12 Mike Read online

  While he was engaged on these reflections, the train drew up at a small station. Opposite the door of Mike’s compartment was standing a boy of about Mike’s size, though evidently some years older. He had a sharp face, with rather a prominent nose; and a pair of pince-nez gave him a supercilious look. He wore a bowler hat, and carried a small portmanteau.

  He opened the door, and took the seat opposite to Mike, whom he scrutinised for a moment rather after the fashion of a naturalist examining some new and unpleasant variety of beetle. He seemed about to make some remark, but, instead, got up and looked through the open window.

  “Where’s that porter?” Mike heard him say.

  The porter came skimming down the platform at that moment.

  “Porter.”

  “Sir?”

  “Are those frightful boxes of mine in all right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Because, you know, there’ll be a frightful row if any of them get lost.”

  “No chance of that, sir.”

  “Here you are, then.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The youth drew his head and shoulders in, stared at Mike again, and finally sat down. Mike noticed that he had nothing to read, and wondered if he wanted anything; but he did not feel equal to offering him one of his magazines. He did not like the looks of him particularly. Judging by appearances, he seemed to carry enough side for three. If he wanted a magazine, thought Mike, let him ask for it.

  The other made no overtures, and at the next stop got out. That explained his magazineless condition. He was only travelling a short way.

  “Good business,” said Mike to himself. He had all the Englishman’s love of a carriage to himself.

  The train was just moving out of the station when his eye was suddenly caught by the stranger’s bag, lying snugly in the rack.

  And here, I regret to say, Mike acted from the best motives, which is always fatal.

  He realised in an instant what had happened. The fellow had forgotten his bag.

  Mike had not been greatly fascinated by the stranger’s looks; but, after all, the most supercilious person on earth has a right to his own property. Besides, he might have been quite a nice fellow when you got to know him. Anyhow, the bag had better be returned at once. The trainwas already moving quite fast, and Mike’s compartment was nearing the end of the platform.

  He snatched the bag from the rack and hurled it out of the window. (Porter Robinson, who happened to be in the line of fire, escaped with a flesh wound.) Then he sat down again with the inward glow of satisfaction which comes to one when one has risen successfully to a sudden emergency.

  The glow lasted till the next stoppage, which did not occur for a good many miles. Then it ceased abruptly, for the train had scarcely come to a standstill when the opening above the door was darkened by a head and shoulders. The head was surmounted by a bowler, and a pair of pince-nez gleamed from the shadow.

  “Hullo, I say,” said the stranger. “Have you changed carriages, or what?”

  “No,” said Mike.

  “Then, dash it, where’s my frightful bag?”

  Life teems with embarrassing situations. This was one of them.

  “The fact is,” said Mike, “I chucked it out.”

  “Chucked it out! what do you mean? When?”

  “At the last station.”

  The guard blew his whistle, and the other jumped into the carriage.

  “I thought you’d got out there for good,” explained Mike. “I’m awfully sorry.”

  “Where is the bag?”

  “On the platform at the last station. It hit a porter.”

  Against his will, for he wished to treat the matter with fitting solemnity, Mike grinned at the recollection. The look on Porter Robinson’s face as the bag took him in the small of the back had been funny, though not intentionally so.

  The bereaved owner disapproved of this levity; and said as much.

  “Don’t grin, you little beast,” he shouted. “There’s nothing to laugh at. You go chucking bags that don’t belong to you out of the window, and then you have the frightful cheek to grin about it.”

  “It wasn’t that,” said Mike hurriedly. “Only the porter looked awfully funny when it hit him.”

  “Dash the porter! What’s going to happen about my bag? I can’t get out for half a second to buy a magazine without your flinging my things about the platform. What you want is a frightful kicking.”

  The situation was becoming difficult. But fortunately at this moment the train stopped once again; and, looking out of the window, Mike saw a board with East Wobsley upon it in large letters. A moment later Bob’s head appeared in the doorway.

  “Hullo, there you are,” said Bob.

  His eye fell upon Mike’s companion.

  “Hullo, Gazeka!” he exclaimed. “Where did you spring from? Do you know my brother? He’s coming to Wrykyn this term. By the way, rather lucky you’ve met. He’s in your house. Firby-Smith’s head of Wain’s, Mike.”

  Mike gathered that Gazeka and Firby-Smith were one and the same person. He grinned again. Firby-Smith continued to look ruffled, though not aggressive.

  “Oh, are you in Wain’s?” he said.

  “I say, Bob,” said Mike, “I’ve made rather an ass of myself.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I mean, what happened was this. I chucked Firby-Smith’s portmanteau out of the window, thinking he’d got out, only he hadn’t really, and it’s at a station miles back.”

  “You’re a bit of a rotter, aren’t you? Had it got your name and address on it, Gazeka?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, then it’s certain to be all right. It’s bound to turn up some time. They’ll send it on by the next train, and you’ll get it either to-night or to-morrow.”

