12 Mike Read online

  “Do you think you will be caught?”

  “Shouldn’t be surprised. Anyhow, you stay where you are. Go to sleep and dream that you’re playing for the school against Ripton. So long.”

  And Wyatt, laying the bar he had extracted on the window-sill, wriggled out. Mike saw him disappearing along the wall.

  It was all very well for Wyatt to tell him to go to sleep, but it was not so easy to do it. The room was almost light; and Mike always found it difficult to sleep unless it was dark. He turned over on his side and shut his eyes, but he had never felt wider awake. Twice he heard the quarters chime from the school clock; and the second time he gave up the struggle. He got out of bed and went to the window. It was a lovely night, just the sort of night on which, if he had been at home, he would have been out after moths with a lantern.

  A sharp yowl from an unseen cat told of Wyatt’s presence somewhere in the big garden. He would have given much to be with him, but he realised that he was on parole. He had promised not to leave the house, and there was an end of it.

  He turned away from the window and sat down on his bed. Then a beautiful, consoling thought came to him. He had given his word that he would not go into the garden, but nothing had been said about exploring inside the house. It was quite late now. Everybody would be in bed. It would be quite safe. And there must be all sorts of things to interest the visitor in Wain’s part of the house. Food, perhaps. Mike felt that he could just do with a biscuit. And there were bound to be biscuits on the sideboard in Wain’s dining-room.

  He crept quietly out of the dormitory.

  He had been long enough in the house to know the way, in spite of the fact that all was darkness. Down the stairs, along the passage to the left, and up a few more stairs at the end The beauty of the position was that the dining-room had two doors, one leading into Wain’s part of the house, the other into the boys’ section. Any interruption that there might be would come from the further door.

  To make himself more secure he locked that door; then, turning up the incandescent light, he proceeded to look about him.

  Mr. Wain’s dining-room repaid inspection. There were the remains of supper on the table. Mike cut himself some cheese and took some biscuits from the box, feeling that he was doing himself well. This was Life. There was a little soda-water in the syphon. He finished it. As it swished into the glass, it made a noise that seemed to him like three hundred Niagaras; but nobody else in the house appeared to have noticed it.

  He took some more biscuits, and an apple.

  After which, feeling a new man, he examined the room.

  And this was where the trouble began.

  On a table in one corner stood a small gramophone. And gramophones happened to be Mike’s particular craze.

  All thought of risk left him. The soda-water may have got into his head, or he may have been in a particularly reckless mood, as indeed he was. The fact remains that he inserted the first record that came to hand, wound the machine up, and set it going.

  The next moment, very loud and nasal, a voice from the machine announced that Mr. Godfrey Field would sing “The Quaint Old Bird.” And, after a few preliminary chords, Mr. Field actually did so.

  “Auntie went to Aldershot in a Paris pom-pom hat.”

  Mike stood and drained it in.

  “… Good gracious (sang Mr. Field), what was that?”

  It was a rattling at the handle of the door. A rattling that turned almost immediately into a spirited banging. A voice accompanied the banging. “Who is there?” inquired the voice. Mike recognised it as Mr. Wain’s. He was not alarmed. The man who holds the ace of trumps has no need to be alarmed. His position was impregnable. The enemy was held in check by the locked door, while the other door offered an admirable and instantaneous way of escape.

  Mike crept across the room on tip-toe and opened the window. It had occurred to him, just in time, that if Mr. Wain, on entering the room, found that the occupant had retired by way of the boys’ part of the house, he might possibly obtain a clue to his identity. If, on the other hand, he opened the window, suspicion would be diverted. Mike had not read his “Raffles” for nothing.

  The handle-rattling was resumed. This was good. So long as the frontal attack was kept up, there was no chance of his being taken in the rear—his only danger.

  He stopped the gramophone, which had been pegging away patiently at “The Quaint Old Bird” all the time, and reflected. It seemed a pity to evacuate the position and ring down the curtain on what was, to date, the most exciting episode of his life; but he must not overdo the thing, and get caught. At any moment the noise might bring reinforcements to the besieging force, though it was not likely, for the dining-room was a long way from the dormitories; and it might flash upon their minds that there were two entrances to the room. Or the same bright thought might come to Wain himself.

