Chapter Twenty Four.
The Strange Adventures of a Brown-Paper Parcel.
Railsford was somewhat surprised at call-over on the following morning to observe that neither Arthur Herapath nor Digby Oakshott answered to their names.
“Why are they not here?” he asked.
“They’re still on the sick list,” said Ainger.
“Has anyone seen them?”
“Yes, sir,” said Tilbury; “they were coughing a good deal in the night, and said they felt too bad to get up this morning, and had the medical doctor’s leave to stay in bed till he came round.”
“Oh,” said Railsford, and walked up-stairs to interview these two unfortunate invalids.
“Well,” said he, entering the room just in time to interrupt what he imagined, from the sounds heard outside, must have been a spirited bolster match, “how are you both this morning?”
They both began to cough, wearily, “A little better, I think,” said Arthur, with fortitude; “I think we might try to get up later on. But the medical said we’d better wait till he saw us.”
And he relapsed into a painful fit of coughing.
“I feel very hot all over,” said the baronet, who was notoriously energetic at bolster matches.
“Now, you two,” said Railsford sternly, “just get up at once. I shall remain in the room while you dress.”
They looked at him in reproachful horror, and broke into the most heart-rending paroxysm of coughing he had ever listened to.
“Stop that noise,” said he, “and get up at once.”
“Oh, please, Marky—Mr Railsford—we’re so bad and—and Daisy would be so sorry if I got consumption, or anything of that sort.”
“We shall get into trouble, sir,” added the baronet, “for getting up without the medical’s leave. He told us to stay in bed, and—”
Here another cough, which, however, was promptly suppressed.
“You will get into no more trouble with him than you have got into already for getting up last night after he had gone, and acting in the farce in the Fourth class-room.”
The culprits regarded one another with looks of consternation.
“Did you see us then?” asked Arthur. “You see, Marky—Mr Railsford I mean—we’d promised to—”
“I want no explanations, Arthur; you had no business to get up then, and you’ve no business not to get up now. Shamming isn’t honourable, and that ought to be reason enough why you and Oakshott should drop it.”
After this the delinquents dressed in silence and followed their master down to the class-room, where the ironical welcome of their fellows by no means tended to smooth their ruffled plumage.
However, as they were down, their colds recovered in ample time to allow of their taking part in the cricket practice in the afternoon; and the exercise had a wonderful effect in reconciling them to their compulsory convalescence.
They were sitting, half working, half humbugging, in their study at preparation-time, when Railsford again looked in. “Herapath,” said he, “if you bring your Cicero down to my room presently, I’ll show you the passages marked for the Swift Exhibition.”
In due time Arthur presented himself. He and Digby between them had smelt a rat.
“He’s going to jaw you, you bet,” said the baronet.
“Looks like it. I wonder why he always picks on you and me for jawing? Why can’t he give the other fellows a turn? Never mind, he was civil to us that night at the abbey—I suppose I’d better let him have his own way.”
So, after a fitting interval, he repaired with his books to the lion’s den.
These astute boys had been not quite beside the mark in their surmise that the master had ulterior reasons in inviting Arthur to his study. He did want to “jaw” him; but not in the manner they had anticipated.
After going through the Cicero, and marking the portions requiring special getting up for the examination, Railsford put down his pen and sat back in his chair.
“Arthur,” said he, “there is something I should like to ask you.”
“It’s coming, I knew it,” said Arthur to himself.
“Do you remember, Arthur, last term, you and I had some talk one evening about what happened to Mr Bickers, and the mysterious way in which that secret had been kept?”
Arthur fidgeted uncomfortably.
“Oh, yes,” said he. “That’s all done with now, though, isn’t it?”
“I think not. Do you remember my asking you if you knew anything about it, which I did not?”
“Oh yes—I didn’t. I know nothing more about it than you do.”
“How do you know that? What if I knew nothing about it?”
Arthur looked puzzled.
“I want you to be frank with me. It is a matter of great importance to us all to get this affair cleared up—more to me than you guess. All I ask you is, do you know who did it?”
“Why, yes,” said Arthur.
“How did you discover? Did anyone tell you?”
“No; I found out.”
“Do you consider that you have no right to tell me the name?”
Arthur stared at him, and once more thought to himself what a wonderfully clever fellow this brother-in-law of his was.
“It doesn’t much matter if I tell you,” said he, “only I mean to keep it dark from anybody else.”
“Who was it then?” inquired the master, with beating heart. “Tell me.”
“Why, you know!”
“I wish to hear the name from you, Arthur,” repeated the master.
“All right! Mark Railsford, Esquire, M.A. That’s the name, isn’t it?”
