dressing gown and red bedroom slippers.
"You can pop off, Jack."
Exit boots to his slumbers once more.
"Well, Mr. Jackson, what's it all about?"
"Jellicoe asked me to come and bring you the money."
"The money? What money?"
"What he owes you; the five pounds, of course."
"The five--" Mr. Barley stared openmouthed at Mike for a moment; then he
broke into a roar of laughter which shook the sporting prints on the
wall and drew barks from dogs in some distant part of the house. He
staggered about laughing and coughing till Mike began to expect a fit of
some kind. Then he collapsed into a chair, which creaked under him, and
wiped his eyes.
"Oh dear!" he said, "Oh dear! The five pounds!"
Mike was not always abreast of the rustic idea of humor, and now he felt
particularly fogged. For the life of him he could not see what there was
to amuse anyone so much in the fact that a person who owed five pounds
was ready to pay it back. It was an occasion for rejoicing, perhaps, but
rather for a solemn, thankful, eyes-raised-to-heaven kind of rejoicing.
"What's up?" he asked.
"Five pounds!"
"You might tell us the joke."
Mr. Barley opened the letter, read it, and had another attack; when this
was finished he handed the letter to Mike, who was waiting patiently by,
hoping for light, and requested him to read it.
"Dear, dear!" chuckled Mr. Barley, "five pounds! They may teach you
young gentlemen to talk Latin and Greek and what-not at your school, but
it 'ud do a lot more good if they'd teach you how many beans make five;
it 'ud do a lot more good if they'd teach you to come in when it rained;
it 'ud do ..."
Mike was reading the letter.
"Dear Mr. Barley," it ran.
"I send the £5, which I could not get before. I hope it is in time,
because I don't want you to write to the headmaster. I am sorry Jane and
John ate your wife's hat and the chicken and broke the vase."
There was some more to the same effect; it was signed "T.G. Jellicoe."
"What on earth's it all about?" said Mike, finishing this curious
document.
Mr. Barley slapped his leg. "Why, Mr. Jellicoe keeps two dogs here; I
keep 'em for him till the young gentlemen go home for their holidays.
Aberdeen terriers, they are, and as sharp as mustard. Mischief! I
believe you, but, love us! they don't do no harm! Bite up an old shoe
sometimes and such sort of things. The other day, last Wednesday it
were, about 'ar parse five, Jane--she's the worst of the two, always up
to it, she is--she got hold of my old hat and had it in bits before you
could say knife. John upset a china vase in one of the bedrooms chasing
a mouse, and they got on the coffee-room table and ate half a cold
chicken what had been left there. So I says to myself, 'I'll have a game
with Mr. Jellicoe over this,' and I sits down and writes off saying the
little dogs have eaten a valuable hat and a chicken and what not, and
the damage'll be five pounds, and will he kindly remit same by Saturday
night at the latest or I write to his headmaster. Love us!" Mr. Barley
slapped his thigh, "he took it all in, every word--and here's the five
pounds in cash in this envelope here! I haven't had such a laugh since
we got old Tom Raxley out of bed at twelve of a winter's night by
telling him his house was afire."
It is not always easy to appreciate a joke of the practical order if one
has been made even merely part victim of it. Mike, as he reflected that
he had been dragged out of his house in the middle of the night, in
contravention of all school rules and discipline, simply in order to
satisfy Mr. Barley's sense of humor, was more inclined to be abusive
than mirthful. Running risks is all very well when they are necessary,
or if one chooses to run them for one's own amusement, but to be placed
in a dangerous position, a position imperiling one's chance of going to
the 'Varsity, is another matter altogether.
But it is impossible to abuse the Barley type of man. Barley's enjoyment
of the whole thing was so honest and childlike. Probably it had given
him the happiest quarter of an hour he had known for years, since, in
fact, the affair of old Tom Raxley. It would have been cruel to damp
the man.
So Mike laughed perfunctorily, took back the envelope with the five
pounds, accepted a ginger beer and a plateful of biscuits, and rode off
on his return journey.
* * * * *
Mention has been made above of the difference which exists between
getting into an inn after lockup and into a private house. Mike was to
find this out for himself.
His first act on arriving at Sedleigh was to replace his bicycle in the
shed. This he accomplished with success. It was pitch-dark in the shed,
and as he wheeled his machine in, his foot touched something on the
floor. Without waiting to discover what this might be, he leaned his
bicycle against the wall, went out, and locked the door, after which he
ran across to Outwood's.
Fortune had favored his undertaking by decreeing that a stout drainpipe
should pass up the wall within a few inches of his and Psmith's study.
On the first day of term, it may be remembered he had wrenched away the
wooden bar which bisected the window frame, thus rendering exit and
entrance almost as simple as they had been for Wyatt during Mike's first
term at Wrykyn.
He proceeded to scale this water pipe.
He had got about halfway up when a voice from somewhere below cried,
"Who's that?"
16
PURSUIT
These things are Life's Little Difficulties. One can never tell
precisely how one will act in a sudden emergency. The right thing for
Mike to have done at this crisis was to have ignored the voice, carried
on up the water pipe, and through the study window, and gone to bed. It
was extremely unlikely that anybody could have recognized him at night
against the dark background of the house. The position then would have
been that somebody in Mr. Outwood's house had been seen breaking in
after lights-out; but it would have been very difficult for the
authorities to have narrowed the search down any further than that.
There were thirty-four boys in Outwood's, of whom about fourteen were
much the same size and build as Mike.
The suddenness, however, of the call caused Mike to lose his head. He
made the strategic error of sliding rapidly down the pipe, and running.
There were two gates to Mr. Outwood's front garden. The drive ran in a
semicircle, of which the house was the center. It was from the
right-hand gate, nearest to Mr. Downing's house, that the voice had
come, and, as Mike came to the ground, he saw a stout figure galloping
toward him from that direction. He bolted like a rabbit for the other
gate. As he did so, his pursuer again gave tongue.
"Oo-oo-oo yer!" was the exact remark.
Whereby Mike recognized him as the school sergeant. "Oo-oo-oo yer!" was
that militant gentleman's habitual way of beginning a conversation.
With this knowledge, Mike felt easier in his mind. Sergeant Collard was
a man of many fine qualities (notably a talent for what he was wont to
call "spott'n," a mysterious gift which he exercised on the rifle
range), but he could not run. There had been a time in his hot youth
when he had sprinted like an untamed mustang in pursuit of volatile
Pathans in Indian hill wars, but Time, increasing his girth, had taken
from him the taste for such exercise. When he moved now it was at a
stately walk. The fact that he ran tonight showed how the excitement of
the chase had entered into his blood.
"Oo-oo-oo yer!" he shouted again, as Mike, passing through the gate,
turned into the road that led to the school. Mike's attentive ear noted
that the bright speech was a shade more puffily delivered this time. He
began to feel that this was not such bad fun after all. He would have
liked to be in bed, but, if that was out of the question, this was
certainly the next-best thing.
He ran on, taking things easily, with the sergeant panting in his wake,
till he reached the entrance to the school grounds. He dashed in and
took cover behind a tree.
Presently the sergeant turned the corner, going badly and evidently
cured of a good deal of the fever of the chase. Mike heard him toil on
for a few yards and then stop. A sound of panting was borne to him.
Then the sound of footsteps returning, this time at a walk. They passed
the gate and went on down the road.
The pursuer had given the thing up.
Mike waited for several minutes behind his tree. His program now was
simple. He would give Sergeant Collard about half an hour, in case the
latter took it into his head to "guard home" by waiting at the gate.
Then he would trot softly back, shoot up the water pipe once more, and
so to bed. It had just struck a quarter to something--twelve, he
supposed--on the school clock. He would wait till a quarter past.
Meanwhile, there was nothing to be gained from lurking behind a tree. He
left his cover, and started to stroll in the direction of the pavilion.
Having arrived there, he sat on the steps, looking out onto the
cricket field.
His thoughts were miles away, at Wrykyn, when he was recalled to
Sedleigh by the sound of somebody running. Focusing his gaze, he saw a
dim figure moving rapidly across the cricket field straight for him.
His first impression, that he had been seen and followed, disappeared as
the runner, instead of making for the pavilion, turned aside, and
stopped at the door of the bicycle shed. Like Mike, he was evidently
possessed of a key, for Mike heard it grate in the lock. At this point
he left the pavilion and hailed his fellow rambler by night in a
cautious undertone.
The other appeared startled.
"Who the dickens is that?" he asked. "Is that you, Jackson?"
Mike recognized Adair's voice. The last person he would have expected to
meet at midnight obviously on the point of going for a bicycle ride.
"What are you doing out here. Jackson?"
"What are you, if it comes to that?"
Adair was adjusting his front light.
"I'm going for the doctor. One of the chaps in our house is bad."
"Oh!"
"What are you doing out here?"
"Just been for a stroll."
"Hadn't you better be getting back?"
"Plenty of time."
"I suppose you think you're doing something tremendously brave and
dashing?"
"Hadn't you better be going to the doctor?"
"If you want to know what I think--"
"I don't. So long."
Mike turned away, whistling between his teeth. After a moment's pause,
Adair rode off. Mike saw his light pass across the field and through the
gate. The school clock struck the quarter.
It seemed to Mike that Sergeant Collard, even if he had started to wait
for him at the house, would not keep up the vigil for more than half an
hour. He would be safe now in trying for home again.
He walked in that direction.
Now it happened that Mr. Downing, aroused from his first sleep by the
news, conveyed to him by Adair, that MacPhee, one of the junior members
of Adair's dormitory, was groaning and exhibiting other symptoms of
acute illness, was disturbed in his mind. Most housemasters feel uneasy
in the event of illness in their houses, and Mr. Downing was apt to get
jumpy beyond the ordinary on such occasions. All that was wrong with
MacPhee, as a matter of fact, was a very fair stomachache, the direct
and legitimate result of eating six buns, half a coconut, three
doughnuts, two ices, an apple, and a pound of cherries, and washing the
lot down with tea. But Mr. Downing saw in his attack the beginnings of
some deadly scourge which would sweep through and decimate the house. He
had dispatched Adair for the doctor, and, after spending a few minutes
prowling restlessly about his room, was now standing at his front gate,
waiting for Adair's return.
It came about, therefore, that Mike, sprinting lightly in the direction
of home and safety, had his already shaken nerves further maltreated by
being hailed, at a range of about two yards, with a cry of "Is that you,
Adair?" The next moment Mr. Downing emerged from his gate.
Mike stood not upon the order of his going. He was off like an arrow--a
flying figure of Guilt. Mr. Downing, after the first surprise, seemed to
grasp the situation. Ejaculating at intervals the words, "Who is that?
Stop! Who is that? Stop!" he dashed after the much-enduring Wrykynian at
an extremely creditable rate of speed. Mr. Downing was by way of being a
sprinter. He had won handicap events at College sports at Oxford, and,
if Mike had not got such a good start, the race might have been over in
the first fifty yards. As it was, that victim of Fate, going well, kept
ahead. At the entrance to the school grounds he led by a dozen yards.
The procession passed into the field, Mike heading as before for
the pavilion.
As they raced across the soft turf, an idea occurred to Mike, which he
was accustomed in after years to attribute to genius, the one flash of
it which had ever illumined his life.
It was this.
One of Mr. Downing's first acts, on starting the Fire Brigade at
Sedleigh, had been to institute an alarm bell. It had been rubbed into
the school officially--in speeches from the dais--by the headmaster, and
unofficially--in earnest private conversations--by Mr. Downing, that at
the sound of this bell, at whatever hour of day or night, every member
of the school must leave his house in the quickest possible way, and
make for the open. The bell might mean that the school was on fire, or
it might mean that one of the houses was on fire. In any case, the
school had its orders--to get out into the open at once.
Nor must it be supposed that the school was without practice at this
feat. Every now and then a notice would be found posted up on the board
to the effect that there would be fire drill during the dinner hour that
day. Sometimes the performance was bright and interesting, as on the
occasion when Mr. Downing, marshaling the brigade at his front gate, had
said, "My house is supposed to be on fire. Now let's do a record!" which
the Brigade, headed by Stone and Robinson, obligingly did. They fastened
the hose to the hydrant, smashed a window on the ground floor (Mr.
Downing having retired for a moment to talk with the headmaster), and
poured a stream of water into the room. When Mr. Downing was at liberty
to turn his attention to the matter, he found that the room selected was
his private study, most of the light furniture of which was floating in
a miniature lake. That episode had rather discouraged his passion for
realism, and fire drill since then had taken the form, for the most
part, of "practicing escaping." This was done by means of canvas chutes,
kept in the dormitories. At the sound of the bell the prefect of the
dormitory would heave one end of the chute out of the window, the other
end being fastened to the sill. He would then go down it himself, using
his elbows as a brake. Then the second man would follow his example, and
these two, standing below, would hold the end of the chute so that the
rest of the dormitory could fly rapidly down it without injury, except
to their digestions.
After the first novelty of the thing had worn off, the school had taken
a rooted dislike to fire drill. It was a matter for self-congratulation
among them that Mr. Downing had never been able to induce the headmaster
to allow the alarm bell to be sounded for fire drill at night. The
headmaster, a man who had his views on the amount of sleep necessary for
the growing boy, had drawn the line at night operations. "Sufficient
unto the day" had been the gist of his reply. If the alarm bell were to
ring at night when there was no fire, the school might mistake a genuine
alarm of fire for a bogus one, and refuse to hurry themselves.
So Mr. Downing had had to be content with day drill.
The alarm bell hung in the archway, leading into the school grounds. The
end of the rope, when not in use, was fastened to a hook halfway up
the wall.
Mike, as he raced over the cricket field, made up his mind in a flash
that his only chance of getting out of this tangle was to shake his
pursuer off for a space of time long enough to enable him to get to the
rope and tug it. Then the school would come out. He would mix with them,
and in the subsequent confusion get back to bed unnoticed.
The task was easier than it would have seemed at the beginning of the
chase. Mr. Downing, owing to the two facts that he was not in the
strictest training, and that it is only a Bannister who can run for any
length of time at top speed shouting "Who is that? Stop! Who is that?
Stop!" was beginning to feel distressed. There were bellows to mend in
the Downing camp. Mike perceived this, and forced the pace. He rounded
the pavilion ten yards to the good. Then, heading for the gate, he put
all he knew into one last sprint. Mr. Downing was not equal to the
effort. He worked gamely for a few strides, then fell behind. When Mike
reached the gate, a good forty yards separated them.
As far as Mike could judge--he was not in a condition to make nice
calculations--he had about four seconds in which to get busy with that
bell rope.
Probably nobody has ever crammed more energetic work into four seconds
than he did then.
The night was as still as only an English summer night can be, and the
first clang of the clapper sounded like a million iron girders falling
from a height onto a sheet of tin. He tugged away furiously, with an eye
on the now rapidly advancing and loudly shouting figure of the
housemaster.
And from the darkened house beyond there came a gradually swelling hum,
as if a vast hive of bees had been disturbed.
The school was awake.
17
THE DECORATION OF SAMMY
Psmith leaned against the mantelpiece in the senior day room at
Outwood's--since Mike's innings against Downing's the Lost Lambs had
been received as brothers by the center of disorder, so that even
Spiller was compelled to look on the hatchet as buried--and gave his
views on the events of the preceding night, or, rather, of that morning,
for it was nearer one than twelve when peace had once more fallen on
the school.
"Nothing that happens in this loony bin," said Psmith, "has power to
surprise me now. There was a time when I might have thought it a little
unusual to have to leave the house through a canvas chute at one o'clock
in the morning, but I suppose it's quite the regular thing here. Old
school tradition, etc. Men leave the school, and find that they've got
so accustomed to jumping out of windows that they look on it as a sort
of affectation to go out by the door. I suppose none of you merchants
can give me any idea when the next knockabout entertainment of this kind
is likely to take place?"
"I wonder who rang that bell!" said Stone. "Jolly sporting idea."
"I believe it was Downing himself. If it was, I hope he's satisfied."
Jellicoe, who was appearing in society supported by a stick, looked
meaningly at Mike, and giggled, receiving in answer a stony stare. Mike
had informed Jellicoe of the details of his interview with Mr. Barley at
the White Boar, and Jellicoe, after a momentary splutter of wrath
against the practical joker, was now in a particular lighthearted mood.
He hobbled about, giggling at nothing and at peace with all the world.
"It was a stirring scene," said Psmith. "The agility with which Comrade
Jellicoe boosted himself down the chute was a triumph of mind over
matter. He seemed to forget his ankle. It was the nearest thing to a
Boneless Acrobatic Wonder that I have ever seen."
"I was in a beastly funk, I can tell you."
Stone gurgled.
"So was I," he said, "for a bit. Then, when I saw that it was all a rag,
I began to look about for ways of doing the thing really well. I emptied
about six jugs of water on a gang of kids under my window."
"I rushed into Downing's, and ragged some of the beds," said Robinson.
