The Gold Bat

  XVII

  THE WATCHERS IN THE VAULT

  For the next three seconds you could have heard a cannonball drop. Andthat was equivalent, in the senior day-room at Seymour's, to a deadsilence. Barry stood in the middle of the room leaning on the stick onwhich he supported life, now that his ankle had been injured, andturned red and white in regular rotation, as the magnificence of thenews came home to him.

  Then the small voice of Linton was heard.

  "That'll be six d. I'll trouble you for, young Sammy," said Linton. Forhe had betted an even sixpence with Master Samuel Menzies that Barrywould get his first fifteen cap this term, and Barry had got it.

  A great shout went up from every corner of the room. Barry was one ofthe most popular members of the house, and every one had been sorry forhim when his sprained ankle had apparently put him out of the runningfor the last cap.

  "Good old Barry," said Drummond, delightedly. Barry thanked him in adazed way.

  Every one crowded in to shake his hand. Barry thanked then all in adazed way.

  And then the senior day-room, in spite of the fact that Milton hadreturned, gave itself up to celebrating the occasion with one of themost deafening uproars that had ever been heard even in that factory ofnoise. A babel of voices discussed the match of the afternoon, eachtrying to outshout the other. In one corner Linton was beating wildlyon a biscuit-tin with part of a broken chair. Shoeblossom was busy inthe opposite corner executing an intricate step-dance on somebodyelse's box. M'Todd had got hold of the red-hot poker, and was burninghis initials in huge letters on the seat of a chair. Every one, inshort, was enjoying himself, and it was not until an advanced hour thatcomparative quiet was restored. It was a great evening for Barry, thebest he had ever experienced.

  Clowes did not learn the news till he saw it on the notice-board, onthe following Monday. When he saw it he whistled softly.

  "I see you've given Barry his first," he said to Trevor, when they met."Rather sensational."

  "Milton and Allardyce both thought he deserved it. If he'd been playinginstead of Rand-Brown, they wouldn't have scored at all probably, andwe should have got one more try."

  "That's all right," said Clowes. "He deserves it right enough, and I'mjolly glad you've given it him. But things will begin to move now,don't you think? The League ought to have a word to say about thebusiness. It'll be a facer for them."

  "Do you remember," asked Trevor, "saying that you thought it must beRand-Brown who wrote those letters?"

  "Yes. Well?"

  "Well, Milton had an idea that it was Rand-Brown who ragged his study."

  "What made him think that?"

  Trevor related the Shoeblossom incident.

  Clowes became quite excited.

  "Then Rand-Brown must be the man," he said. "Why don't you go andtackle him? Probably he's got the bat in his study."

  "It's not in his study," said Trevor, "because I looked everywhere forit, and got him to turn out his pockets, too. And yet I'll swear heknows something about it. One thing struck me as a bit suspicious. Iwent straight into his study and showed him that last letter--about thebat, you know, and accused him of writing it. Now, if he hadn't been inthe business somehow, he wouldn't have understood what was meant bytheir saying 'the bat you lost'. It might have been an ordinarycricket-bat for all he knew. But he offered to let me search the study.It didn't strike me as rum till afterwards. Then it seemed fishy. Whatdo you think?"

  Clowes thought so too, but admitted that he did not see of what use thesuspicion was going to be. Whether Rand-Brown knew anything about theaffair or not, it was quite certain that the bat was not with him.

  O'Hara, meanwhile, had decided that the time had come for him to resumehis detective duties. Moriarty agreed with him, and they resolved thatthat night they would patronise the vault instead of the gymnasium, andtake a holiday as far as their boxing was concerned. There was plentyof time before the Aldershot competition.

  Lock-up was still at six, so at a quarter to that hour they slippeddown into the vault, and took up their position.

  A quarter of an hour passed. The lock-up bell sounded faintly. Moriartybegan to grow tired.

  "Is it worth it?" he said, "an' wouldn't they have come before, if theymeant to come?"

  "We'll give them another quarter of an hour," said O'Hara. "After that--"

  "Sh!" whispered Moriarty.

  The door had opened. They could see a figure dimly outlined in thesemi-darkness. Footsteps passed down into the vault, and there came asound as if the unknown had cannoned into a chair, followed by a sharpintake of breath, expressive of pain. A scraping sound, and a flash oflight, and part of the vault was lit by a candle. O'Hara caught aglimpse of the unknown's face as he rose from lighting the candle, butit was not enough to enable him to recognise him. The candle wasstanding on a chair, and the light it gave was too feeble to reach theface of any one not on a level with it.

  The unknown began to drag chairs out into the neighbourhood of thelight. O'Hara counted six.

  The sixth chair had scarcely been placed in position when the dooropened again. Six other figures appeared in the opening one after theother, and bolted into the vault like rabbits into a burrow. The lastof them closed the door after them.

  O'Hara nudged Moriarty, and Moriarty nudged O'Hara; but neither made asound. They were not likely to be seen--the blackness of the vault wastoo Egyptian for that--but they were so near to the chairs that theleast whisper must have been heard. Not a word had proceeded from theoccupants of the chairs so far. If O'Hara's suspicion was correct, andthis was really the League holding a meeting, their methods were moresecret than those of any other secret society in existence. Even theNihilists probably exchanged a few remarks from time to time, when theymet together to plot. But these men of mystery never opened their lips.It puzzled O'Hara.

  The light of the candle was obscured for a moment, and a sound ofpuffing came from the darkness.

  O'Hara nudged Moriarty again.

  "Smoking!" said the nudge.

  Moriarty nudged O'Hara.

  "Smoking it is!" was the meaning of the movement.

