Bywater for once was genuinely surprised. “I had no more to do with it, sir, than this desk had,” touching the master’s. “I should not have spent many an hour since, trying to ferret it out, if I had done it.”
“Well, what have you found out?”
“On the day it happened, sir, when we were discussing it in the cloisters, little Channing suddenly started up with a word that caused me to think he had seen something connected with it, in which Gerald Yorke was mixed up. But the boy recollected himself before he had said much, and I could get no more from him. Once afterwards I heard him tell Yorke that he had kept counsel about the inked surplice.”
“Is that all?” asked the master, while the whole school sat with tingling ears, for Bywater was not making his complaint in private.
“Not quite, sir. Please to look at this.”
Bywater had whipped the broken phial out of his pocket, and was handing the smaller piece towards the master. Mr. Pye looked at it curiously.
“As I was turning over my surplice, sir, in the vestry, when I found it that day, I saw this bit of glass lying in the wet ink. I thought it belonged to a small ornamental phial, which Gerald Yorke used to keep, about that time, in his pocket, full of ink. But I couldn’t be sure. So I put the bit of glass into my pocket, thinking the phial would turn up some day, if it did belong to it. And so it has. You can put the piece into it, sir, and see whether it fits.”
Gerald Yorke left his place, and joined Bywater before the head master. He looked white and haughty. “Is it to be borne, sir, that he should tell these lies of me?”
“Are they lies?” returned Mr. Pye, who was fitting the piece into the bottle.
“I have told no lies yet,” said Bywater. “And I have not said for certain you did it. I say I think so.”