“Why, the League, of course. You don't suppose he's the only man in it? There must be a lot of them.”
“But what makes you think it was Rand-Brown?”
Milton told him the story of Shoeblossom, as Barry had told it to him. The only difference was that Trevor listened without any of the scepticism which Milton had displayed on hearing it. He was getting excited. It all fitted in so neatly. If ever there was circumstantial evidence against a man, here it was against Rand-Brown. Take the two cases. Milton had quarrelled with him. Milton's study was wrecked “with the compliments of the League”. Trevor had turned him out of the first fifteen. Trevor's study was wrecked “with the compliments of the League”. As Clowes had pointed out, the man with the most obvious motive for not wishing Barry to play for the school was Rand-Brown. It seemed a true bill.
“I shouldn't wonder if you're right,” he said, “but of course one can't do anything yet. You want a lot more evidence. Anyhow, we must play him against Ripton, I suppose. Which is his study? I'll go and tell him now.”
“Ten.”
Trevor knocked at the door of study Ten. Rand-Brown was sitting over the fire, reading. He jumped up when he saw that it was Trevor who had come in, and to his visitor it seemed that his face wore a guilty look.
“What do you want?” said Rand-Brown.
It was not the politest way of welcoming a visitor. It increased Trevor's suspicions. The man was afraid. A great idea darted into his mind. Why not go straight to the point and have it out with him here and now? He had the League's letter about the bat in his pocket. He would confront him with it and insist on searching the study there and then. If Rand-Brown were really, as he suspected, the writer of the letter, the bat must be in this room somewhere. Search it now, and he would have no time to hide it. He pulled out the letter.
“I believe you wrote that,” he said.
Trevor was always direct.
Rand-Brown seemed to turn a little pale, but his voice when he replied was quite steady.
“That's a lie,” he said.
“Then, perhaps,” said Trevor, “you wouldn't object to proving it.”
“How?”
“By letting me search your study?”
“You don't believe my word?”
“Why should I? You don't believe mine.”
Rand-Brown made no comment on this remark.
“Was that what you came here for?” he asked.
“No,” said Trevor; “as a matter of fact, I came to tell you to turn out for running and passing with the first tomorrow afternoon. You're playing against Ripton on Saturday.”
Rand-Brown's attitude underwent a complete transformation at the news. He became friendliness itself.
“All right,” he said. “I say, I'm sorry I said what I did about lying. I was rather sick that you should think I wrote that rot you showed me. I hope you don't mind.”
“Not a bit. Do you mind my searching your study?”
For a moment Rand-Brown looked vicious. Then he sat down with a laugh.
“Go on,” he said; “I see you don't believe me. Here are the keys if you want them.”
Trevor thanked him, and took the keys. He opened every drawer and examined the writing-desk. The bat was in none of these places. He looked in the cupboards. No bat there.
“Like to take up the carpet?” inquired Rand-Brown.
“No, thanks.”
“Search me if you like. Shall I turn out my pockets?”
“Yes, please,” said Trevor, to his surprise. He had not expected to be taken literally.
Rand-Brown emptied them, but the bat was not there. Trevor turned to go.
“You've not looked inside the legs of the chairs yet,” said Rand-Brown. “They may be hollow. There's no knowing.”
“It doesn't matter, thanks,” said Trevor. “Sorry for troubling you. Don't forget tomorrow afternoon.”
And he went, with the very unpleasant feeling that he had been badly scored off.
XVI. THE RIPTON MATCH
It was a curious thing in connection with the matches between Ripton and Wrykyn, that Ripton always seemed to be the bigger team. They always had a gigantic pack of forwards, who looked capable of shoving a hole through one of the pyramids. Possibly they looked bigger to the Wrykinians than they really were. Strangers always look big on the football field. When you have grown accustomed to a person's appearance, he does not look nearly so large. Milton, for instance, never struck anybody at Wrykyn as being particularly big for a school forward, and yet today he was the heaviest man on the field by a quarter of a stone. But, taken in the mass, the Ripton pack were far heavier than their rivals. There was a legend current among the lower forms at Wrykyn that fellows were allowed to stop on at Ripton till they were twenty-five, simply to play football. This is scarcely likely to have been based on fact. Few lower form legends are.
Jevons, the Ripton captain, through having played opposite Trevor for three seasons—he was the Ripton left centre-three-quarter—had come to be quite an intimate of his. Trevor had gone down with Milton and Allardyce to meet the team at the station, and conduct them up to the school.
“How have you been getting on since Christmas?” asked Jevons.
“Pretty well. We've lost Paget, I suppose you know?”
“That was the fast man on the wing, wasn't it?”
“Yes.”
“Well, we've lost a man, too.”
“Oh, yes, that red-haired forward. I remember him.”
“It ought to make us pretty even. What's the ground like?”
“Bit greasy, I should think. We had some rain late last night.”
The ground was a bit greasy. So was the ball. When Milton kicked off up the hill with what wind there was in his favour, the outsides of both teams found it difficult to hold the ball. Jevons caught it on his twenty-five line, and promptly handed it forward. The first scrum was formed in the heart of the enemy's country.
A deep, swelling roar from either touch-line greeted the school's advantage. A feature of a big match was always the shouting. It rarely ceased throughout the whole course of the game, the monotonous but impressive sound of five hundred voices all shouting the same word. It was worth hearing. Sometimes the evenness of the noise would change to an excited crescendo as a school three-quarter got off, or the school back pulled up the attack with a fine piece of defence. Sometimes the shouting would give place to clapping when the school was being pressed and somebody had found touch with a long kick. But mostly the man on the ropes roared steadily and without cessation, and with the full force of his lungs, the word “Wrykyn!“
The scrum was a long one. For two minutes the forwards heaved and strained, now one side, now the other, gaining a few inches. The Wrykyn pack were doing all they knew to heel, but their opponents' superior weight was telling. Ripton had got the ball, and were keeping it. Their game was to break through with it and rush. Then suddenly one of their forwards kicked it on, and just at that moment the opposition of the Wrykyn pack gave way, and the scrum broke up. The ball came out on the Wrykyn side, and Allardyce whipped it out to Deacon, who was playing half with him.
“Ball's out,” cried the Ripton half who was taking the scrum. “Break up. It's out.”
And his colleague on the left darted across to stop Trevor, who had taken Deacon's pass, and was running through on the right.
Trevor ran splendidly. He was a three-quarter who took a lot of stopping when he once got away. Jevons and the Ripton half met him almost simultaneously, and each slackened his pace for the fraction of a second, to allow the other to tackle. As they hesitated, Trevor passed them. He had long ago learned that to go hard when you have once started is the thing that pays.
He could see that Rand-Brown was racing up for the pass, and, as he reached the back, he sent the ball to him, waist-high. Then the back got to him, and he came down with a thud, with a vision, seen from the corner of his eye, of the ball bounding forward out of the wing three-quarter's hands into touch. Rand-Brown had bungled the pass in the old familiar way, and lost a certain try.