The Willoughby Captains Part 52

"Where?" asked the captain.

"On your table. I saw it there when I was sticking away your pens just now."

"You may as well bring it," said Riddell; "I am going to the library."

So Cusack went off, and presently reappeared in the library with the letter.

Riddell was busy at the moment searching through the catalogue, and consequently let the letter lie unopened for some little time beside him. In due time, however, he turned and took it up.

It was a strangely directed letter, at any rate--not in ordinary handwriting, but in printed characters, evidently to disguise the authorship.

Riddell hastily tore open the envelope of this mysterious missive and read the contents, which were also written like printing, in characters quite unrecognisable.

The letter was as follows:

"Riddel,--If you want to get to the bottom of that boat-race affair, you had better see what Tom the boat-boy has to say. That's all."

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

TOM THE BOAT-BOY EARNS FOUR-AND-SIXPENCE.

Riddell, as he read over and over again the mysterious doc.u.ment in his hand, hardly knew what to make of it.

It looked like a clue, certainly. But who had sent it? Was it a friend or an enemy; and if the latter, might it not just as likely be a hoax as not?

He examined the disguised writing letter for letter, but failed to recognise in it the hand of any one he knew. He called back Cusack and cross-examined him as to how and when the letter was brought to his study; but Cusack could tell him nothing. All he knew was that when he went in to look after Riddell's tea that afternoon, it was lying there on the table. He couldn't say how long it had been there. He hadn't been in the room since dinner, nor had Riddell.

Cusack was very curious to know what the letter was about concerning which the captain seemed so much excited; but Riddell declined to gratify him on this point, and put the paper away in his pocket and returned to his work.

"No," said he to himself, "if it's a hoax there's no object in making it public property, and still less reason if there's anything in it."

Of one thing he was determined--he must go down to-morrow morning and have an interview with Tom the boat-boy. The thing _might_ all be a hoax, but if there was the remotest chance of its being otherwise it was clearly his duty to do what he could to find out the miscreant who had brought such disgrace upon Willoughby. So he spent a somewhat uneasy evening, and even appeared absent-minded when young Wyndham, now a constant visitor to his study, paid his usual evening call.

"I say," said the boy, with beaming face, as he entered, "isn't it prime, Riddell? Bloomfield's going to try me in the second-eleven, he says. You know I've been grinding at cricket like a horse lately, and he came down and watched me this afternoon, and I was in, and made no end of a lucky score off Dobson's bowling. And then Bloomfield said he'd bowl me an over. My eye! what a funk I was in. I could hardly hold the bat. But I straightened up somehow, and his first ball went by. The next was frightfully swift, and dead on, but it broke a bit to the leg, and I was just in time to get at it and send it right away between long-leg and long-stop in the elms--a safe five if we'd been running. And old Bloomfield laughed and said he couldn't wait till the ball was sent up, and said I could turn up at the second-eleven Big practice to-morrow and see how I got on there. I say, isn't it prime, Riddell? I tell you, I shall stand on my head if I get into the team."

Riddell had only partially heard this jubilant speech, for at that moment Tom the boat-boy was more in his thoughts even than Wyndham the Limpet. However, he had heard enough to gather from it that his young _protege_ was in a vast state of joy and content, and as usual he was ready with any amount of sympathy.

"It will be splendid if you do get in," said he.

"Yes. They've only got eight places actually fixed, I hear, so I've three chances. I say, Riddell, I like Bloomfield, do you know? I think he's an awfully good captain."

Riddell could not help smiling at this artless outburst from the young candidate for cricket honours, and replied, "I like him too, for he came and watched our practice too, here at Welch's."

"Did he bowl you any b.a.l.l.s?" demanded Wyndham.

"No, happily," said Riddell; "but some one told me he told somebody else that I might possibly squeeze into the eleven against Rockshire if I practised hard."

"What!" exclaimed Wyndham, in most uncomplimentary astonishment. "_You_ in the first eleven! I say, it must be a mistake."