Railsford started back in his chair as if he had been shot, and stared at the boy.
“What! what do you say?—I?”
Arthur had never seen acting like it.
“All right, I tell you, it’s safe with me, I’ll keep it as dark as ditch-water.”
“Arthur, you’re either attempting a very poor joke, or you are making a most extraordinary mistake. Do you really mean to say that you believe it was I who attacked Mr Bickers?”
Arthur nodded knowingly.
“And that you have believed it ever since the middle of last term?”
“Yes—I say, weren’t you the only one in it, then?” asked the boy, who could not any longer mistake the master’s bewildered and horrified manner for mere acting.
Railsford felt that this was a time of all others to be explicit.
“I did not do it, Arthur, and I had no more connection with the affair than—your father.”
Arthur was duly impressed by this asseveration.
“It’s a precious rum thing, then, about all those things, you know. They looked awfully fishy against you.”
“What things? I don’t understand you.”
“Perhaps I’d better not tell you,” said the boy, getting puzzled himself.
“I can’t force you to tell me; but when you know it’s a matter of great importance to me to know how you or anybody came to suspect such a thing of me, I think you will do it.”
Arthur thereupon proceeded to narrate the history of the finding of the match-box, sack, and wedge of paper, with which the reader is already familiar, and considerably astonished his worthy listener by the business-like way in which he appeared to have put two and two together, and to have laid the crime at his, Railsford’s, door.
Nothing would satisfy the boy now but to go up and fetch down the incriminating articles and display them in the presence of the late criminal.
To his wrath and amazement, when he went to the cupboard he found—what it had been the lot of a certain classical personage to find before him—that the “cupboard was bare.” The articles were nowhere to be seen. Dig, on being charged with their abstraction, protested that he had never set eyes on them, and when Arthur told him the purpose for which they were wanted, he was scarcely less concerned at the mysterious disappearance than his friend.
Arthur finally had to return to Railsford without the promised evidence.
“I can’t make it out,” said he; “they’re gone.”
“Did anyone know about this except yourself?”
“Dig knew,” said Arthur, “and he must have collared them.”
“Who? Oakshott?”
“Oh no; but I happened to say something last term, just after that trial we had, you know; I was talking about it, on the strict quiet, of course, to Felgate.”
“Felgate!” exclaimed the master; and the whole truth flashed upon him at once.
“Yes, he promised to keep it dark. I really didn’t think there was any harm, you know, as he is a prefect.”
“You think he has taken the things, then?”
“Must have,” said Arthur. “I don’t know why, though; I’ll go and ask him.”
“You had better not,” said Railsford. If Felgate had taken them, he probably had some reason, and there was no occasion to involve Arthur any further in the business.
“The thing is,” said Arthur, still sorely puzzled, “if it wasn’t you, who was it?”
Railsford smiled.
“That is a question a great many persons are asking. But you are the only boy I have met with who has no doubt in his mind that I was the guilty person.”
Arthur winced.
“I’m awfully sorry, sir,” said he. “I’ll tell them all you had nothing to do with it.”
“I think you had better say nothing. How do you know I am not telling you a lie now?”
Arthur winced once more. He would have preferred if Railsford had given him one hundred lines for daring to suspect him, and had done with it.
“I say,” said he, “you needn’t tell them at home, Marky. I know I was a cad, especially when you were such a brick that night at the abbey, and I’ll never do it again. They’d be awfully down on me if they knew.”
“My dear boy, you are not a cad, and I shall certainly not tell anyone of your little mistake. But leave me now; I have a lot of things to think about. Good-night.”
Arthur returned to his room in dejected spirits.
He had made a fool of himself, he knew, and done his best friend an injustice; consequently he felt, for once in a way, thoroughly ashamed of himself. What irritated him most of all was the loss of the articles he had so carefully treasured up as evidence against somebody.
“Felgate’s collared them, that’s certain,” said he, “and why?”
“He has a big row on with Marky,” replied Dig; “I expect he means to bowl him out about this.”
“That’s it,” said Arthur, “that’s what he’s up to. I say, Dig, we ought to be able to pay him out, you and I; and save old Marky.”
“I’m game,” said Dig; “but how?”
“Get the things back, anyhow. Let’s see, they’ve got something on at the Forum to-night, haven’t they?”
“Yes—two to one he’ll be there. Why, of course he will; he’s got to second the motion—something about the fine arts.”
Arthur laughed.
“We’ll try a bit of fine art on him, I vote. Come on, old man; we’ll have a look round his rooms for the traps.”
