Chapter Ten.
Arthur puts two and two together.
Sir Digby Oakshott, of Oakshott Park, Baronet, was down on his luck. His heart had been set on saving his house single-handed by a brilliant discovery of the miscreants to whom it owed its present disgrace.
It had been a busy week for him. He had had three or four fights a day with outraged suspects, and had not invariably got the best of them. Besides, in his devotion to the public service his private duties had been neglected, and the pile of impositions had grown with compound interest. Worst of all, his own familiar friend had lifted up his heel against him, and had openly gibed at his efforts. This was “the most unkindest cut of all,” and Sir Digby felt it deeply.
“What’s the use of going on fooling?” said Arthur, one evening, when the tension was becoming acute. “Why can’t you shut up making an ass of yourself?”
“Look here, Arthur, old man,” said the baronet deprecatingly, “I don’t want to be jawed by you. It’s no business of yours.”
“What I can’t make out,” pursued his friend sarcastically, “is why you haven’t tried to smell the chaps out by means of Smiley. Now, if you let Smiley have a good sniff of that bit of rope on your watch-chain, and then turn him out into the square, he’d ferret them out for you.”
“I tell you what, old man, if it’s coming to a regular row between us two, hadn’t you better say so at once, and get done with it?”
“Who says anything about a row? All I say is, you’re in a precious good way of getting yourself kicked round the house, the way you’re going on; and I don’t much mind if I’m asked to lead off.”
“You’d better try to kick me, that’s all,” said Dig.
“I’ll see what I can do for you some day. But, I say, Dig, can’t you see what a howling ass you’re making of yourself?”
“No, I don’t know so much about asses as you do,” responded Dig.
“Daresay not. If you were in the company of one all day long, as I am, you’d soon throw it up. I tell you, my—”
Here the speaker suddenly broke off and looked affectionately at the troubled face of his old chum.
“Look here, Dig, old man, I don’t want to have a row with you, no more do you. I vote we don’t.”
“Hang a row,” said Dig. “But it seems to me, Arthur, you don’t care twopence whether the chap’s found out or not.”
Arthur’s face clouded over.
“Perhaps I do, perhaps I don’t. I don’t see we’re called upon to show them up.”
“But look what a mess the house is in till they’re bowled out. We’ll never get hold of a bat all the season.”
“Jolly bad luck, I know, but we must lump it, Dig. You must drop fooling about with your clues. Don’t get in a wax, now. I’ve got my reasons.”
“Whatever do you mean? Do you know who it was, then? Come in! Who’s there?”
The intruder was the Baby Jukes, who carried half a dozen letters in his hand, one of which he presented to the two chums.
“One for you,” said he. “They’re all the same. Wake gave Bateson and me a penny a-piece for writing them out, and we knocked off twenty. He says he’d have sent you one a-piece, only he knows you’ve not two ideas between you. Catch hold.”
And he departed, smiling sweetly, with his tongue in his cheek, just in time to avoid a Caesar flung by the indignant baronet at his head.
“Those kids are getting a drop too much,” said Dig. “They’ve no more respect for their betters than Smiley has. What’s this precious letter?”
The letter was addressed to “Messrs Herapath and Oakshott,” and was signed by Wake of the Fifth, although written in the inelegant hand of Master Jukes the Baby.
“‘Central Criminal Court, Grandcourt. The assizes will open this evening in the forum at 6.30 sharp. You are hereby summoned on urgent business. Hereof fail not at your peril.’”
“What do that mean?” again inquired Dig. “What right has Wake to threaten us?”
“Don’t you see, Wake, whose father is a pettifogging lawyer, is going to get up a make-believe law court—I heard him talk about it last term—instead of the regular debating evening. The best of it is, we kids shall all be in it, instead of getting stuck on the back bench to clap, as we generally are.”
“He’s no business to tell us to fail not at our peril,” growled Dig. “What will they do?”
“Try somebody for murder, perhaps, or—why, of course!” exclaimed Arthur, “they’ll have somebody tried for that Bickers row!”
“By the way,” said Dig, returning to the great question on his mind, “you never told me if you really knew who did it.”
Arthur’s face clouded again.
“How should I know?” said he shortly. “What’s the use of talking about it?”
There was something mysterious in Herapath’s manner which disturbed his friend. It was bad enough not to be backed up in his own schemes, but to feel that his chum knew something that he did not, was very hard on Sir Digby.
