by Unknown
But the rest of the camp, lacking that intimate knowledge of the Kayite which he possessed, did not turn the eye of suspicion towards the Eckleton lines. The affair remained a mystery. Kennedy, who never gave up a problem when everybody else did, continued to revolve the mystery in his mind.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” he said to Silver, two days later, “if you were right.”
Silver, who had not made any remark for the last five minutes, with the exception of abusive comments on the toughness of the meat which he was trying to carve with a blunt knife for the tent, asked for an explanation. “I mean about that row the other night.”
“What row?”
“That guard-tent business.”
“Oh, that! I’d forgotten. Why don’t you move with the times? You’re always thinking of something that’s been dead and buried for years.”
“You remember you said you thought it was those Kay’s chaps who did it. I’ve been thinking it over, and I believe you’re right. You see, it was probably somebody who’d been to camp before, or he wouldn’t have known that dodge of loosing the ropes.”
“I don’t see why. Seems to me it’s the sort of idea that might have occurred to anybody. You don’t want to study the thing particularly deeply to know that the best way of making a tent collapse is to loose the ropes. Of course it was Kay’s lot who did it. But I don’t see how you’re going to have them simply because one or two of them have been here before.”
“No, I suppose not,” said Kennedy.
After tea the other occupants of the tent went out of the lines to play stump-cricket. Silver was in the middle of a story in one of the magazines, so did not accompany them. Kennedy cried off on the plea of slackness.
“I say,” he said, when they were alone.
“Hullo,” said Silver, finishing his story, and putting down the magazine. “What do you say to going after those chaps? I thought that story was going to be a long one that would take half an hour to get through. But it collapsed. Like that guard-tent.”
“About that tent business,” said Kennedy. “Of course that was all rot what I was saying just now. I suddenly remembered that I didn’t particularly want anybody but you to hear what I was going to say, so I had to invent any rot that I could think of.”
“But now,” said Jimmy Silver, sinking his voice to a melodramatic whisper, “the villagers have left us to continue their revels on the green, our wicked uncle has gone to London, his sinister retainer, Jasper Murgleshaw, is washing his hands in the scullery sink, and—_we are alone!_”
“Don’t be an ass,” pleaded Kennedy.
“Tell me your dreadful tale. Conceal nothing. Spare me not. In fact, say on.”
“I’ve had a talk with the chap who was sentry that night,” began Kennedy.
“Astounding revelations by our special correspondent,” murmured Silver.
“You might listen.”
“I am listening. Why don’t you begin? All this hesitation strikes me as suspicious. Get on with your shady story.”
“You remember the sentry was upset—”
“Very upset.”
“Somebody collared him from behind, and upset him into the ditch. They went in together, and the other man sat on his head.”
“A touching picture. Proceed, friend.”
“They rolled about a bit, and this sentry chap swears he scratched the man. It was just after that that the man sat on his head. Jones says he was a big chap, strong and heavy.”
“He was in a position to judge, anyhow.”
“Of course, he didn’t mean to scratch him. He was rather keen on having that understood. But his fingers came up against the fellow’s cheek as he was falling. So you see we’ve only got to look for a man with a scratch on his cheek. It was the right cheek, Jones was almost certain. I don’t see what you’re laughing at.”
“I wish you wouldn’t spring these good things of yours on me suddenly,” gurgled Jimmy Silver, rolling about the wooden floor of the tent. “You ought to give a chap some warning. Look here,” he added, imperatively, “swear you’ll take me with you when you go on your tour through camp examining everybody’s right cheek to see if it’s got a scratch on it.”
Kennedy began to feel the glow and pride of the successful sleuth-hound leaking out of him. This aspect of the case had not occurred to him. The fact that the sentry had scratched his assailant’s right cheek, added to the other indubitable fact that Walton, of Kay’s, was even now walking abroad with a scratch on his right cheek, had seemed to him conclusive. He had forgotten that there might be others. Still, it was worth while just to question him. He questioned him at Cove Reservoir next day.
