“It’s all right, sir; you needn’t hurry; only I thought you might like to know there was a light up there this minute!”
The stampede back across the gravel was in signal contrast to the stealthy and circumspect advance; and many a late laggard found himself swept off his feet in the van; but Sprawson outstripped all with a rush that spilt the small fry right and left, and he was first up the study stairs. But the Spook panted after him, and once more insisted on taking the actual lead.
The procession which he headed down the long study passage was no longer the somewhat faltering force which had deployed in the moonlit quad; it was as though confidence had come with protracted immunity, and high spirits had come of confidence; in any case, Sprawson had to lay about him more than once to stop a giggle or a merry scuffle in the dark. He appealed to Loder to keep better order (Cave major was finishing his cigarette quietly in the quad), and Loder promptly smacked the unoffending head of Chips. Merriment, moreover, was unpreventable under the Spook’s leadership in the study passage; for into each of the little dark dens would he peer after pounding on the door with the blunt end of the Kaffir battle-axe, and his cry was always, “Come out, fellow!” or “You’d better come out, my man!” or “It’s fourteen years for this, you know; only fourteen years’ hard labour!” and once— “You think I can see you, but I can’t!” — a signal instance of absence of mind in the presence of danger.
There were other diversions to which the Spook did not contribute, as when Sprawson screamed “Got him!” from the depths of some study, and emerged dragging young Petrie after him by the hair of his innocent head; but the dramatic effect of this interlude was immediately discounted by a clumsy imitation on the part of Shockley, of whom wonderfully little had been seen or heard during the earlier proceedings. Sprawson made short work of him now.
“You fool, do you want to spoil the whole thing?” whispered Sprawson, fiercely, in Jan’s hearing; and those few words spoilt the whole thing for Jan. He retired into his own study, and sat down in the dark, wiping his forehead on his sleeve, and chuckling and shaking his head by turns, as amusement mingled in his mind with a certain vexatious disappointment.
Meanwhile a climax was deducible in or about the big studies up the two or three steps at the inner end of the passage. General clamour drowned the individual voice; but the devil’s own tattoo with the battle-axe proclaimed a door fastened on the inside according to the best burgling traditions as expounded by Bingley in dormitory. Jan was not going to see the fun; he was not out of bed for fun; but he could not resist a grin when the belaboured door gave way audibly, and the crash was succeeded by a louder outcry than ever from the bloodthirsty pack. It was a chorus of disgust and discomfiture, shouted down eventually by Sprawson, and at length followed by some muffled remarks from the Spook and subdued cheers from his audience. Then master and boys trooped back along the passage, and all but Chips Carpenter passed Jan’s open door without looking in.
“Tiger! is that you?”
“It’s me, Chips. I’d had enough.”
“But you missed the best of all! The thief or thieves had got out through Sprawson’s study — locked the door — fixed a rope to his table leg, and heaved it back through the open window after they’d got down into the street!”
“Does anybody know what they took away with them?”
“Nothing, it’s hoped, because Sprawson disturbed them at their work.”
“Oh, he did, did he? And it was Sprawson’s study they got out by?”
“Yes. That was a bit of a coincidence, wasn’t it?”
“Just a bit! But I think all the more of Sprawson.”
“So does all the house,” said Chips, eagerly. “The old Spook’s let the lot of us off first school to-morrow, or rather to-day, and he and Sprawson are looking for the key of the beer-barrel to serve out some all round! So I advise you to look sharp.”
But Jan elected to enlighten his friend about something on the way; and the now lighted hall presented an animated scene when at length they passed the windows. Flushed faces emerging from the various degrees of dishabille were congregated by force of habit about the fireplace. Sprawson and Cave major (“bracketed supreme,” as Chips afterwards remarked) were the salient and central pair; Loder and others, such as Shockley, were plying them with questions, only to receive subtle smiles and pregnant shakes of the head; on the outer skirts were the nobodies, and the less than nobodies, whispering together in excited knots, or pressing forward for a crumb of first-hand information.
