He took the key and opened the lid, when the cakes and wine stood revealed in all their damning profusion. The Doctor stepped back dramatically. "Hardbake!" he gasped; "wine, pots of strawberry jam! Oh, Bultitude, this is a revelation indeed! So I have nourished one more viper in my bosom, have I? A crawling reptile which curries favour by denouncing the very crime it conceals in its playbox! Bultitude, I was not prepared for such duplicity as this!"
"I—I swear I never put them in!" protested the unhappy Paul. "I—I never touch such things: they would bring on my gout in half-an-hour. It's ridiculous to punish me. I never knew they were there!"
"Then why were you so anxious to avoid opening the box?" rejoined the Doctor. "No, sir, you're too ingenious; your guilt is clear. Go to your dormitory, and wait there till I come to you!"
Paul went upstairs, feeling utterly abandoned and helpless. Though a word as to his real character might have saved him, he could not have said it, and, worse still, knew now that he could not.
"I shall be caned," he told himself, and the thought nearly drove him mad. "I know I shall be caned! What on earth shall I do?"
He opened the door of his bedroom. Coggs was rocking and moaning on his bed in one corner of the room, but looked up with red furious eyes as Paul came in.
"What do you want up here?" he said savagely. "Go away, can't you!"
"I wish I could go away," said Paul dolefully; "but I'm—hum—I'm sent up here too," he explained, with some natural embarrassment.
"What!" cried Coggs, slipping off his bed and staring wildly: "you don't mean to say you're going to catch it too?"
"I've—ah—every reason to fear," said Mr. Bultitude stiffly, "that I am indeed going to 'catch it,' as you call it."