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CERTAIN REVELATIONS
During the last hour of morning school, Tony got a note from Jim.
'Graham,' said Mr Thompson, the master of the Sixth, sadly, just asTony was about to open it.
'Yes, sir?'
'Kindly tear that note up, Graham.'
'Note, sir?'
'Kindly tear that note up, Graham. Come, you are keeping us waiting.'
As the hero of the novel says, further concealment was useless. Tonytore the note up unread.
'Hope it didn't want an answer,' he said to Jim after school. 'Constantpractice has made Thompson a sort of amateur lynx.'
'No. It was only to ask you to be in the study directly after lunch.There's a most unholy row going to occur shortly, as far as I can see.'
'What, about this burglary business?'
'Yes. Haven't time to tell you now. See you after lunch.'
After lunch, having closed the study door, Jim embarked on thefollowing statement.
It appeared that on the previous night he had left a book of notes,which were of absolutely vital importance for the examination which theSixth had been doing in the earlier part of the morning, in theidentical room in which the prizes had been placed. Or rather, he hadleft it there several days before, and had not needed it till thatnight. At half-past six the Pavilion had been locked up, and Biffen,the ground-man, had taken the key away with him, and it was only aftertea had been consumed and the evening paper read, that Jim, thinking itabout time to begin work, had discovered his loss. This was abouthalf-past seven.
Being a House-prefect, Jim did not attend preparation in the Great Hallwith the common herd of the Houses, but was part-owner with Tony of astudy.
The difficulties of the situation soon presented themselves tohim. It was only possible to obtain the notes in three ways--firstly,by going to the rooms of the Sixth Form master, who lived out ofCollege; secondly, by borrowing from one of the other Sixth Formmembers of the House; and thirdly, by the desperate expedient ofburgling the Pavilion. The objections to the first course were two. Inthe first place Merevale was taking prep. over in the Hall, and it wasstrictly forbidden for anyone to quit the House after lock-up withoutleave. And, besides, it was long odds that Thompson, the Sixth Formmaster, would not have the notes, as he had dictated them partly out ofhis head and partly from the works of various eminent scholars. Thesecond course was out of the question. The only other Sixth Form boy inthe House, Tony and Welch being away at Aldershot, was Charteris, andCharteris, who never worked much except the night before an exam, butworked then under forced draught, was appalled at the mere suggestionof letting his note-book out of his hands. Jim had sounded him on thesubject and had met with the reply, 'Kill my father and burn myancestral home, and I will look on and smile. But touch these notes andyou rouse the British Lion.' After which he had given up the borrowingidea.
There remained the third course, and there was an excitement andsporting interest about it that took him immensely. But how was he toget out to start with? He opened his study-window and calculated therisks of a drop to the ground. No, it was too far. Not worth risking asprained ankle on the eve of the mile. Then he thought of the Matron'ssitting-room. This was on the ground-floor, and if its owner happenedto be out, exit would be easy. As luck would have it she was out, andin another minute Jim had crossed the Rubicon and was standing on thegravel drive which led to the front gate.
A sharp sprint took him to the Pavilion. Now the difficulty was not howto get out, but how to get in. Theoretically, it should have been theeasiest of tasks, but in practice there were plenty of obstacles tosuccess. He tried the lower windows, but they were firmly fixed. Therehad been a time when one of them would yield to a hard kick and flybodily out of its frame, but somebody had been caught playing that gamenot long before, and Jim remembered with a pang that not only had thewindow been securely fastened up, but the culprit had had a spell ofextra tuition and other punishments which had turned him for the timeinto a hater of his species. His own fate, he knew, would be evenworse, for a prefect is supposed to have something better to do in hisspare time than breaking into pavilions. It would mean expulsionperhaps, or, at the least, the loss of his prefect's cap, and Jim didnot want to lose that. Still the thing had to be done if he meant toscore any marks at all in the forthcoming exam. He wavered a whilebetween a choice of methods, and finally fixed on the crudest of all.No one was likely to be within earshot, thought he, so he picked up thelargest stone he could find, took as careful aim as the dim light wouldallow, and hove it. There was a sickening crash, loud enough, hethought, to bring the whole School down on him, followed by a prolongedrattle as the broken pieces of glass fell to the ground.