Now he recalled it, Arthur had all along been somewhat reserved about the business. He had made sport of other fellows’ theories, but he had never disclosed his own. Yet it was evident he had his own ideas on the subject. Was it come to this, that after all these terms of confidence and alliance, a petty secret was to come between them and cloud the hitherto peaceful horizon of their fellowship?
Digby, perhaps, did not exactly put the idea into these poetical words, but the matter troubled him quite as much.
Now, it is my intention, at this place, generously to disclose to the reader what was hidden from Sir Digby Oakshott, Baronet, and from everyone else at Grandcourt—namely, that Arthur Herapath was fully persuaded in his own mind that he knew the name of the arch offender in the recent outrage, and was resolved through thick and thin to shield him from detection. He was perfectly aware that in so doing he made himself an accessory after the fact, but that was a risk he was prepared to run. Only it decided him to keep his knowledge to himself.
Arthur was not a particularly sharp boy. His qualities were chiefly of the bull-dog order. He did not take things in with the rapidity of some fellows, but when he did get his teeth into a fact he held on like grim death. So it was now. In the first excitement of the discovery he had been as much at sea and as wild in his conjectures as anybody. But after a little he stumbled upon a piece of evidence which gave him a serious turn, and had kept him serious ever since.
On the morning of the discovery, Arthur, being in the neighbourhood of the “boot-box,” thought he would have a look round. There was no fear of his mistaking the place; he had been there before, and seen Mr Bickers come out of the sack. Everything was pretty much as it had been left. The sack lay in the corner where it had been thrown, and the cord, all except the piece which the baronet had secured, was there too. On the dusty floor could clearly be perceived the place where Mr Bickers had rolled about in his uncomfortable shackles during the night, and on the ledge of the dim window which let light into the boot-box from the lobby still stood the tumbler which Arthur himself had officiously fetched an hour or two ago.
One or two things occurred to Arthur which had not previously struck him. One was that the door of the boot-box was a very narrow one, and, closing-to by a spring, it would either have had to be held open or propped open while Mr Bickers was being hauled in by his captors. He found that to hold it open wide he would have to get behind it and shut himself up between it and the stairs. Most likely, all hands being required for securing the victim, the captors would have taken the precaution to prop the door open by some means, so as to be ready for their deep-laid and carefully prepared scheme.
So Arthur groped about and discovered a twisted-up wedge of paper, which, by its battered look and peculiar shape, had evidently been stuck at some time under the door to keep it from closing-to. He quietly pocketed this prize, on the chance of its being useful, and after possessing himself of the sack and cord, and two wax vestas lying on the floor, one of which had been lit and the other had not, he prepared to quit the scene. As he was going up-stairs he caught sight of one other object—not, however, on the floor, but on the ledge of the cornice above the door. This was a match-box of the kind usually sold by street arabs for a halfpenny. Arthur tried to reach it, but could not get at it even by jumping.
“The fellow who put that there must have been over six feet,” said he to himself.
With some trouble he got a stick and tipped the box off the ledge, and as he did so it occurred to him that, whereas the dust lay a quarter of an inch thick on the ledge, and whereas the match-box had no similar coating of dust, but was almost clean, it must have been put up there recently. He opened the box and looked inside. It contained wax vestas, with curiously coloured purple heads, which on examination corresponded exactly with the matches he had picked up on the floor of the boot-box.
“Oh,” said Arthur to himself, very red in the face, “here’s a go!” and he bolted up to his room.
Dig, as it happened, was out, not altogether to his chum’s regret, who set himself, with somewhat curious agitation, to examine his booty.
First of all he examined once more the match-box, and satisfied himself that there was no doubt about the identity of its contents with the stray vestas he had picked up. The result was decisive. The box had been placed above the door very recently by someone who, unless he stood on a form or climbed on somebody else’s back, must have been more than six feet high. No one puts matches above doors by accident. Whoever put it there must have meant it—and more than that, must have opened it and dropped one out inside the boot-box.
“Now,” considered the astute Arthur, “it was pitch dark when Bickers was collared; lights were out, and the fellows thought they’d have a glim handy in case of need. They struck one and spilt one, and shoved the box up there, in case they should want it again. I say! what a clever chap I am! The tall chap this box belongs to did the job, eh?”
An expert might possibly find a flaw in this clue, but Arthur was a little proud of himself.
