“It is enough,” said Bantock; “there is no need to think of anything else. Listen.”
And, truly, there was a most stealthy and uncouth sort of noise. Eels may have soft skins, but their muscles are hard and, as they careered round the basin, one heard a continuous smooth sound as of people going about some nefarious business in the dark, and now and again, [190] ]at unexpected moments, a loud thwack would be heard as one of the fish threw his tail upon the side of the basin.
Newman and Frederic Austin and one or two others collaborated in preparing our scheme. A female figure was made, carefully placed on the middle of Dr McNaught’s pillow, and gently covered to the neck with the bedclothes.
These elaborate arrangements for Dr McNaught’s entertainment were only just completed when the doctor himself returned. We waited in dark corners of the corridor for the result.
After an interval of a few minutes, a bell rang and a chambermaid appeared.
“There is some mistake, I think,” said Dr McNaught genially. “Either this room is a bedroom, a larder, or an aquarium; it would be most good of you if you would decide as soon as possible which it really is.”
The chambermaid entered the bedroom and we could just hear her quiet voice as, a moment later, she half whispered:
“But, sir, the room is already occupied. There is a lady in your bed.”
Of course, the psychological moment had arrived, and we strolled casually into the bedroom to become witnesses of Dr McNaught’s embarrassment. The jape was continued. McNaught was taken to the smoke-room, solemnly tried by judge and jury for having murdered a woman and concealed her body (it was at the time of the Crippen affair), and sentenced to death. Newman brought a hatchet from the cellar and, not long before dawn, the mock sentence was carried out with elaborate pantomime....
“Very childish—just like schoolboys!” I hear a reader (not you, of course) say, rather contemptuously. Yes, it was like schoolboys, and substitute “-like” for “-ish” in “childish” and I agree with you most heartily.