Perhaps it was as well that the members of the Old Firm saw every atom of fun that was going, for the task they had set themselves was destined to prove monotonous. After all, once the novelty of patrolling a huge place wears off, it has few attractions. Then, too, a cosy bed pulls hard after a long day's exercise. A whole fortnight passed, in fact, without anything unusual happening.
"Someone's twigged what we're doing, eh?" asked Susanne.
"No," said Clive. "I'm certain. But whoever set those fires going is too canny to be caught easily. They say that lunatics are awfully artful. This chap's stopped for a while. We've just got to be patient."
And so for a few more days they continued watching, shadowing many a late-returning master. It was almost three weeks from the date of the commencement of this duty that Clive heard sounds that roused his strong suspicions. Someone was moving in the corridor, someone who had not entered the school through the front door as had been the case with masters. A figure glided past him as silently as a ghost. This was something entirely different from what he had experienced in the whole course of his watching.
CHAPTER XVIII
TRACKED DOWN
Clive stood as still as a post, watching and listening. Overhead there was a small crescent of the moon floating over the school and partially illuminating the quad. But the corridors were plunged in stygian darkness. Had he actually heard anything? Had someone really passed him?
"Well, I'm jiggered," he observed to himself, clinging doubtfully to one of the cross-bars placed across the usually open windows of the corridor by a thoughtful directorate, and with a view to keeping small boys from clambering through them. For it was the custom at Ranleigh to indulge in an ample measure of fresh air, and those corridor windows remained free of glass until the depths of winter.
"Feel certain someone went by," thought Clive. "Felt rather than heard him. But—but where's he gone? Is he just opposite me. Ah!"