So they sallied out, and after peeping into the Forum on their way, to ascertain that their man was safely there, they marched boldly up-stairs to his study. If it had not been for the righteousness of their cause, these boys might have thought twice before entering anyone’s room in his absence. But Arthur in his present temper had cast to the winds all scruples, and regarding himself merely as a robbed lioness searching for her whelps, he would have liked to meet the man who would tell him he hadn’t a perfect right to be where he was. Dig, for his part, was not prepared to raise any such awkward question.
The boys’ instinct had told them right. For one of the first things they beheld, on a corner of the window-sill, apparently put there hurriedly before starting for the Forum, was a brown-paper parcel, corresponding exactly with the missing bundle.
It was carefully tied up, and under the string was thrust an envelope addressed to “Mr Bickers.”
Arthur whistled, and Dig ran forward to capture the lost property.
“Steady,” said the former warily. “Perhaps it’s just a dodge to catch us. See how it lies, in case we have to put it back.”
They took the necessary bearings with all precaution, and then hurried back with their prize to their own study.
“How long before the Forum’s up?” demanded Arthur, depositing the parcel on the table.
“Twenty minutes,” said Dig.
“All serene.”
The things had evidently been recently tied up with new string in fresh brown paper, the wedge of paper and the match-box being rolled up in the middle of the sack.
“That seems all right,” said Arthur, “now let’s see the letter.”
He carefully slid a pen-holder under the fold of the envelope, so as to open it without breaking, and extracted the letter, which ran as follows:—
“Dear Sir,—I send you the three things I told you of. The sack has his initials on it; the paper belongs to him, as you will see, and he is the only man in the house who could reach up to put the match-box on the ledge. Please do not mention my name. My only reason is to get justice done.
“Yours, truly,
“T.F.”
“Oh, the cad!” was the joint exclamation of the two readers as they perused this treacherous epistle.
“Look alive, now,” said Arthur; “cut down as fast as ever you can and fetch one of those turfs lying on the corner of the grass, you know.”
“What’s that for?” asked Dig, who felt quite out of the running.
“Never mind. Cut away; there’s no time to lose. Don’t let anyone see you.”
Dig obeyed, and selected one of the turfs in question, which he clandestinely conveyed up to his room.
“Now lend a hand to wrap it up,” said Arthur. “Don’t you see it’ll make a parcel just about the size and weight of the sack? Mind how you tie it up—a double knot, not a bow.”
Dig began to perceive what the sport was at last, and grinned complacently as he tied up the new parcel into an exact counterfeit of the old.
Arthur overhauled it critically, and pronounced it all right. “Now,” said he, “we’ll write him a letter.”
He sat down and dashed off the following, Dig nudging vehement approval of the contents from behind.
“Sir,—I’m a cad and a liar and a thief. Don’t believe a word I say. You can tell anyone you like. Most of them know already. Yours truly,
“Jerry Sneak.”
“That’s ripping!” exclaimed the admiring Dig, as this elegant epistle was carefully folded into the original envelope, and, after being gummed down, was thrust under the string of the counterfeit parcel. “Oh, I wish I could be there to see it opened!”
“We may get into a row for it,” said Arthur. “I don’t care. It’ll show him up and be a real leg-up for Marky. Look alive now, and come and put it back in his room.”
So they sallied up once more and carefully replaced the parcel exactly where they had found it, and then, rejoicing exceedingly, dodged down again. It seemed to them a politic thing just to look in at the Forum on their way down, to witness the end of the debate and take part in the division. They had not the slightest idea what the debate was about, but they made themselves prominent among the “Ays,” and cheered loudly when the motion was declared to be carried by two votes.
Felgate nodded to them as he passed out, little guessing the real meaning of the affectionate smile with which they returned the greeting.
“So your cold’s better, youngster?” said he to Arthur.
“Looks like it,” replied Arthur.
Felgate’s first glance as he entered the room was towards the corner in which he had left his parcel.
He had just been cording it up that evening when he suddenly remembered his engagement at the Forum, and in the hurry of the discovery he had carelessly left it out, instead of, as he had intended, locking it up.
“However,” thought he to himself, “it’s all safe as it happens. I won’t send it over to Bickers till to-morrow afternoon, just before the master’s session. It will be far more effective if he opens it in the brute’s presence; and, after all, I don’t care a twopenny-piece if he knows it comes from me or not—the cad!”
He had half a mind to open the letter and tell Mr Bickers to mention his name if he chose; but just as he was about to do so Munger came in to see him. So he abandoned the idea and locked the parcel up safely in his drawer.
Felgate had, as the reader may have judged, come to the conclusion that it was time to play his trump card against his enemy. Railsford’s reporting of him to the doctor had been, to mix metaphors a little, the last straw which breaks the patient camel’s back.
