The Head of Kay's Part 7

VII

A CLUE

The guard-tent had disappeared.

Private Jones' bewildered eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, in search of the missing edifice, found it at last in a tangled heap upon the ground. It was too dark to see anything distinctly, but he perceived that the canvas was rising and falling spasmodically like a stage sea, and for a similar reason--because there were human beings imprisoned beneath it.

By this time the whole camp was up and doing. Figures in _deshabille_, dashing the last vestiges of sleep away with their knuckles, trooped on to the scene in twos and threes, full of inquiry and trenchant sarcasm.

"What are you men playing at? What's all the row about? Can't you finish that game of footer some other time, when we aren't trying to get to sleep? What on earth's up?"

Then the voice of one having authority.

"What's the matter? What are you doing?"

It was perfectly obvious what the guard was doing. It was trying to get out from underneath the fallen tent. Private Jones explained this with some warmth.

"Somebody jumped at me and sat on my head in the ditch. I couldn't get up. And then some blackguard cut the ropes of the guard-tent. I couldn't see who it was. He cut off directly the tent went down."

Private Jones further expressed a wish that he could find the chap.

When he did, there would, he hinted, be trouble in the old homestead.

The tent was beginning to disgorge its prisoners.

"Guard, turn out!" said a facetious voice from the darkness.

The camp was divided into two schools of thought. Those who were watching the guard struggle out thought the episode funny. The guard did not. It was pathetic to hear them on the subject of their mysterious a.s.sailants. Matters quieted down rapidly after the tent had been set up again. The spectators were driven back to their lines by their officers. The guard turned in again to try and restore their shattered nerves with sleep until their time for sentry-go came round.

Private Jones picked up his rifle and resumed his beat. The affair was at an end as far as that night was concerned.

Next morning, as might be expected, nothing else was talked about.

Conversation at breakfast was confined to the topic. No halfpenny paper, however many times its circulation might exceed that of any penny morning paper, ever propounded so fascinating and puzzling a breakfast-table problem. It was the utter impossibility of detecting the culprits that appealed to the schools. They had swooped down like hawks out of the night, and disappeared like eels into mud, leaving no traces.

Jimmy Silver, of course, had no doubts.

"It was those Kay's men," he said. "What does it matter about evidence? You've only got to look at 'em. That's all the evidence you want. The only thing that makes it at all puzzling is that they did nothing worse. You'd naturally expect them to slay the sentry, at any rate."

But the rest of the camp, lacking that intimate knowledge of the Kayite which he possessed, did not turn the eye of suspicion towards the Eckleton lines. The affair remained a mystery. Kennedy, who never gave up a problem when everybody else did, continued to revolve the mystery in his mind.

"I shouldn't wonder," he said to Silver, two days later, "if you were right."

Silver, who had not made any remark for the last five minutes, with the exception of abusive comments on the toughness of the meat which he was trying to carve with a blunt knife for the tent, asked for an explanation. "I mean about that row the other night."

"What row?"

"That guard-tent business."

"Oh, that! I'd forgotten. Why don't you move with the times? You're always thinking of something that's been dead and buried for years."

"You remember you said you thought it was those Kay's chaps who did it. I've been thinking it over, and I believe you're right. You see, it was probably somebody who'd been to camp before, or he wouldn't have known that dodge of loosing the ropes."

"I don't see why. Seems to me it's the sort of idea that might have occurred to anybody. You don't want to study the thing particularly deeply to know that the best way of making a tent collapse is to loose the ropes. Of course it was Kay's lot who did it. But I don't see how you're going to have them simply because one or two of them have been here before."

"No, I suppose not," said Kennedy.

After tea the other occupants of the tent went out of the lines to play stump-cricket. Silver was in the middle of a story in one of the magazines, so did not accompany them. Kennedy cried off on the plea of slackness.

"I say," he said, when they were alone.

"Hullo," said Silver, finishing his story, and putting down the magazine. "What do you say to going after those chaps? I thought that story was going to be a long one that would take half an hour to get through. But it collapsed. Like that guard-tent."

"About that tent business," said Kennedy. "Of course that was all rot what I was saying just now. I suddenly remembered that I didn't particularly want anybody but you to hear what I was going to say, so I had to invent any rot that I could think of."

"But now," said Jimmy Silver, sinking his voice to a melodramatic whisper, "the villagers have left us to continue their revels on the green, our wicked uncle has gone to London, his sinister retainer, Jasper Murgleshaw, is washing his hands in the scullery sink, and--_we are alone!_"

"Don't be an a.s.s," pleaded Kennedy.

"Tell me your dreadful tale. Conceal nothing. Spare me not. In fact, say on."

"I've had a talk with the chap who was sentry that night," began Kennedy.

"Astounding revelations by our special correspondent," murmured Silver.

"You might listen."

"I _am_ listening. Why don't you begin? All this hesitation strikes me as suspicious. Get on with your shady story."

"You remember the sentry was upset--"

"Very upset."

"Somebody collared him from behind, and upset him into the ditch. They went in together, and the other man sat on his head."

"A touching picture. Proceed, friend."

"They rolled about a bit, and this sentry chap swears he scratched the man. It was just after that that the man sat on his head. Jones says he was a big chap, strong and heavy."

"He was in a position to judge, anyhow."

"Of course, he didn't mean to scratch him. He was rather keen on having that understood. But his fingers came up against the fellow's cheek as he was falling. So you see we've only got to look for a man with a scratch on his cheek. It was the right cheek, Jones was almost certain. I don't see what you're laughing at."

"I wish you wouldn't spring these good things of yours on me suddenly," gurgled Jimmy Silver, rolling about the wooden floor of the tent. "You ought to give a chap some warning. Look here," he added, imperatively, "swear you'll take me with you when you go on your tour through camp examining everybody's right cheek to see if it's got a scratch on it."

Kennedy began to feel the glow and pride of the successful sleuth-hound leaking out of him. This aspect of the case had not occurred to him. The fact that the sentry had scratched his a.s.sailant's right cheek, added to the other indubitable fact that Walton, of Kay's, was even now walking abroad with a scratch on his right cheek, had seemed to him conclusive. He had forgotten that there might be others. Still, it was worth while just to question him. He questioned him at Cove Reservoir next day.

"Hullo, Walton," he said, with a friendly carelessness which would not have deceived a prattling infant, "nasty scratch you've got on your cheek. How did you get it?"

"Perry did it when we were ragging a few days ago," replied Walton, eyeing him distrustfully.