“And I never saw it!” muttered Chips outside the door. “But old Bob Heriot will, the very moment he hears. And what on earth do you think he’ll do?”
“Score off the whole house,” Jan suggested, “to make sure of one or two!”
“And make a laughing-stock of the wretched Spook into the bargain? No fear! Bob’s not another Haigh. He’ll do something cleverer than that, or he won’t do anything at all.”
CHAPTER XVI. SIMILIA SIMILIBUS
Chips was right and Jan was wrong, but there was just one moment when it looked the other way about.
Heriot did nothing at all — until the next Saint’s Day. That, however, was almost immediately after his return, while he still looked sadder than when he went away, and years older than his age. The chief event of the day was the annual match between the Sixth Form and the School. Heriot had not been near the ground, though he had no dearer haunt, and yet by dinner-time he seemed suddenly himself again. Stratten and Jellicoe, whose places in hall that term were on either side of him at the long table, afterwards declared that they had never known the old boy in better form. Stratten and Jellicoe were cricketers of high promise, and Heriot chatted with them as usual about their cricket and the game in general. When Miss Heriot had left the hall, however, her brother did not resume his seat preparatory to signing orders for his house, as his practice was, but remained standing at the head of the long table, and ordered the door to be shut. There was a certain dry twinkle behind his glasses; but his beard and moustache were one, and the beard jutted out abnormally.
“If I’ve been slow to allude to your strange adventures of two or three nights ago,” said Heriot, “I need hardly tell you it has only been because my mind has been full of other things. I’m very sorry not to have been with you in what certainly appears to have been the most exciting hour the house has known since I took it over. I have evidently missed a great deal; but I congratulate you all on the conspicuous gallantry said to have been displayed by every one of you, at a moment’s notice, in the middle of the night. I’ve heard of two-o’clock-in-the-morning courage, but I never heard of such a wholesale example of it. I’m sure I should be very proud of a whole house whom I can trust to play the man like this behind my back!”
There was even some little feeling in the tone employed by Heriot. Jan could not understand it; he had never looked upon the man as a fool; but this deep appreciation of an utter hoax was worthy of the Spook himself. Fellows moved uneasily in their places, where they stood uncomfortably enough between table and form; one or two played with what they had left of their bread. Sprawson, to be sure, looked hotly indifferent, but his truculent eye might have been seen running down the lines of faces, as if in search of some smiling head to smack afterwards as a relief. Both Sprawson and Charles Cave were in flannels, the popular Champion having found a place in the match which had begun that morning. But even the great cricketer looked less pleased with himself than usual. And the only smile to be seen by Sprawson had lightened the countenance of old Bob Heriot himself.
“Where all seem to have distinguished themselves,” he continued, “it may seem invidious to single out individuals. But I am advised to couple with my congratulations the honoured names of Cave major and Sprawson. I was afraid you were going to cheer” — the honoured names had been received in dead silence— “but I like these things to be taken as a matter of course, and I’m sure neither Cave nor yet Sprawson would wish to pose as popular he
roes. I have an important message for them both, however, from a very important quarter. My friend Major Mangles, the Chief Constable of the county, wishes to have an interview with Cave and Sprawson, with a view to the early apprehension of the would-be thieves.”
Living people are not often quite so silent as the boys at that moment in Heriot’s hall. Major the Hon. Henry Mangles was known to the whole school by sight and reputation as the most dashing figure of a military man in all those parts. Sometimes he played in a match against the Eleven, and seldom survived many balls without lifting at least one out of the ground. Sometimes he was to be seen and heard in Heriot’s inner court, and then the entire house would congregate to catch his picturesque remarks. He inhabited a moated grange some four miles from the school, broke a fresh bone in his body every hunting season, and often gave Bob Heriot a mount.
“When does he wish to see us, sir?” inquired Cave major, with becoming coolness.
“This afternoon.”
“Here in the town?”