"It was an invigorating time," said Psmith. "A sort of pageant. I was
particularly struck with the way some of the bright lads caught hold of
the idea. There was no skimping. Some of the kids, to my certain
knowledge, went down the chute a dozen times. There's nothing like doing
a thing thoroughly. I saw them come down, rush upstairs, and be saved
again, time after time. The thing became chronic with them. I should say
Comrade Downing ought to be satisfied with the high state of efficiency
to which he has brought us. At any rate I hope--"
There was a sound of hurried footsteps outside the door, and Sharpe, a
member of the senior day room, burst excitedly in. He seemed amused.
"I say, have you chaps seen Sammy?"
"Seen who?" said Stone. "Sammy? Why?"
"You'll know in a second. He's just outside. Here, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy!
Sam! Sam!"
A bark and a patter of feet outside.
"Come on, Sammy. Good dog."
There was a moment's silence. Then a great yell of laughter burst forth.
Even Psmith's massive calm was shattered. As for Jellicoe, he sobbed
in a corner.
Sammy's beautiful white coat was almost entirely concealed by a thick
covering of bright-red paint. His head, with the exception of the ears,
was untouched, and his serious, friendly eyes seemed to emphasise the
weirdness of his appearance. He stood in the doorway, barking and
wagging his tail, plainly puzzled at his reception. He was a popular
dog, and was always well received when he visited any of the houses, but
he had never before met with enthusiasm like this.
"Good old Sammy!"
"What on earth's been happening to him?"
"Who did it?"
Sharpe, the introducer, had no views on the matter.
"I found him outside Downing's, with a crowd round him. Everybody seems
to have seen him. I wonder who on earth has gone and mucked him up
like that!"
Mike was the first to show any sympathy for the maltreated animal.
"Poor old Sammy," he said, kneeling on the floor beside the victim, and
scratching him under the ear. "What a beastly shame! It'll take hours to
wash all that off him, and he'll hate it."
"It seems to me," said Psmith, regarding Sammy dispassionately through
his eyeglass, "that it's not a case for mere washing. They'll either
have to skin him bodily, or leave the thing to time. Time, the Great
Healer. In a year or two he'll fade to a delicate pink. I don't see why
you shouldn't have a pink bull terrier. It would lend a touch of
distinction to the place. Crowds would come in excursion trains to see
him. By charging a small fee you might make him self-supporting. I think
I'll suggest it to Comrade Downing."
"There'll be a row about this," said Stone.
"Rows are rather sport when you're not mixed up in them," said Robinson,
philosophically. "There'll be another if we don't start off for chapel
soon. It's a quarter to."
There was a general move. Mike was the last to leave the room. As he was
going, Jellicoe stopped him. Jellicoe was staying in that Sunday, owing
to his ankle.
"I say," said Jellicoe, "I just wanted to thank you again about that--"
"Oh, that's all right."
"No, but it really was awfully decent of you. You might have got into a
frightful row. Were you nearly caught?"
"Jolly nearly."
"It _was_ you who rang the bell, wasn't it?"
"Yes, it was. But for goodness' sake don't go gassing about it, or
somebody will get to hear who oughtn't to, and I shall be sacked."
"All right. But, I say, you _are_ a chap!"
"What's the matter now?"
"I mean about Sammy, you know. It's a jolly good score off old Downing.
He'll be frightfully sick."
"Sammy!" cried Mike. "My good man, you don't think I did that, do you?
What absolute rot! I never touched the poor brute."
"Oh, all right," said Jellicoe. "But I wasn't going to tell anyone, of
course."
"What do you mean?"
"You _are_ a chap!" giggled Jellicoe.
Mike walked to chapel rather thoughtfully.
18
MR. DOWNING ON THE SCENT
There was just one moment, the moment in which, on going down to the
junior day room of his house to quell an unseemly disturbance, he was
boisterously greeted by a vermilion bull terrier, when Mr. Downing was
seized with a hideous fear lest he had lost his senses. Glaring down at
the crimson animal that was pawing at his knees, he clutched at his
reason for one second as a drowning man clutches at a life belt.
Then the happy laughter of the young onlookers reassured him.
"Who--" he shouted, "WHO has done this?"
"Please, sir, we don't know," shrilled the chorus.
"Please, sir, he came in like that."
"Please, sir, we were sitting here when he suddenly ran in, all red."
A voice from the crowd: "Look at old Sammy!"
The situation was impossible. There was nothing to be done. He could not
find out by verbal inquiry who had painted the dog. The possibility of
Sammy being painted red during the night had never occurred to Mr.
Downing, and now that the thing had happened he had no scheme of action.
As Psmith would have said, he had confused the unusual with the
impossible, and the result was that he was taken by surprise.
While he was pondering on this, the situation was rendered still more
difficult by Sammy, who, taking advantage of the door being open,
escaped and rushed into the road, thus publishing his condition to all
and sundry. You can hush up a painted dog while it confines itself to
your own premises, but once it has mixed with the great public, this
becomes out of the question. Sammy's state advanced from a private
trouble into a row. Mr. Downing's next move was in the same direction
that Sammy had taken, only, instead of running about the road, he went
straight to the headmaster.
The Head, who had had to leave his house in the small hours in his
pajamas and a dressing gown, was not in the best of tempers. He had a
cold in the head, and also a rooted conviction that Mr. Downing, in
spite of his strict orders, had rung the bell himself on the previous
night in order to test the efficiency of the school in saving themselves
in the event of fire. He received the housemaster frostily, but thawed
as the latter related the events which had led up to the ringing of
the bell.
"Dear me!" he said, deeply interested. "One of the boys at the school,
you think?"
"I am certain of it," said Mr. Downing.
"Was he wearing a school cap?"
"He was bareheaded. A boy who breaks out of his house at night would
hardly run the risk of wearing a distinguishing cap."
"No, no, I suppose not. A big boy, you say?"
"Very big."
"You did not see his face?"
"It was dark and he never looked back--he was in front of me all the
time."
"Dear me!"
"There is another matter ..."
"Yes?"
"This boy, whoever he was, had done something before he rang the
bell--he had painted my dog Sampson red."
The headmaster's eyes protruded from their sockets. "He--he--_what_, Mr.
Downing?"
"He painted my dog red--bright red." Mr. Downing was too angry to see
anything humorous in the incident. Since the previous night he had been
wounded in his tenderest feelings, his Fire Brigade system had been most
shamefully abused by being turned into a mere instrument in the hands of
a malefactor for escaping justice, and his dog had been held up to
ridicule to all the world. He did not want to smile; he wanted revenge.
The headmaster, on the other hand, did want to smile. It was not his
dog, he could look on the affair with an unbiased eye, and to him there
was something ludicrous in a white dog suddenly appearing as a red dog.
"It is a scandalous thing!" said Mr. Downing.
"Quite so! Quite so!" said the headmaster hastily. "I shall punish the
boy who did it most severely. I will speak to the school in the Hall
after chapel."
Which he did, but without result. A cordial invitation to the criminal
to come forward and be executed was received in wooden silence by the
school, with the exception of Johnson III, of Outwood's, who, suddenly
reminded of Sammy's appearance by the headmaster's words, broke into a
wild screech of laughter, and was instantly awarded two hundred lines.
The school filed out of the Hall to their various lunches, and Mr.
Downing was left with the conviction that, if he wanted the criminal
discovered, he would have to discover him for himself.
The great thing in affairs of this kind is to get a good start, and
Fate, feeling perhaps that it had been a little hard upon Mr. Downing,
gave him a most magnificent start. Instead of having to hunt for a
needle in a haystack, he found himself in a moment in the position of
being set to find it in a mere truss of straw.
It was Mr. Outwood who helped him. Sergeant Collard had waylaid the
archaeological expert on his way to chapel, and informed him that at
close on twelve the night before he had observed a youth, unidentified,
attempting to get into his house _via_ the water pipe. Mr. Outwood,
whose thoughts were occupied with apses and plinths, not to mention
cromlechs, at the time, thanked the sergeant with absent minded
politeness and passed on. Later he remembered the fact apropos of some
reflections on the subject of burglars in medieval England, and passed
it on to Mr. Downing as they walked back to lunch.
"Then the boy was in your house!" exclaimed Mr. Downing.
"Not actually in, as far as I understand. I gather from the sergeant
that he interrupted him before--"
"I mean he must have been one of the boys in your house."
"But what was he doing out at that hour?"
"He had broken out."
"Impossible, I think. Oh yes, quite impossible! I went around the
dormitories as usual at eleven o'clock last night, and all the boys were
asleep--all of them."
Mr. Downing was not listening. He was in a state of suppressed
excitement and exultation, which made it hard for him to attend to his
colleague's slow utterances. He had a clue! Now that the search had
narrowed itself down to Outwood's house, the rest was comparatively
easy. Perhaps Sergeant Collard had actually recognized the boy. On
reflection he dismissed this as unlikely, for the sergeant would
scarcely have kept a thing like that to himself; but he might very well
have seen more of him than he, Downing, had seen. It was only with an
effort that he could keep himself from rushing to the sergeant then and
there, and leaving the house lunch to look after itself. He resolved to
go the moment that meal was at an end.
Sunday lunch at a public-school house is probably one of the longest
functions in existence. It drags its slow length along like a languid
snake, but it finishes in time. In due course Mr. Downing, after sitting
still and eyeing with acute dislike everybody who asked for a second
helping, found himself at liberty.
Regardless of the claims of digestion, he rushed forth on the trail.
Sergeant Collard lived with his wife and a family of unknown dimensions
in the lodge at the school front gate. Dinner was just over when Mr.
Downing arrived, as a blind man could have told.
The sergeant received his visitor with dignity, ejecting the family, who
were torpid after roast beef and resented having to move, in order to
ensure privacy.
Having requested his host to smoke, which the latter was about to do
unasked, Mr. Downing stated his case.
"Mr. Outwood," he said, "tells me that last night, Sergeant, you saw a
boy endeavoring to enter his house."
The sergeant blew a cloud of smoke. "Oo-oo-oo, yer," he said; "I did,
sir--spotted 'im, I did. Feeflee good at spottin', I am, sir. Dook of
Connaught, he used to say, ''Ere comes Sergeant Collard,' 'e used to
say, ''e's feeflee good at spottin'.'"
"What did you do?"
"Do? Oo-oo-oo! I shouts 'Oo-oo-oo yer, yer young monkey, what yer doin'
there?'"
"Yes?"
"But 'e was off in a flash, and I doubles after 'im prompt."
"But you didn't catch him?"
"No, sir," admitted the sergeant reluctantly.
"Did you catch sight of his face, Sergeant?"
"No, sir, 'e was doublin' away in the opposite direction."
"Did you notice anything at all about his appearance?"
"'E was a long young chap, sir, with a pair of legs on him--feeflee fast
'e run, sir. Oo-oo-oo, feeflee!"
"You noticed nothing else?"
"'E wasn't wearing no cap of any sort, sir."
"Ah!"
"Bare'eaded, sir," added the sergeant, rubbing the point in.
"It was undoubtedly the same boy, undoubtedly! I wish you could have
caught a glimpse of his face, Sergeant."
"So do I, sir."
"You would not be able to recognize him again if you saw him, you
think?"
"Oo-oo-oo! Wouldn't go as far as to say that, sir, 'cos yer see, I'm
feeflee good at spottin', but it was a dark night."
Mr. Downing rose to go.
"Well," he said, "the search is now considerably narrowed down,
considerably! It is certain that the boy was one of the boys in Mr.
Outwood's house."
"Young monkeys!" interjected the sergeant helpfully
"Good afternoon, Sergeant."
"Good afternoon to you, sir."
"Pray do not move, Sergeant."
The sergeant had not shown the slightest inclination of doing anything
of the kind.
"I will find my way out. Very hot today, is it not?"
"Feeflee warm, sir; weather's goin' to break' workin' up for thunder."
"I hope not. The school plays the M.C.C. on Wednesday, and it would be a
pity if rain were to spoil our first fixture with them. Good afternoon."
And Mr. Downing went out into the baking sunlight, while Sergeant
Collard, having requested Mrs. Collard to take the children out for a
walk at once, and furthermore to give young Ernie a clip side of the
'ead, if he persisted in making so much noise, put a handkerchief over
his face, rested his feet on the table, and slept the sleep of the just.
19
THE SLEUTH-HOUND
For the Doctor Watsons of this world, as opposed to the Sherlock
Holmeses, success in the province of detective work must be, to a very
large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract a clue
from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar ash. But Doctor Watson has got
to have it taken out for him, and dusted, and exhibited clearly, with a
label attached.
The average man is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a
patronizing manner at that humbler follower of the great investigator,
but, as a matter of fact, we should have been just as dull ourselves. We
should not even have risen to the modest level of a Scotland Yard
bungler. We should simply have hung around, saying: "My dear Holmes,
how...?" and all the rest of it, just as the downtrodden medico did.
It is not often that the ordinary person has any need to see what he can
do in the way of detection. He gets along very comfortably in the
humdrum round of life without having to measure footprints and smile
quiet, tight-lipped smiles. But if ever the emergency does arise, he
thinks naturally of Sherlock Holmes, and his methods.
Mr. Downing had read all the Holmes stories with great attention, and
had thought many times what an incompetent ass Doctor Watson was; but,
now that he had started to handle his own first case, he was compelled
to admit that there was a good deal to be said in extenuation of
Watson's inability to unravel tangles. It certainly was uncommonly hard,
he thought, as he paced the cricket field after leaving Sergeant
Collard, to detect anybody, unless you knew who had really done the
crime. As he brooded over the case in hand, his sympathy for Doctor
Watson increased with every minute, and he began to feel a certain
resentment against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was all very well for Sir
Arthur to be so shrewd and infallible about tracing a mystery to its
source, but he knew perfectly well who had done the thing before
he started!
Now that he began really to look into this matter of the alarm bell and
the painting of Sammy, the conviction was creeping over him that the
problem was more difficult than a casual observer might imagine. He had
got as far as finding that his quarry of the previous night was a boy in
Mr. Outwood's house, but how was he to get any further? That was the
thing. There was, of course, only a limited number of boys in Mr.
Outwood's house as tall as the one he had pursued; but even if there had
been only one other, it would have complicated matters. If you go to a
boy and say, "Either you or Jones were out of your house last night at
twelve o'clock," the boy does not reply, "Sir, I cannot tell a lie--I
was out of my house last night at twelve o'clock." He simply assumes the
animated expression of a stuffed fish, and leaves the next move to you.
It is practically stalemate.
All these things passed through Mr. Downing's mind as he walked up and
down the cricket field that afternoon.
What he wanted was a clue. But it is so hard for the novice to tell what
is a clue and what isn't. Probably, if he only knew, there were clues
lying all over the place, shouting to him to pick them up.
What with the oppressive heat of the day and the fatigue of hard
thinking, Mr. Downing was working up for a brainstorm when Fate once
more intervened, this time in the shape of Riglett, a junior member of
his house.
Riglett slunk up in the shamefaced way peculiar to some boys, even when
they have done nothing wrong, and, having "capped" Mr. Downing with the
air of one who had been caught in the act of doing something
particularly shady, requested that he might be allowed to fetch his
bicycle from the shed.
"Your bicycle?" snapped Mr. Downing. Much thinking had made him
irritable. "What do you want with your bicycle?"
Riglett shuffled, stood first on his left foot, then on his right,
blushed, and finally remarked, as if it were not so much a sound reason
as a sort of feeble excuse for the low and blackguardly fact that he
wanted his bicycle, that he had got leave for tea that afternoon.
Then Mr. Downing remembered. Riglett had an aunt resident about three
miles from the school, whom he was accustomed to visit occasionally on
Sunday afternoons during the term.
He felt for his bunch of keys, and made his way to the shed, Riglett
shambling behind at an interval of two yards.
Mr. Downing unlocked the door, and there on the floor was the Clue!
A clue that even Doctor Watson could not have overlooked.
Mr. Downing saw it, but did not immediately recognize it for what it
was. What he saw at first was not a clue, but just a mess. He had a tidy
soul and abhorred messes. And this was a particularly messy mess. The
greater part of the flooring in the neighborhood of the door was a sea
of red paint. The tin from which it had flowed was lying on its side in
the middle of the shed. The air was full of the pungent scent.
"Pah!" said Mr. Downing.
Then suddenly, beneath the disguise of the mess, he saw the clue. A
footmark! No less. A crimson footmark on the gray concrete!
Riglett, who had been waiting patiently two yards away, now coughed
plaintively. The sound recalled Mr. Downing to mundane matters.
"Get your bicycle, Riglett," he said, "and be careful where you tread.
Somebody has upset a pot of paint on the floor."
Riglett, walking delicately through dry places, extracted his bicycle
from the rack, and presently departed to gladden the heart of his aunt,
leaving Mr. Downing, his brain fizzing with the enthusiasm of the
detective, to lock the door and resume his perambulation of the
cricket field.
Give Doctor Watson a fair start, and he is a demon at the game. Mr.
Downing's brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which a
professional sleuth might have envied.
Paint. Red paint. Obviously the same paint with which Sammy had been
decorated. A footmark. Whose footmark? Plainly that of the criminal who
had done the deed of decoration.
Yoicks!