Next he spread out the sack and inspected the cord. There was not much to help him here, one would suppose, and yet Arthur, being once on a good tack, thought it worth his while to look closely at these two relics.
The sack was not the ordinary type of potato-sack which most people associate with the term, but more like a large canvas pillow-case, such as some article of furniture might be packed in, or which might be used to envelop a small bath and its contents on a railway journey. Arthur perceived that it had been turned inside out, and took the trouble to reverse it. It was riddled with holes, some of them to admit the running cords which had closed round the neck and elbows of the unfortunate Mr Bickers, and some, notably that in the region of the nose, made hastily, with the motive of giving the captive a little ventilation.
Arthur could not help thinking, as he turned the sack outside in, that it would have been nicer for Mr Bickers to have the comparatively clean side of the canvas next to his face instead of the very grimy and travel-stained surface which had fallen to his lot.
But these speculations gave place to other emotions as he discovered two black initials painted on the canvas, and still legible under their covering of dirt and grease. There was no mistaking them, and Arthur gave vent to a whistle of consternation as he deciphered an “M.R.”
Now, as Arthur and everybody else knows, “M.R.” may mean Midland Railway, but the Midland Railway is not six feet two inches, and does not carry wax vestas about him, or drop them on the floor of the boot-box.
Arthur gaped at those initials for fully three minutes, and then hurriedly hid the sack away in the cupboard.
He had still one more point to clear up. He pulled the wedge of paper out of his pocket and began nervously to unroll it. It was frayed and black where the door had ground it against the floor; but, on beginning to open it, it turned out to be a portion of a torn newspaper. It was a Standard of February 4—two days ago—and Arthur whistled again and turned pale as he saw a stamp and a postmark on the front page, and read a fragment of the address—”...ford, Esquire, Grandcourt.”
“That settles it clean!” he muttered to himself. “I say! who’d have thought it!”
Then he sat down and went over the incidents of the last twenty-four hours.
Last night—it is sad to have to record it—Arthur had been out in the big square at half-past nine, when he should have been in bed. He had been over to find a ball which he had lost during the morning while playing catch with Dig out of the window. On his way back—he remembered it now—he had had rather a perilous time. First of all he had nearly run into the arms of Branscombe, the captain of Bickers’s house, who was inconveniently prowling about at the time, probably in search of some truant of his own house. Then in doubling to avoid this danger he had dimly sighted Mr Bickers himself, taking a starlight walk on Railsford’s side of the square. Finally, in his last bolt home, he had encountered Railsford stalking moodily under the shadow of his own house, and too preoccupied to notice, still less to challenge, the truant.
All this Arthur remembered now, and, carrying his mind a day or two further back, he recalled Mr Bickers’s uninvited visit to the house—Arthur had painful cause to remember it—and Railsford’s evident resentment of the intrusion, and the threatenings of slaughter which had been bandied about between the two houses ever since.
“Why,” said Arthur to himself, “it’s as clear as a pikestaff. I see it all now. Bickers said it was about a quarter to ten when he was collared. No fellows would be about then, and certainly no one would know that he would be passing our door, except Marky. Marky must have been actually hanging about for him when I passed! What a pity I didn’t stop to see the fun! Yes, he’d got his sack ready, and had jammed the door open with this paper, and got his matches handy. Bickers would never see him till he came close up, and then Marky would have the sack on in two twos before he could halloa. My eye! I would never have believed it of Marky. Served Bickers right, of course, and it’ll be a lesson to him; but it’ll be hot for Marky if he’s found out. Bickers says there may have been more than one fellow on the job, but I don’t fancy it. If Mark had had anybody, he’d have got me to help him, because it would be all in the family, and I’d be bound to keep it dark. Wouldn’t he turn green if he knew I’d twigged him! Anyhow, I’ll keep it as close as putty now, and help him worry through. Very knowing of him to go with a candle and let him out this morning, and look so struck all of a heap. He took me in regularly.”
Arthur said this to himself in a tone which implied that if Mark had been able to take him in, it was little to be wondered at that all the rest of the house had been hoodwinked.
“Hard luck,” thought he condescendingly. “I daren’t tell Dig. He’s such a gossip, it would be all over the place in a day. Wonder if I’d best let Marky know I’ve spotted him? Think not. He wouldn’t like it, and as long as he’s civil I’ll back him up for Daisy’s sake.”
