“Not to you!” said Tempest hotly; “the fewer you have the better. But if you choose to accuse me, I sha’n’t ask you whom to have to speak for me.”
“Tempest,” said the head master, “you are only doing yourself harm by this. Jones, go and fetch Pridgin, and any of the others he speaks of, to the police court; and kindly do not say a word of what has passed here. Now, constable, are you ready?”
The school was fortunately all within doors at the time, so that, except to the few who chanced to be gazing from the windows, the little procession, headed by the doctor and Mr Jarman, with the policeman and Tempest bringing up the rear, passed unobserved.
I was full of apprehensions. Whatever the result, I knew Tempest well enough to be sure that the effect on him would be bad, and would call out in him all that spirit of insubordination and defiance which had before now threatened to wreck his career. A strong sense of responsibility was all that had hitherto held it in check. If that were now shattered—and how could it help being upset by this charge?—it would break out badly and dangerously. I was not long in speeding over to Sharpe’s, where I found Pridgin just going over to class.
He heard the doctor’s message with a groan of weariness.
“What’s the use of my going?—I can’t tell them anything,” said he.
“You can tell them Tempest never did it,” said I.
“If they don’t believe him, they won’t me. Anyhow, I am coming.” Thereupon I was inspired to tell him the secret history of the effigy of Mr Jarman, and my theory as to the cause of the explosion; namely, that Tempest might have dropped a match through the grating, not knowing on what it would fall, and that in the natural perversity of things it had lit on the projecting tongue of the guy.
“You’d better make a clean breast of that guy,” said Pridgin, “if you want to get Tempest out of this mess. You’ll probably get expelled or flogged, but Low Heath can spare you better than it can Tempest. It strikes me you’d better fetch down one or two of your lot to corroborate you. It sounds too neat a story as it is.”
Whereupon I sought out Langrish and Trimble, and had the satisfaction of making their hair stand on end for once. At first they flatly refused to come, and reminded me that, as President of the Conversation Club, the entire responsibility for the guy rested on me.