There were two things, however, to be considered. Your careful detective
must consider everything. In the first place, the paint might have been
upset by the groundsman. It was the groundsman's paint. He had been
giving a fresh coating to the woodwork in front of the pavilion scoring
box at the conclusion of yesterday's match. (A labor of love which was
the direct outcome of the enthusiasm for work which Adair had instilled
into him.) In that case the footmark might be his.
_Note one_: Interview the groundsman on this point.
In the second place Adair might have upset the tin and trodden in its
contents when he went to get his bicycle in order to fetch the doctor
for the suffering MacPhee. This was the more probable of the two
contingencies, for it would have been dark in the shed when Adair
went into it.
_Note two_: Interview Adair as to whether he found, on returning to the
house, that there was paint on his shoes.
Things were moving.
* * * * *
He resolved to take Adair first. He could get the groundsman's address
from him.
Passing by the trees under whose shade Mike and Psmith and Dunster had
watched the match on the previous day, he came upon the Head of his
house in a deck chair reading a book. A summer Sunday afternoon is the
time for reading in deck chairs.
"Oh, Adair," he said. "No, don't get up. I merely wished to ask you if
you found any paint on your shoes when you returned to the house
last night."
"Paint, sir?" Adair was plainly puzzled. His book had been interesting,
and had driven the Sammy incident out of his head.
"I see somebody has spilled some paint on the floor of the bicycle shed.
You did not do that, I suppose, when you went to fetch your bicycle?"
"No, sir."
"It is spilled all over the floor. I wondered whether you had happened
to tread in it. But you say you found no paint on your shoes
this morning?"
"No, sir, my bicycle is always quite near the door of the shed. I didn't
go into the shed at all."
"I see. Quite so. Thank you, Adair. Oh, by the way, Adair, where does
Markby live?"
"I forget the name of his cottage, sir, but I could show you in a
second. It's one of those cottages just past the school gates, on the
right as you turn out into the road. There are three in a row. His is
the first you come to. There's a barn just before you get to them."
"Thank you. I shall be able to find them. I should like to speak to
Markby for a moment on a small matter."
A sharp walk took him to the cottages Adair had mentioned. He rapped at
the door of the first, and the groundsman came out in his shirt sleeves,
blinking as if he had just waked up, as was indeed the case.
"Oh, Markby!"
"Sir?"
"You remember that you were painting the scoring box in the pavilion
last night after the match?"
"Yes, sir. It wanted a lick of paint bad. The young gentlemen will
scramble about and get through the window. Makes it look shabby, sir. So
I thought I'd better give it a coating so as to look shipshape when the
Marylebone come down."
"Just so. An excellent idea. Tell me, Markby, what did you do with the
pot of paint when you had finished?"
"Put it in the bicycle shed, sir."
"On the floor?"
"On the floor, sir? No. On the shelf at the far end, with the can of
whitening what I use for marking out the wickets, sir."
"Of course, yes. Quite so. Just as I thought."
"Do you want it, sir?"
"No, thank you, Markby, no, thank you. The fact is, somebody who had no
business to do so has moved the pot of paint from the shelf to the
floor, with the result that it has been kicked over and spilled. You had
better get some more tomorrow. Thank you, Markby. That is all I
wished to know."
Mr. Downing walked back to the school thoroughly excited. He was hot on
the scent now. The only other possible theories had been tested and
successfully exploded. The thing had become simple to a degree. All he
had to do was to go to Mr. Outwood's house--the idea of searching a
fellow master's house did not appear to him at all a delicate task;
somehow one grew unconsciously to feel that Mr. Outwood did not really
exist as a man capable of resenting liberties--find the paint-splashed
shoe, ascertain its owner, and denounce him to the headmaster. There
could be no doubt that a paint-splashed shoe must be in Mr. Outwood's
house somewhere. A boy cannot tread in a pool of paint without showing
some signs of having done so. It was Sunday, too, so that the shoe would
not yet have been cleaned. Yoicks! Also tally-ho! This really was
beginning to be something like business.
Regardless of the heat, the sleuth-hound hurried across to Outwood's as
fast as he could walk.
20
A CHECK
The only two members of the house not out in the grounds when he arrived
were Mike and Psmith. They were standing on the gravel drive in front of
the boys' entrance. Mike had a deck chair in one hand and a book in the
other. Psmith--for even the greatest minds will sometimes unbend--was
wrestling with a Yo-Yo. That is to say, he was trying without success to
keep the spool spinning. He smoothed a crease out of his waistcoat and
tried again. He had just succeeded in getting the thing to spin when Mr.
Downing arrived. The sound of his footsteps disturbed Psmith and brought
the effort to nothing.
"Enough of this spoolery," said he, flinging the spool through the open
window of the senior day room. "I was an ass ever to try it. The
philosophical mind needs complete repose in its hours of
leisure. Hello!"
He stared after the sleuth-hound, who had just entered the house.
"What the dickens," said Mike, "does he mean by barging in as if he'd
bought the place?"
"Comrade Downing looks pleased with himself. What brings him around in
this direction, I wonder! Still, no matter. The few articles which he
may sneak from our study are of inconsiderable value. He is welcome to
them. Do you feel inclined to wait awhile till I have fetched a chair
and book?"
"I'll be going on. I shall be under the trees at the far end of the
ground."
"'Tis well. I will be with you in about two ticks."
Mike walked on toward the field, and Psmith, strolling upstairs to fetch
his novel, found Mr. Downing standing in the passage with the air of one
who has lost his bearings.
"A warm afternoon, sir," murmured Psmith courteously, as he passed.
"Er--Smith!"
"Sir?"
"I--er--wish to go round the dormitories."
It was Psmith's guiding rule in life never to be surprised at anything,
so he merely inclined his head gracefully, and said nothing.
"I should be glad if you would fetch the keys and show me where the
rooms are."
"With acute pleasure, sir," said Psmith. "Or shall I fetch Mr. Outwood,
sir?"
"Do as I tell you Smith," snapped Mr. Downing.
Psmith said no more, but went down to the matron's room. The matron
being out, he abstracted the bunch of keys from her table and rejoined
the master.
"Shall I lead the way, sir?" he asked.
Mr. Downing nodded.
"Here, sir," said Psmith, opening the door, "we have Barnes's dormitory.
An airy room, constructed on the soundest hygienic principles. Each boy,
I understand, has quite a considerable number of cubic feet of air all
to himself. It is Mr. Outwood's boast that no boy has ever asked for a
cubic foot of air in vain. He argues justly--"
He broke off abruptly and began to watch the other's maneuvers in
silence. Mr. Downing was peering rapidly beneath each bed in turn.
"Are you looking for Barnes, sir?" inquired Psmith politely. "I think
he's out in the field."
Mr. Downing rose, having examined the last bed, crimson in the face with
the exercise.
"Show me the next dormitory, Smith," he said, panting slightly.
"This," said Psmith, opening the next door and sinking his voice to an
awed whisper, "is where _I_ sleep!"
Mr. Downing glanced swiftly beneath the three beds.
"Excuse me, sir," said Psmith, "but are we chasing anything?"
"Be good enough, Smith," said Mr. Downing with asperity, "to keep your
remarks to yourself."
"I was only wondering sir. Shall I show you the next in order?"
"Certainly."
They moved on up the passage.
Drawing blank at the last dormitory, Mr. Downing paused, baffled. Psmith
waited patiently by. An idea struck the master.
"The studies, Smith," he cried.
"Aha!" said Psmith. "I beg your pardon, sir. The observation escaped me
unawares. The frenzy of the chase is beginning to enter into my blood.
Here we have--"
Mr. Downing stopped short.
"Is this impertinence studied, Smith?"
"Ferguson's study, sir? No, sir. That's farther down the passage. This
is Barnes's."
Mr. Downing looked at him closely. Psmith's face was wooden in its
gravity. The master snorted suspiciously, then moved on.
"Whose is this?" he asked, rapping a door.
"This, sir, is mine and Jackson's."
"What! Have you a study? You are low down in the school for it."
"I think, sir, that Mr. Outwood gave it us rather as a testimonial to
our general worth than to our proficiency in schoolwork."
Mr. Downing raked the room with a keen eye. The absence of bars from the
window attracted his attention.
"Have you no bars to your windows here, such as there are in my house?"
"There appears to be no bar, sir," said Psmith, putting up his eyeglass.
Mr. Downing was leaning out of the window.
"A lovely view, is it not, sir?" said Psmith. "The trees, the field, the
distant hills ..."
Mr. Downing suddenly started. His eye had been caught by the water pipe
at the side of the window. The boy whom Sergeant Collard had seen
climbing the pipe must have been making for this study.
He spun around and met Psmith's blandly inquiring gaze. He looked at
Psmith carefully for a moment. No. The boy he had chased last night had
not been Psmith. That exquisite's figure and general appearance were
unmistakable, even in the dusk.
"Whom did you say you shared this study with, Smith?"
"Jackson, sir. The cricketer."
"Never mind about his cricket, Smith," said Mr. Downing with irritation.
"No, sir."
"He is the only other occupant of the room?"
"Yes, sir."
"Nobody else comes into it?"
"If they do, they go out extremely quickly, sir."
"Ah! Thank you, Smith."
"Not at all, sir."
Mr. Downing pondered. Jackson! The boy bore him a grudge. The boy was
precisely the sort of boy to revenge himself by painting the dog Sammy.
And, gadzooks! The boy whom he had pursued last night had been just
about Jackson's size and build!
Mr. Downing was as firmly convinced at that moment that Mike's had been
the hand to wield the paintbrush as he had ever been of anything in
his life.
"Smith!" he said excitedly.
"On the spot, sir," said Psmith affably.
"Where are Jackson's shoes?"
There are moments when the giddy excitement of being right on the trail
causes the amateur (or Watsonian) detective to be incautious. Such a
moment came to Mr. Downing then. If he had been wise, he would have
achieved his object, the getting a glimpse of Mike's shoes, by a devious
and snaky route. As it was, he rushed straight on.
"His shoes, sir? He has them on. I noticed them as he went out just
now."
"Where is the pair he wore yesterday?"
"Where are the shoes of yesteryear?" murmured Psmith to himself. "I
should say at a venture, sir, that they would be in the basket,
downstairs. Edmund, our genial knife-and-boot boy, collects them, I
believe, at early dawn."
"Would they have been cleaned yet?"
"If I know Edmund, sir--no."
"Smith," said Mr. Downing, trembling with excitement, "go and bring that
basket to me here."
Psmith's brain was working rapidly as he went downstairs. What exactly
was at the back of the sleuth's mind, prompting these maneuvers, he did
not know. But that there was something, and that that something was
directed in a hostile manner against Mike, probably in connection with
last night's wild happenings, he was certain. Psmith had noticed, on
leaving his bed at the sound of the alarm bell, that he and Jellicoe
were alone in the room. That might mean that Mike had gone out through
the door when the bell sounded, or it might mean that he had been out
all the time. It began to look as if the latter solution were the
correct one.
He staggered back with the basket, painfully conscious all the while
that it was creasing his waistcoat, and dumped it down on the study
floor. Mr. Downing stooped eagerly over it. Psmith leaned against the
wall, and straightened out the damaged garment.
"We have here, sir," he said, "a fair selection of our various
bootings."
Mr. Downing looked up.
"You dropped none of the shoes on your way up, Smith?"
"Not one, sir. It was a fine performance."
Mr. Downing uttered a grunt of satisfaction, and bent once more to his
task. Shoes flew about the room. Mr. Downing knelt on the floor beside
the basket, and dug like a terrier at a rathole.
At last he made a dive, and, with an exclamation of triumph, rose to his
feet. In his hand he held a shoe.
"Put those back again, Smith," he said.
The ex-Etonian, wearing an expression such as a martyr might have worn
on being told off for the stake, began to pick up the scattered
footgear, whistling softly the tune of "I do all the dirty work," as
he did so.
"That's the lot, sir," he said, rising.
"Ah. Now come across with me to the headmaster's house. Leave the basket
here. You can carry it back when you return."
"Shall I put back that shoe, sir?"
"Certainly not. I shall take this with me, of course."
"Shall I carry it, sir?"
Mr. Downing reflected.
"Yes, Smith," he said. "I think it would be best."
It occurred to him that the spectacle of a house master wandering abroad
on the public highway, carrying a dirty shoe, might be a trifle
undignified. You never knew whom you might meet on Sunday afternoon.
Psmith took the shoe, and doing so, understood what before had puzzled
him.
Across the toe of the shoe was a broad splash of red paint.
He knew nothing, of course, of the upset tin in the bicycle shed; but
when a housemaster's dog has been painted red in the night, and when, on
the following day, the housemaster goes about in search of a paint
splashed shoe, one puts two and two together. Psmith looked at the name
inside the shoe. It was "Brown bootmaker, Bridgnorth." Bridgnorth was
only a few miles from his own home and Mike's. Undoubtedly it was
Mike's shoe.
"Can you tell me whose shoe that is?" asked Mr. Downing.
Psmith looked at it again.
"No, sir. I can't say the little chap's familiar to me."
"Come with me, then."
Mr. Downing left the room. After a moment Psmith followed him.
The headmaster was in his garden. Thither Mr. Downing made his way, the
shoe-bearing Psmith in close attendance.
The Head listened to the amateur detective's statement with interest.
"Indeed?" he said, when Mr. Downing had finished, "Indeed? Dear me! It
certainly seems ... It is a curiously well-connected thread of evidence.
You are certain that there was red paint on this shoe you discovered in
Mr. Outwood's house?"
"I have it with me. I brought it on purpose to show to you. Smith!"
"Sir?"
"You have the shoe?"
"Ah," said the headmaster, putting on a pair of pince-nez, "now let me
look at--This, you say, is the--? Just so. Just so. Just ... But, er,
Mr. Downing, it may be that I have not examined this shoe with
sufficient care, but--Can _you_ point out to me exactly where this paint
is that you speak of?"
Mr. Downing stood staring at the shoe with a wild, fixed stare. Of any
suspicion of paint, red or otherwise, it was absolutely and
entirely innocent.
21
THE DESTROYER OF EVIDENCE
The shoe became the center of attention, the cynosure of all eyes. Mr.
Downing fixed it with the piercing stare of one who feels that his brain
is tottering. The headmaster looked at it with a mildly puzzled
expression. Psmith, putting up his eyeglass, gazed at it with a sort of
affectionate interest, as if he were waiting for it to do a trick of
some kind.
Mr. Downing was the first to break the silence.
"There was paint on this shoe," he said vehemently. "I tell you there
was a splash of red paint across the toe. Smith will bear me out in
this. Smith, you saw the paint on this shoe?"
"Paint, sir?"
"What! Do you mean to tell me that you did _not_ see it?"
"No, sir. There was no paint on this shoe."
"This is foolery. I saw it with my own eyes. It was a broad splash right
across the toe."
The headmaster interposed.
"You must have made a mistake, Mr. Downing. There is certainly no trace
of paint on this shoe. These momentary optical delusions are, I fancy,
not uncommon. Any doctor will tell you--"
"I had an aunt, sir," said Psmith chattily, "who was remarkably
subject--"
"It is absurd. I cannot have been mistaken," said Mr. Downing. "I am
positively certain the toe of this shoe was red when I found it."
"It is undoubtedly black now, Mr. Downing."
"A sort of chameleon shoe," murmured Psmith.
The goaded housemaster turned on him.
"What did you say, Smith?"
"Did I speak, sir?" said Psmith, with the start of one coming suddenly
out of a trance.
Mr. Downing looked searchingly at him.
"You had better be careful, Smith."
"Yes, sir."
"I strongly suspect you of having something to do with this."
"Really, Mr. Downing," said the headmaster, "this is surely improbable.
Smith could scarcely have cleaned the shoe on his way to my house. On
one occasion I inadvertently spilled some paint on a shoe of my own. I
can assure you that it does not brush off. It needs a very systematic
cleaning before all traces are removed."
"Exactly, sir," said Psmith. "My theory, if I may...?"
"Certainly Smith."
Psmith bowed courteously and proceeded.
"My theory, sir, is that Mr. Downing was deceived by the light-and-shade
effects on the toe of the shoe. The afternoon sun, streaming in through
the window, must have shone on the shoe in such a manner as to give it a
momentary and fictitious aspect of redness. If Mr. Downing recollects,
he did not look long at the shoe. The picture on the retina of the eye,
consequently, had not time to fade. I remember thinking myself, at the
moment, that the shoe appeared to have a certain reddish tint. The
mistake...."
"Bag!" said Mr. Downing shortly.
"Well, really," said the headmaster, "it seems to me that that is the
only explanation that will square with the facts. A shoe that is really
smeared with red paint does not become black of itself in the course of
a few minutes."
"You are very right, sir," said Psmith with benevolent approval. "May I
go now, sir? I am in the middle of a singularly impressive passage of
Cicero's speech _De senectute_."
"I am sorry that you should leave your preparation till Sunday, Smith.
It is a habit of which I altogether disapprove."
"I am reading it, sir," said Psmith, with simple dignity, "for pleasure.
Shall I take the shoe with me, sir?"
