"No," he answered indignantly, "and I wouldn't play, not if they all went down on their knees and begged me to. What do I care about the Wraxby match? If I could, I'd put a stopper on it, and bring the whole thing to the ground."
"Well," continued Fletcher calmly, "that's just what we're going to do. If you'd asked me this morning how we could put a spoke in Allingford's wheel, and pay out him and a lot of those other prigs like Oaks and Rowlands, I couldn't have told you; but now the thing's as easy as pat. They'll find out they haven't cold-shouldered me at every turn and corner for nothing. I'll give them tit for tat, and after Christmas, when I've left this beastly place, I'll write and tell them who did it."
"You seem to have got your back up, old chap," said Thurston, referring to the bitter tones in which the last few sentences had been spoken; "but out with it—what's your plan?"
"Why, this: I'd no idea what a chance we should have when I stuck that note in our pillar-box, but here it is all ready made. Allingford and Oaks have had a row with little Grice; he's reported them, and it's quite natural they should want to pay him out for doing it. As they're such good boys, I don't suppose they'll try anything of the kind; but we might undertake the job, and do it for them."
The speaker paused to see if he had been understood.
"What!" exclaimed Thurston bluntly, "you mean, play Grice a trick and make it appear they'd done it because of this rumpus about locking the door?"
"That's about it," returned the other, laughing. "What could we do better?"
Noaks murmured his approval of the scheme, but Gull and Hawley were silent. To tell the truth, since the big row following their attack on Browse had put a stop to any further chance of card-parties and other amusements in Thurston's study, their attachment to the ex-prefect had considerably lessened. Like many others of their kind, they were thoroughly selfish at heart, and saw no good in running any personal risk to settle the quarrels of a third person. The party feeling which had characterized the last school elections, and caused for the time being a spirit of ill-will and opposition towards the school leaders, had just about died a natural death; and if another public meeting had been called in the gymnasium, not half a dozen fellows would have shouted for Thurston, or allied themselves against the side of law and order. All this had tended to make Hawley and Gull lukewarm in their adherence to the cause. Noaks, however, who would have paid any price for the privilege of being able to hobnob with those who were in any higher position than himself, was ready to follow his two Sixth Form cronies to any extreme they might suggest.
"Well," he inquired, "and what's to be the trick?"
"I only just thought of one on the spur of the moment," answered Fletcher; "but if no one else has a better to suggest, I daresay it'll do. We might screw up little Grice's bedroom door so as to get him down late in the morning; his room's right away at the end of the passage. There is a screw-driver belonging to Oaks lying in one of the empty lockers—it has his name on the handle; and if we happened to drop it as we came away, I think that in the face of this row it would look uncommonly like his doing. D'you twig?"