So the two friends hastily conferred together in the window, while we stared round with an awestruck, and apparently disconcerting, gaze at the gentlemen on the doormat, who severally represented the majesty of the law and injured innocence.
“Now, then,” said the magistrate presently, “let us hear what this is all about. One of your boys, doctor, I see, is charged with attempting to blow up part of the school gymnasium last night, and injuring this poor fellow here. Who makes the charge, by the way? Do you?”
“No,” said the doctor, “I understand Mr Jarman does.”
“Which is Mr Jarman?” said the captain, looking blandly round. “Ah, you. Well, sir, this is a serious charge to make; let us hear what you have to say. This is not a sworn examination, but what you say will be taken down, and the boy you accuse will have a right to ask any question. Now, sir.”
Mr Jarman, thereupon, with very bad grace, for he felt that the magistrate’s tone was not cordial, related how he was walking in the court at such and such an hour, when he saw a boy attempting to enter the gymnasium. That he stopped him and demanded his name. That the boy pushed past him and entered the gymnasium. Upon which Mr Jarman turned the key on the outside in order to detain him there, by way of punishment. That the boy began to kick at the door, and after half an hour broke it open and made his escape. That the boy was Tempest, and that scarcely two minutes after he had left, and just after Mr Jarman, having stayed to examine the damage to the door, had turned to go away, the explosion occurred; that he heard a cry from young Sugden, the lodge-keeper’s son, who was passing at the time, and was thrown violently forward against the railings, cutting his head badly.
“How do you know the boy was Tempest?” asked the magistrate.
“I recognised him in the dark,” said Mr Jarman. “In fact, I expected him.”
“Expected him?”
“Yes, he had sent his fag for a jacket just previously, and I had sent the fag back.”
“Why?”