"If Mr. Downing does not want it?"
The housemaster passed the fraudulent piece of evidence to Psmith
without a word, and the latter, having included both masters in a kindly
smile, left the garden.
Pedestrians who had the good fortune to be passing along the road
between the headmaster's house and Mr. Outwood's at that moment saw
what, if they had but known it, was a most unusual sight, the spectacle
of Psmith running. Psmith's usual mode of progression was a dignified
walk. He believed in the contemplative style rather than the hustling.
On this occasion, however, reckless of possible injuries to the crease
of his trousers, he raced down the road, and turning in at Outwood's
gate, bounded upstairs like a highly trained professional athlete.
On arriving at the study, his first act was to remove a shoe from the
top of the pile in the basket, place it in the small cupboard under the
bookshelf, and lock the cupboard. Then he flung himself into a chair
and panted.
"Brain," he said to himself approvingly, "is what one chiefly needs in
matters of this kind. Without brain, where are we? In the soup, every
time. The next development will be when Comrade Downing thinks it over,
and is struck with the brilliant idea that it's just possible that the
shoe he gave me to carry and the shoe I did carry were not one shoe but
two shoes. Meanwhile ..."
He dragged up another chair for his feet and picked up his novel.
He had not been reading long when there was a footstep in the passage,
and Mr. Downing appeared.
The possibility, in fact the probability, of Psmith's having substituted
another shoe for the one with the incriminating splash of paint on it
had occurred to him almost immediately on leaving the headmaster's
garden. Psmith and Mike, he reflected, were friends. Psmith's impulse
would be to do all that lay in his power to shield Mike. Feeling
aggrieved with himself that he had not thought of this before, he, too,
hurried over to Outwood's.
Mr. Downing was brisk and peremptory.
"I wish to look at these shoes again," he said. Psmith, with a sigh,
laid down his novel, and rose to assist him.
"Sit down, Smith," said the housemaster. "I can manage without your
help."
Psmith sat down again, carefully tucking up the knees of his trousers,
and watched him with silent interest through his eyeglass.
The scrutiny irritated Mr. Downing.
"Put that thing away, Smith," he said.
"That thing, sir?"
"Yes, that ridiculous glass. Put it away."
"Why, sir?"
"Why! Because I tell you to do so."
"I guessed that that was the reason, sir," sighed Psmith, replacing the
eyeglass in his waistcoat pocket. He rested his elbows on his knees, and
his chin on his hands, and resumed his contemplative inspection of the
shoe expert, who, after fidgeting for a few moments, lodged another
complaint.
"Don't sit there staring at me, Smith."
"I was interested in what you were doing, sir."
"Never mind. Don't stare at me in that idiotic way."
"May I read, sir?" asked Psmith, patiently.
"Yes, read if you like."
"Thank you, sir."
Psmith took up his book again, and Mr. Downing, now thoroughly
irritated, pursued his investigations in the boot basket.
He went through it twice, but each time without success. After the
second search, he stood up, and looked wildly round the room. He was as
certain as he could be of anything that the missing piece of evidence
was somewhere in the study. It was no use asking Psmith point-blank
where it was, for Psmith's ability to parry dangerous questions with
evasive answers was quite out of the common.
His eye roamed about the room. There was very little cover there, even
for so small a fugitive as a number nine shoe. The floor could be
acquitted, on sight, of harboring the quarry.
Then he caught sight of the cupboard, and something seemed to tell him
that there was the place to look.
"Smith!" he said.
Psmith had been reading placidly all the while.
"Yes, sir?"
"What is in this cupboard?"
"That cupboard, sir?"
"Yes. This cupboard." Mr. Downing rapped the door irritably.
"Just a few odd trifles, sir. We do not often use it. A ball of string,
perhaps. Possibly an old notebook. Nothing of value or interest.
"Open it."
"I think you will find that it is locked, sir."
"Unlock it."
"But where is the key, sir?"
"Have you not got the key?"
"If the key is not in the lock, sir, you may depend upon it that it will
take a long search to find it."
"Where did you see it last?"
"It was in the lock yesterday morning. Jackson might have taken it."
"Where is Jackson?"
"Out in the field somewhere, sir."
Mr. Downing thought for a moment.
"I don't believe a word of it," he said shortly. "I have my reasons for
thinking that you are deliberately keeping the contents of that cupboard
from me. I shall break open the door."
Psmith got up.
"I'm afraid you mustn't do that, sir."
Mr. Downing stared, amazed.
"Are you aware whom you are talking to, Smith?" he inquired icily.
"Yes, sir. And I know it's not Mr. Outwood, to whom that cupboard
happens to belong. If you wish to break it open, you must get his
permission. He is the sole lessee and proprietor of that cupboard. I am
only the acting manager."
Mr. Downing paused. He also reflected. Mr. Outwood in the general rule
did not count much in the scheme of things, but possibly there were
limits to the treating of him as if he did not exist. To enter his house
without his permission and search it to a certain extent was all very
well. But when it came to breaking up his furniture, perhaps...!
On the other hand, there was the maddening thought that if he left the
study in search of Mr. Outwood, in order to obtain his sanction for the
house-breaking work which he proposed to carry through, Smith would be
alone in the room. And he knew that if Smith were left alone in the
room, he would instantly remove the shoe to some other hiding place. He
thoroughly disbelieved the story of the lost key. He was perfectly
convinced that the missing shoe was in the cupboard.
He stood chewing these thoughts for a while, Psmith in the meantime
standing in a graceful attitude in front of the cupboard, staring
into vacancy.
Then he was seized with a happy idea. Why should he leave the room at
all? If he sent Smith, then he himself could wait and make certain that
the cupboard was not tampered with.
"Smith," he said, "go and find Mr. Outwood, and ask him to be good
enough to come here for a moment."
22
MAINLY ABOUT SHOES
"Be quick, Smith," he said, as the latter stood looking at him without
making any movement in the direction of the door.
"_Quick_, sir?" said Psmith meditatively, as if he had been asked a
conundrum.
"Go and find Mr. Outwood at once."
Psmith still made no move.
"Do you intend to disobey me, Smith?" Mr. Downing's voice was steely.
"Yes, sir."
"What!"
"Yes, sir."
There was one of those you-could-have-heard-a-pin-drop silences. Psmith
was staring reflectively at the ceiling. Mr. Downing was looking as if
at any moment he might say, "Thwarted to me face, ha, ha! And by a very
stripling!"
It was Psmith, however, who resumed the conversation. His manner was
almost too respectful; which made it all the more a pity that what he
said did not keep up the standard of docility.
"I take my stand," he said, "on a technical point. I say to myself, 'Mr.
Downing is a man I admire as a human being and respect as a
master. In--'"
"This impertinence is doing you no good, Smith."
Psmith waved a hand deprecatingly.
"If you will let me explain, sir. I was about to say that in any other
place but Mr. Outwood's house, your word would be law. I would fly to do
your bidding. If you pressed a button, I would do the rest. But in Mr.
Outwood's house I cannot do anything except what pleases me or what is
ordered by Mr. Outwood. I ought to have remembered that before. One
cannot," he continued, as who should say, "Let us be reasonable," "one
cannot, to take a parallel case, imagine the colonel commanding the
garrison at a naval station going on board a battleship and ordering the
crew to splice the jibboom spanker. It might be an admirable thing for
the Empire that the jibboom spanker _should_ be spliced at that
particular juncture, but the crew would naturally decline to move in the
matter until the order came from the commander of the ship. So in my
case. If you will go to Mr. Outwood, explain to him how matters stand,
and come back and say to me, 'Psmith, Mr. Outwood wishes you to ask him
to be good enough to come to this study,' then I shall be only too glad
to go and find him. You see my difficulty, sir?"
"Go and fetch Mr. Outwood, Smith. I shall not tell you again."
Psmith flicked a speck of dust from his coat sleeve.
"Very well, Smith."
"I can assure you, sir, at any rate, that if there is a shoe in that
cupboard now, there will be a shoe there when you return."
Mr. Downing stalked out of the room.
"But," added Psmith pensively to himself, as the footsteps died away, "I
did not promise that it would be the same shoe."
He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the cupboard, and took out the
shoe. Then he selected from the basket a particularly battered specimen.
Placing this in the cupboard, he relocked the door.
His next act was to take from the shelf a piece of string. Attaching one
end of this to the shoe that he had taken from the cupboard, he went to
the window. His first act was to fling the cupboard key out into the
bushes. Then he turned to the shoe. On a level with the sill the water
pipe, up which Mike had started to climb the night before, was fastened
to the wall by an iron band. He tied the other end of the string to
this, and let the shoe swing free. He noticed with approval, when it had
stopped swinging, that it was hidden from above by the windowsill.
He returned to his place at the mantelpiece.
As an afterthought he took another shoe from the basket, and thrust it
up the chimney. A shower of soot fell into the grate, blackening
his hand.
The bathroom was a few yards down the corridor. He went there, and
washed off the soot.
When he returned, Mr. Downing was in the study, and with him Mr.
Outwood, the latter looking dazed, as if he were not quite equal to the
intellectual pressure of the situation.
"Where have you been, Smith?" asked Mr. Downing sharply.
"I have been washing my hands, sir."
"H'm!" said Mr. Downing suspiciously.
"Yes, I saw Smith go into the bathroom," said Mr. Outwood. "Smith, I
cannot quite understand what it is Mr. Downing wishes me to do."
"My dear Outwood," snapped the sleuth, "I thought I had made it
perfectly clear. Where is the difficulty?"
"I cannot understand why you should suspect Smith of keeping his shoes
in a cupboard, and," added Mr. Outwood with spirit, catching sight of a
good-gracious-has-the-man-_no_-sense look on the other's face, "Why he
should not do so if he wishes it."
"Exactly, sir," said Psmith, approvingly. "You have touched the spot."
"If I must explain again, my dear Outwood, will you kindly give me your
attention for a moment. Last night a boy broke out of your house, and
painted my dog Sampson red."
"He painted...!" said Mr. Outwood, round-eyed. "Why?"
"I don't know why. At any rate, he did. During the escapade one of his
shoes was splashed with the paint. It is that shoe which I believe Smith
to be concealing in this cupboard. Now, do you understand?"
Mr. Outwood looked amazedly at Psmith, and Psmith shook his head
sorrowfully at Mr. Outwood. Psmith's expression said, as plainly as if
he had spoken the words, "We must humor him."
"So with your permission, as Smith declares that he has lost the key, I
propose to break open the door of this cupboard. Have you any
objection?"
Mr. Outwood started.
"Objection? None at all, my dear fellow, none at all. Let me see, _what_
is it you wish to do?"
"This," said Mr. Downing shortly.
There was a pair of dumbbells on the floor, belonging to Mike. He never
used them, but they always managed to get themselves packed with the
rest of his belongings on the last day of the holidays. Mr. Downing
seized one of these, and delivered two rapid blows at the cupboard door.
The wood splintered. A third blow smashed the flimsy lock. The cupboard,
with any skeletons it might contain, was open for all to view.
Mr. Downing uttered a cry of triumph, and tore the shoe from its resting
place.
"I told you," he said. "I told you."
"I wondered where that shoe had got to," said Psmith. "I've been looking
for it for days."
Mr. Downing was examining his find. He looked up with an exclamation of
surprise and wrath.
"This shoe has no paint on it," he said, glaring at Psmith. "This is not
the shoe."
"It certainly appears, sir," said Psmith sympathetically, "to be free
from paint. There's a sort of reddish glow just there, if you look at it
sideways," he added helpfully.
"Did you place that shoe there, Smith?"
"I must have done. Then, when I lost the key--"
"Are you satisfied now, Downing?" interrupted Mr. Outwood with asperity,
"or is there any more furniture you wish to break?"
The excitement of seeing his household goods smashed with a dumbbell had
made the archaeological student quite a swashbuckler for the moment. A
little more, and one could imagine him giving Mr. Downing a good,
hard knock.
The sleuth-hound stood still for a moment, baffled. But his brain was
working with the rapidity of a buzz saw. A chance remark of Mr.
Outwood's set him fizzing off on the trail once more. Mr. Outwood had
caught sight of the little pile of soot in the grate. He bent down to
inspect it.
"Dear me," he said, "I must remember to have the chimneys swept. It
should have been done before."
Mr. Downing's eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, from
earth to heaven, also focused itself on the pile of soot; and a thrill
went through him. Soot in the fireplace! Smith washing his hands! ("You
know my methods, my dear Watson. Apply them.")
Mr. Downing's mind at that moment contained one single thought; and that
thought was, "What ho for the chimney!"
He dived forward with a rush, nearly knocking Mr. Outwood off his feet,
and thrust an arm up into the unknown. An avalanche of soot fell upon
his hand and wrist, but he ignored it, for at the same instant his
fingers had closed upon what he was seeking.
"Ah," he said. "I thought as much. You were not quite clever enough,
after all, Smith."
"No, sir," said Psmith patiently. "We all make mistakes."
"You would have done better, Smith, not to have given me all this
trouble. You have done yourself no good by it."
"It's been great fun, though, sir," argued Psmith.
"Fun!" Mr. Downing laughed grimly. "You may have reason to change your
opinion of what constitutes--"
His voice failed as his eye fell on the all-black toe of the shoe. He
looked up, and caught Psmith's benevolent gaze. He straightened himself
and brushed a bead of perspiration from his face with the back of his
hand. Unfortunately, he used the sooty hand, and the result was that he
looked like a chimney sweep at work.
"Did--you--put--that--shoe--there, Smith?" he asked slowly.
"Yes, sir."
"Then what did you _MEAN_ by putting it there?" roared Mr. Downing.
"Animal spirits, sir," said Psmith.
"WHAT?"
"Animal spirits, sir."
What Mr. Downing would have replied to this one cannot tell, though one
can guess roughly. For, just as he was opening his mouth, Mr. Outwood,
catching sight of his soot-covered countenance, intervened.
"My dear Downing," he said, "your face. It is positively covered with
soot, positively. You must come and wash it. You are quite black. Really
you present a most curious appearance, most. Let me show you the way
to my room."
In all times of storm and tribulation there comes a breaking point, a
point where the spirit definitely refuses to battle any longer against
the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Mr. Downing could not bear
up against this crowning blow. He went down beneath it. In the language
of the ring, he took the count. It was the knockout.
"Soot!" he murmured weakly. "Soot!"
"Your face is covered, my dear fellow, quite covered."
"It certainly has a faintly sooty aspect, sir," said Psmith.
His voice roused the sufferer to one last flicker of spirit.
"You will hear more of this, Smith," he said. "I say you will hear more
of it."
Then he allowed Mr. Outwood to lead him out to a place where there were
towels, soap, and sponges.
* * * * *
When they had gone, Psmith went to the window, and hauled in the string.
He felt the calm afterglow which comes to the general after a
successfully conducted battle. It had been trying, of course, for a man
of refinement, and it had cut into his afternoon, but on the whole it
had been worth it.
The problem now was what to do with the painted shoe. It would take a
lot of cleaning, he saw, even if he could get hold of the necessary
implements for cleaning it. And he rather doubted if he would be able to
do so. Edmund, the boot-boy, worked in some mysterious cell far from the
madding crowd, at the back of the house. In the boot cupboard downstairs
there would probably be nothing likely to be of any use.
His fears were realized. The boot cupboard was empty. It seemed to him
that, for the time being, the best thing he could do would be to place
the shoe in safe hiding, until he would have thought out a scheme.
Having restored the basket to its proper place, accordingly, he went up
to the study again, and placed the red-toed shoe in the chimney, at
about the same height where Mr. Downing had found the other. Nobody
would think of looking there a second time, and it was improbable that
Mr. Outwood really would have the chimneys swept, as he had said. The
odds were that he had forgotten about it already.
Psmith went to the bathroom to wash his hands again, with the feeling
that he had done a good day's work.
23
ON THE TRAIL AGAIN
The most massive minds are apt to forget things at times. The most
adroit plotters make their little mistakes. Psmith was no exception to
the rule. He made the mistake of not telling Mike of the afternoon's
happenings.
It was not altogether forgetfulness. Psmith was one of those people who
like to carry through their operations entirely by themselves. Where
there is only one in a secret, the secret is more liable to remain
unrevealed. There was nothing, he thought, to be gained from telling
Mike. He forgot what the consequences might be if he did not.
So Psmith kept his own counsel, with the result that Mike went over to
school on the Monday morning in gym shoes.
Edmund, summoned from the hinterland of the house to give his opinion
why only one of Mike's shoes was to be found, had no views on the
subject. He seemed to look on it as one of these things which no fellow
can understand.
"'Ere's one of 'em, Mr. Jackson," he said, as if he hoped that Mike
might be satisfied with a compromise.
"One? What's the good of that, Edmund, you chump? I can't go over to
school in one shoe."
Edmund turned this over in his mind, and then said, "No, sir," as much
as to say, "I may have lost a shoe, but, thank goodness, I can still
understand sound reasoning."
"Well, what am I to do? Where _is_ the other shoe?"
"Don't know, Mr. Jackson," replied Edmund to both questions.
