The Pothunters Part 10

'Never put off till tomorrow--Why?'

'I simply must keep fit for the mile. How's Welch to run, too, if he eats this sort of thing?' He pointed to the well-spread board.

'Yes, there's something in that,' said Tony. 'Thank goodness, my little entertainment's over. I think I _will_ try one of those chocolate things. Thanks.'

'Welch is all right,' said Jackson. 'He could win the hundred and the quarter on sausage-rolls. But think of the times.'

'And there,' observed Charteris, 'there, my young friend, you have touched upon a sore subject. Before you came in I was administering a few wholesome words of censure to that miserable object on your right.

What is a fifth of a second more or less that it should make a man insult his digestion as Welch does? You'll hardly credit it, but for the last three weeks or more I have been forced to look on a fellow-being refusing pastry and drinking beastly extracts of meat, all for the sake of winning a couple of races. It quite put me off my feed.

Cake, please. Good robust slice. Thanks.'

'It's rather funny when you come to think of it,' said Tony. 'Welch lives on Bovril for, a month, and then, just as he thinks he's going to score, a burglar with a sense of humour strolls into the Pav., carefully selects the only two cups he had a chance of winning, and so to bed.'

'Leaving Master J. G. Welch an awful example of what comes of training,' said Jim. 'Welch, you're a rotter.'

'It isn't my fault,' observed Welch, plaintively. 'You chaps seem to think I've committed some sort of crime, just because a man I didn't know from Adam has bagged a cup or two.'

'It looks to me,' said Charteris, 'as if Welch, thinking his chances of the quarter rather rocky, hired one of his low acquaintances to steal the cup for him.'

'Shouldn't wonder. Welch knows some jolly low characters in Stapleton.'

'Welch is a jolly low character himself,' said Tony, judicially. 'I wonder you a.s.sociate with him, Alderman.'

'Stand _in loco parentis_. Aunt of his asked me to keep an eye on him. "Dear George is so wild,"' she said.

Before Welch could find words to refute this hideous slander, Tony cut in once more.

'The only reason he doesn't drink gin and play billiards at the "Blue Lion" is that gin makes him ill and his best break at pills is six, including two flukes.'

'As a matter of fact,' said Welch, changing the conversation with a jerk, 'I don't much care if the cups are stolen. One doesn't only run for the sake of the pot.'

Charteris groaned. 'Oh, well,' said he, 'if you're going to take the high moral standpoint, and descend to brazen plat.i.tudes like that, I give you up.'

'It's a rum thing about those pots,' said Welch, meditatively.

'Seems to me,' Jim rejoined, 'the rum thing is that a man who considers the Pav. a safe place to keep a lot of valuable prizes in should be allowed at large. Why couldn't they keep them in the Board Room as they used to?'

'Thought it 'ud save trouble, I suppose. Save them carting the things over to the Pav. on Sports Day,' hazarded Tony.

'Saved the burglar a lot of trouble, I should say,' observed Jackson, 'I could break into the Pav. myself in five minutes.'

'Good old Jackson,' said Charteris, 'have a shot tonight. I'll hold the watch. I'm doing a leader on the melancholy incident for next month's _Glow Worm_. It appears that Master Reginald Robinson, a member of Mr Merevale's celebrated boarding-establishment, was pa.s.sing by the Pavilion at an early hour on the morning of the second of April--that's today--when his eye was attracted by an excavation or incision in one of the windows of that imposing edifice. His narrative appears on another page. Interviewed by a _Glow Worm_ representative, Master Robinson, who is a fine, healthy, bronzed young Englishman of some thirteen summers, with a delightful, boyish flow of speech, not wholly free from a suspicion of cheek, gave it as his opinion that the outrage was the work of a burglar--a remarkable display of sagacity in one so young. A portrait of Master Robinson appears on another page.'

'Everything seems to appear on another page,' said Jim. 'Am I to do the portrait?'

'I think it would be best. You can never trust a photo to caricature a person enough. Your facial H.B.'s the thing.'

'Have you heard whether anything else was bagged besides the cups?'

asked Welch.

'Not that I know of,' said Jim.

'Yes there was,' said Jackson. 'It further appears that that lunatic, Adamson, had left some money in the pocket of his blazer, which he had left in the Pav. overnight. On enquiry it was found that the money had also left.'

Adamson was in the same House as Jackson, and had talked of nothing else throughout the whole of lunch. He was an abnormally wealthy individual, however, and it was generally felt, though he himself thought otherwise, that he could afford to lose some of the surplus.

'How much?' asked Jim.

'Two pounds.'

At this Jim gave vent to the exclamation which Mr Barry Pain calls the Englishman's shortest prayer.

'My dear sir,' said Charteris. 'My very dear sir. We blush for you.

Might I ask _why_ you take the matter to heart so?'

Jim hesitated.

'Better have it out, Jim,' said Tony. 'These chaps'll keep it dark all right.' And Jim entered once again upon the recital of his doings on the previous night.

'So you see,' he concluded, 'this two pound business makes it all the worse.'

'I don't see why,' said Welch.

'Well, you see, money's a thing everybody wants, whereas cups wouldn't be any good to a fellow at school. So that I should find it much harder to prove that I didn't take the two pounds, than I should have done to prove that I didn't take the cups.'

'But there's no earthly need for you to prove anything,' said Tony.

'There's not the slightest chance of your being found out.'

'Exactly,' observed Charteris. 'We will certainly respect your incog.

if you wish it. Wild horses shall draw no evidence from us. It is, of course, very distressing, but what is man after all? Are we not as the beasts that perish, and is not our little life rounded by a sleep?

Indeed, yes. And now--with full chorus, please.

'"We-e take him from the city or the plough.

We-e dress him up in uniform so ne-e-e-at."'

And at the third line some plaster came down from the ceiling, and Merevale came up, and the meeting dispersed without the customary cheers.

[7]

BARRETT EXPLORES

Barrett stood at the window of his study with his hands in his pockets, looking thoughtfully at the football field. Now and then he whistled.

That was to show that he was very much at his ease. He whistled a popular melody of the day three times as slowly as its talented composer had originally intended it to be whistled, and in a strange minor key. Some people, when offended, invariably whistle in this manner, and these are just the people with whom, if you happen to share a study with them, it is rash to have differences of opinion. Reade, who was deep in a book--though not so deep as he would have liked the casual observer to fancy him to be--would have given much to stop Barrett's musical experiments. To ask him to stop in so many words was, of course, impossible. Offended dignity must draw the line somewhere.

That is one of the curious results of a polite education. When two gentlemen of Hoxton or the Borough have a misunderstanding, they address one another with even more freedom than is their usual custom.

When one member of a public school falls out with another member, his politeness in dealing with him becomes so Chesterfieldian, that one cannot help being afraid that he will sustain a strain from which he will never recover.