King of Ranleigh: A School Story

by F. S. Brereton

"Shall I, or shall I not?" he wondered, his finger on the sliding trigger. "Supposing he's over there, still waiting and listening? Supposing he's slid off and is at work elsewhere?"

It was a dilemma. There are very many placed in the same position of responsibility and under the self-same circumstances who would have hesitated, and rightly so, who would have determined to do nothing that savoured of rashness, and who would have decided to curb their impatience, risking everything lest by premature action they should wreck the whole enterprise. Still Clive swung badly between the two decisions. He brought his electric lamp out of his pocket, presented it across the corridor, and then tucked it back in his pocket again, just as he had done a few moments before. It gave him a start, a minute later, when he again had his lamp in position, though the trigger was not yet moved, suddenly to perceive a ray of light opposite.

"Why, he's opened the Head's door," he told himself. "That light's shining from the inside. The beggar's managed to get into the house. What's his business?"

It was something dishonest and underhand, in any case, else why such silence? why this flitting in the depths of night, when the school and its residents were sunk in slumber?

"Frightfully fishy," Clive told himself. "Either a burglar or the incendiary we're after. I'm going across to that door to take a look in. No, I'm not."

He bobbed down like lightning, his head below the window frame through which he had been staring. For the light within the half-open door increased. It swung across to the opposite side of the corridor, and then, through the surrounding darkness, Clive saw the bull's-eye orifice through which the beam was projected. Nothing more was visible. The hand which operated the lamp, the man behind might not have been in existence. He was invisible. It looked, indeed, as if the torch were supporting itself, and swaying from side to side by its own efforts. And then, of a sudden, the beam died out.

"Beggar felt it necessary to come out of the house into the corridor so as to make sure no one was about," Clive whispered to himself. "Now, is he still outside the door, listening and waiting, or has he gone in again? I'm not going to wait much longer. This cad means business, and if he's up to the old game, why, the sooner I nab him the better. Supposing he's already made a fire!"

That caused his heart to increase its exertions again, for his excitement had abated a little after his first discovery. But as he thought of this serious possibility, his pulses stirred with a vengeance. Why, the whole fate of the school might be in his hands! Delay and hesitation at this moment might see old Ranleigh, the place which he and hundreds like him loved, some young, some growing to manhood, some already arrived at that stage in life's progression, and getting rather on the seamy side, might see it burned to ashes. The thought sent a chill through his sweating frame. Clive moved quickly in the direction of the open door at the west end of the quad and crept into the corridor. Was that a flash of light he saw from beneath the door?

"Jolly like it. Believe he's gone in again. I'm going to chance matters."

He touched the trigger of his lamp and sent a flood of light on the half-open door. The corridor was empty. There was no figure beside the door. Clive darted over to it, and stood at its edge, peeping round into the passage leading to the Head's own study. It was a dismal place at any time, badly lighted in the most brilliant day, and now sunk in the depths of impenetrable darkness. It was a heart-breaking sort of passage, with uncompromising and unsatisfactory walls, which gave not the smallest encouragement to a malefactor. And here it was that malefactors gathered. Not the class of malefactor that Clive was now after, but wretched Ranleighans, haled before the Head, sent there often enough with the politest of notes by one or other of the masters—notes, too, which the wretched victims had themselves to bear. They were almost like death warrants. Clive had experienced the dreadful feeling of bearing one. He had waited in that depressing passage while another sinner preceded him. He had listened to the drone of voices behind the Head's door. And then had come the sound of tribulation. Staring into this dark pit brought his early days at Ranleigh back to his mind. What a thrashing he had had on that occasion when he and Masters had broken bounds and contrived to stampede two of Squire Studholme's finest horses!