The jacket had only one, a breast pocket already congested by keys, handkerchief, letters from home, pet bits of indiarubber, and the like. Remained therefore the despised garment already alluded to. This, being tucked—by official decree—into the wearer’s socks, formed an admirable hold-all for a packet of butterscotch—worked flat—a snack of Turkish Delight, or a peculiar and highly favoured form of delicacy known as “My Queen.”
With a not too saintly expression, an unflinching eye, and a sufficiently baggy pair of trousers, the contrabandist might count on a reasonable amount of success. But Harker’s X-ray glance rarely failed him.
That stern, incisive voice would rivet all eyes upon the culprit just when the muster by the officer of the day had been completed, and the long ranks awaited the stentorian dismissal of the chief cadet captain.
“Mr. Z! You’ll step along to the sick-bay when we falls out.”
The blanched smuggler clutched at his momentarily abandoned halo of rectitude.
“Sick-bay!” he echoed indignantly. “Why the sick-bay? There’s nothing wrong with me—I swear there isn’t. I never felt better in my life.”
“That there nasty swelling on your shin,” was the pitiless reply, “did ought to be seen to at once.” A draught, that had fluttered the carefully selected baggy trousers against their wearer’s legs, had been his undoing. The game was up.
Like all truly great men, Harker could unbend without discipline suffering an iota. As the months passed and his term of fledgling “News” acquired the modest dignity of “Threes” (second term cadets), Marker’s methods changed. He was no longer the detective, inquisitor, encyclopædia of a thousand unfamiliar phrases, events, and objects. His term were on their feet now, treading in their turn paths fiercely illumined by the new first term’s gaping admiration and curiosity. They were an example.
“’Ow long ’ave we been in the Britannia?” he would demand reproachfully when some breach of the laws called for reproof. “’Ere we are in our second term, an’ talkin’ about HUP-STAIRS!”
The scorn in his voice was like a whiplash.