* * * * *
The term wore on. Donaldson’s won the final house-match by a matter of twenty-six points. It was, as they had expected, one of the easiest games they had had to play in the competition. Bryant’s, who were their opponents, were not strong, and had only managed to get into the final owing to their luck in drawing weak opponents for the trial heats. The real final, that had decided the ownership of the cup, had been Donaldson’s v. Seymour’s.
Aldershot arrived, and the sports. Drummond and O’Hara covered themselves with glory, and brought home silver medals. But Moriarty, to the disappointment of the school, which had counted on his pulling off the middles, met a strenuous gentleman from St Paul’s in the final, and was prematurely outed in the first minute of the third round. To him, therefore, there fell but a medal of bronze.
It was on the Sunday after the sports that Trevor’s connection with the bat ceased—as far, that is to say, as concerned its unpleasant character (as a piece of evidence that might be used to his disadvantage). He had gone to supper with the headmaster, accompanied by Clowes and Milton. The headmaster nearly always invited a few of the house prefects to Sunday supper during the term. Sir Eustace Briggs happened to be there. He had withdrawn his insinuations concerning the part supposedly played by a member of the school in the matter of the tarred statue, and the headmaster had sealed the entente cordiale by asking him to supper.
An ordinary man might have considered it best to keep off the delicate subject. Not so Sir Eustace Briggs. He was on to it like glue. He talked of little else throughout the whole course of the meal.
“My suspicions,” he boomed, towards the conclusion of the feast, “which have, I am rejoiced to say, proved so entirely void of foundation and significance, were aroused in the first instance, as I mentioned before, by the narrative of the man Samuel Wapshott.”
Nobody present showed the slightest desire to learn what the man Samuel Wapshott had had to say for himself, but Sir Eustace, undismayed, continued as if the whole table were hanging on his words.
“The man Samuel Wapshott,” he said, “distinctly asserted that a small gold ornament, shaped like a bat, was handed by him to a lad of age coeval with these lads here.”
The headmaster interposed. He had evidently heard more than enough of the man Samuel Wapshott.
“He must have been mistaken,” he said briefly. “The bat which Trevor is wearing on his watch-chain at this moment is the only one of its kind that I know of. You have never lost it, Trevor?”