12 Mike Read online

  “Not likely.”

  “I’ll tell you all the latest news when I come back. Where are me slippers? Ha, ‘tis well! Lead on, then, minions. I follow.”

  In the study Mr. Wain was fumbling restlessly with his papers when Wyatt appeared.

  “Sit down, James,” he said.

  Wyatt sat down. One of his slippers fell off with a clatter. Mr. Wain jumped nervously.

  “Only my slipper,” explained Wyatt. “It slipped.”

  Mr. Wain took up a pen, and began to tap the table.

  “Well, James?”

  Wyatt said nothing.

  “I should be glad to hear your explanation of this disgraceful matter.”

  “The fact is–-” said Wyatt.

  “Well?”

  “I haven’t one, sir.”

  “What were you doing out of your dormitory, out of the house, at that hour?”

  “I went for a walk, sir.”

  “And, may I inquire, are you in the habit of violating the strictest school rules by absenting yourself from the house during the night?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is an exceedingly serious matter.”

  Wyatt nodded agreement with this view.

  “Exceedingly.”

  The pen rose and fell with the rapidity of the cylinder of a motorcar. Wyatt, watching it, became suddenly aware that the thing was hypnotising him. In a minute or two he would be asleep.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that, father. Tap like that, I mean. It’s sending me to sleep.”

  “James!”

  “It’s like a woodpecker.”

  “Studied impertinence–-“

  “I’m very sorry. Only it was sending me off.”

  Mr. Wain suspended tapping operations, and resumed the thread of his discourse.

  “I am sorry, exceedingly, to see this attitude in you, James. It is not fitting. It is in keeping with your behaviour throughout. Your conduct has been lax and reckless in the extreme. It is possible that you imagine that the peculiar circumstances of our relationship secure you from the penalties to which the ordinary boy–-“

  “No, sir.”

  “I need hardly say,” continued Mr. Wain, ignoring the interruption, “that I shall treat you exactly as I should treat any other member of my house whom I had detected in the same misdemeanour.”

  “Of course,” said Wyatt, approvingly.

  “I must ask you not to interrupt me when I am speaking to you, James. I say that your punishment will be no whit less severe than would be that of any other boy. You have repeatedly proved yourself lacking in ballast and a respect for discipline in smaller ways, but this is a far more serious matter. Exceedingly so. It is impossible for me to overlook it, even were I disposed to do so. You are aware of the penalty for such an action as yours?”

  “The sack,” said Wyatt laconically.

  “It is expulsion. You must leave the school. At once.”

  Wyatt nodded.

  “As you know, I have already secured a nomination for you in the London and Oriental Bank. I shall write to-morrow to the manager asking him to receive you at once–-“

  “After all, they only gain an extra fortnight of me.”

  “You will leave directly I receive his letter. I shall arrange with the headmaster that you are withdrawn privately–-“

  “Not the sack?”

  “Withdrawn privately. You will not go to school to-morrow. Do you understand? That is all. Have you anything to say?”

  Wyatt reflected.

  “No, I don’t think–-“

  His eye fell on a tray bearing a decanter and a syphon.

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Can’t I mix you a whisky and soda, father, before I go off to bed?”

  “Well?” said Mike.

  Wyatt kicked off his slippers, and began to undress.

  “What happened?”

  “We chatted.”

  “Has he let you off?”

  “Like a gun. I shoot off almost immediately. To-morrow I take a well-earned rest away from school, and the day after I become the gay young bank-clerk, all amongst the ink and ledgers.”

  Mike was miserably silent.

  “Buck up,” said Wyatt cheerfully. “It would have happened anyhow in another fortnight. So why worry?”

  Mike was still silent. The reflection was doubtless philosophic, but it failed to comfort him.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE AFTERMATH

  Bad news spreads quickly. By the quarter to eleven interval next day the facts concerning Wyatt and Mr. Wain were public property. Mike, as an actual spectator of the drama, was in great request as an informant. As he told the story to a group of sympathisers outside the school shop, Burgess came up, his eyes rolling in a fine frenzy.

  “Anybody seen young—oh, here you are. What’s all this about Jimmy Wyatt? They’re saying he’s been sacked, or some rot.”

  [Illustration: “WHAT’S ALL THIS ABOUT JIMMY WYATT?”]

  “So he has—at least, he’s got to leave.”

  “What? When?”

  “He’s left already. He isn’t coming to school again.”

  Burgess’s first thought, as befitted a good cricket captain, was for his team.

  “And the Ripton match on Saturday!”

  Nobody seemed to have anything except silent sympathy at his command.

  “Dash the man! Silly ass! What did he want to do it for! Poor old Jimmy, though!” he added after a pause. “What rot for him!”

  “Beastly,” agreed Mike.

  “All the same,” continued Burgess, with a return to the austere manner of the captain of cricket, “he might have chucked playing the goat till after the Ripton match. Look here, young Jackson, you’ll turn out for fielding with the first this afternoon. You’ll play on Saturday.”

  “All right,” said Mike, without enthusiasm. The Wyatt disaster was too recent for him to feel much pleasure at playing against Ripton vice his friend, withdrawn.

