Bags took off his dressing-gown.
“Oh, you thought I was going back to dormitory to put them in your cubicle again, did you?” he said. “It just happens to be my bath there by the door.”
“Well, but do you accept?” cried David, executing a sort of Indian war-dance round him.
“No,” said Bags. “I don’t want to give you three with a racquet-handle, as we made it up last night. And I don’t want you turning everything upside down in my cubicle.”
Ferrers put on his dressing-gown with the solemnity of a judge assuming the black-cap.
“Then it simply proves the plaintiff’s case, if you won’t have your cubicle searched,” he said. “It’s all rot about your not wanting to whack Blazes because it was pax last night. He’s challenged you: it isn’t pax any longer. State of war!”
Ferrers was in his element, and it seemed to the court generally even as to him, that never at the Old Bailey had the net been woven in such impenetrable fashion round the most palpable criminal. Bags, too, felt that, but the net that really enmeshed him was of very different sort from what it appeared to be. Certainly he was in a hole, but not the hole that every one thought he was in.
The majesty of the law proceeded.
“If you don’t accept the challenge,” said Ferrers, “it proves you are guilty.”
The plaintiff continued to dance.