“Hullo, Walton,” he said, with a friendly carelessness which would not have deceived a prattling infant, “nasty scratch you’ve got on your cheek. How did you get it?”
“Perry did it when we were ragging a few days ago,” replied Walton, eyeing him distrustfully.
“Oh,” said Kennedy.
“Silly fool,” said Walton.
“Talking about me?” inquired Kennedy politely.
“No,” replied Walton, with the suavity of a Chesterfield, “Perry.”
They parted, Kennedy with the idea that Walton was his man still more deeply rooted, Walton with an uncomfortable feeling that Kennedy knew too much, and that, though he had undoubtedly scored off him for the moment, a time (as Jimmy Silver was fond of observing with a satanic laugh) would come, and then—!
He felt that it behoved him to be wary.
VIII
A NIGHT ADVENTURE—THE DETHRONEMENT OF FENN
One of the things which make life on this planet more or less agreeable is the speed with which alarums, excursions, excitement, and rows generally, blow over. A nine-days’ wonder has to be a big business to last out its full time nowadays. As a rule the third day sees the end of it, and the public rushes whooping after some other hare that has been started for its benefit. The guard-tent row, as far as the bulk of camp was concerned, lasted exactly two days; at the end of which period it was generally agreed that all that could be said on the subject had been said, and that it was now a back number. Nobody, except possibly the authorities, wanted to find out the authors of the raid, and even Private Jones had ceased to talk about it—this owing to the unsympathetic attitude of his tent.
“Jones,” the corporal had observed, as the ex-sentry’s narrative of his misfortunes reached a finish for the third time since reveille that morning, “if you can’t manage to switch off that infernal chestnut of yours, I’ll make you wash up all day and sit on your head all night.”
So Jones had withdrawn his yarn from circulation. Kennedy’s interest in detective work waned after his interview with Walton. He was quite sure that Walton had been one of the band, but it was not his business to find out; even had he found out, he would have done nothing. It was more for his own private satisfaction than for the furtherance of justice that he wished to track the offenders down. But he did not look on the affair, as Jimmy Silver did, as rather sporting; he had a tender feeling for the good name of the school, and he felt that it was not likely to make Eckleton popular with the other schools that went to camp if they got the reputation of practical jokers. Practical jokers are seldom popular until they have been dead a hundred years or so.
As for Walton and his colleagues, to complete the list of those who were interested in this matter of the midnight raid, they lay remarkably low after their successful foray. They imagined that Kennedy was spying on their every movement. In which they were quite wrong, for Kennedy was doing nothing of the kind. Camp does not allow a great deal of leisure for the minding of other people’s businesses. But this reflection did not occur to Walton, and he regarded Kennedy, whenever chance or his duties brought him into the neighbourhood of that worthy’s tent, with a suspicion which increased whenever the latter looked at him.
On the night before camp broke up, a second incident of a sensational kind occurred, which, but for the fact th
at they never heard of it, would have given the schools a good deal to talk about. It happened that Kennedy was on sentry-go that night. The manner of sentry-go is thus. At seven in the evening the guard falls in, and patrols the fringe of the camp in relays till seven in the morning. A guard consists of a sergeant, a corporal, and ten men. They are on duty for two hours at a time, with intervals of four hours between each spell, in which intervals they sleep the sleep of tired men in the guard-tent, unless, as happened on the occasion previously described, some miscreant takes it upon himself to loose the ropes. The ground to be patrolled by the sentries is divided into three parts, each of which is entrusted to one man.
Kennedy was one of the ten privates, and his first spell of sentry-go began at eleven o’clock.
On this night there was no moon. It was as black as pitch. It is always unpleasant to be on sentry-go on such a night. The mind wanders, in spite of all effort to check it, through a long series of all the ghastly stories one has ever read. There is one in particular of Conan Doyle’s about a mummy that came to life and chased people on lonely roads—but enough! However courageous one may be, it is difficult not to speculate on the possible horrors which may spring out on one from the darkness. That feeling that there is somebody—or something—just behind one can only be experienced in all its force by a sentry on an inky night at camp. And the thought that, of all the hundreds there, he and two others are the only ones awake, puts a sort of finishing touch to the unpleasantness of the situation.
