"And I"m going to look after it," said Kennedy, "as you"ll find."
Jimmy Silver put in a plaintive protest.
"I wish you two men wouldn"t talk shop," he said. "It"s bad enough having Kay"s next door to one, without your dragging it into the conversation. How were the forwards this evening, Kennedy?"
"Not bad," said Kennedy, shortly.
"I wonder if we shall lick Tuppenham on Sat.u.r.day?"
"I don"t know," said Kennedy; and there was silence again.
"Look here, Jimmy," said Kennedy, after a long pause, during which the head of Blackburn"s tried to fill up the blank in the conversation by toasting a piece of bread in a way which was intended to suggest that if he were not so busy, the talk would be unchecked and animated, "it"s no good. We must have it out some time, so it may as well be here as anywhere else. I"ve been looking for Fenn all day."
"Sorry to give you all that trouble," said Fenn, with a sneer. "Got something important to say?"
"Yes."
"Go ahead, then."
Jimmy Silver stood between them with the toasting-fork in his hand, as if he meant to plunge it into the one who first showed symptoms of flying at the other"s throat. He was unhappy. His peace-making tea-party was not proving a success.
"I wanted to ask you," said Kennedy, quietly, "what you meant by giving the f.a.gs leave down town when you knew that they ought to come to me?"
The gentle and intelligent reader will remember (though that miserable worm, the vapid and irreflective reader, will have forgotten) that at the beginning of the term the f.a.gs of Kay"s had endeavoured to show their approval of Fenn and their disapproval of Kennedy by applying to the former for leave when they wished to go to the town; and that Fenn had received them in the most ungrateful manner with blows instead of exeats. Strong in this recollection, he was not disturbed by Kennedy"s question. Indeed, it gave him a comfortable feeling of rect.i.tude.
There is nothing more pleasant than to be accused to your face of something which you can deny on the spot with an easy conscience. It is like getting a very loose ball at cricket. Fenn felt almost friendly towards Kennedy.
"I meant nothing," he replied, "for the simple reason that I didn"t do it."
"I caught Wren down town yesterday, and he said you had given him leave."
"Then he lied, and I hope you licked him."
"There you are, you see," broke in Jimmy Silver triumphantly, "it"s all a misunderstanding. You two have got no right to be cutting one another. Why on earth can"t you stop all this rot, and behave like decent members of society again?"
"As a matter of fact," said Fenn, "they did try it on earlier in the term. I wasted a lot of valuable time pointing out to them with a swagger-stick--that I was the wrong person to come to. I"m sorry you should have thought I could play it as low down as that."
Kennedy hesitated. It is not very pleasant to have to climb down after starting a conversation in a stormy and wrathful vein. But it had to be done.
"I"m sorry, Fenn," he said; "I was an idiot."
Jimmy Silver cut in again.
"You were," he said, with enthusiasm. "You both were. I used to think Fenn was a bigger idiot than you, but now I"m inclined to call it a dead heat. What"s the good of going on trying to see which of you can make the bigger fool of himself? You"ve both lowered all previous records."
"I suppose we have," said Fenn. "At least, I have."
"No, I have," said Kennedy.
"You both have," said Jimmy Silver. "Another cup of tea, anybody? Say when."
Fenn and Kennedy walked back to Kay"s together, and tea-d together in Fenn"s study on the following afternoon, to the amazement--and even scandal--of Master Spencer, who discovered them at it. Spencer liked excitement; and with the two leaders of the house at logger-heads, things could never be really dull. If, as appearances seemed to suggest, they had agreed to settle their differences, life would become monotonous again--possibly even unpleasant.
This thought flashed through Spencer"s brain (as he called it) when he opened Fenn"s door and found him helping Kennedy to tea.
"Oh, the headmaster wants to see you, please, Fenn," said Spencer, recovering from his amazement, "and told me to give you this."
"This" was a prefect"s cap. Fenn recognised it without difficulty. It was the cap he had left in the sitting-room of the house in the High Street.
XXI
IN WHICH AN EPISODE IS CLOSED
"Thanks," said Fenn.
He stood twirling the cap round in his hand as Spencer closed the door. Then he threw it on to the table. He did not feel particularly disturbed at the thought of the interview that was to come. He had been expecting the cap to turn up, like the corpse of Eugene Aram"s victim, at some inconvenient moment. It was a pity that it had come just as things looked as if they might be made more or less tolerable in Kay"s. He had been looking forward with a grim pleasure to the sensation that would be caused in the house when it became known that he and Kennedy had formed a combine for its moral and physical benefit. But that was all over. He would be sacked, beyond a doubt. In the history of Eckleton, as far as he knew it, there had never been a case of a fellow breaking out at night and not being expelled when he was caught. It was one of the cardinal sins in the school code. There had been the case of Peter Brown, which his brother had mentioned in his letter. And in his own time he had seen three men vanish from Eckleton for the same offence. He did not flatter himself that his record at the school was so good as to make it likely that the authorities would stretch a point in his favour.
"So long, Kennedy," he said. "You"ll be here when I get back, I suppose?"
"What does he want you for, do you think?" asked Kennedy, stretching himself, with a yawn. It never struck him that Fenn could be in any serious trouble. Fenn was a prefect; and when the headmaster sent for a prefect, it was generally to tell him that he had got a split infinitive in his English Essay that week.
"Glad I"m not you," he added, as a gust of wind rattled the sash, and the rain dashed against the pane. "Beastly evening to have to go out."
"It isn"t the rain I mind," said Fenn; "it"s what"s going to happen when I get indoors again," and refused to explain further. There would be plenty of time to tell Kennedy the whole story when he returned. It was better not to keep the headmaster waiting.
The first thing he noticed on reaching the School House was the strange demeanour of the butler. Whenever Fenn had had occasion to call on the headmaster hitherto, Watson had admitted him with the air of a high priest leading a devotee to a shrine of which he was the sole managing director. This evening he seemed restless, excited.
"Good evening, Mr Fenn," he said. "This way, sir."
Those were his actual words. Fenn had not known for certain until now that he _could_ talk. On previous occasions their conversations had been limited to an "Is the headmaster in?" from Fenn, and a stately inclination of the head from Watson. The man was getting a positive babbler.
With an eager, springy step, distantly reminiscent of a shopwalker heading a procession of customers, with a touch of the style of the winner in a walking-race to Brighton, the once slow-moving butler led the way to the headmaster"s study.
For the first time since he started out, Fenn was conscious of a tremor. There is something about a closed door, behind which somebody is waiting to receive one, which appeals to the imagination, especially if the ensuing meeting is likely to be an unpleasant one.
"Ah, Fenn," said the headmaster. "Come in."
Fenn wondered. It was not in this tone of voice that the Head was wont to begin a conversation which was going to prove painful.
"You"ve got your cap, Fenn? I gave it to a small boy in your house to take to you."
"Yes, sir."
He had given up all hope of understanding the Head"s line of action.
Unless he was playing a deep game, and intended to flash out suddenly with a keen question which it would be impossible to parry, there seemed nothing to account for the strange absence of anything unusual in his manner. He referred to the cap as if he had borrowed it from Fenn, and had returned it by bearer, hoping that its loss had not inconvenienced him at all.