  “Now what,” pondered Mike, “would A. J. Raffles have done in a case like this? Suppose he’d been after somebody’s jewels, and found that they were after him, and he’d locked one door, and could get away by the other.”

  The answer was simple.

  “He’d clear out,” thought Mike.

  Two minutes later he was in bed.

  He lay there, tingling all over with the consciousness of having played a masterly game, when suddenly a gruesome idea came to him, and he sat up, breathless. Suppose Wain took it into his head to make a tour of the dormitories, to see that all was well! Wyatt was still in the garden somewhere, blissfully unconscious of what was going on indoors. He would be caught for a certainty!

  CHAPTER VI

  IN WHICH A TIGHT CORNER IS EVADED

  For a moment the situation paralysed Mike. Then he began to be equal to it. In times of excitement one thinks rapidly and clearly. The main point, the kernel of the whole thing, was that he must get into the garden somehow, and warn Wyatt. And at the same time, he must keep Mr. Wain from coming to the dormitory. He jumped out of bed, and dashed down the dark stairs.

  He had taken care to close the dining-room door after him. It was open now, and he could hear somebody moving inside the room. Evidently his retreat had been made just in time.

  He knocked at the door, and went in.

  Mr. Wain was standing at the window, looking out. He spun round at the knock, and stared in astonishment at Mike’s pyjama-clad figure. Mike, in spite of his anxiety, could barely check a laugh. Mr. Wain was a tall, thin man, with a serious face partially obscured by a grizzled beard. He wore spectacles, through which he peered owlishly at Mike. His body was wrapped in a brown dressing-gown. His hair was ruffled. He looked like some weird bird.

  “Please, sir, I thought I heard a noise,” said Mike.

  Mr. Wain continued to stare.

  “What are you doing here?” said he at last.

  “Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”

  “A noise?”

  “Please, sir, a row.”

  “You thought you heard–-!”

  The thing seemed to be worrying Mr. Wain.

  “So I came down, sir,” said Mike.

  The housemaster’s giant brain still appeared to be somewhat clouded. He looked about him, and, catching sight of the gramophone, drew inspiration from it.

  “Did you turn on the gramophone?” he asked.

  “Me, sir!” said Mike, with the air of a bishop accused of contributing to the Police News.

  “Of course not, of course not,” said Mr. Wain hurriedly. “Of course not. I don’t know why I asked. All this is very unsettling. What are you doing here?”

  “Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”

  “A noise?”

  “A row, sir.”

  If it was Mr. Wain’s wish that he should spend the night playing Massa Tambo to his Massa Bones, it was not for him to baulk the housemaster’s innocent pleasure. He was prepared to continue the snappy dialogue till breakfast time.

  “I think there must have been a burglar in here, Jackson.”

&
nbsp; “Looks like it, sir.”

  “I found the window open.”

  “He’s probably in the garden, sir.”

  Mr. Wain looked out into the garden with an annoyed expression, as if its behaviour in letting burglars be in it struck him as unworthy of a respectable garden.

  “He might be still in the house,” said Mr. Wain, ruminatively.

  “Not likely, sir.”

  “You think not?”

  “Wouldn’t be such a fool, sir. I mean, such an ass, sir.”

  “Perhaps you are right, Jackson.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder if he was hiding in the shrubbery, sir.”

  Mr. Wain looked at the shrubbery, as who should say, “Et tu, Brute!”

  “By Jove! I think I see him,” cried Mike. He ran to the window, and vaulted through it on to the lawn. An inarticulate protest from Mr. Wain, rendered speechless by this move just as he had been beginning to recover his faculties, and he was running across the lawn into the shrubbery. He felt that all was well. There might be a bit of a row on his return, but he could always plead overwhelming excitement.

