“Mr Roe and gentlemen,” said he, “I am sorry once again to trouble the meeting with the affairs of so very unimportant a person as myself, and I can only repeat what I have said before, and what I have a right to take credit for, that my only motive in doing so is my clear duty to Grandcourt, and the removal from a large number of innocent boys of a stigma under which they at present suffer.”
Here someone said, “Hear, hear,” and everybody agreed that Mr Bickers had begun well.
“In February last,” continued he, “I was unfortunate enough to meet with some personal violence while passing the door of an adjoining house in the dark, I was seized from behind, enveloped in a sack, which was tied over my head and shoulders, in a manner which both gagged me and rendered me powerless to move my arms. My feet were also tied together, and in this condition I was dragged into a cupboard under the stairs and there left for the night. My impression is that two or three strong persons were engaged in the outrage, although the pinioning was performed by only one. I was released in the morning by my colleague in whose house I had been attacked, who, with his senior boys, untied my hands, and expressed himself as greatly astonished and indignant at what had befallen me. I fully believed at the time these protestations on my colleague’s part were sincere.”
Here Mr Bickers was beginning to get aggressive, and the backs of one or two of Railsford’s friends, particularly monsieur’s back, went up.
“That same morning, gentlemen, the doctor came and challenged the house to produce the offender or offenders. Every boy in the house was called over and questioned separately; said each one denied not only that he had done it himself, but that he had any knowledge of who had. Every member of the house, except the master of the house, was thus questioned. The master was not challenged.
“The house was disgraced by the doctor; and from that time to this the secret has been carefully kept. But capital has been made out of the supposed misfortune of the house to set on foot several ambitious schemes which depended for their success on the continued isolation of the house from the rest of the school.
“The master of the house was a prime mover in these schemes, and in consequence decidedly interested in preserving the new state of affairs.
“Now, gentlemen, you may ask why I make all this preamble—”
“Hear, hear!” from monsieur, and “Order, order!” from the chairman.
“I do so because I feel I have no right to take for granted that you all know what is nevertheless a notorious fact in Grandcourt.