  “Frightful nuisance, all the same. Lots of things in it I wanted.”

  “Oh, never mind, it’s all right. I say, what have you been doing in the holidays? I didn’t know you lived on this line at all.”

  From this point onwards Mike was out of the conversation altogether. Bob and Firby-Smith talked of Wrykyn, discussing events of the previous term of which Mike had never heard. Names came into their conversation which were entirely new to him. He realised that school politics were being talked, and that contributions from him to the dialogue were not required. He took up his magazine again, listening the while. They were discussing Wain’s now. The name Wyatt cropped up with some frequency. Wyatt was apparently something of a character. Mention was made of rows in which he had played a part in the past.

  “It must be pretty rotten for him,” said Bob. “He and Wain never get on very well, and yet they have to be together, holidays as well as term. Pretty bad having a step-father at all—I shouldn’t care to—and when your housemaster and your step-father are the same man, it’s a bit thick.”

  “Frightful,” agreed Firby-Smith.

  “I swear, if I were in Wyatt’s place, I should rot about like anything. It isn’t as if he’d anything to look forward to when he leaves. He told me last term that Wain had got a nomination for him in some beastly bank, and that he was going into it directly after the end of this term. Rather rough on a chap like Wyatt. Good cricketer and footballer, I mean, and all that sort of thing. It’s just the sort of life he’ll hate most. Hullo, here we are.”

  Mike looked out of the window. It was Wrykyn at last.

  CHAPTER III

  MIKE FINDS A FRIENDLY NATIVE

  Mike was surprised to find, on alighting, that the platform was entirely free from Wrykynians. In all the stories he had read the whole school came back by the same train, and, having smashed in one another’s hats and chaffed the porters, made their way to the school buildings in a solid column. But here they were alone.

  A remark of Bob’s to Firby-Smith explained this. “Can’t make out why none of the fellows came back by this train,” he said. “Heaps of them must come by this line, and it’s the only Christian train
they run,”

  “Don’t want to get here before the last minute they can possibly manage. Silly idea. I suppose they think there’d be nothing to do.”

  “What shall we do?” said Bob. “Come and have some tea at Cook’s?”

  “All right.”

  Bob looked at Mike. There was no disguising the fact that he would be in the way; but how convey this fact delicately to him?

  “Look here, Mike,” he said, with a happy inspiration, “Firby-Smith and I are just going to get some tea. I think you’d better nip up to the school. Probably Wain will want to see you, and tell you all about things, which is your dorm. and so on. See you later,” he concluded airily. “Any one’ll tell you the way to the school. Go straight on. They’ll send your luggage on later. So long.” And his sole prop in this world of strangers departed, leaving him to find his way for himself.

  There is no subject on which opinions differ so widely as this matter of finding the way to a place. To the man who knows, it is simplicity itself. Probably he really does imagine that he goes straight on, ignoring the fact that for him the choice of three roads, all more or less straight, has no perplexities. The man who does not know feels as if he were in a maze.

  Mike started out boldly, and lost his way. Go in which direction he would, he always seemed to arrive at a square with a fountain and an equestrian statue in its centre. On the fourth repetition of this feat he stopped in a disheartened way, and looked about him. He was beginning to feel bitter towards Bob. The man might at least have shown him where to get some tea.

  At this moment a ray of hope shone through the gloom. Crossing the square was a short, thick-set figure clad in grey flannel trousers, a blue blazer, and a straw hat with a coloured band. Plainly a Wrykynian. Mike made for him.

  “Can you tell me the way to the school, please,” he said.

  “Oh, you’re going to the school,” said the other. He had a pleasant, square-jawed face, reminiscent of a good-tempered bull-dog, and a pair of very deep-set grey eyes which somehow put Mike at his ease. There was something singularly cool and genial about them. He felt that they saw the humour in things, and that their owner was a person who liked most people and whom most people liked.

  “You look rather lost,” said the stranger. “Been hunting for it long?”

  “Yes,” said Mike.

  “Which house do you want?”

  “Wain’s.”

  “Wain’s? Then you’ve come to the right man this time. What I don’t know about Wain’s isn’t worth knowing.”

  “Are you there, too?”

  “Am I not! Term and holidays. There’s no close season for me.”

  “Oh, are you Wyatt, then?” asked Mike.

  “Hullo, this is fame. How did you know my name, as the ass in the detective story always says to the detective, who’s seen it in the lining of his hat? Who’s been talking about me?”

  “I heard my brother saying something about you in the train.”

  “Who’s your brother?”

  “Jackson. He’s in Donaldson’s.”

  “I know. A stout fellow. So you’re the newest make of Jackson, latest model, with all the modern improvements? Are there any more of you?”

  “Not brothers,” said Mike.

  “Pity. You can’t quite raise a team, then? Are you a sort of young Tyldesley, too?”

  “I played a bit at my last school. Only a private school, you know,” added Mike modestly.

  “Make any runs? What was your best score?”