"Well, I mean ... Oh, dash it, there's the bell." And Mike sprinted off
in the gym shoes he stood in.
It is only a deviation from those ordinary rules of school life, which
one observes naturally and without thinking, that enables one to realize
how strong public-school prejudices really are. At a school, for
instance, where the regulations say that coats only of black or dark
blue are to be worn, a boy who appears one day in even the most
respectable and unostentatious brown finds himself looked on with a
mixture of awe and repulsion, which would be excessive if he had
sandbagged the headmaster. So in the case of shoes. School rules decree
that a boy shall go to his form room in shoes. There is no real reason
why, if the day is fine, he should not wear gym shoes, should he prefer
them. But, if he does, the thing creates a perfect sensation. Boys say,
"Great Scott, what _have_ you got on?" Masters say, "Jones, _what_ are
you wearing on your feet?" In the few minutes which elapse between the
assembling of the form for call-over and the arrival of the form master,
some wag is sure either to stamp on the gym shoes, accompanying the act
with some satirical remark, or else to pull one of them off, and
inaugurate an impromptu game of football with it. There was once a boy
who went to school one morning in elastic-sided boots.
Mike had always been coldly distant in his relations to the rest of his
form, looking on them, with a few exceptions, as worms; and the form,
since his innings against Downing's on the Friday, had regarded Mike
with respect. So that he escaped the ragging he would have had to
undergo at Wrykyn in similar circumstance. It was only Mr. Downing who
gave trouble.
There is a sort of instinct which enables some masters to tell when a
boy in their form is wearing gym shoes instead of the more formal kind,
just as people who dislike cats always know when one is in a room with
them. They cannot see it but they feel it in their bones.
Mr. Downing was perhaps the most bigoted anti-gym-shoeist in the whole
list of English schoolmasters. He waged war remorselessly against gym
shoes. Satire, abuse, lines, detention--every weapon was employed by him
in dealing with their wearers. It had been the late Dunster's practice
always to go over to school in gym shoes when, as he usually did, he
felt shaky in the morning's lesson. Mr. Downing always detected him in
the first five minutes, and that meant a lecture of anything from ten
minutes to a quarter of an hour on Untidy Habits and Boys Who Looked
Like Loafers--which broke the back of the morning's work nicely. On one
occasion, when a particularly tricky bit of Livy was on the bill of
fare, Dunster had entered the form room in heelless Turkish bath
slippers, of a vivid crimson; and the subsequent proceedings, including
his journey over to the house to change the heelless atrocities, had
seen him through very nearly to the quarter-to-eleven interval.
Mike, accordingly, had not been in his place for three minutes when Mr.
Downing, stiffening like a pointer, called his name.
"Yes, sir?" said Mike.
"_What_ are you wearing on your feet, Jackson?"
"Gym shoes, sir."
"You are wearing gym shoes? Are you not aware that gym shoes are not the
proper things to come to school in? Why are you wearing gym shoes?"
The form, leaning back against the next row of desks, settled itself
comfortably for the address from the throne.
"I have lost one of my shoes, sir."
A kind of gulp escaped from Mr. Downing's lips. He stared at Mike for a
moment in silence. Then, turning to Stone, he told him to start
translating.
Stone, who had been expecting at least ten minutes' respite, was taken
unawares. When he found the place in his book and began to construe, he
floundered hopelessly. But, to his growing surprise and satisfaction,
the form master appeared to notice nothing wrong. He said "Yes, yes,"
mechanically, and finally, "That will do," whereupon Stone resumed his
seat with the feeling that the age of miracles had returned.
Mr. Downing's mind was in a whirl. His case was complete. Mike's
appearance in gym shoes, with the explanation that he had lost a shoe,
completed the chain. As Columbus must have felt when his ship ran into
harbor, and the first American interviewer, jumping on board, said,
"Wal, sir, and what are your impressions of our glorious country?" so
did Mr. Downing feel at that moment.
When the bell rang at a quarter to eleven, he gathered up his gown and
sped to the headmaster.
24
THE ADAIR METHOD
It was during the interval that day that Stone and Robinson, discussing
the subject of cricket over a bun and ginger beer at the school shop,
came to a momentous decision, to wit, that they were fed up with the
Adair administration and meant to strike. The immediate cause of revolt
was early-morning fielding practice, that searching test of cricket
keenness. Mike himself, to whom cricket was the great and serious
interest in life, had shirked early-morning fielding practice in his
first term at Wrykyn. And Stone and Robinson had but a lukewarm
attachment to the game, compared with Mike's.
As a rule, Adair had contented himself with practice in the afternoon
after school, which nobody objects to; and no strain, consequently, had
been put upon Stone's and Robinson's allegiance. In view of the M.C.C.
match on the Wednesday, however, he had now added to this an extra dose
to be taken before breakfast. Stone and Robinson had left their
comfortable beds that day at six o'clock, yawning and heavy-eyed, and
had caught catches and fielded drives which, in the cool morning air,
had stung like adders and bitten like serpents. Until the sun has really
got to work, it is no joke taking a high catch. Stone's dislike of the
experiment was only equaled by Robinson's. They were neither of them of
the type which likes to undergo hardships for the common good. They
played well enough when on the field, but neither cared greatly whether
the school had a good season or not. They played the games entirely for
their own sakes.
The result was that they went back to the house for breakfast with a
never-again feeling, and at the earliest possible moment met to debate
as to what was to be done about it. At all costs another experience like
today's must be avoided.
"It's all rot," said Stone. "What on earth's the good of sweating about
before breakfast? It only makes you tired."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Robinson, "if it wasn't bad for the heart.
Rushing about on an empty stomach, I mean, and all that sort of thing."
"Personally," said Stone, gnawing his bun, "I don't intend to stick it."
"Nor do I."
"I mean, it's such absolute rot. If we aren't good enough to play for
the team without having to get up overnight to catch catches, he'd
better find somebody else."
"Yes."
At this moment Adair came into the shop.
"Fielding practice again tomorrow," he said briskly, "at six."
"Before breakfast?" said Robinson.
"Rather. You two must buck up, you know. You were rotten today." And he
passed on, leaving the two malcontents speechless.
Stone was the first to recover.
"I'm hanged if I turn out tomorrow," he said, as they left the shop. "He
can do what he likes about it. Besides, what can he do, after all? Only
kick us out of the team. And I don't mind that."
"Nor do I."
"I don't think he will kick us out, either. He can't play the M.C.C.
with a scratch team. If he does, we'll go and play for that village
Jackson plays for. We'll get Jackson to shove us into the team."
"All right," said Robinson. "Let's."
Their position was a strong one. A cricket captain may seem to be an
autocrat of tremendous power, but in reality he has only one weapon, the
keenness of those under him. With the majority, of course, the fear of
being excluded or ejected from a team is a spur that drives. The
majority, consequently, are easily handled. But when a cricket captain
runs up against a boy who does not much care whether he plays for the
team or not, then he finds himself in a difficult position, and, unless
he is a man of action, practically helpless.
Stone and Robinson felt secure. Taking it all around, they felt that
they would just as soon play for Lower Borlock as for the school. The
bowling of the opposition would be weaker in the former case, and the
chance of making runs greater. To a certain type of cricketer runs are
runs, wherever and however made.
The result of all this was that Adair, turning out with the team next
morning for fielding practice, found himself two short. Barnes was among
those present, but of the other two representatives of Outwood's house
there were no signs.
Barnes, questioned on the subject, had no information to give, beyond
the fact that he had not seen them about anywhere. Which was not a great
help. Adair proceeded with the fielding practice without further delay.
At breakfast that morning he was silent and apparently rapt in thought.
Mr. Downing, who sat at the top of the table with Adair on his right,
was accustomed at the morning meal to blend nourishment of the body with
that of the mind. As a rule he had ten minutes with the daily paper
before the bell rang, and it was his practice to hand on the results of
his reading to Adair and the other house prefects, who, not having seen
the paper, usually formed an interested and appreciative audience.
Today, however, though the house prefects expressed varying degrees of
excitement at the news that Sheppard had made a century against
Gloucestershire, and that a butter famine was expected in the United
States, these world-shaking news items seemed to leave Adair cold. He
champed his bread and marmalade with an abstracted air.
He was wondering what to do in the matter of Stone and Robinson.
Many captains might have passed the thing over. To take it for granted
that the missing pair had overslept themselves would have been a safe
and convenient way out of the difficulty. But Adair was not the sort of
person who seeks for safe and convenient ways out of difficulties. He
never shirked anything, physical or moral.
He resolved to interview the absentees.
It was not until after school that an opportunity offered itself. He
went across to Outwood's and found the two nonstarters in the senior day
room, engaged in the intellectual pursuit of kicking the wall and
marking the height of each kick with chalk. Adair's entrance coincided
with a record effort by Stone, which caused the kicker to overbalance
and stagger backward against the captain.
"Sorry," said Stone. "Hello, Adair!"
"Don't mention it. Why weren't you two at fielding practice this
morning?"
Robinson, who left the lead to Stone in all matters, said nothing. Stone
spoke.
"We didn't turn up," he said.
"I know you didn't. Why not?"
Stone had rehearsed this scene in his mind, and he spoke with the
coolness which comes from rehearsal.
"We decided not to."
"Oh?"
"Yes. We came to the conclusion that we hadn't any use for early-morning
fielding."
Adair's manner became ominously calm.
"You were rather fed up, I suppose?"
"That's just the word."
"Sorry it bored you."
"It didn't. We didn't give it the chance to."
Robinson laughed appreciatively.
"What's the joke, Robinson?" asked Adair.
"There's no joke," said Robinson, with some haste. "I was only thinking
of something."
"I'll give you something else to think about soon."
Stone intervened.
"It's no good making a row about it, Adair. You must see that you can't
do anything. Of course, you can kick us out of the team, if you like,
but we don't care if you do. Jackson will get us a game any Wednesday or
Saturday for the village he plays for. So we're all right. And the
school team aren't such a lot of flyers that you can afford to go
chucking people out of it whenever you want to. See what I mean?"
"You and Jackson seem to have fixed it all up between you."
"What are you going to do? Kick us out?"
"No."
"Good. I thought you'd see it was no good making a beastly row. We'll
play for the school all right. There's no earthly need for us to turn
out for fielding practice before breakfast."
"You don't think there is? You may be right. All the same, you're going
to tomorrow morning."
"What!"
"Six sharp. Don't be late."
"Don't be an ass, Adair. We've told you we aren't going to."
"That's only your opinion. I think you are. I'll give you till five past
six, as you seem to like lying in bed."
"You can turn out if you feel like it. You won't find me there."
"That'll be a disappointment. Nor Robinson?"
"No," said the junior partner in the firm; but he said it without any
deep conviction. The atmosphere was growing a great deal too tense for
his comfort.
"You've quite made up your minds?"
"Yes," said Stone.
"Right," said Adair quietly, and knocked him down.
He was up again in a moment. Adair had pushed the table back, and was
standing in the middle of the open space.
"You cad," said Stone. "I wasn't ready."
"Well, you are now. Shall we go on?"
Stone dashed in without a word, and for a few moments the two might have
seemed evenly matched to a not too intelligent spectator. But science
tells, even in a confined space. Adair was smaller and lighter than
Stone, but he was cooler and quicker, and he knew more about the game.
His blow was always home a fraction of a second sooner than his
opponent's. At the end of a minute Stone was on the floor again.
He got up slowly and stood leaning with one hand on the table.
"Suppose we say ten past six!" said Adair. "I'm not particular to a
minute or two."
Stone made no reply.
"Will ten past six suit you for fielding practice tomorrow?" said Adair.
"All right," said Stone.
"Thanks. How about you, Robinson?"
Robinson had been a petrified spectator of the Captain-Kettle-like
maneuvers of the cricket captain, and it did not take him long to make
up his mind. He was not altogether a coward. In different circumstances
he might have put up a respectable show. But it takes a more than
ordinarily courageous person to embark on a fight which he knows must
end in his destruction. Robinson knew that he was nothing like a match
even for Stone, and Adair had disposed of Stone in a little over one
minute. It seemed to Robinson that neither pleasure nor profit was
likely to come from an encounter with Adair.
"All right," he said hastily, "I'll turn up."
"Good," said Adair. "I wonder if either of you chaps could tell me which
is Jackson's study."
Stone was dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief, a task which
precluded anything in the shape of conversation; so Robinson replied
that Mike's study was the first you came to on the right of the corridor
at the top of the stairs.
"Thanks," said Adair. "You don't happen to know if he's in, I suppose?"
"He went up with Smith a quarter of an hour ago. I don't know if he's
still there."
"I'll go and see," said Adair. "I should like a word with him if he
isn't busy."
25
ADAIR HAS A WORD WITH MIKE
Mike, all unconscious of the stirring proceedings which had been going
on below stairs, was peacefully reading a letter he had received that
morning from Strachan at Wrykyn, in which the successor to the cricket
captaincy which should have been Mike's had a good deal to say in a
lugubrious strain. In Mike's absence things had been going badly with
Wrykyn. A broken arm, contracted in the course of some rash experiments
with a day boy's motor bicycle, had deprived the team of the services of
Dunstable, the only man who had shown any signs of being able to bowl a
side out. Since this calamity, wrote Strachan, everything had gone
wrong. The M.C.C., led by Mike's brother Reggie, the least of the three
first-class cricketing Jacksons, had smashed them by a hundred and fifty
runs. Geddington had wiped them off the face of the earth. The Incogs,
with a team recruited exclusively from the rabbit hutch--not a
well-known man on the side except Stacey, a veteran who had been playing
for the club for nearly half a century--had got home by two wickets. In
fact, it was Strachan's opinion that the Wrykyn team that summer was
about the most hopeless gang of deadbeats that had ever made exhibition
of itself on the school grounds. The Ripton match, fortunately, was off,
owing to an outbreak of mumps at that shrine of learning and
athletics--the second outbreak of the malady in two terms. Which, said
Strachan, was hard lines on Ripton, but a bit of jolly good luck for
Wrykyn, as it had saved them from what would probably have been a record
hammering, Ripton having eight of their last year's team left, including
Dixon, the fast bowler, against whom Mike alone of the Wrykyn team had
been able to make runs in the previous season. Altogether, Wrykyn had
struck a bad patch.
Mike mourned over his suffering school. If only he could have been there
to help. It might have made all the difference. In school cricket one
good batsman, to go in first and knock the bowlers off their length, may
take a weak team triumphantly through a season. In school cricket the
importance of a good start for the first wicket is incalculable.
As he put Strachan's letter away in his pocket, all his old bitterness
against Sedleigh, which had been ebbing during the past few days,
returned with a rush. He was conscious once more of that feeling of
personal injury which had made him hate his new school on the first
day of term.
And it was at this point, when his resentment was at its height, that
Adair, the concrete representative of everything Sedleighan, entered
the room.
There are moments in life's placid course when there has got to be the
biggest kind of row. This was one of them.
Psmith, who was leaning against the mantelpiece, reading the serial
story in a daily paper which he had abstracted from the senior day room,
made the intruder free of the study with a dignified wave of the hand,
and went on reading. Mike remained in the deck chair in which he was
sitting, and contented himself with glaring at the newcomer.
Psmith was the first to speak.
"If you ask my candid opinion," he said, looking up from his paper, "I
should say that young Lord Antony Trefusis was in the soup already. I
seem to see the consommé splashing about his ankles. He's had a note
telling him to be under the oak tree in the Park at midnight. He's just
off there at the end of this installment. I bet Long Jack, the poacher,
is waiting there with a sandbag. Care to see the paper, Comrade Adair?
Or don't you take any interest in contemporary literature?"
"Thanks," said Adair. "I just wanted to speak to Jackson for a minute."
"Fate," said Psmith, "has led your footsteps to the right place. This is
Comrade Jackson, the Pride of the School, sitting before you."
"What do you want?" said Mike.
He suspected that Adair had come to ask him once again to play for the
school. The fact that the M.C.C. match was on the following day made
this a probable solution of the reason for his visit. He could think of
no other errand that was likely to have set the head of Downing's paying
afternoon calls.
"I'll tell you in a minute. It won't take long."
"That," said Psmith approvingly, "is right. Speed is the keynote of the
present age. Promptitude. Dispatch. This is no time for loitering. We
must be strenuous. We must hustle. We must Do It Now. We--"
"Buck up," said Mike.
"Certainly," said Adair. "I've just been talking to Stone and Robinson."
"An excellent way of passing an idle half hour," said Psmith.
"We weren't exactly idle," said Adair grimly. "It didn't last long, but
it was pretty lively while it did. Stone chucked it after the
first round."
Mike got up out of his chair. He could not quite follow what all this
was about, but there was no mistaking the truculence of Adair's manner.
For some reason, which might possibly be made clear later, Adair was
looking for trouble, and Mike in his present mood felt that it would be
a privilege to see that he got it.
Psmith was regarding Adair through his eyeglass with pain and surprise.
"Surely," he said, "you do not mean us to understand that you have been
_brawling_ with Comrade Stone! This is bad hearing. I thought that you
and he were like brothers. Such a bad example for Comrade Robinson, too.