“No — at his place.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Cave, firmly— “but that’s impossible.”
“Any other time, sir,” suggested Sprawson, civilly. “To-day we’re both playing in the Sixth Form match.”
“Et tu, Sprawson?” cried Heriot, merrily.
“I’m the tip of the School tail, sir.”
The house relieved itself in laughter led by Heriot.
“Have either of you been in yet?”
“I had one ball, sir. It was the last of the innings,” said the brazen Sprawson. “The Sixth are just going in, and we expect to have Cave there all the afternoon.”
“I’m afraid he can’t go in first,” said Heriot; “and you’ll have to find a substitute to field for you, Sprawson. Or rather I’ll see the two captains myself, and explain about you both. That’ll save time and you can start at once. You can’t do these doughty deeds behind my back and not expect to find them fame, you know.”
“But, surely, sir, this is a most high-handed demand of the Major’s?”
Charles Cave had never been known to display such heat.
“He’s the Chief Constable, and Chief Constables are high-handed people,” said Heriot, preparing to sign the orders. “I shouldn’t advise either of you to disappoint Major Mangles, much less when he’s paying you a compliment as the pair who specially distinguished themselves in the night of battle. He wants you to tell him all about it. There’s no reason why that should take long, and if you drive both ways you might be back before any wickets have fallen. But you must see that when a house is entered by common burglars it’s a matter for the police and not for us, and as police witnesses you’re in their hands and out of ours. To make matters easy for you, however, the Major has very kindly sent his carriage, which I think you’ll find waiting for you now outside the quad. If I were you I should go just as you are, and make no more bones about it.”
And Heriot sat down to attend to the daily detachment with orders on the tradesmen requiring his signature, while the rest of the house streamed out of the hall in a silence due partly to the eminence of the discomfited ringleaders, and partly to the guilty conscience of the mob as accessories after the fact. Sprawson alone made light of the situation, and that chiefly at the expense of his superfine confederate.
“All aboard the Black Maria!” said Sprawson, taking the other by the arm. “I say, Charles, old cock, I wonder how you’ll look with a convict’s crop and a quiverful of broad arrows?”
And for once the great Charles made use of the baser language of his inferiors, and tossed his tawny mane in anger as he stalked out of the quad, a Phœbus Apollo setting in a cloud. But it really was the Major’s landau that awaited them, a cockaded footman standing at the door. Phœbus gave a dying gleam, and stepped in as though the imposing equipage belonged to him.
And Sprawson shook every hand within reach, and played several kinds of fool with his handkerchief until the landau was out of sight.
Then indeed the quad became a Babel, from which a trained ear might have extracted a consensus of unshaken confidence in Sprawson and Cave major. The house, as a whole entirely trusted them to hoodwink Major Mangles as they had already hoodwinked the Spook and even old Heriot himself. It was the last feat which made all things possible to these arch impostors. And only a severe old sage like Crabtree would have entertained any doubt upon the point, which his trenchant tongue argued against all and sundry till the quad was empty for the afternoon.
Jan happened to be playing in the first game on the Middle, while Chips had a humble place in the second Lower; at the joint call-over for the two grounds (4.30) it was whispered that neither Cave nor Sprawson had returned to the Sixth Form match on the Upper. The whisper had swelled into a Bible Oath, and the indisputable fact into a farrago of pure fiction, before the return of the missing pair made it unsafe even to breathe their names in Heriot’s quad. They were not quite the same young men who had made a state departure in the Major’s landau. Their flannels were powdered with the drab dust of the wayside, and they limped a little in the fives-shoes for which they had changed their spikes before coming down from the Upper. Cave moreover looked a diabolically dangerous customer, to whom Loder himself shrank from addressing a remark, after crossing the quad with that obvious intention. Sprawson as usual preserved a genial countenance; but the unlucky Bingley, betrayed into a tactless question by a mysterious wink, had his arm nearly twisted out of its socket as he deserved.