  Bob was the next to interview him. They met in the cloisters.

  “Hullo, Mike!” said Bob. “I say, what’s all this about Wyatt?”

  “Wain caught him getting back into the dorm. last night after Neville-Smith’s, and he’s taken him away from the school.”

  “What’s he going to do? Going into that bank straight away?”

  “Yes. You know, that’s the part he bars most. He’d have been leaving anyhow in a fortnight, you see; only it’s awful rot for a chap like Wyatt to have to go and froust in a bank for the rest of his life.”

  “He’ll find it rather a change, I expect. I suppose you won’t be seeing him before he goes?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. Not unless he comes to the dorm. during the night. He’s sleeping over in Wain’s part of the house, but I shouldn’t be surprised if he nipped out after Wain has gone to bed. Hope he does, anyway.”

  “I should like to say good-bye. But I don’t suppose it’ll be possible.”

  They separated in the direction of their respective form-rooms. Mike felt bitter and disappointed at the way the news had been received. Wyatt was his best friend, his pal; and it offended him that the school should take the tidings of his departure as they had done. Most of them who had come to him for information had expressed a sort of sympathy with the absent hero of his story, but the chief sensation seemed to be one of pleasurable excitement at the fact that something big had happened to break the monotony of school routine. They treated the thing much as they would have treated the announcement that a record score had been made in first-class cricket. The school was not so much regretful as comfortably thrilled. And Burgess had actually cursed before sympathising. Mike felt resentful towards Burgess. As a matter of fact, the cricket captain wrote a letter to Wyatt during preparation that night which would have satisfied even Mike’s sense of what was fit. But Mike had no opportunity of learning this.

  There was, however, one exception to
the general rule, one member of the school who did not treat the episode as if it were merely an interesting and impersonal item of sensational news. Neville-Smith heard of what had happened towards the end of the interval, and rushed off instantly in search of Mike. He was too late to catch him before he went to his form-room, so he waited for him at half-past twelve, when the bell rang for the end of morning school.

  “I say, Jackson, is this true about old Wyatt?”

  Mike nodded.

  “What happened?”

  Mike related the story for the sixteenth time. It was a melancholy pleasure to have found a listener who heard the tale in the right spirit. There was no doubt about Neville-Smith’s interest and sympathy. He was silent for a moment after Mike had finished.

  “It was all my fault,” he said at length. “If it hadn’t been for me, this wouldn’t have happened. What a fool I was to ask him to my place! I might have known he would be caught.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mike.

  “It was absolutely my fault.”

  Mike was not equal to the task of soothing Neville-Smith’s wounded conscience. He did not attempt it. They walked on without further conversation till they reached Wain’s gate, where Mike left him. Neville-Smith proceeded on his way, plunged in meditation.

  The result of which meditation was that Burgess got a second shock before the day was out. Bob, going over to the nets rather late in the afternoon, came upon the captain of cricket standing apart from his fellow men with an expression on his face that spoke of mental upheavals on a vast scale.

  “What’s up?” asked Bob.

  “Nothing much,” said Burgess, with a forced and grisly calm. “Only that, as far as I can see, we shall play Ripton on Saturday with a sort of second eleven. You don’t happen to have got sacked or anything, by the way, do you?”

  “What’s happened now?”

  “Neville-Smith. In extra on Saturday. That’s all. Only our first-and second-change bowlers out of the team for the Ripton match in one day. I suppose by to-morrow half the others’ll have gone, and we shall take the field on Saturday with a scratch side of kids from the Junior School.”

  “Neville-Smith! Why, what’s he been doing?”

  “Apparently he gave a sort of supper to celebrate his getting his first, and it was while coming back from that that Wyatt got collared. Well, I’m blowed if Neville-Smith doesn’t toddle off to the Old Man after school to-day and tell him the whole yarn! Said it was all his fault. What rot! Sort of thing that might have happened to any one. If Wyatt hadn’t gone to him, he’d probably have gone out somewhere else.”

  “And the Old Man shoved him in extra?”

  “Next two Saturdays.”

  “Are Ripton strong this year?” asked Bob, for lack of anything better to say.

  “Very, from all accounts. They whacked the M.C.C. Jolly hot team of M.C.C. too. Stronger than the one we drew with.”

  “Oh, well, you never know what’s going to happen at cricket. I may hold a catch for a change.”

  Burgess grunted.

  Bob went on his way to the nets. Mike was just putting on his pads.

  “I say, Mike,” said Bob. “I wanted to see you. It’s about Wyatt. I’ve thought of something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A way of getting him out of that bank. If it comes off, that’s to say.”

  “By Jove, he’d jump at anything. What’s the idea?”

  “Why shouldn’t he get a job of sorts out in the Argentine? There ought to be heaps of sound jobs going there for a chap like Wyatt. He’s a jolly good shot, to start with. I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t rather a score to be able to shoot out there. And he can ride, I know.”

  “By Jove, I’ll write to father to-night. He must be able to work it, I should think. He never chucked the show altogether, did he?”