He held his breath and listened. For a moment all was still, uncannilystill. He could hear the tops of the trees groaning in the slightbreeze that had sprung up, and far away the distant roar of a train.Then a queer thing happened. He heard a quiet thud, as if somebody hadjumped from a height on to grass, and then quick footsteps.
He waited breathless and rigid, expecting every moment to see a formloom up beside him in the darkness. It was useless to run. His onlychance was to stay perfectly quiet.
Then it dawned upon him that the man was running away from him, nottowards him. His first impulse was to give chase, but prudencerestrained him. Catching burglars is an exhilarating sport, but it isbest to indulge in it when one is not on a burgling expedition oneself.
Besides he had come out to get his book, and business is business.
There was no time to be lost now, for someone might have heard one orboth of the noises and given the alarm.
Once the window was broken the rest was fairly easy, the only dangerbeing the pieces of glass. He took off his coat and flung it on to thesill of the upper window. In a few seconds he was up himself withoutinjury. He found it a trifle hard to keep his balance, as there wasnothing to hold on to, but he managed it long enough to enable him tothrust an arm through the gap and turn the handle. After this there wasa bolt to draw, which he managed without difficulty.
The window swung open. Jim jumped in, and groped his way round the roomtill he found his book. The other window of the room was wide open. Heshut it for no definite reason, and noticed that a pane had been cutout entire. The professional cracksman had done his work more neatlythan the amateur.
'Poor chap,' thought Jim, with a chuckle, as he effected a retreat, 'Imust have given him a bit of a start with my half-brick.' After boltingthe window behind him, he climbed down.
As he reached earth again the clock struck a quarter to nine. Inanother quarter of an hour prep, would be over and the House doorunlocked, and he would be able to get in again. Nor would the fact ofhis being out excite remark, for it was the custom of theHouse-Prefects to take the air for the few minutes which elapsedbetween the opening of the door and the final locking-up for the night.
The rest of his adventures ran too smoothly to require a detaileddescription. Everything succeeded excellently. The only reminiscencesof his escapade were a few cuts in his coat, which went unnoticed, andthe precious book of notes, to which he applied himself with suchvigour in the watches of the night, with a surreptitious candle and ahamper of apples as aids to study, that, though tired next day, hemanaged to do quite well enough in the exam, to pass muster. And, as hehad never had the least prospect of coming out top, or even in thefirst five, this satisfied him completely.
Tony listened with breathless interest to Jim's recital of hisadventures, and at the conclusion laughed.
'What a mad thing to go and do,' he said. 'Jolly sporting, though.'
Jim did not join in his laughter.
'Yes, but don't you see,' he said, ruefully, 'what a mess I'm in? Ifthey find out that I was in the Pav. at the time when the cups werebagged, how on earth am I to prove I didn't take them myself?'
'By Jove, I never thought of that. But, hang it all, they'd never dreamof accusing a Coll. chap of stealing Sports prizes. This isn't areformatory
for juvenile hooligans.'
'No, perhaps not.'
'Of course not.'
'Well, even if they didn't, the Old Man would be frightfully sick if hegot to know about it. I'd lose my prefect's cap for a cert.'
'You might, certainly.'
'I should. There wouldn't be any question about it. Why, don't youremember that business last summer about Cairns? He used to stay outafter lock-up. That was absolutely all he did. Well, the Old 'Undropped on him like a hundredweight of bricks. Multiply that by aboutten and you get what he'll do to me if he books me over this job.'
Tony looked thoughtful. The case of Cairns _versus_ The Powersthat were, was too recent to have escaped his memory. Even now Cairnswas to be seen on the grounds with a common School House cap at theback of his head in place of the prefect's cap which had once adornedit.
'Yes,' he said, 'you'd lose your cap all right, I'm afraid.'
'Rather. And the sickening part of the business is that this real,copper-bottomed burglary'll make them hunt about all over the shop forclues and things, and the odds are they'll find me out, even if theydon't book the real man. Shouldn't wonder if they had a detective downfor a big thing of this sort.'
'They are having one, I heard.'
'There you are, then,' said Jim, dejectedly. 'I'm done, you see.'
'I don't know. I don't believe detectives are much class.'
'Anyhow, he'll probably have gumption enough to spot me.'
Jim's respect for the abilities of our national sleuth-hounds wasgreater than Tony's, and a good deal greater than that of most people.
The Pothunters Page 4