‘I’m not sick, thank you,’ said Vivian, drawing pictures slowly with his fingers on the window-pane; ‘but I want to tell you something, auntie.’
‘Yes, dearie?’
At that moment Anne appeared in the doorway. ‘If you please, mum, there’s a young gentleman in the hall who wishes to speak to you. It is one of the young gentlemen who were here last night, and I think he has lost something.’
Mrs Osbourne rose and left the room, and Vivian followed her, sick and miserable. He would fain not have gone at all, for he knew too well who it was, and what he wanted; but something within him compelled him to go and hear what was said.
As he expected, Basil Gray stood outside, a look of anxiety on his boyish face.
‘Good-morning, Mrs Osbourne. I’ve come very early, but mother sent me round. The fact is, I’m afraid that I have lost that parcel which you gave me to take home to Vivian—the pistol and caps, you know. It was awfully careless of me, and yet I can’t think how I lost it. I put it in my greatcoat-pocket in the cloakroom, as you told me, and I never thought anything more about it until I got home, and ran upstairs to give it to Vivian, and when I put my hand in my pocket it wasn’t there. Of course it may have fallen out on the way home, but it doesn’t seem likely; my pocket is too deep, and mother thinks that I may have put it in some one else’s pocket. There were some coats hanging in the cloakroom just like mine, almost the same, made of gray tweed. This is the coat I had on last night,’ and he unbuttoned it to let Mrs Osbourne see it better.
‘Why, it is almost exactly the same as those that Ronald and you have, Vivian,’ she said, stooping down to examine it. ‘It is just possible that Basil may have put it in one of your pockets. Run into the cloakroom, like a good boy, and see, and we will go upstairs, and send Ralph to search his coat, although I hardly think that you could put it there, Basil, for he has a dark-brown coat, quite different from this.’
Clearly Aunt Dora had forgotten that the coats had been carried upstairs in the morning, but Vivian did not remind her of the fact. He crept away into the cloakroom and waited there, feeling as he had never felt in his life before. He realised that he had lost the chance of retrieving that first wrong step, for he knew only too well that he would never have the courage now to confess that the pistol had been put in the wrong pocket, and that when he had found it there, as he was carrying his coat upstairs, the sudden temptation had been too strong for him, and that, almost without intending to keep it, he had hidden it where no one would dream of looking for it. At least he hoped so; but supposing Mary took it into her head to dust the top of the wardrobe? The very idea made him shiver; and, in case Aunt Dora might wonder why he was lingering downstairs, he started and ran out of the cloakroom so suddenly that he knocked up against Anne, who was dusting in the hall, and, muttering an apology, hurried up into the schoolroom.
‘We took our coats upstairs in the morning, Aunt Dora,’ he said breathlessly, ‘and I don’t see any parcel lying about.’