  Mike, as most other boys of his age would have been, was profoundly ignorant as to the details by which his father’s money had been, or was being, made. He only knew vaguely that the source of revenue had something to do with the Argentine. His brother Joe had been born in Buenos Ayres; and once, three years ago, his father had gone over there for a visit, presumably on business. All these things seemed to show that Mr. Jackson senior was a useful man to have about if you wanted a job in that Eldorado, the Argentine Republic.

  As a matter of fact, Mike’s father owned vast tracts of land up country, where countless sheep lived and had their being. He had long retired from active superintendence of his estate. Like Mr. Spenlow, he had a partner, a stout fellow with the work-taint highly developed, who asked nothing better than to be left in charge. So Mr. Jackson had returned to the home of his fathers, glad to be there again. But he still had a decided voice in the ordering of affairs on the ranches, and Mike was going to the fountain-head of things when he wrote to his father that night, putting forward Wyatt’s claims to attention and ability to perform any sort of job with which he might be presented.

  The reflection that he had done all that could be done tended to console him for the non-appearance of Wyatt either that night or next morning—a non-appearance which was due to the simple fact that he passed that night in a bed in Mr. Wain’s dressing-room, the door of which that cautious pedagogue, who believed in taking no chances, locked from the outside on retiring to rest.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  THE RIPTON MATCH

  Mike got an answer from his father on the morning of the Ripton match. A letter from Wyatt also lay on his plate when he came down to breakfast.

  Mr. Jackson’s letter was short, but to the point. He said he would go and see Wyatt early in the next week. He added that being expelled from a public school was not the only qualification for success as a sheep-farmer, but that, if Mike’s friend added to this a general intelligence and amiability, and a skill for picking off cats with an air-pistol and bull’s-eyes with a Lee-Enfield, there was no reason why something should not be done for him. In any case he would buy him a lunch, so that Wyatt would extract at least some profit from his visit. He said that he hoped something could be managed. It was a pity that a boy accustomed to shoot cats should be condemned for the rest of his life to shoot nothing more exciting than his cuffs.

  Wyatt’s letter was longer. It might have been published under the title “My First Day in a Bank, by a Beginner.” His advent had apparently caused little sensation. He had first had a brief conversation with the manager, which had run as follows:

  “Mr. Wyatt?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “H’m … Sportsman?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cricketer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Play football?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “H’m … Racquets?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Everything?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “H’m … Well, you won’t get any more of it now.”

  After which a Mr. Blenkinsop had led him up to a vast ledger, in which he was to inscribe the addresses of all out-going letters. These letters he would then stamp, and subsequently take in bundles to the post office. Once a week he would be required to buy stamps. “If I were one of those Napoleons of Finance,” wrote Wyatt, “I should cook the accounts, I suppose, and embezzle stamps to an incredible amount. But it doesn’t seem in my line. I’m afraid I wasn’t cut out for a business career. Still, I have stamped this letter at the expense of the office, and entered it up under the heading ‘Sundries,’ which is a sort of start. Look out for an article in the Wrykynian, ‘Hints for Young Criminals, by J. Wyatt, champion catch-as-catch-can stamp-stealer of the British Isles.’ So long. I suppose you are playing against Ripton, now that the world of commerce has found that it can’t get on without me. Mind you make a century, and then perhaps Burgess’ll give you your first after all. There were twelve colours given three years ago, because one chap left at half-term and the man who played instead of him came off against Ripton.”

&n
bsp; This had occurred to Mike independently. The Ripton match was a special event, and the man who performed any outstanding feat against that school was treated as a sort of Horatius. Honours were heaped upon him. If he could only make a century! or even fifty. Even twenty, if it got the school out of a tight place. He was as nervous on the Saturday morning as he had been on the morning of the M.C.C. match. It was Victory or Westminster Abbey now. To do only averagely well, to be among the ruck, would be as useless as not playing at all, as far as his chance of his first was concerned.

  It was evident to those who woke early on the Saturday morning that this Ripton match was not likely to end in a draw. During the Friday rain had fallen almost incessantly in a steady drizzle. It had stopped late at night; and at six in the morning there was every prospect of another hot day. There was that feeling in the air which shows that the sun is trying to get through the clouds. The sky was a dull grey at breakfast time, except where a flush of deeper colour gave a hint of the sun. It was a day on which to win the toss, and go in first. At eleven-thirty, when the match was timed to begin, the wicket would be too wet to be difficult. Runs would come easily till the sun came out and began to dry the ground. When that happened there would be trouble for the side that was batting.

  Burgess, inspecting the wicket with Mr. Spence during the quarter to eleven interval, was not slow to recognise this fact.

  “I should win the toss to-day, if I were you, Burgess,” said Mr. Spence.

  “Just what I was thinking, sir.”

  “That wicket’s going to get nasty after lunch, if the sun comes out. A regular Rhodes wicket it’s going to be.”

  “I wish we had Rhodes,” said Burgess. “Or even Wyatt. It would just suit him, this.”

  Mr. Spence, as a member of the staff, was not going to be drawn into discussing Wyatt and his premature departure, so he diverted the conversation on to the subject of the general aspect of the school’s attack.