Kennedy was not a particularly imaginative youth, but he looked forward with no little eagerness to the time when he should be relieved. It would be a relief in two senses of the word. His beat included that side of the camp which faces the road to Aldershot. Between camp and this road is a ditch and a wood. After he had been on duty for an hour this wood began to suggest a variety of possibilities, all grim. The ditch, too, was not without associations. It was into this that Private Jones had been hurled on a certain memorable occasion. Such a thing was not likely to happen again in the same week, and, even if it did, Kennedy flattered himself that he would have more to say in the matter than Private Jones had had; but nevertheless he kept a careful eye in that direction whenever his beat took him along the ditch.
It was about half-past twelve, and he had entered upon the last section of his two hours, when Kennedy distinctly heard footsteps in the wood. He had heard so many mysterious sounds since his patrol began at eleven o’clock that at first he was inclined to attribute this to imagination. But a crackle of dead branches and the sound of soft breathing convinced him that this was the real thing for once, and that, as a sentry of the Public Schools’ Camp on duty, it behoved him to challenge the unknown.
He stopped and waited, peering into the darkness in a futile endeavour to catch a glimpse of his man. But the night was too black for the keenest eye to penetrate it. A slight thud put him on the right track. It showed him two things; first, that the unknown had dropped into the ditch, and, secondly, that he was a camp man returning to his tent after an illegal prowl about the town at lights-out. Nobody save one belonging to the camp would have cause to cross the ditch.
Besides, the man walked warily, as one not ignorant of the danger of sentries. The unknown had crawled out of the ditch now. As luck would have it he had chosen a spot immediately opposite to where Kennedy stood. Now that he was nearer Kennedy could see the vague outline of him.
“Who goes there?” he said.
From an instinctive regard for the other’s feelings he did not shout the question in the regulation manner. He knew how he would feel himself if he were out of camp at half-past twelve, and the voice of the sentry were to rip suddenly through the silence fortissimo.
As it was, his question was quite loud enough to electrify the person to whom it was addressed. The unknown started so violently that he nearly leapt into the air. Kennedy was barely two yards from him when he spoke.
The next moment this fact was brought home to him in a very practical manner. The unknown, sighting the sentry, perhaps more clearly against the dim whiteness of the tents than Kennedy could sight him against the dark wood, dashed in with a rapidity which showed that he knew something of the art of boxing. Kennedy dropped his rifle and flung up his arm. He was altogether too late. A sudden blaze of light, and he was on the ground, sick and dizzy, a feeling he had often experienced before in a slighter degree, when sparring in the Eckleton gymnasium with the boxing instructor.
The immediate effect of a flush hit in the regions about the jaw is to make the victim lose for the moment all interest in life. Kennedy lay where he had fallen for nearly half a minute before he fully realised what it was that had happened to him. When he did realise the situation, he leapt to his feet, feeling sick and shaky, and staggered about in all directions in a manner which suggested that he fancied his assailant would be waiting politely until he had recovered. As was only natural, that wily person had vanished, and was by this time doing a quick change into garments of the night. Kennedy had the satisfaction of knowing—for what it was worth—that his adversary was in one of those tents, but to place him with any greater accuracy was impossible.
So he gave up the search, found his rifle, and resumed his patrol. And at one o’clock his successor relieved him.
On the following day camp broke up.
Kennedy always enjoyed going home, but, as he travelled back to Eckleton on the last day of these summer holidays, he could not help feeling that there was a great deal to be said for term. He felt particularly cheerful. He had the carriage to himself, and he had also plenty to read and eat. The train was travelling at forty miles an hour. And there were all the pleasures of a first night after the holidays to look forward to, when you dashed from one friend’s study to another’s, comparing notes, and explaining—five or six of you at a time—what a good time you had had in the holidays. This was always a pleasant ceremony at Blackburn’s, where all the prefects were intimate friends, and all good sorts, without that liberal admixture of weeds, worms, and outsiders which marred the list of prefects in most of the other houses. Such as Kay’s! Kennedy could not restrain a momentary gloating as he contrasted the state of affairs in Blackburn’s with what existed at Kay’s. Then this feeling was merged in one of pity for Fenn’s hard case. How he must hate the beginning of term, thought Kennedy.