Then, having stumbled on to the thought of home, it occurred to him that since the opening day, when he had sent a postcard to announce his arrival, he had not yet troubled his relatives with a letter this term. It was a chance, while he was in the humour, to polish them off now; so he took up his pen, and thus discoursed to his indulgent sister:—
“Dear Da,—Mark’s all right so far. He doesn’t hit it with a lot of the chaps, and now and then we hate him, but he lets Dig and me alone, and doesn’t interfere with Smiley. I hope you and he keep it up, because it would make me look rather foolish if it was all off, especially as Dimsdale and one or two of the chaps happen to have heard about it, and have bets on that it won’t last over the summer holidays.
“I’m getting on very well, and working hard at French. Je suis allant à commencer translater une chose par Molière le prochain term si je suis bon. There’s a howling row on in the house just now. Bickers got nobbled and sacked the other night, and shoved in the boot-box, and nobody knows who did it. I’ve a notion, but I’m bound to keep it dark for the sake of a mutual friend. It would be as rough as you like for him if it came out. But I believe in assistant un boiteux chien au travers de la stile; so I’m keeping it all dark. Ponsford has been down on us like a sack of coals. They’ve shoved forward our dinner-hour to one o’clock, so we’re regularly dished over the sports, especially as Saturday afternoon has been changed into morning. The house will go to the dogs now, mais que est les odds si longtemps que vous êtes heureuses? Dig sends his love. He and I remember the loved ones at home, and try to be good. By the way, do you think pater could go another five bob? I’m awfully hard up, my dear Daisy, and should greatly like not to get into evil ways and borrow from Dig. Can you spare me a photograph to stick up on the mantelpiece to remind me of you always? You needn’t send a cabinet one, because they cost too much. I’d sooner have a carte-de-visite and the rest in stamps, if you don’t mind. I’m doing my best to give Marky a leg-up. I could get him into a row and a half if I liked, but for your sake I’m keeping it all dark. I hope you’ll come down soon. It will be an awful game if you do, and I’ll promise to keep the fellows from grinning. Maintenant, il faut que je close haut. Donnez mon amour à mère et père, et esperant que vous êtes tout droit, souvenez me votre aimant frère, Arthur Herapath. Dig envoie son amour à tous.”
Daisy might have been still more affected by this brotherly effusion than she was, had not she received a letter by the same post from Mark himself, telling her of his later troubles, and containing a somewhat more explicit narrative of recent events than had been afforded in the letter of his prospective brother-in-law.
“I am, I confess, almost at a loss,” said he. “I do not like to believe that anyone in the house can have the meanness to involve us all in this misfortune by his own guilty silence. ... Much depends now on the spirit which my prefects show. I believe, myself, that if they take a proper view of the situation, we may weather the storm. But the new order of things hits them harder than anyone else, for it excludes them from football, cricket, and the sports; and I fear it is too much to expect that they will even try to make the best of it! I begin to feel that a master, after all, if he is to do any good, must be a sort of head boy himself, and I would be thankful if my seniors let me into their confidence, and we were not always dealing with one another at arm’s length. All this, I fear, is uninteresting to you; but it means a good deal to me. The flighty Arthur does not appear to be much cast down by our troubles. I wish I could help him to a little of the ballast he so greatly needs. But, although I am the master of this house, I seem scarcely ever to see him. I hear him, though. I hear him this minute. He and his chum occupy the room over me, and when they execute a war dance—which occurs on an average six times a day—it makes me tremble for my ceiling. I have a notion Arthur spends his weekly allowance rather recklessly, and am thinking of suggesting to your father that a reduction might be judicious,” etcetera, etcetera.
Had Railsford guessed, as he wrote these rather despondent lines, that his youthful kinsman in the room above was hugging himself for his own astuteness in tracking out his (Railsford’s) villainy, he might perhaps have regarded the situation of affairs as still less cheerful. As it was, after the first discovery, the hope had begun to dawn upon the Master of the Shell, as it had already dawned on Barnworth, that some good might even result from the present misfortunes of the house. And as the days passed, he became still more confirmed in the hope, and, with his usual sanguine temper, thought he could see already Railsford’s house starting on a new career and turning its troubles to credit.
Alas! Mark Railsford had rough waters still to pass through. And the house, before it was to start on its new career, had several little affairs to wind up and dispose of.
Among others, the Central Criminal Court Assizes were coming on, and the boys were summoned, “at their peril,” not to fail in appearing on the occasion.