"I'm afraid they'll think it a mistake," said Riddell, laughing; "but I certainly have heard something of the sort."

"Why, you usen't to play at all in our house," said Wyndham.

"No more I did; but since I came here I've been going in for it rather more, though I never dreamt of such rapid promotion."

"Well," said Wyndham, quite patronisingly, "I'm jolly glad to hear it; but I wish you were in the schoolhouse instead of Welch's. By the way, how are the `kids' in your house getting on?"

"The `kids' are getting on very well, I fancy," said the captain.

"They've a match with the Parrett's juniors fixed already, and mean to challenge the schoolhouse too, I fancy."

"I say, that's coming it rather strong," said Wyndham, half incredulously.

"It's a fact, though," said Riddell, "and what's more, I have it on Parrett's authority that they are getting to play very well together, and any eleven that plays them will have to look out for itself if it is to beat them."

"Ho, ho! I guess our fellows will be able to manage that. Of course, you know, if I'm in the second-eleven, I shan't be able to play with my house juniors."

"That will be a calamity!" said Riddell, laughing, as he began to get out his books and settle himself for the evening's work.

Despite all the boy's juvenile conceit and self-a.s.surance, Riddell rejoiced to find him grown enthusiastic about anything so harmless as cricket. Wyndham had been working hard the last week or so in a double sense--working hard not only at cricket, but in striving to act up to the better resolutions which, with Riddell's help, he had formed. And he had succeeded so far in both. Indeed, the cricket had helped the good resolutions, and the good resolutions had helped the cricket. As long as every spare moment was occupied with his congenial sport, and a place in the second-eleven was a prize within reach, he had neither time nor inclination to fall back on the society of Silk or Gilks, or any of their set. And as long as the good resolutions continued to fire his breast, he was only too glad to find refuge from temptation in the steady pursuit of so honourable an ambition as cricket.

He was, if truth must be told, more enthusiastic about his cricket than about his studies, and that evening it was a good while before Wyndham could get his mind detached from bats and b.a.l.l.s and concentrated on Livy.

Riddell himself, too, found work more than ordinarily difficult that night, but his thoughts were wandering on far less congenial ground than cricket.

Supposing that letter did mean something, how ought he to act? It was no pleasant responsibility to have thrown on his shoulders the duty of bringing a criminal to justice, and possibly of being the means of his expulsion. And yet the honour of Willoughby was at stake, and no squeamishness ought to interfere with that. He wished, true or untrue, that the wretched letter had been left anywhere but in his study.

"I say," said young Wyndham, after about an hour's spell of work, and strangely enough starting the very topic with which Riddell's mind was full--"I say, I think that boat-race business is blowing over, do you know? You don't hear nearly so much about it now."

"The thing is, ought it to blow over?" said the captain, gravely.

"Why, of course! Besides, after all it may have been an accident. I broke a bit of cord the other day, and it looked just as if it had been partly cut through. Anyhow, it's just as much the Parretts business as ours, and they aren't doing anything, I know."

"It would be a good deal more satisfactory to have it cleared up," said Riddell.

"It would do just as well to have a new race, and settle the thing right off--even if they were to lick us."

Wyndham went soon afterwards. Riddell was too much occupied with his own perplexities to think much just then of the boy's views on this burning question. And after all, had he thought of them, he would probably have guessed, as the reader may have done, that Wyndham's present cricket mania made him dread any reopening of the old soreness between Parrett's and the schoolhouse, which would be sure to result, among other things, in his exclusion, as a member of the latter fraternity, from the coveted place in the second-eleven.

The next morning the captain was up early, and on his way to the boat- house. Ever since the race the river had been almost deserted, at any rate in the early mornings.

Consequently when Riddell arrived at the boat-house he found no one up.

After a good deal of knocking he managed to rouse the boatman.

"I want Tom," he said, "to steer me up to the Willows."

"You might have let me known you'd want the gig yesterday," said the man, rather surlily; "I'd have left it out for you overnight."