Leave us, Adair. We would brood. 'Oh, go thee, knave, I'll none of
thee.' Shakespeare."
Psmith turned away, and resting his elbows on the mantelpiece, gazed at
himself mournfully in the looking glass.
"I'm not the man I was," he sighed, after a prolonged inspection. "There
are lines on my face, dark circles beneath my eyes. The fierce rush of
life at Sedleigh is wasting me away."
"Stone and I had a discussion about early-morning fielding practice,"
said Adair, turning to Mike.
Mike said nothing.
"I thought his fielding wanted working up a bit, so I told him to turn
out at six tomorrow morning. He said he wouldn't, so we argued it out.
He's going to all right. So is Robinson."
Mike remained silent.
"So are you," said Adair.
"I get thinner and thinner," said Psmith from the mantelpiece.
Mike looked at Adair, and Adair looked at Mike, after the manner of two
dogs before they fly at one another. There was an electric silence in
the study. Psmith peered with increased earnestness into the glass.
"Oh?" said Mike at last. "What makes you think that?"
"I don't think. I know."
"Any special reason for my turning out?"
"Yes."
"What's that?"
"You're going to play for the school against the M.C.C. tomorrow, and I
want you to get some practice."
"I wonder how you got that idea!"
"Curious I should have done, isn't it?"
"Very. You aren't building on it much, are you?" said Mike politely.
"I am, rather," replied Adair, with equal courtesy.
"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."
"I don't think so."
"My eyes," said Psmith regretfully, "are a bit close together. However,"
he added philosophically, "it's too late to alter that now."
Mike drew a step closer to Adair.
"What makes you think I shall play against the M.C.C.?" he asked
curiously.
"I'm going to make you."
Mike took another step forward. Adair moved to meet him.
"Would you care to try now?" said Mike.
For just one second the two drew themselves together preparatory to
beginning the serious business of the interview, and in that second
Psmith, turning from the glass, stepped between them.
"Get out of the light, Smith," said Mike.
Psmith waved him back with a deprecating gesture.
"My dear young friends," he said placidly, "if you _will_ let your angry
passions rise, against the direct advice of Doctor Watts, I suppose you
must. But when you propose to claw each other in my study, in the midst
of a hundred fragile and priceless ornaments, I lodge a protest. If you
really feel that you want to scrap, for goodness' sake do it where
there's some room. I don't want all the study furniture smashed. I know
a bank whereon the wild thyme grows, only a few yards down the road,
where you can scrap all night if you want to. How would it be to move on
there? Any objections? None. Then shift ho! And let's get it over."
26
CLEARING THE AIR
Psmith was one of those people who lend a dignity to everything they
touch. Under his auspices the most unpromising ventures became somehow
enveloped in an atmosphere of measured stateliness. On the present
occasion, what would have been, without his guiding hand, a mere
unscientific scramble, took on something of the impressive formality of
the National Sporting Club.
"The rounds," he said, producing a watch, as they passed through a gate
into a field a couple of hundred yards from the house gate, "will be of
three minutes' duration, with a minute rest in between. A man who is
down will have ten seconds in which to rise. Are you ready, Comrades
Adair and Jackson? Very well, then. Time."
After which, it was a pity that the actual fight did not quite live up
to its referee's introduction. Dramatically, there should have been
cautious sparring for openings and a number of tensely contested rounds,
as if it had been the final of a boxing competition. But school fights,
when they do occur--which is only once in a decade nowadays, unless you
count junior school scuffles--are the outcome of weeks of suppressed bad
blood, and are consequently brief and furious. In a boxing competition,
however much one may want to win, one does not dislike one's opponent.
Up to the moment when "time" was called, one was probably warmly
attached to him, and at the end of the last round one expects to resume
that attitude of mind. In a fight each party, as a rule, hates
the other.
So it happened that there was nothing formal or cautious about the
present battle. All Adair wanted was to get at Mike, and all Mike wanted
was to get at Adair. Directly Psmith called "time," they rushed together
as if they meant to end the thing in half a minute.
It was this that saved Mike. In an ordinary contest with the gloves,
with his opponent cool and boxing in his true form, he could not have
lasted three rounds against Adair. The latter was a clever boxer, while
Mike had never had a lesson in his life. If Adair had kept away and used
his head, nothing could have prevented his winning.
As it was, however, he threw away his advantages, much as Tom Brown did
at the beginning of his fight with Slogger Williams, and the result was
the same as on that historic occasion. Mike had the greater strength,
and, thirty seconds from the start, knocked his man clean off his feet
with an unscientific but powerful righthander.
This finished Adair's chances. He rose full of fight, but with all the
science knocked out of him. He went in at Mike with both hands. The
Irish blood in him, which for the ordinary events of life made him
merely energetic and dashing, now rendered him reckless. He abandoned
all attempt at guarding. It was the Frontal Attack in its most futile
form, and as unsuccessful as a frontal attack is apt to be. There was a
swift exchange of blows, in the course of which Mike's left elbow,
coming into contact with his opponent's right fist, got a shock which
kept it tingling for the rest of the day; and then Adair went down in
a heap.
He got up slowly and with difficulty. For a moment he stood blinking
vaguely. Then he lurched forward at Mike.
In the excitement of a fight--which is, after all, about the most
exciting thing that ever happens to one in the course of one's life--it
is difficult for the fighters to see what the spectators see. Where the
spectators see an assault on an already beaten man, the fighter himself
only sees a legitimate piece of self-defense against an opponent whose
chances are equal to his own. Psmith saw, as anybody looking on would
have seen, that Adair was done. Mike's blow had taken him within a
fraction of an inch of the point of the jaw, and he was all but knocked
out. Mike could not see this. All he understood was that his man was on
his feet again and coming at him, so he hit out with all his strength;
and this time Adair went down and stayed down.
"Brief," said Psmith, coming forward, "but exciting. We may take that, I
think, to be the conclusion of the entertainment. I will now have a dash
at picking up the slain. I shouldn't stop, if I were you. He'll be
sitting up and taking notice soon, and if he sees you he may want to go
on with the combat, which would do him no earthly good. If it's going to
be continued in our next, there had better be a bit of an interval for
alterations and repairs first."
"Is he hurt much, do you think?" asked Mike. He had seen knockouts
before in the ring, but this was the first time he had ever effected one
on his own account, and Adair looked unpleasantly corpselike.
"_He's_ all right," said Psmith. "In a minute or two he'll be skipping
about like a little lambkin. I'll look after him. You go away and
pick flowers."
Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house. He was conscious of a
perplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which was a
curious feeling that he rather liked Adair. He found himself thinking
that Adair was a good chap, that there was something to be said for his
point of view, and that it was a pity he had knocked him about so much.
At the same time, he felt an undeniable thrill of pride at having beaten
him. The feat presented that interesting person, Mike Jackson, to him in
a fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had a tough job to face and
had carried it through. Jackson the cricketer he knew, but Jackson the
deliverer of knockout blows was strange to him, and he found this new
acquaintance a man to be respected.
The fight, in fact, had the result which most fights have, if they are
fought fairly and until one side has had enough. It revolutionized
Mike's view of things. It shook him up, and drained the bad blood out of
him. Where before he had seemed to himself to be acting with massive
dignity, he now saw that he had simply been sulking like some wretched
kid. There had appeared to him something rather fine in his policy of
refusing to identify himself in any way with Sedleigh, a touch of the
stone-walls-do-not-a-prison-make sort of thing. He now saw that his
attitude was to be summed up in the words, "Sha'n't play."
It came upon Mike with painful clearness that he had been making an ass
of himself.
He had come to this conclusion, after much earnest thought, when Psmith
entered the study.
"How's Adair?" asked Mike.
"Sitting up and taking nourishment once more. We have been chatting.
He's not a bad cove."
"He's all right," said Mike.
There was a pause. Psmith straightened his tie.
"Look here," he said, "I seldom interfere in terrestrial strife, but it
seems to me that there's an opening here for a capable peacemaker, not
afraid of work, and willing to give his services in exchange for a
comfortable home. Comrade Adair's rather a stoutish fellow in his way.
I'm not much on the 'Play up for the old school, Jones,' game, but
everyone to his taste. I shouldn't have thought anybody would get
overwhelmingly attached to this abode of wrath, but Comrade Adair seems
to have done it. He's all for giving Sedleigh a much-needed boost-up.
It's not a bad idea in its way. I don't see why one shouldn't humor him.
Apparently he's been sweating since early childhood to buck the school
up. And as he's leaving at the end of the term, it mightn't be a scaly
scheme to give him a bit of a send-off, if possible, by making the
cricket season a bit of a banger. As a start, why not drop him a line to
say that you'll play against the M.C.C. tomorrow?"
Mike did not reply at once. He was feeling better disposed toward Adair
and Sedleigh then he had felt, but he was not sure that he was quite
prepared to go as far as a complete climb-down.
"It wouldn't be a bad idea," continued Psmith. "There's nothing like
giving in to a man a bit every now and then. It broadens the soul and
improves the action of the skin. What seems to have fed up Comrade
Adair, to a certain extent, is that Stone apparently led him to
understand that you had offered to give him and Robinson places in your
village team. You didn't, of course?"
"Of course not," said Mike indignantly.
"I told him he didn't know the old _noblesse oblige_ spirit of the
Jacksons. I said that you would scorn to tarnish the Jackson escutcheon
by not playing the game. My eloquence convinced him. However, to return
to the point under discussion, why not?"
"I don't ... What I mean to say ..." began Mike.
"If your trouble is," said Psmith, "that you fear that you may be in
unworthy company--"
"Don't be an ass."
"--Dismiss it. _I_ am playing."
Mike stared.
"You're _what? You_?"
"I," said Psmith, breathing on a coat button, and polishing it with his
handkerchief.
"Can you play cricket?"
"You have discovered," said Psmith, "my secret sorrow."
"You're rotting."
"You wrong me, Comrade Jackson."
"Then why haven't you played?"
"Why haven't you?"
"Why didn't you come and play for Lower Borlock, I mean?"
"The last time I played in a village cricket match I was caught at point
by a man in braces. It would have been madness to risk another such
shock to my system. My nerves are so exquisitely balanced that a thing
of that sort takes years off my life."
"No, but look here, Smith, bar rotting. Are you really any good at
cricket?"
"Competent judges at Eton gave me to understand so. I was told that this
year I should be a certainty for Lord's. But when the cricket season
came, where was I? Gone. Gone like some beautiful flower that withers in
the night."
"But you told me you didn't like cricket. You said you only liked
watching it."
"Quite right. I do. But at schools where cricket is compulsory you have
to overcome your private prejudices. And in time the thing becomes a
habit. Imagine my feelings when I found that I was degenerating, little
by little, into a slow left-hand bowler with a swerve. I fought against
it, but it was useless, and after a while I gave up the struggle, and
drifted with the stream. Last year in a house match"--Psmith's voice
took on a deeper tone of melancholy--"I took seven for thirteen in the
second innings on a hard wicket. I did think, when I came here, that I
had found a haven of rest, but it was not to be. I turn out tomorrow.
What Comrade Outwood will say, when he finds that his keenest
archaeological disciple has deserted, I hate to think. However ..."
Mike felt as if a young and powerful earthquake had passed. The whole
face of his world had undergone a quick change. Here was he, the
recalcitrant, wavering on the point of playing for the school, and here
was Psmith, the last person whom he would have expected to be a player,
stating calmly that he had been in the running for a place in the
Eton eleven.
Then in a flash Mike understood. He was not by nature intuitive, but he
read Psmith's mind now. Since the term began, he and Psmith had been
acting on precisely similar motives. Just as he had been disappointed of
the captaincy of cricket at Wrykyn, so had Psmith been disappointed of
his place in the Eton team at Lord's. And they had both worked it off,
each in his own way--Mike sullenly, Psmith whimsically, according to
their respective natures--on Sedleigh.
If Psmith, therefore, did not consider it too much of a climb-down to
renounce his resolution not to play for Sedleigh, there was nothing to
stop Mike doing so, as--at the bottom of his heart--he wanted to do.
"By Jove," he said, "if you're playing, I'll play. I'll write a note to
Adair now. But, I say"--he stopped--"I'm hanged if I'm going to turn out
and field before breakfast tomorrow."
"That's all right. You won't have to. Adair won't be there himself. He's
not playing against the M.C.C. He's sprained his wrist."
27
IN WHICH PEACE IS DECLARED
"Sprained his wrist?" said Mike. "How did he do that?"
"During the brawl. Apparently one of his efforts got home on your elbow
instead of your expressive countenance, and whether it was that your
elbow was particularly tough or his wrist particularly fragile, I don't
know. Anyhow, it went. It's nothing bad, but it'll keep him out of the
game tomorrow."
"I say, what beastly rough luck! I'd no idea. I'll go around."
"Not a bad scheme. Close the door gently after you, and if you see
anybody downstairs who looks as if he were likely to be going over to
the shop, ask him to get me a small pot of some rare old jam and tell
the man to chalk it up to me. The jam Comrade Outwood supplies to us at
tea is all right as a practical joke or as a food for those anxious to
commit suicide, but useless to anybody who values life."
On arriving at Mr. Downing's and going to Adair's study, Mike found that
his late antagonist was out. He left a note informing him of his
willingness to play in the morrow's match. The lock-up bell rang as he
went out of the house.
A spot of rain fell on his hand. A moment later there was a continuous
patter, as the storm, which had been gathering all day, broke in
earnest. Mike turned up his coat collar, and ran back to Outwood's. "At
this rate," he said to himself, "there won't be a match at all
tomorrow."
* * * * *
When the weather decides, after behaving well for some weeks, to show
what it can do in another direction, it does the thing thoroughly. When
Mike woke the next morning the world was gray and dripping.
Leaden-colored clouds drifted over the sky, till there was not a trace
of blue to be seen, and then the rain began again, in the gentle,
determined way rain has when it means to make a day of it.
It was one of those bad days when one sits in the pavilion, damp and
depressed, while figures in mackintoshes, with discolored buckskin
boots, crawl miserably about the field in couples.
Mike, shuffling across to school in a Burberry, met Adair at Downing's
gate.
These moments are always difficult. Mike stopped--he could hardly walk
on as if nothing had happened--and looked down at his feet.
"Coming across?" he said awkwardly.
"Right ho!" said Adair.
They walked on in silence.
"It's only about ten to, isn't it?" said Mike.
Adair fished out his watch, and examined it with an elaborate care born
of nervousness.
"About nine to."
"Good. We've got plenty of time."
"Yes."
"I hate having to hurry over to school."
"So do I."
"I often do cut it rather fine, though."
"Yes. So do I."
"Beastly nuisance when one does."
"Beastly."
"It's only about a couple of minutes from the houses to the school, I
should think, shouldn't you?"
"Not much more. Might be three."
"Yes. Three if one didn't hurry."
Another silence.
"Beastly day," said Adair.
"Rotten."
Silence again.
"I say," said Mike, scowling at his toes, "awfully sorry about your
wrist."
"Oh, that's all right. It was my fault."
"Does it hurt?"
"Oh, no, rather not, thanks."
"I'd no idea you'd crocked yourself."
"Oh, no, that's all right. It was only right at the end. You'd have
smashed me anyhow."
"Oh, rot."
"I bet you anything you like you would."
"I bet you I shouldn't.... Jolly hard luck, just before the match."
"Oh, no.... I say, thanks awfully for saying you'd play."
"Oh, rot.... Do you think we shall get a game?"
Adair inspected the sky carefully.
"I don't know. It looks pretty bad, doesn't it?"
"Rotten. I say, how long will your wrist keep you out of cricket?"
"Be all right in a week. Less, probably."
"Good."
"Now that you and Smith are going to play, we ought to have a jolly good
season."
"Rummy, Smith turning out to be a cricketer."
"Yes. I should think he'd be a hot bowler, with his height."
"He must be jolly good if he was only just out of the Eton team last
year."
"Yes."
"What's the time?" asked Mike.
Adair produced his watch once more.
"Five to."
"We've heaps of time."
"Yes, heaps."
"Let's stroll on a bit down the road, shall we?"
"Right ho!"
Mike cleared his throat.
"I say."
"Hello?"
"I've been talking to Smith. He was telling me that you thought I'd
promised to give Stone and Robinson places in the--"
"Oh, no, that's all right. It was only for a bit. Smith told me you
couldn't have done, and I saw that I was an ass to think you could have.
It was Stone seeming so dead certain that he could play for Lower
Borlock if I chucked him from the school team that gave me the idea."
"He never even asked me to get him a place."
"No, I know."
"Of course, I wouldn't have done it, even if he had."
"Of course not."
"I didn't want to play myself, but I wasn't going to do a rotten trick
like getting other fellows away from the team."
"No, I know."
"It was rotten enough, really, not playing myself."
"Oh, no. Beastly rough luck having to leave Wrykyn just when you were
going to be captain, and come to a small school like this."
