Percy shook his head still.
And Rix, feeling much injured, laid the scene of the outrage in Fisher’s study, and conceded that the money might belong to the clubs, and might be only five pounds.
Percy had the temerity once more to express doubt. Whereupon Rix flatly declined to come down another penny in the amount, or alter his story one iota, with one possible exception; that the money may have been taken when Fisher major was not in his room.
Percy considered the anecdote had been boiled down sufficiently for human consumption, and grieved Rix prodigiously by saying that he knew all about it weeks ago, and what did he mean by coming and telling him his wretched second-hand stories?
However, whatever variations the rumour underwent as it passed from hand to hand, it managed to retain its three most salient points all through—namely, that Fisher major had been robbed; that the money taken belonged to the club; and that the suspected thief was Rollitt.
For a week or two Rollitt remained profoundly ignorant of the charges against him. His unapproachable attitude was the despair both of friend and enemy. Yorke, who would have given anything to let him have an opportunity of denying or explaining the charge, was at his wits’ end how to get at him. Dangle, on the contrary, who was chiefly interested in the penalties in store for the thief, was equally at a loss how to bring him to bay.
He would see no one. He shut himself in his study and fastened the door. In class and Hall he was practically deaf and dumb; and in his solitary walks by the river it was as much as any one’s comfort for the whole term was worth to accost him.
By one of those strange coincidences which often bring the most unlikely persons into sympathy, Yorke and Dangle each decided to write what they hesitated to say.
Yorke had endless difficulty over his letter. He could not bring himself to believe Rollitt a thief, yet he could not deny that suspicions existed. Still less could he evade his duty as captain to see things right. The latter duty he might have put off on Mr Wakefield or the doctor. But the mere reporting to them of the circumstances would fix the suspicions on Rollitt more pointedly than they were already, and certainly more pointedly than Yorke wished them to be.
“Dear Rollitt,” he wrote, “I hope you will not resent my writing to tell you of a rumour which is afloat very injurious to you, and one which I feel quite sure you can dispose of at once. I would not write about it, only I am very anxious for the sake of everybody you should deny it, and so shut up others who would be glad enough if it were true. A sum of money, about £4 10 shillings, belonging to the Club funds has been lost from Fisher major’s room. The rumour is that you have taken it, and those who accuse you make much of the coincidence that about the time when the money was said to be lost, you spent a similar sum in the purchase of a new boat for Widow Wisdom. If I didn’t feel quite sure you would be able to deny the charge and explain anything about it that seems suspicious, I should not have cared to write this.