“Now I feel better!” says Sprawson, with ferocious glee. “I’m much obliged to you, Toby, and I hope you’ll regain the use of your arm in time.”
But the house was no wiser until after prayers. At tea Cave major never spoke, and Sprawson only grinned into his plate. But Miss Heriot had scarcely withdrawn after prayers, when Heriot, taking up his nightly position before the fireplace, asked the two swells how they got on. And the entire house stayed in the hall to hear.
“Major Mangles,” returned Cave major, with cutting deliberation, “may be Chief Constable of the county, and anything he likes by birth, but he’s no gentleman for all that.”
“Really, Cave? That’s a serious indictment. Why, what has he done?”
“You’d better ask Sprawson,” says Charles Cave, with a haughty jerk of his fine fair head. He looked a very stormy Phœbus now, but still every inch that grand young god.
“Well, Sprawson?”
“I’m sure Cave can tell you better than I can, sir,” says Sprawson of the wicked humour.
“But Sprawson will make the most of it,” says the cricketer with icy sneer.
“It’s not a tale that wants much varnish, sir, if that’s what he means,” said Sprawson, happily. “I’ll tell you the facts, sir, and Cave can check them if he’ll be so kind. You said we should find the Major’s carriage waiting for us outside the quad, and so we did. It was the landau, sir, a very good one nicely hung, and capital cattle tooling us along like lords. The country was looking beautiful. Roads rather dusty, but a smell of hay that turned it into a sort of delicate snuff, sir. It really was a most delightful drive.”
“Speak for yourself, Sprawson, if you don’t mind.”
“I shouldn’t dream of speaking for you, Cave. You didn’t seem to me to take any interest in the scenery. I may be wrong, but I couldn’t help thinking your heart was at the wicket, flogging our poor bowling all over the parish, and I was so thankful to be where I was! But that was only on the way, sir, it was nothing to what we were in for at the other end. The footman said we should find the Major on the lawn. So we did, sir — playing tennis like a three-year-old — and half the county looking on!”
“Not a garden-party?” inquired Heriot incredulously.
“That sort of thing, sir.”
“My poor fellows! Pray go on.”
“Of course we couldn’t interrupt him in the middle of his set, sir, and when he’d finished it he crossed straight over and started another without ever seeming to see that we
were there. Nobody else took any notice of us either,” continued Sprawson, with a sly glance at the still stately Cave. “We might have been a pair of garden statues, or tennis professionals waiting to play an exhibition match.”
“It reminds me of Dr. Johnson and Lord Chesterfield,” said Heriot darkly. “Your fame is perhaps more parochial, Sprawson. But is it possible that you, Cave, are personally unknown to Major Mangles?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” replied Charles Cave magnificently. “I should have said he might have known me by the times I’ve bowled him.”
“And you never thought of coming away again? I shouldn’t have blamed you, upon my word.”
“Of course we thought of it, sir,” said Sprawson. “But the carriage had gone round to the stables, and we couldn’t very well order it ourselves.”
“I should have walked.”
“It’s a terrible tramp, sir, on a hot afternoon, and in rubber soles!” Sprawson winced involuntarily at the recollection; but the thought of his companion consoled him yet again. “Especially after bowling all the morning,” he added, “and expecting to go in the moment you got back!”
“Well, that wouldn’t have been necessary,” said Heriot. “It must be some satisfaction to you that the Sixth won so easily, even without your certain century, Cave.”
“It doesn’t alter the fact that he had to walk back after all,” said Sprawson, when the greater man had been given ample time to answer for himself.
“So had you!” he thundered then, not like a great man at all, but in a voice that gave some idea of that homeward tramp and its recriminations, in which Sprawson was suddenly felt to be having the last word now.
“But surely Major Mangles interviewed you first?” inquired Heriot, with becoming gravity.
“Oh, yes; he took us under the trees and asked us questions,” said Sprawson, forcing the gay note a little for the first time.
“Questions he’d no earthly right to ask!” cried Cave with confidence.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 353