All the well-known stations were flashing by now. In a few minutes he would be at the junction, and in another half-hour back at Blackburn’s. He began to collect his baggage from the rack.
Nobody he knew was at the junction. This was the late train that he had come down by. Most of the school had returned earlier in the afternoon.
He reached Blackburn’s at eight o’clock, and went up to his study to unpack. This was always his first act on coming back to school. He liked to start the term with all his books in their shelves, and all his pictures and photographs in their proper places on the first day. Some of the studies looked like lumber-rooms till near the end of the first week.
He had filled the shelves, and was arranging the artistic decorations, when Jimmy Silver came in. Kennedy had been surprised that he had not met him downstairs, but the matron had answered his inquiry with the statement that he was talking to Mr Blackburn in the other part of the house.
“When did you arrive?” asked Silver, after the conclusion of the first outbreak of holiday talk.
“I’ve only just come.”
“Seen Blackburn yet?”
“No. I was thinking of going up after I had got this place done properly.”
Jimmy Silver ran his eye over the room.
“I haven’t started mine yet,” he said. “You’re such an energetic man. Now, are all those books in their proper places?”
“Yes,” said Kennedy.
“Sure?”
“Yes.”
“How about the pictures? Got them up?”
“All but this lot here. Shan’t be a second. There you are. How’s that for effect?”
>
“Not bad. Got all your photographs in their places?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Jimmy Silver, calmly, “you’d better start now to pack them all up again. And why, my son? Because you are no longer a Blackburnite. That’s what.”
Kennedy stared.
“I’ve just had the whole yarn from Blackburn,” continued Jimmy Silver. “Our dear old pal, Mr Kay, wanting somebody in his house capable of keeping order, by way of a change, has gone to the Old Man and borrowed you. So you’re head of Kay’s now. There’s an honour for you.”
IX
THE SENSATIONS OF AN EXILE
“What” shouted Kennedy.
He sprang to his feet as if he had had an electric shock.
Jimmy Silver, having satisfied his passion for the dramatic by the abruptness with which he had exploded his mine, now felt himself at liberty to be sympathetic.
“It’s quite true,” he said. “And that’s just how I felt when Blackburn told me. Blackburn’s as sick as anything. Naturally he doesn’t see the point of handing you over to Kay. But the Old Man insisted, so he caved in. He wanted to see you as soon as you arrived. You’d better go now. I’ll finish your packing.”
This was noble of Jimmy, for of all the duties of life he loathed packing most.
“Thanks awfully,” said Kennedy, “but don’t you bother. I’ll do it when I get back. But what’s it all about? What made Kay want a man? Why won’t Fenn do? And why me?”
“Well, it’s easy to see why they chose you. They reflected that you’d had the advantage of being in Blackburn’s with me, and seeing how a house really should be run. Kay wants a head for his house. Off he goes to the Old Man. ‘Look here,’ he says, ‘I want somebody shunted into my happy home, or it’ll bust up. And it’s no good trying to put me off with an inferior article, because I won’t have it. It must be somebody who’s been trained from youth up by Silver.’ ‘Then,’ says the Old Man, reflectively, ‘you can’t do better than take Kennedy. I happen to know that Silver has spent years in showing him the straight and narrow path. You take Kennedy.’ ‘All right,’ says Kay; ‘I always thought Kennedy a bit of an ass myself, but if he’s studied under Silver he ought to know how to manage a house. I’ll take him. Advise our Mr Blackburn to that effect, and ask him to deliver the goods at his earliest convenience. Adoo, mess-mate, adoo!’ And there you are—that’s how it was.”