"And the right shoulders are——"
"Percival. It was through following him we fell into that beastly trap, and it seems to me—though I don't like to say it—that Percival has a good deal to answer for. What was he doing at St. Bede's? What was he doing with that fellow, Wyndham, who knocked about your cousin so unmercifully at the sand-pits? Did you notice what good terms they were on—Wyndham with his arm tucked through Percival's."
Harry had seen it all, and as Plunger was speaking he recalled that other scene he had striven so hard to forget—when he had seen Percival and Wyndham together near the school. He had tried to put that from him, especially since the heroism Percival had shown on the river. But now it all came back with a rush. There was not the slightest doubt that Percival and Wyndham were on terms of friendship. No one who had witnessed the scene that he and Plunger had witnessed could question it. What did it mean? There was something behind it all.
"Yes, I noticed it, Freddy," he slowly answered. "It puzzles me, and I don't know what to make of it." Then looking up quickly, as though a sudden suspicion had come to him, he blurted out: "I say, is it possible that—that——No, I can't say it—it's too horrid."
"Out with it. There's no one to hear you but me. Remember, we're both in the same boat."
"No one to hear me but you," said Harry, looking quickly round. "And I shouldn't like anybody to hear but you; it's a horrid suspicion that came into my mind just now. There must be something between Percival and Wyndham, that's certain. I've tried not to believe it; but it's no use trying to shut our eyes to facts. Can it be that Percival's plotting against his own school, can it be that he is betraying us to the enemy—those beastly Beetles?"
"Funny! Just the same thing's been running through my mind. Can it be that he's betraying us to the enemy, and can it be"—here Plunger's voice dropped to a whisper, as though he feared the very hedges might overhear him—"that it was he who hauled down the school flag and handed it over to the Beetles?"
"No, no; I can't believe that," cried Harry, clasping his hands over his face, as though to blot out the suspicion.
"And I've been trying not to believe it, but what else are you to make of it? A Beetle couldn't have got to the turret and taken the flag off his own bat. There must have been some one helping him who knew all about the school. If it wasn't Percival, who was it? What are we to think after what we've seen?"
So it came about that while Percival had been doing his best to trace out where the school flag had gone, so as to return it to its old place of honour on the turret, the suspicion came into the minds of these two boys that he was betraying the school.