  Wyatt was round at the back somewhere, and the problem was how to get back without being seen from the dining-room window. Fortunately a belt of evergreens ran along the path right up to the house. Mike worked his way cautiously through these till he was out of sight, then tore for the regions at the back.

  The moon had gone behind the clouds, and it was not easy to find a way through the bushes. Twice branches sprang out from nowhere, and hit Mike smartly over the shins, eliciting sharp howls of pain.

  On the second of these occasions a low voice spoke from somewhere on his right.

  “Who on earth’s that?” it said.

  Mike stopped.

  “Is that you, Wyatt? I say–-“

  “Jackson!”

  The moon came out again, and Mike saw Wyatt clearly. His knees were covered with mould. He had evidently been crouching in the bushes on all fours.

  “You young ass,” said Wyatt. “You promised me that you wouldn’t get out.”

  “Yes, I know, but–-“

  “I heard you crashing through the shrubbery like a hundred elephants. If you must get out at night and chance being sacked, you might at least have the sense to walk quietly.”

  “Yes, but you don’t understand.”

  And Mike rapidly explained the situation.

  “But how the dickens did he hear you, if you were in the dining-room?” asked Wyatt. “It’s miles from his bedroom. You must tread like a policeman.”

  “It wasn’t that. The thing was, you see, it was rather a rotten thing to do, I suppose, but I turned on the gramophone.”

  “You—_what?_”

  “The gramophone. It started playing ‘The Quaint Old Bird.’ Ripping it was, till Wain came along.”

  Wyatt doubled up with noiseless laughter.

  “You’re a genius,” he said. “I never saw such a man. Well, what’s the game now? What’s the idea?”

  “I think you’d better nip back along the wall and in through the window, and I’ll go back to the dining-room. Then it’ll be all right if Wain comes and looks into the dorm. Or, if you like, you might come down too, as if you’d just woke up and thought you’d heard a row.”

  “That’s not a bad idea. All right. You dash along then. I’ll get back.”

  Mr. Wain was still in the dining-room, drinking in the beauties of the summer night through the open window. He gibbered slightly when Mike reappeared.

  “Jackson! What do you mean by running about outside the house in this way! I shall punish you very heavily. I shall certainly report the matter to the headmaster. I will not have boys rushing about the garden in their pyjamas. You will catch an exceedingly bad cold. You will do me two hundred lines, Latin and English. Exceedingly so. I will not have it. Did you not hear me call to you?”

  “Please, sir, so excited,” said Mike, standing outside with his hands on the sill.

  “You have no business to be excited. I will not have it. It is exceedingly impertinent of you.”

  “Please, sir, may I come in?”

  “Come in! Of course, come in. Have you no sense, boy? You are laying the seeds of a bad cold. Come in at once.”

  Mike clambered through the window.

  “I couldn’t find him, sir. He must have got out of the garden.”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Mr. Wain. “Undoubtedly so. It was very wrong of you to search for him. You have been seriously injured. Exceedingly so”

  He was about to say more on the subject when Wyatt strolled into the room. Wyatt wore the rather dazed expression of one who has been aroused from deep sleep. He yawned before he spoke.

  “I thought I heard a noise, sir,” he said.

  He called Mr. Wain “father” in private, “sir” in public. The presence of Mike made this a public occasion.

  “Has there been a burglary?”

  “Yes,” said Mike, “only he has got away.”

  “Shall I go out into the garden, and have a look round, sir?” asked Wyatt helpfully.

  The question stung Mr. Wain into active eruption once more.

  “Under no circumstances whatever,” he said excitedly. “Stay where you are, James. I will not have boys running about my garden at night. It is preposterous. Inordinately so. Both of you go to bed immediately. I shall not speak to you again on this subject. I must be obeyed instantly. You hear me, Jackson? James, you understand me? To bed at once. And, if I find you outside your dormitory again to-night, you will both be punished with extreme severity. I will not have this lax and reckless behaviour.”

  “But the burglar, sir?” said Wyatt.

  “We might catch him, sir,” said Mike.

