“The second round was just like the first, and so was the third. O'Hara kept getting the worst of it. He was knocked down three or four times more, and once, when he'd rushed Rand-Brown against one of the walls, he hit out and missed, and barked his knuckles jolly badly against the wall. That was in the middle of the third round, and Rand-Brown had it all his own way for the rest of the round—for about two minutes, that is to say. He hit O'Hara about all over the shop. I was so jolly keen on O'Hara's winning, that I had half a mind to call time early, so as to give him time to recover. But I thought it would be a low thing to do, so I gave them their full three minutes.
“Directly they began the fourth round, I noticed that things were going to change a bit. O'Hara had given up his rushing game, and was waiting for his man, and when he came at him he'd put in a hot counter, nearly always at the body. After a bit Rand-Brown began to get cautious, and wouldn't rush, so the fourth round was the quietest there had been. In the last minute they didn't hit each other at all. They simply sparred for openings. It was in the fifth round that O'Hara began to forge ahead. About half way through he got in a ripper, right in the wind, which almost doubled Rand-Brown up, and then he started rushing again. Rand-Brown looked awfully bad at the end of the round. Round six was ripping. I never saw two chaps go for each other so. It was one long rally. Then—how it happened I couldn't see, they were so quick—just as they had been at it a minute and a half, there was a crack, and the next thing I saw was Rand-Brown on the ground, looking beastly. He went down absolutely flat; his heels and head touched the ground at the same time.
“I counted ten out loud in the professional way like they do at the National Sporting Club, you know, and then said 'O'Hara wins'. I felt an awful swell. After about another half-minute, Rand-Brown was all right again, and he got up and went back to the house with Merrett, and O'Hara and Moriarty went off to Dexter's, and I gave the ferrets their grub, and cut back to breakfast.”
“Rand-Brown wasn't at breakfast,” said Harvey.
“No. He went to bed. I wonder what'll happen. Think there'll be a row about it?”
“Shouldn't think so,” said Harvey. “They never do make rows about fights, and neither of them is a prefect, so I don't see what it matters if they do fight. But, I say—”
“What's up?”
“I wish,” said Harvey, his voice full of acute regret, “that it had been my turn to feed those ferrets.”
“I don't,” said Renford cheerfully. “I wouldn't have missed that mill for something. Hullo, there's the bell. We'd better run.”
When Trevor called at Seymour's that afternoon to see Rand-Brown, with a view to challenging him to deadly combat, and found that O'Hara had been before him, he ought to have felt relieved. His actual feeling was one of acute annoyance. It seemed to him that O'Hara had exceeded the limits of friendship. It was all very well for him to take over the Rand-Brown contract, and settle it himself, in order to save Trevor from a very bad quarter of an hour, but Trevor was one of those people who object strongly to the interference of other people in their private business. He sought out O'Hara and complained. Within two minutes O'Hara's golden eloquence had soothed him and made him view the matter in quite a different light. What O'Hara pointed out was that it was not Trevor's affair at all, but his own. Who, he asked, had been likely to be damaged most by Rand-Brown's manoeuvres in connection with the lost bat? Trevor was bound to admit that O'Hara was that person. Very well, then, said O'Hara, then who had a better right to fight Rand-Brown? And Trevor confessed that no one else had a better.
“Then I suppose,” he said, “that I shall have to do nothing about it?”
“That's it,” said O'Hara.
“It'll be rather beastly meeting the man after this,” said Trevor, presently. “Do you think he might possibly leave at the end of term?”
“He's leaving at the end of the week,” said O'Hara. “He was one of the fellows Dexter caught in the vault that evening. You won't see much more of Rand-Brown.”
“I'll try and put up with that,” said Trevor.
“And so will I,” replied O'Hara. “And I shouldn't think Milton would be so very grieved.”
“No,” said Trevor. “I tell you what will make him sick, though, and that is your having milled with Rand-Brown. It's a job he'd have liked to have taken on himself.”
XXIV. CONCLUSION
Into the story at this point comes the narrative of Charles Mereweather Cook, aged fourteen, a day-boy.
Cook arrived at the school on the tenth of March, at precisely nine o'clock, in a state of excitement.
He said there was a row on in the town.
Cross-examined, he said there was no end of a row on in the town.
During morning school he explained further, whispering his tale into the attentive ear of Knight of the School House, who sat next to him.
What sort of a row, Knight wanted to know.
Cook deposed that he had been riding on his bicycle past the entrance to the Recreation Grounds on his way to school, when his eye was attracted by the movements of a mass of men just inside the gate. They appeared to be fighting. Witness did not stop to watch, much as he would have liked to do so. Why not? Why, because he was late already, and would have had to scorch anyhow, in order to get to school in time. And he had been late the day before, and was afraid that old Appleby (the master of the form) would give him beans if he were late again. Wherefore he had no notion of what the men were fighting about, but he betted that more would be heard about it. Why? Because, from what he saw of it, it seemed a jolly big thing. There must have been quite three hundred men fighting. (Knight, satirically, “Pile it on!”) Well, quite a hundred, anyhow. Fifty a side. And fighting like anything. He betted there would be something about it in the Wrykyn Patriot tomorrow. He shouldn't wonder if somebody had been killed. What were they scrapping about? How should he know!
Here Mr Appleby, who had been trying for the last five minutes to find out where the whispering noise came from, at length traced it to its source, and forthwith requested Messrs Cook and Knight to do him two hundred lines, adding that, if he heard them talking again, he would put them into the extra lesson. Silence reigned from that moment.
Next day, while the form was wrestling with the moderately exciting account of Caesar's doings in Gaul, Master Cook produced from his pocket a newspaper cutting. This, having previously planted a forcible blow in his friend's ribs with an elbow to attract the latter's attention, he handed to Knight, and in dumb show requested him to peruse the same. Which Knight, feeling no interest whatever in Caesar's doings in Gaul, and having, in consequence, a good deal of time on his hands, proceeded to do. The cutting was headed “Disgraceful Fracas", and was written in the elegant style that was always so marked a feature of the Wrykyn Patriot.
“We are sorry to have to report,” it ran, “another of those deplorable ebullitions of local Hooliganism, to which it has before now been our painful duty to refer. Yesterday the Recreation Grounds were made the scene of as brutal an exhibition of savagery as has ever marred the fair fame of this town. Our readers will remember how on a previous occasion, when the fine statue of Sir Eustace Briggs was found covered with tar, we attributed the act to the malevolence of the Radical section of the community. Events have proved that we were right. Yesterday a body of youths, belonging to the rival party, was discovered in the very act of repeating the offence. A thick coating of tar had already been administered, when several members of the rival faction appeared. A free fight of a peculiarly violent nature immediately ensued, with the result that, before the police could interfere, several of the combatants had received severe bruises. Fortunately the police then arrived on the scene, and with great difficulty succeeded in putting a stop to the fracas. Several arrests were made.