There was no time for more speculation then. Official footsteps were approaching. The three cadets were just able to reach their room and stiffen at attention by their beds before the inspecting party came in view.
The officer in charge was Captain Branch, whose piercing black eyes had never been known to miss a spot of dirt. Square-jawed, quick-moving, he entered the room accompanied by a cadet officer with notebook and pencil. His thin, sensitive nostrils sniffed the air.
“Who,” he asked sharply, “has been smoking here within the last few minutes? The room smells foul!”
A tense, five-second silence followed. Barry Blake broke it.
“I don’t know, sir,” he managed to say. “It was none of us three. We don’t use tobacco.”
The muscles of the captain’s jaw bulged. The thin line of his lips hardened.
“What is your idea in leaving rolls of dust under your bed at inspection?” he demanded bitterly. “And dirty soap on your washbowl? And that can of foot powder on the desk? And that drawer—”
He broke off, to stride across the room. From the crack of a drawer in Barry’s desk drifted a tiny feather of smoke. Captain Branch jerked it open. There, on a charred paper, lay a smouldering cigar.
With his face like a marble mask, the officer tossed the cigar into the washbowl.
“Gentlemen,” he said heavily. “This is an idiotic defiance of authority. Unless you can clear yourselves immediately in a written report, appropriate punishment must follow. That is all.”