  Mr. Wain’s manner changed to a slow and stately sarcasm, in much the same way as a motorcar changes from the top speed to its first.

  “I was under the impression,” he said, in the heavy way almost invariably affected by weak masters in their dealings with the obstreperous, “I was distinctly under the impression that I had ordered you to retire immediately to your dormitory. It is possible that you mistook my meaning. In that case I shall be happy to repeat what I said. It is also in my mind that I threatened to punish you with the utmost severity if you did not retire at once. In these circumstances, James—and you, Jackson—you will doubtless see the necessity of complying with my wishes.”

  They made it so.

  CHAPTER VII

  IN WHICH MIKE IS DISCUSSED

  Trevor and Clowes, of Donaldson’s, were sitting in their study a week after the gramophone incident, preparatory to going on the river. At least Trevor was in the study, getting tea ready. Clowes was on the window-sill, one leg in the room, the other outside, hanging over space. He loved to sit in this attitude, watching some one else work, and giving his views on life to whoever would listen to them. Clowes was tall, and looked sad, which he was not. Trevor was shorter, and very much in earnest over all that he did. On the present occasion he was measuring out tea with a concentration worthy of a general planning a campaign.

  “One for the pot,” said Clowes.

  “All right,” breathed Trevor. “Come and help, you slacker.”

  “Too busy.”

  “You aren’t doing a stroke.”

  “My lad, I’m thinking of Life. That’s a thing you couldn’t do. I often say to people, ‘Good chap, Trevor, but can’t think of Life. Give him a tea-pot and half a pound of butter to mess about with,’ I say, ‘and he’s all right. But when it comes to deep thought, where is he? Among the also-rans.’ That’s what I say.”

  “Silly ass,” said Trevor, slicing bread. “What particular rot were you thinking about just then? What fun it was sitting back and watching other fellows work, I should think.”

  “My mind at the moment,” said Clowes, “was tensely occupied with the problem of brothers at school. Have you got any brothers, Trevor?”

  “One. Couple of years younger than me. I say, we sha
ll want some more jam to-morrow. Better order it to-day.”

  “See it done, Tigellinus, as our old pal Nero used to remark. Where is he? Your brother, I mean.”

  “Marlborough.”

  “That shows your sense. I have always had a high opinion of your sense, Trevor. If you’d been a silly ass, you’d have let your people send him here.”

  “Why not? Shouldn’t have minded.”

  “I withdraw what I said about your sense. Consider it unsaid. I have a brother myself. Aged fifteen. Not a bad chap in his way. Like the heroes of the school stories. ‘Big blue eyes literally bubbling over with fun.’ At least, I suppose it’s fun to him. Cheek’s what I call it. My people wanted to send him here. I lodged a protest. I said, ‘One Clowes is ample for any public school.’”

  “You were right there,” said Trevor.

  “I said, ‘One Clowes is luxury, two excess.’ I pointed out that I was just on the verge of becoming rather a blood at Wrykyn, and that I didn’t want the work of years spoiled by a brother who would think it a rag to tell fellows who respected and admired me–-“

  “Such as who?”

  “–-Anecdotes of a chequered infancy. There are stories about me which only my brother knows. Did I want them spread about the school? No, laddie, I did not. Hence, we see my brother two terms ago, packing up his little box, and tooling off to Rugby. And here am I at Wrykyn, with an unstained reputation, loved by all who know me, revered by all who don’t; courted by boys, fawned upon by masters. People’s faces brighten when I throw them a nod. If I frown–-“

  “Oh, come on,” said Trevor.

  Bread and jam and cake monopolised Clowes’s attention for the next quarter of an hour. At the end of that period, however, he returned to his subject.

  “After the serious business of the meal was concluded, and a simple hymn had been sung by those present,” he said, “Mr. Clowes resumed his very interesting remarks. We were on the subject of brothers at school. Now, take the melancholy case of Jackson Brothers. My heart bleeds for Bob.”

  “Jackson’s all right. What’s wrong with him? Besides, naturally, young Jackson came to Wrykyn when all his brothers had been here.”