Mike at Wrykyn (5 page)

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 on the 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 put on the first record that came to hand and switched on.

The
next moment, a very loud voice 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 bat.”

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 recognized 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 tiptoe 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
hand-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 hater 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
house-master’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 balk the house-master’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.”

“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
might 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 tonight,
you will both be punished with extreme severity. I will not have this lax and
reckless behaviour.”