The excitement of the past few days must have had a stimulating effect
on Mike's mind--shaken it up, as it were, for now, for the second time
in two days, he displayed quite a creditable amount of intuition. He
might have been misled by Adair's apparently deprecatory attitude toward
Sedleigh, and blundered into a denunciation of the place. Adair had
said, "a small school like this" in the sort of voice which might have
led his hearer to think that he was expected to say, "Yes, rotten little
hole, isn't it?" or words to that effect. Mike, fortunately, perceived
that the words were used purely from politeness, on the Chinese
principle. When a Chinese man wishes to pay a compliment, he does so by
belittling himself and his belongings.
He eluded the pitfall.
"What rot!" he said. "Sedleigh's one of the most sporting schools I've
ever come across. Everybody's as keen as blazes. So they ought to be,
after the way you've sweated."
Adair shuffled awkwardly.
"I've always been fairly keen on the place," he said. "But I don't
suppose I've done anything much."
"You've loosened one of my front teeth," said Mike, with a grin, "if
that's any comfort to you."
"I couldn't eat anything except porridge this morning. My jaw still
aches."
For the first time during the conversation their eyes met, and the
humorous side of the thing struck them simultaneously. They began
to laugh.
"What fools we must have looked," said Adair.
"_You_ were all right. I must have looked rotten. I've never had the
gloves on in my life. I'm jolly glad no one saw us except Smith, who
doesn't count. Hello, there's the bell. We'd better be moving on. What
about this match? Not much chance of it from the look of the sky
at present."
"It might clear before eleven. You'd better get changed, anyhow, at the
interval, and hang about in case."
"All right. It's better than doing Thucydides with Downing. We've got
math till the interval, so I don't see anything of him all day; which
won't hurt me."
"He isn't a bad sort of chap, when you get to know him," said Adair.
"I can't have done, then. I don't know which I'd least soon be, Downing
or a black beetle, except that if one was Downing one could tread on the
black beetle. Dash this rain. I got about half a pint down my neck just
then. We shan't get a game today, or anything like it. As you're
crocked, I'm not sure that I care much. You've been sweating for years
to get the match on, and it would be rather rot playing it without you."
"I don't know that so much. I wish we could play because I'm certain,
with you and Smith, we'd walk into them. They probably aren't sending
down much of a team, and really, now that you and Smith are turning out,
we've got a jolly hot lot. There's quite decent batting all the way
through, and the bowling isn't so bad. If only we could have given this
M.C.C. lot a really good hammering, it might have been easier to get
some good fixtures for next season. You see, it's all right for a school
like Wrykyn, but with a small place like this you simply can't get the
best teams to give you a match till you've done something to show that
you aren't absolute rotters at the game. As for the schools, they're
worse. They'd simply laugh at you. You were cricket secretary at Wrykyn
last year. What would you have done if you'd had a challenge from
Sedleigh? You'd either have laughed till you were sick, or else had a
fit at the mere idea of the thing."
Mike stopped.
"By Jove, you've struck about the brightest scheme on record. I never
thought of it before. Let's get a match on with Wrykyn."
"What! They wouldn't play us."
"Yes, they would. At least, I'm pretty sure they would. I had a letter
from Strachan, the captain, yesterday, saying that the Ripton match had
had to be scratched owing to illness. So they've got a vacant date.
Shall I try them? I'll write to Strachan tonight, if you like. And they
aren't strong this year. We'll smash them. What do you say?"
Adair was as one who has seen a vision.
"By Jove," he said at last, "if we only could!"
28
MR. DOWNING MOVES
The rain continued without a break all the morning. The two teams, after
hanging about dismally, and whiling the time away with stump-cricket in
the changing rooms, lunched in the pavilion at one o'clock. After which
the M.C.C. captain, approaching Adair, moved that this merry meeting be
considered off and he and his men permitted to catch the next train back
to town. To which Adair, seeing that it was out of the question that
there should be any cricket that afternoon, regretfully agreed, and the
first Sedleigh _v_. M.C.C. match was accordingly scratched.
Mike and Psmith, wandering back to the house, were met by a damp junior
from Downing's, with a message that Mr. Downing wished to see Mike as
soon as he was changed.
"What's he want me for?" inquired Mike.
The messenger did not know. Mr. Downing, it seemed, had not confided in
him. All he knew was that the housemaster was in the house, and would be
glad if Mike would step across.
"A nuisance," said Psmith, "this incessant demand for you. That's the
worst of being popular. If he wants you to stop to tea, edge away. A
meal on rather a sumptuous scale will be prepared in the study against
your return."
Mike changed quickly, and went off, leaving Psmith, who was fond of
simple pleasures in his spare time, earnestly occupied with a puzzle
which had been scattered through the land by a weekly paper. The prize
for a solution was one thousand pounds, and Psmith had already informed
Mike with some minuteness of his plans for the disposition of this sum.
Meanwhile, he worked at it both in and out of school, generally with
abusive comments on its inventor.
He was still fiddling away at it when Mike returned.
Mike, though Psmith was at first too absorbed to notice it, was
agitated.
"I don't wish to be in any way harsh," said Psmith, without looking up,
"but the man who invented this thing was a blighter of the worst type.
You come and have a shot. For the moment I am baffled. The whisper flies
round the clubs, 'Psmith is baffled.'"
"The man's an absolute driveling ass," said Mike warmly.
"Me, do you mean?"
"What on earth would be the point of my doing it?"
"You'd gather in a thousand of the best. Give you a nice start in life."
"I'm not talking about your rotten puzzle."
"What _are_ you talking about?"
"That ass Downing. I believe he's off his nut."
"Then your chat with Comrade Downing was not of the
old-College-chums-meeting-unexpectedly-after-years'-separation type?
What has he been doing to you?"
"He's off his nut."
"I know. But what did he do? How did the brainstorm burst? Did he jump
at you from behind a door and bite a piece out of your leg, or did he
say he was a teapot?"
Mike sat down.
"You remember that painting-Sammy business?"
"As if it were yesterday," said Psmith. "Which it was, pretty nearly."
"He thinks I did it."
"Why? Have you ever shown any talent in the painting line?"
"The silly ass wanted me to confess that I'd done it. He as good as
asked me to. Jawed a lot of rot about my finding it to my advantage
later on if I behaved sensibly."
"Then what are you worrying about? Don't you know that when a master
wants you to do the confessing act, it simply means that he hasn't
enough evidence to start in on you with? You're all right. The thing's a
stand-off."
"Evidence!" said Mike. "My dear man, he's got enough evidence to sink a
ship. He's absolutely sweating evidence at every pore. As far as I can
see, he's been crawling about, doing the Sherlock Holmes business for
all he's worth ever since the thing happened, and now he's dead certain
that I painted Sammy."
"_Did_ you, by the way?" said Psmith.
"No," said Mike shortly, "I didn't. But after listening to Downing I
almost began to wonder if I hadn't. The man's got stacks of evidence to
prove that I did."
"Such as what?"
"It's mostly about my shoes. But, dash it, you know all about that. Why,
you were with him when he came and looked for them."
"It is true," said Psmith, "that Comrade Downing and I spent a very
pleasant half hour together inspecting shoes, but how does he drag
you into it?"
"He swears one of the shoes was splashed with paint."
"Yes. He babbled to some extent on that point when I was entertaining
him. But what makes him think that the shoe, if any, was yours?"
"He's certain that somebody in this house got one of his shoes splashed,
and is hiding it somewhere. And I'm the only chap in the house who
hasn't got a pair of shoes to show, so he thinks it's me. I don't know
where the dickens my other shoe has gone. Of course I've got two pairs,
but one's being soled. So I had to go over to school yesterday in gym
shoes. That's how he spotted me."
Psmith sighed.
"Comrade Jackson," he said mournfully, "all this very sad affair shows
the folly of acting from the best motives. In my simple zeal, meaning to
save you unpleasantness, I have landed you, with a dull, sickening thud,
right in the cart. Are you particular about dirtying your hands? If you
aren't, just reach up that chimney a bit!"
Mike stared.
"What the dickens are you talking about?"
"Go on. Get it over. Be a man, and reach up the chimney."
"I don't know what the game is," said Mike, kneeling beside the fender
and groping, "but--_Hello_!"
"Ah ha!" said Psmith moodily.
Mike dropped the soot-covered object in the fender, and glared at it.
"It's my shoe!" he said at last.
"It _is_," said Psmith, "your shoe. And what is that red stain across
the toe? Is it blood? No, 'tis not blood. It is red paint."
Mike seemed unable to remove his eyes from the shoe.
"How on earth did--By Jove! I remember now. I kicked up against
something in the dark when I was putting my bicycle back that night. It
must have been the paint pot."
"Then you were out that night?"
"Rather. That's what makes it so jolly awkward. It's too long to tell
you now--"
"Your stories are never too long for me," said Psmith. "Say on!"
"Well, it was like this." And Mike related the events which had led up
to his midnight excursion. Psmith listened attentively.
"This," he said, when Mike had finished, "confirms my frequently stated
opinion that Comrade Jellicoe is one of Nature's blitherers. So that's
why he touched us for our hard-earned, was it?"
"Yes. Of course there was no need for him to have the money at all."
"And the result is that you are in something of a tight place. You're
_absolutely_ certain you didn't paint that dog? Didn't do it, by any
chance, in a moment of absent-mindedness, and forgot all about it? No?
No, I suppose not. I wonder who did!"
"It's beastly awkward. You see, Downing chased me that night. That was
why I rang the alarm bell. So, you see, he's certain to think that the
chap he chased, which was me, and the chap who painted Sammy, are the
same. I shall get landed both ways."
Psmith pondered.
"It _is_ a tightish place," he admitted.
"I wonder if we could get this shoe clean," said Mike, inspecting it
with disfavor.
"Not for a pretty considerable time."
"I suppose not. I say, I _am_ in the cart. If I can't produce this shoe,
they're bound to guess why."
"What exactly," asked Psmith, "was the position of affairs between you
and Comrade Downing when you left him? Had you definitely parted brass
rags? Or did you simply sort of drift apart with mutual courtesies?"
"Oh, he said I was ill advised to continue that attitude, or some rot,
and I said I didn't care, I hadn't painted his bally dog, and he said
very well, then, he must take steps, and--well, that was about all."
"Sufficient, too," said Psmith, "quite sufficient, I take it, then, that
he is now on the warpath, collecting a gang, so to speak."
"I suppose he's gone to the Old Man about it."
"Probably. A very worrying time our headmaster is having, taking it all
round, in connection with this painful affair. What do you think his
move will be?"
"I suppose he'll send for me, and try to get something out of me."
"_He'll_ want you to confess, too. Masters are all whales on confession.
The worst of it is, you can't prove an alibi, because at about the time
the foul act was perpetrated, you were playing Round-and-round-the-
mulberry-bush with Comrade Downing. This needs thought. You had
better put the case in my hands, and go out and watch the dandelions
growing. I will think over the matter."
"Well, I hope you'll be able to think of something. I can't."
"Possibly. You never know."
There was a tap at the door.
"See how we have trained them," said Psmith. "They now knock before
entering. There was a time when they would have tried to smash in a
panel. Come in."
A small boy, carrying a straw hat adorned with the School House ribbon,
answered the invitation.
"Oh, I say, Jackson," he said, "the headmaster sent me over to tell you
he wants to see you."
"I told you so," said Mike to Psmith.
"Don't go," suggested Psmith. "Tell him to write."
Mike got up.
"All this is very trying," said Psmith. "I'm seeing nothing of you
today." He turned to the small boy. "Tell Willie," he added, "that Mr.
Jackson will be with him in a moment."
The emissary departed.
"_You're_ all right," said Psmith encouragingly. "Just you keep on
saying you're all right. Stout denial is the thing. Don't go in for any
airy explanations. Simply stick to stout denial. You can't beat it."
With which expert advice, he allowed Mike to go on his way.
He had not been gone two minutes, when Psmith, who had leaned back in
his chair, rapt in thought, heaved himself up again. He stood for a
moment straightening his tie at the looking glass; then he picked up his
hat and moved slowly out of the door and down the passage. Thence, at
the same dignified rate of progress, out of the house and in at
Downing's front gate.
The postman was at the door when he got there, apparently absorbed in
conversation with the parlor maid. Psmith stood by politely till the
postman, who had just been told it was like his impudence, caught sight
of him, and, having handed over the letters in an ultraformal and
professional manner, passed away.
"Is Mr. Downing at home?" inquired Psmith.
He was, it seemed. Psmith was shown into the dining room on the left of
the hall, and requested to wait. He was examining a portrait of Mr.
Downing which hung on the wall when the housemaster came in.
"An excellent likeness, sir," said Psmith, with a gesture of the hand
toward the painting.
"Well, Smith," said Mr. Downing shortly, "what do you wish to see me
about?"
"It was in connection with the regrettable painting of your dog, sir."
"Ha!" said Mr. Downing.
"I did it, sir," said Psmith, stopping and flicking a piece of fluff off
his knee.
29
THE ARTIST CLAIMS HIS WORK
The line of action which Psmith had called Stout Denial is an excellent
line to adopt, especially if you really are innocent, but it does not
lead to anything in the shape of a bright and snappy dialogue between
accuser and accused. Both Mike and the headmaster were oppressed by a
feeling that the situation was difficult. The atmosphere was heavy, and
conversation showed a tendency to flag. The headmaster had opened
brightly enough, with a summary of the evidence which Mr. Downing had
laid before him, but after that a massive silence had been the order of
the day. There is nothing in this world quite so stolid and
uncommunicative as a boy who has made up his mind to be stolid and
uncommunicative; and the headmaster, as he sat and looked at Mike, who
sat and looked past him at the bookshelves, felt awkward. It was a scene
which needed either a dramatic interruption or a neat exit speech. As it
happened, what it got was the dramatic interruption.
The headmaster was just saying, "I do not think you fully realize,
Jackson, the extent to which appearances ..."--which was practically
going back to the beginning and starting again--when there was a knock
at the door. A voice without said, "Mr. Downing to see you, sir," and
the chief witness for the prosecution burst in.
"I would not have interrupted you," said Mr. Downing, "but--"
"Not at all, Mr. Downing. Is there anything I can ..."
"I have discovered ... I have been informed ... In short, it was not
Jackson, who committed the--who painted my dog."
Mike and the headmaster both looked at the speaker. Mike with a feeling
of relief--for Stout Denial, unsupported by any weighty evidence, is a
wearing game to play--the headmaster with astonishment.
"Not Jackson?" said the headmaster.
"No. It was a boy in the same house. Smith."
Psmith! Mike was more than surprised. He could not believe it. There is
nothing which affords so clear an index to a boy's character as the type
of rag which he considers humorous. Between what is a rag and what is
merely a rotten trick there is a very definite line drawn. Masters, as a
rule, do not realize this, but boys nearly always do. Mike could not
imagine Psmith doing a rotten thing like covering a housemaster's dog
with red paint, any more than he could imagine doing it himself. They
had both been amused at the sight of Sammy after the operation, but
anybody, except possibly the owner of the dog, would have thought it
funny at first. After the first surprise, their feeling had been that it
was a rotten thing to have done and beastly rough luck on the poor
brute. It was a kid's trick. As for Psmith having done it, Mike simply
did not believe it.
"Smith!" said the headmaster. "What makes you think that?"
"Simply this," said Mr. Downing, with calm triumph, "that the boy
himself came to me a few moments ago and confessed."
Mike was conscious of a feeling of acute depression. It did not make him
in the least degree jubilant, or even thankful, to know that he himself
was cleared of the charge. All he could think of was that Psmith was
done for. This was bound to mean the sack. If Psmith had painted Sammy
it meant that Psmith had broken out of his house at night; and it was
not likely that the rules about nocturnal wandering were less strict at
Sedleigh than at any other school in the kingdom. Mike felt, if
possible, worse than he had felt when Wyatt had been caught on a similar
occasion. It seemed as if Fate had a special grudge against his best
friends. He did not make friends very quickly or easily, though he had
always had scores of acquaintances--and with Wyatt and Psmith he had
found himself at home from the first moment he had met them.
He sat there, with a curious feeling of having swallowed a heavy weight,
hardly listening to what Mr. Downing was saying. Mr. Downing was talking
rapidly to the headmaster, who was nodding from time to time.
Mike took advantage of a pause to get up. "May I go, sir?" he said.
"Certainly, Jackson, certainly," said the Head. "Oh, and er--if you are
going back to your house, tell Smith that I should like to see him."
"Yes, sir."
He had reached the door, when again there was a knock.
"Come in," said the headmaster.
It was Adair.
"Yes, Adair?"
Adair was breathing rather heavily, as if he had been running.
"It was about Sammy--Sampson, sir," he said, looking at Mr. Downing.
"Ah, we know ... Well, Adair, what did you wish to say?"
"It wasn't Jackson who did it, sir."
"No, no, Adair. So Mr. Downing--"
"It was Dunster, sir."
Terrific sensation! The headmaster gave a sort of strangled yelp of
astonishment. Mr. Downing leaped in his chair. Mike's eyes opened to
their fullest extent.
"Adair!"