  A strong smell of tobacco showed that the diagnosis had been a trueone. Each of the figures in turn lit his pipe at the candle, and satback, still in silence. It could not have been very pleasant, smokingin almost pitch darkness, but it was breaking rules, which was probablythe main consideration that swayed the smokers. They puffed awaysteadily, till the two Irishmen were wrapped about in invisible clouds.

  Then a strange thing happened. I know that I am infringing copyright inmaking that statement, but it so exactly suits the occurrence, thatperhaps Mr Rider Haggard will not object. It _was_ a strange thingthat happened.

  A rasping voice shattered the silence.

  "You boys down there," said the voice, "come here immediately. Comehere, I say."

  It was the well-known voice of Mr Robert Dexter, O'Hara and Moriarty'sbeloved house-master.

  The two Irishmen simultaneously clutched one another, each afraid thatthe other would think--from force of long habit--that the house-masterwas speaking to him. Both stood where they were. It was the men ofmystery and tobacco that Dexter was after, they thought.

  But they were wrong. What had brought Dexter to the vault was the factthat he had seen two boys, who looked uncommonly like O'Hara andMoriarty, go down the steps of the vault at a quarter to six. He hadbeen doing his usual after-lock-up prowl on the junior gravel, tointercept stragglers, and he had been a witness--from a distance offifty yards, in a very bad light--of the descent into the vault. He hadremained on the gravel ever since, in the hope of catching them as theycame up; but as they had not come up, he had determined to make thefirst move himself. He had not seen the six unknowns go down, for, theevening being chilly, he had paced up and down, and they had by a luckyaccident chosen a moment when his back was turned.

  "Come up immediately," he repeated.

  Here a blast of tobacco-smoke rushed at him from the darkness
. Thecandle had been extinguished at the first alarm, and he had notrealised--though he had suspected it--that smoking had been going on.

  A hurried whispering was in progress among the unknowns. Apparentlythey saw that the game was up, for they picked their way towards thedoor.

  As each came up the steps and passed him, Mr Dexter observed "Ha!" andappeared to make a note of his name. The last of the six was justleaving him after this process had been completed, when Mr Dextercalled him back.

  "That is not all," he said, suspiciously.

  "Yes, sir," said the last of the unknowns.

  Neither of the Irishmen recognised the voice. Its owner was a strangerto them.

  "I tell you it is not," snapped Mr Dexter. "You are concealing thetruth from me. O'Hara and Moriarty are down there--two boys in my ownhouse. I saw them go down there."

  "They had nothing to do with us, sir. We saw nothing of them."

  "I have no doubt," said the house-master, "that you imagine that youare doing a very chivalrous thing by trying to hide them, but you willgain nothing by it. You may go."

  He came to the top of the steps, and it seemed as if he intended toplunge into the darkness in search of the suspects. But, probablyrealising the futility of such a course, he changed his mind, anddelivered an ultimatum from the top step.

  "O'Hara and Moriarty."

  No reply.

  "O'Hara and Moriarty, I know perfectly well that you are down there.Come up immediately."

  Dignified silence from the vault.

  "Well, I shall wait here till you do choose to come up. You would bewell advised to do so immediately. I warn you you will not tire meout."

  He turned, and the door slammed behind him.

  "What'll we do?" whispered Moriarty. It was at last safe to whisper.

  "Wait," said O'Hara, "I'm thinking."

  O'Hara thought. For many minutes he thought in vain. At last there cameflooding back into his mind a memory of the days of his faghood. It wasafter that that he had been groping all the time. He remembered now.Once in those days there had been an unexpected function in the middle ofterm. There were needed for that function certain chairs. He could recalleven now his furious disgust when he and a select body of fellow fags hadbeen pounced upon by their form-master, and coerced into forming a linefrom the junior block to the cloisters, for the purpose of handingchairs. True, his form-master had stood ginger-beer after the event, withprincely liberality, but the labour was of the sort that gallons ofginger-beer will not make pleasant. But he ceased to regret the episodenow. He had been at the extreme end of the chair-handling chain. He hadstood in a passage in the junior block, just by the door that led to themasters' garden, and which--he remembered--was never locked till late atnight. And while he stood there, a pair of hands--apparently without abody--had heaved up chair after chair through a black opening in thefloor. In other words, a trap-door connected with the vault in whichhe now was.

  He imparted these reminiscences of childhood to Moriarty. They set offto search for the missing door, and, after wanderings and barkings ofshins too painful to relate, they found it. Moriarty lit a match. Thelight fell on the trap-door, and their last doubts were at an end. Thething opened inwards. The bolt was on their side, not in the passageabove them. To shoot the bolt took them one second, to climb into thepassage one minute. They stood at the side of the opening, and dustedtheir clothes.

  "Bedad!" said Moriarty, suddenly.

  "What?"

  "Why, how are we to shut it?"

  This was a problem that wanted some solving. Eventually they managedit, O'Hara leaning over and fishing for it, while Moriarty held hislegs.

  As luck would have it--and luck had stood by them well allthrough--there was a bolt on top of the trap-door, as well asbeneath it.

  "Supposing that had been shot!" said O'Hara, as they fastened the doorin its place.

  Moriarty did not care to suppose anything so unpleasant.

  Mr Dexter was still prowling about on the junior gravel, when the twoIrishmen ran round and across the senior gravel to the gymnasium. Herethey put in a few minutes' gentle sparring, and then marched boldly upto Mr Day (who happened to have looked in five minutes after theirarrival) and got their paper.

  "What time did O'Hara and Moriarty arrive at the gymnasium?" asked MrDexter of Mr Day next morning.

  "O'Hara and Moriarty? Really, I can't remember. I know they _left_at about a quarter to seven."

  That profound thinker, Mr Tony Weller, was never so correct as in hisviews respecting the value of an _alibi_. There are few betterthings in an emergency.