He had had a very warm and uncomfortable quarter of an hour with the head-master, and, as we know, had defended himself on the plea that Railsford, being a malefactor himself, was not competent to judge of the conduct of his boys. The doctor had severely silenced this covert accusation, although taking note of it sufficiently to suggest the very awkward string of questions which he put the following morning to the unlucky Master of the Shell.
Felgate, however, had an impression that his statement to the doctor had missed fire; and being determined not wholly to cast his trump card away, he had walked across and sought an interview with Mr Bickers.
That estimable gentleman was considerably impressed by discovering, first of all, that this boy was the author of the mysterious letter last term, and secondly, that he possessed such satisfactory evidence of the strange story.
He accepted Felgate’s statement that his sole motive was the credit of Grandcourt and the relief of his own conscience, without too particularly inquiring into its value, and undertook not to mention his informer’s name in any use he might have to make of the information.
To that end he suggested it would be better for him to have the “evidence” to produce when required. Felgate promised to send it over to him next day, if that would suit. Mr Bickers said it would suit admirably. There was to be a master’s meeting in the evening, when no doubt the question would come up, and if Felgate preferred not to appear himself, he might send Mr Bickers the things there with a letter, which the master promised to read without disclosing the name of the writer.
This seemed a satisfactory plan, and Felgate hoped that in return for what he was doing Mr Bickers would intercede with the doctor to restore him to his prefecture. Which Mr Bickers said he would do, and the interview ended.
Felgate had not much difficulty in possessing himself of the “articles.” Arthur had himself exhibited them to him last term, and he remembered the corner of the locker in which they had lain. Probably Arthur had never looked at them since, and would be very unlikely to miss them now. Even if he did, Felgate didn’t care.
The securing them was easy enough, for on that particular evening Arthur and Dig were roosting on the big arch of Wellham Abbey, in no condition to interfere if all their worldly goods had been ransacked. The remainder the reader knows.
That eventful evening was to witness one more solemnity before the order for “lights out” cut short its brief career.
Arthur and Dig having returned to their study, held a grave consultation over the sack and match-box and wedge of paper.
“We’d better hide them,” said Dig, “where he can’t find them again.”
“Not safe,” said Arthur; “we’d better burn them.”
“Burn them!” said Dig, astounded by the audacious proposition. “Then we give up all our evidence.”
“Good job too; all the better for Marky. They’ve done us no good so far.”
This was true, and Dig, having turned the matter over, said he was “game.”
The conspirators therefore locked their door, and piled up their fire. It was long since their study had glowed with such a cheerful blaze. The resin-wheel flared, and crackled, and spat as if it was in the jest and was enjoying it, and the flames blazed up the chimney as though they were racing who should be the first to carry the joke outside.
The match-box and paper wedge vanished almost instantaneously, and the old bone-dry sack itself rose grandly to the occasion, and flared away merrily inch by inch, until, a quarter of an hour after the illumination had begun, the last glowing vestige of it had skipped up after the sparks.
The boys were sitting complacently contemplating this glorious finale when a loud knock came at the door, and a shout in Ainger’s voice of “Let me in!”
“What’s the row?” cried Arthur, shovelling the ashes under the grate, while Dig, with wonderful presence of mind, whipped out the toasting-fork, and stuck half a loaf on the end of it.
“Open the door,” cried Ainger, accompanying his demand with a kick which made the timbers creak. “Your chimney’s on fire!”
Arthur rushed and opened the door, while Dig, once more with wonderful presence of mind, seized up the bath bucket and emptied it on the fire.
“You young idiots,” shouted Ainger as he rushed in, half-blinded with the smoke raised by Dig’s coup de théâtre, “you’ll have the house on fire! Bring a jug with you, both of you, up to the roof.”
They each snatched up a jug, and with pale countenances followed the captain up to the skylight. As they emerged on to the roof they were horrified to see the chimney belching forth sparks and smoke with unmistakable fierceness.
Fortunately the roof was flat and the chimney-pot accessible. The contents of the three jugs rapidly damped the ardour of the rising flames, and in five minutes after Ainger’s first knock at the door the danger was all over.
“Luckily I happened to see it from Smedley’s room opposite,” said the captain. “Whatever had you been cooking for supper?” They laughed. It was evident the captain was not going to visit the misadventure severely on their heads.
“Something good,” said Arthur. “But I guess it’ll be a little overdone now. Thanks awfully, Ainger, for helping us out. We might have got into a jolly row if it hadn’t been for you, mightn’t we, Dig?”
And they departed peacefully to bed, leaving Ainger to wonder what was the use of being the captain of a house when your main occupation is to put out fires kindled by the juniors, and be patted on the back by them in return!