  “Hundred and twenty-three,” said Mike awkwardly. “It was only against kids, you know.” He was in terror lest he should seem to be bragging.

  “That’s pretty useful. Any more centuries?”

  “Yes,” said Mike, shuffling.

  “How many?”

  “Seven altogether. You know, it was really awfully rotten bowling. And I was a good bit bigger than most of the chaps there. And my pater always has a pro. down in the Easter holidays, which gave me a bit of an advantage.”

  “All the same, seven centuries isn’t so dusty against any bowling. We shall want some batting in the house this term. Look here, I was just going to have some tea. You come along, too.”

  “Oh, thanks awfully,” said Mike. “My brother and Firby-Smith have gone to a place called Cook’s.”

  “The old Gazeka? I didn’t know he lived in your part of the world. He’s head of Wain’s.”

  “Yes, I know,” said Mike. “Why is he called Gazeka?” he asked after a pause.

  “Don’t you think he looks like one? What did you think of him?”

  “I didn’t speak to him much,” said Mike cautiously. It is always delicate work answering a question like this unless one has some sort of an inkling as to the views of the questioner.

  “He’s all right,” said Wyatt, answering for himself. “He’s got a habit of talking to one as if he were a prince of the blood dropping a gracious word to one of the three Small-Heads at the Hippodrome, but that’s his misfortune. We all have our troubles. That’s his. Let’s go in here. It’s too far to sweat to Cook’s.”

  It was about a mile from the tea-shop to the school. Mike’s first impression on arriving at the school grounds was of his smallness and insignificance. Everything looked so big—the buildings, the grounds, everything. He felt out of the picture. He was glad that he had met Wyatt. To make his entrance into this strange land alone would have been more of an ordeal than he would have cared to face.

  “That’s Wain’s,” said Wyatt, pointing to one of half a dozen large houses which lined the road on the south side of the cricket field. Mike followed his finger, and took in the size of his new home.

  “I say, it’s jolly big,” he said. “How many fellows are there in it?”

  “Thirty-one this term, I believe.”

  “That’s more than there were at King-Hall’s.”

  “What’s King-Hall’s?”

  “The private school I was at. At Emsworth.”

  Emsworth seemed very remote and unreal to him as he spoke.

  They skirted the cricket field, walking along the path that divided the two terraces. The Wrykyn playing-fields were formed of a series of huge steps, cut out of the hill. At the top of the hill came the school. On the first terrace was a sort of informal practice ground, where, though no games were played on it, there was a good deal of punting and drop-kicking in the winter and fielding-practice in the summer. The next terrace was the biggest of all, and formed the first eleven cricket ground, a beautiful piece of turf, a shade too narrow for its length, bounded on the terrace side by a sharply sloping bank, some fifteen feet deep, and on the other by the precipice leading to the next terrace. At the far end of the ground stood the pavilion, and beside it a little ivy-covered rabbit-hutch for the scorers. Old Wrykynians always claimed that it was the prettiest school ground in England. It certainly had the finest view. From the verandah of the pavilion you could look over three counties.

  Wain’s house wore an empty and desolate appearance. There were signs of activity, however, inside; and a smell of soap and warm water told of preparations recently completed.

  Wyatt took Mike into the matron’s room, a small room opening out of the main passage.

  “This is Jackson,” he said. “Which dormitory is he in, Miss Payne?”

  The matron consulted a paper.

  “He’s in yours, Wyatt.”

  “Good business. Who’s in the other bed? There are going to be three of us, aren’t there?”

  “Fereira was to have slept there, but we have just heard that he is not coming back this term. He has had to go on a sea-voyage for his health.”

  “Seems queer any one actually taking the trouble to keep Fereira in the world,” said Wyatt. “I’ve often thought of giving him Rough On Rats myself. Come along, Jackson, and I’ll show you the room.”

  They went along the passage, and up a flight of stairs.

  “Here you are,” said Wyatt.

  It was a fai
r-sized room. The window, heavily barred, looked out over a large garden.

  “I used to sleep here alone last term,” said Wyatt, “but the house is so full now they’ve turned it into a dormitory.”

  “I say, I wish these bars weren’t here. It would be rather a rag to get out of the window on to that wall at night, and hop down into the garden and explore,” said Mike.

  Wyatt looked at him curiously, and moved to the window.

  “I’m not going to let you do it, of course,” he said, “because you’d go getting caught, and dropped on, which isn’t good for one in one’s first term; but just to amuse you–-“

  He jerked at the middle bar, and the next moment he was standing with it in his hand, and the way to the garden was clear.

  “By Jove!” said Mike.

  “That’s simply an object-lesson, you know,” said Wyatt, replacing the bar, and pushing the screws back into their putty. “I get out at night myself because I think my health needs it. Besides, it’s my last term, anyhow, so it doesn’t matter what I do. But if I find you trying to cut out in the small hours, there’ll be trouble. See?”

  “All right,” said Mike, reluctantly. “But I wish you’d let me.”