There was almost a wail in the headmaster's voice. The situation had
suddenly become too much for him. His brain was swimming. That Mike,
despite the evidence against him, should be innocent, was curious,
perhaps, but not particularly startling. But that Adair should inform
him, two minutes after Mr. Downing's announcement of Psmith's
confession, that Psmith, too, was guiltless, and that the real criminal
was Dunster--it was this that made him feel that somebody, in the words
of an American author, had played a mean trick on him, and substituted
for his brain a side order of cauliflower. Why Dunster, of all people?
Dunster, who, he remembered dizzily, had left the school at Christmas.
And why, if Dunster had really painted the dog, had Psmith asserted that
he himself was the culprit? Why--why anything? He concentrated his mind
on Adair as the only person who could save him from impending
brain fever.
"Adair!"
"Yes, sir?"
"What--_what_ do you mean?"
"It _was_ Dunster, sir. I got a letter from him only five minutes ago,
in which he said that he had painted Sammy--Sampson, the dog, sir, for a
rag--for a joke, and that, as he didn't want anyone here to get into a
row--be punished for it, I'd better tell Mr. Downing at once. I tried to
find Mr. Downing, but he wasn't in the house. Then I met Smith outside
the house, and he told me that Mr. Downing had gone over to see
you, sir."
"Smith told you?" said Mr. Downing.
"Yes, sir."
"Did you say anything to him about your having received this letter from
Dunster?"
"I gave him the letter to read, sir."
"And what was his attitude when he had read it?"
"He laughed, sir."
"_Laughed_!" Mr. Downing's voice was thunderous.
"Yes, sir. He rolled about."
Mr. Downing snorted.
"But Adair," said the headmaster, "I do not understand how this thing
could have been done by Dunster. He has left the school."
"He was down here for the Old Sedleighans' match, sir. He stopped the
night in the village."
"And that was the night the--it happened?"
"Yes, sir."
"I see. Well, I am glad to find that the blame can not be attached to
any boy in the school. I am sorry that it is even an Old Boy. It was a
foolish, discreditable thing to have done, but it is not as bad as if
any boy still at the school had broken out of his house at night to
do it."
"The sergeant," said Mr. Downing, "told me that the boy he saw was
attempting to enter Mr. Outwood's house."
"Another freak of Dunster's, I suppose," said the headmaster. "I shall
write to him."
"If it was really Dunster who painted my dog," said Mr. Downing, "I
cannot understand the part played by Smith in this affair. If he did not
do it, what possible motive could he have had for coming to me of his
own accord and deliberately confessing?"
"To be sure," said the headmaster, pressing a bell. "It is certainly a
thing that calls for explanation. Barlow," he said, as the butler
appeared, "kindly go across to Mr. Outwood's house and inform Smith that
I should like to see him."
"If you please, sir, Mr. Smith is waiting in the hall."
"In the hall!"
"Yes, sir. He arrived soon after Mr. Adair, sir, saying that he would
wait, as you would probably wish to see him shortly."
"H'm. Ask him to step up, Barlow."
"Yes, sir."
There followed one of the tensest "stage waits" of Mike's experience. It
was not long, but, while it lasted, the silence was quite solid. Nobody
seemed to have anything to say, and there was not even a clock in the
room to break the stillness with its ticking. A very faint drip-drip of
rain could be heard outside the window.
Presently there was a sound of footsteps on the stairs. The door was
opened.
"Mr. Smith, sir."
The Old Etonian entered as would the guest of the evening who is a few
moments late for dinner. He was cheerful, but slightly deprecating. He
gave the impression of one who, though sure of his welcome, feels that
some slight apology is expected from him. He advanced into the room with
a gentle half-smile which suggested good will to all men.
"It is still raining," he observed. "You wished to see me, sir?"
"Sit down, Smith."
"Thank you, sir."
He dropped into a deep armchair (which both Adair and Mike had avoided
in favor of less luxurious seats) with the confidential cosiness of a
fashionable physician calling on a patient, between whom and himself
time has broken down the barriers of restraint and formality.
Mr. Downing burst out, like a reservoir that has broken its banks.
"Smith."
Psmith turned his gaze politely in the housemaster's direction.
"Smith, you came to me a quarter of an hour ago and told me that it was
you who had painted my dog Sampson."
"Yes, sir."
"It was absolutely untrue?"
"I am afraid so, sir."
"But, Smith ..." began the headmaster.
Psmith bent forward encouragingly.
"... This is a most extraordinary affair. Have you no explanation to
offer? What induced you to do such a thing?"
Psmith sighed softly.
"The craze of notoriety, sir," he replied sadly. "The curse of the
present age."
"What!" replied the headmaster.
"It is remarkable," proceeded Psmith placidly, with the impersonal touch
of one lecturing on generalities, "how frequently, when a murder has
been committed, one finds men confessing that they have done it when it
is out of the question that they should have committed it. It is one of
the most interesting problems with which anthropologists are confronted.
Human nature--"
The headmaster interrupted.
"Smith," he said, "I should like to see you alone for a moment. Mr.
Downing, might I trouble...? Adair, Jackson."
He made a motion toward the door.
When he and Psmith were alone, there was silence. Psmith leaned back
comfortably in his chair. The headmaster tapped nervously with his foot
on the floor.
"Er ... Smith."
"Sir?"
The headmaster seemed to have some difficulty in proceeding. He paused
again. Then he went on.
"Er ... Smith, I do not for a moment wish to pain you, but have you ...
er, do you remember ever having had, as a child, let us say, any ...
er ... severe illness? Any ... er ... _mental_ illness?"
"No, sir."
"There is no--forgive me if I am touching on a sad subject--there is
no ... none of your near relatives have ever suffered in the way I ...
er ... have described?"
"There isn't a lunatic on the list, sir," said Psmith cheerfully.
"Of course, Smith, of course," said the headmaster hurriedly, "I did not
mean to suggest--quite so, quite so. ... You think, then, that you
confessed to an act which you had not committed purely from some sudden
impulse which you cannot explain?"
"Strictly between ourselves, sir ..."
Privately, the headmaster found Psmith's man-to-man attitude somewhat
disconcerting, but he said nothing.
"Well, Smith?"
"I should not like it to go any further, sir."
"I will certainly respect any confidence ..."
"I don't want anybody to know, sir. This is strictly between ourselves."
"I think you are sometimes apt to forget, Smith, the proper relations
existing between boy and--Well, never mind that for the present. We can
return to it later. For the moment, let me hear what you wish to say. I
shall, of course, tell nobody, if you do not wish it."
"Well, it was like this, sir," said Psmith, "Jackson happened to tell me
that you and Mr. Downing seemed to think he had painted Mr. Downing's
dog, and there seemed some danger of his being expelled, so I thought it
wouldn't be an unsound scheme if I were to go and say I had done it.
That was the whole thing. Of course, Dunster writing created a certain
amount of confusion."
There was a pause.
"It was a very wrong thing to do, Smith," said the headmaster, at last,
"but.... You are a curious boy, Smith. Good night."
He held out his hand.
"Good night, sir," said Psmith.
"Not a bad old sort," said Psmith meditatively to himself, as he walked
downstairs. "By no means a bad old sort. I must drop in from time to
time and cultivate him."
Mike and Adair were waiting for him outside the front door.
"Well?" said Mike.
"You _are_ the limit," said Adair. "What's he done?"
"Nothing. We had a very pleasant chat, and then I tore myself away."
"Do you mean to say he's not going to do a thing?"
"Not a thing."
"Well, you're a marvel," said Adair.
Psmith thanked him courteously. They walked on toward the houses.
"By the way, Adair," said Mike, as the latter started to turn in at
Downing's, "I'll write to Strachan tonight about that match."
"What's that?" asked Psmith.
"Jackson's going to try and get Wrykyn to give us a game," said Adair.
"They've got a vacant date. I hope the dickens they'll do it."
"Oh, I should think they're certain to," said Mike. "Good night."
"And give Comrade Downing, when you see him," said Psmith, "my very best
love. It is men like him who make this Merrie England of ours what
it is."
* * * * *
"I say, Psmith," said Mike suddenly, "what really made you tell Downing
you'd done it?"
"The craving for--"
"Oh, chuck it. You aren't talking to the Old Man now. I believe it was
simply to get me out of a jolly tight corner."
Psmith's expression was one of pain.
"My dear Comrade Jackson," said he, "you wrong me. You make me writhe.
I'm surprised at you. I never thought to hear those words from
Michael Jackson."
"Well, I believe you did, all the same," said Mike obstinately. "And it
was jolly good of you, too."
Psmith moaned.
30
SEDLEIGH V. WRYKYN
The Wrykyn match was three parts over, and things were going badly for
Sedleigh. In a way one might have said that the game was over, and that
Sedleigh had lost; for it was a one-day match, and Wrykyn, who had led
on the first innings, had only to play out time to make the game theirs.
Sedleigh were paying the penalty for allowing themselves to be
influenced by nerves in the early part of the day. Nerves lose more
school matches than good play ever won. There is a certain type of
school batsman who is a gift to any bowler when he once lets his
imagination run away with him. Sedleigh, with the exception of Adair,
Psmith, and Mike, had entered upon this match in a state of the most
azure funk. Ever since Mike had received Strachan's answer and Adair had
announced on the notice board that on Saturday, July the twentieth,
Sedleigh would play Wrykyn, the team had been all on the jump. It was
useless for Adair to tell them, as he did repeatedly, on Mike's
authority, that Wrykyn were weak this season, and that on their present
form Sedleigh ought to win easily. The team listened, but were not
comforted. Wrykyn might be below their usual strength, but then Wrykyn
cricket, as a rule, reached such a high standard that this probably
meant little. However weak Wrykyn might be--for them--there was a very
firm impression among the members of the Sedleigh first eleven that the
other school was quite strong enough to knock the cover off _them_.
Experience counts enormously in school matches. Sedleigh had never been
proved. The teams they played were the sort of sides which the Wrykyn
second eleven would play. Whereas Wrykyn, from time immemorial, had been
beating Ripton teams and Free Foresters teams and M.C.C. teams packed
with county men and sending men to Oxford and Cambridge who got their
blues as freshmen.
Sedleigh had gone onto the field that morning a depressed side.
It was unfortunate that Adair had won the toss. He had had no choice but
to take first innings. The weather had been bad for the last week, and
the wicket was slow and treacherous. It was likely to get worse during
the day, so Adair had chosen to bat first.
Taking into consideration the state of nerves the team was in, this in
itself was a calamity. A school eleven are always at their worst and
nerviest before lunch. Even on their own ground they find the
surroundings lonely and unfamiliar. The subtlety of the bowlers becomes
magnified. Unless the first pair make a really good start, a collapse
almost invariably ensues.
Today the start had been gruesome beyond words. Mike, the bulwark of the
side, the man who had been brought up on Wrykyn bowling, and from whom,
whatever might happen to the others, at least a fifty was
expected--Mike, going in first with Barnes and taking first over, had
played inside one from Bruce, the Wrykyn slow bowler, and had been
caught at short slip off his second ball.
That put the finishing touch on the panic. Stone, Robinson, and the
others, all quite decent punishing batsmen when their nerves allowed
them to play their own game, crawled to the wickets, declined to hit out
at anything, and were clean bowled, several of them, playing back to
half volleys. Adair did not suffer from panic, but his batting was not
equal to his bowling, and he had fallen after hitting one four. Seven
wickets were down for thirty when Psmith went in.
Psmith had always disclaimed any pretensions to batting skill, but he
was undoubtedly the right man for a crisis like this. He had an enormous
reach, and he used it. Three consecutive balls from Bruce he turned into
full tosses and swept to the leg boundary, and, assisted by Barnes, who
had been sitting on the splice in his usual manner, he raised the total
to seventy-one before being yorked, with his score at thirty-five. Ten
minutes later the innings was over, with Barnes not out sixteen, for
seventy-nine.
Wrykyn had then gone in, lost Strachan for twenty before lunch, and
finally completed their innings at a quarter to four for a hundred and
thirty-one.
This was better than Sedleigh had expected. At least eight of the team
had looked forward dismally to an afternoon's leather hunting. But Adair
and Psmith, helped by the wicket, had never been easy, especially
Psmith, who had taken six wickets, his slows playing havoc with
the tail.
It would be too much to say that Sedleigh had any hope of pulling the
game out of the fire; but it was a comfort, they felt, at any rate,
having another knock. As is usual at this stage of a match, their
nervousness had vanished, and they felt capable of better things than in
the first innings.
It was on Mike's suggestion that Psmith and he went in first. Mike knew
the limitations of the Wrykyn bowling, and he was convinced that, if
they could knock Bruce off, it might be possible to rattle up a score
sufficient to give them the game, always provided Wrykyn collapsed in
the second innings. And it seemed to Mike that the wicket would be so
bad then that they easily might.
So he and Psmith had gone in at four o'clock to hit. And they had hit.
The deficit had been wiped off, all but a dozen runs, when Psmith was
bowled, and by that time Mike was set and in his best vein. He treated
all the bowlers alike. And when Stone came in, restored to his proper
frame of mind, and lashed out stoutly, and after him Robinson and the
rest, it looked as if Sedleigh had a chance again. The score was a
hundred and twenty when Mike, who had just reached his fifty, skied one
to Strachan at cover. The time was twenty-five past five.
As Mike reached the pavilion, Adair declared the innings closed.
Wrykyn started batting at twenty-five minutes to six, with sixty-nine to
make if they wished to make them, and an hour and ten minutes during
which to keep up their wickets if they preferred to take things easy and
go for a win on the first innings.
At first it looked as if they meant to knock off the runs, for Strachan
forced the game from the first ball, which was Psmith's, and which he
hit into the pavilion. But, at fifteen, Adair bowled him. And when, two
runs later, Psmith got the next man stumped, and finished up his over
with a c-and-b, Wrykyn decided that it was not good enough. Seventeen
for three, with an hour all but five minutes to go, was getting too
dangerous. So Drummond and Rigby, the next pair, proceeded to play with
caution, and the collapse ceased.
This was the state of the game at the point at which this chapter
opened. Seventeen for three had become twenty-four for three, and the
hands of the clock stood at ten minutes past six. Changes of bowling had
been tried, but there seemed no chance of getting past the batsmen's
defence. They were playing all the good balls, and refused to hit at
the bad.
A quarter past six struck, and then Psmith made a suggestion which
altered the game completely.
"Why don't you have a shot this end?" he said to Adair, as they were
crossing over. "There's a spot on the off which might help you a lot.
You can break like blazes if only you land on it. It doesn't help my leg
breaks a bit, because they won't hit at them."
Barnes was on the point of beginning to bowl when Adair took the ball
from him. The captain of Outwood's retired to short leg with an air that
suggested that he was glad to be relieved of his prominent post. The
next moment Drummond's off stump was lying at an angle of forty-five.
Adair was absolutely accurate as a bowler, and he had dropped his first
ball right on the worn patch.
Two minutes later Drummond's successor was retiring to the pavilion,
while the wicket keeper straightened the stumps again.
There is nothing like a couple of unexpected wickets for altering the
atmosphere of a game. Five minutes before, Sedleigh had been lethargic
and without hope. Now there was a stir and buzz all around the ground.
There were twenty-five minutes to go, and five wickets were down.
Sedleigh was on top again.
The next man seemed to take an age coming out. As a matter of fact, he
walked more rapidly than a batsman usually walks to the crease.
Adair's third ball dropped just short of the spot. The batsman, hitting
out, was a shade too soon. The ball hummed through the air a couple of
feet from the ground in the direction of mid off, and Mike, diving to
the right, got to it as he was falling, and chucked it up.
After that the thing was a walk over. Psmith clean bowled a man in his
next over: and the tail, demoralized by the sudden change in the game,
collapsed uncompromisingly. Sedleigh won by thirty-five runs with eight
minutes in hand.
* * * * *
Psmith and Mike sat in their study after lockup, discussing things in
general and the game in particular. "I feel like a beastly renegade,
playing against Wrykyn," said Mike. "Still, I'm glad we won. Adair's a
jolly good sort and it'll make him happy for weeks."
"When I last saw Comrade Adair," said Psmith, "he was going about in a
sort of trance, beaming vaguely and wanting to stand people things at
the shop."
"He bowled awfully well."
"Yes," said Psmith. "I say, I don't wish to cast a gloom over this
joyful occasion in any way, but you say Wrykyn are going to give
Sedleigh a fixture again next year?"
"Well?"
"Well, have you thought of the massacre which will ensue? You will have
left, Adair will have left. Incidentally, I shall have left. Wrykyn will
swamp them."
"I suppose they will. Still, the great thing, you see, is to get the
thing started. That's what Adair was so keen on. Now Sedleigh has beaten
Wrykyn, he's satisfied. They can get fixtures with decent clubs, and
work up to playing the big schools. You've got to start somehow. So it's
all right, you see."
"And, besides," said Psmith, reflectively, "in an emergency they can
always get Comrade Downing to bowl for them, what? Let us now sally out
and see if we can't promote a rag of some sort in this abode of wrath.
Comrade Outwood has gone over to dinner at the School House, and it
would be a pity to waste a somewhat golden opportunity. Shall
we stagger?"
They staggered.
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