“Where are your men?” asked Jimmy. “I’ve got all our chaps out here, bar Challis, who’ll be out in a few minutes. I left him almost changed.”
Challis appeared a little later, and joined the rest of Blackburn’s team, who were putting in the time and trying to keep warm by running and passing and dropping desultory goals. But, with the exception of Fenn, who stood brooding by himself in the centre of the field, wrapped to the eyes in a huge overcoat, and two other house prefects of Kay’s, who strolled up and down looking as if they wished they were in their studies, there was no sign of the missing team.
“I can’t make it out,” said Kennedy.
“You’re sure you put up the right time?” asked Jimmy Silver.
“Yes, quite.”
It certainly could not be said that Kay’s had had any room for doubt as to the time of the match, for it had appeared in large figures on both notices.
A quarter to five sounded from the college clock.
“We must begin soon,” said Mr Blackburn, “or there will not be light enough even for two twenty-fives.”
Kennedy felt wretched. Apart from the fact that he was frozen to an icicle and drenched by the rain, he felt responsible for his team, and he could see that Blackburn’s men were growing irritated at the delay, though they did their best to conceal it.
“Can’t we lend them some subs?” suggested Challis, hopefully.
“All right—if you can raise eleven subs,” said Silver. “They’ve only got four men on the field at present.”
Challis subsided.
“Look here,” said Kennedy, “I’m going back to the house to see what’s up. I’ll be back as soon as I can. They must have mistaken the time or something after all.”
He rushed back to the house, and flung open the door of the senior dayroom. It was empty.
Kennedy had expected to find his missing men huddled in a semicircle round the fire, waiting for some one to come and tell them that Blackburn’s had taken the field, and that they could come out now without any fear of having to wait in the rain for the match to begin. This, he thought, would have been the unselfish policy of Kay’s senior dayroom.
But to find nobody was extraordinary.
The thought occurred to him that the team might be changing in their dormitories. He ran upstairs. But all the dormitories were locked, as he might have known they would have been. Coming downstairs again he met his fag, Spencer.
Spencer replied to his inquiry that he had only just come in. He did not know where the team had got to. No, he had not seen any of them.
“Oh, yes, though,” he added, as an afterthought, “I met Walton just now. He looked as if he was going down town.”
Walton had once licked Spencer, and that vindictive youth thought that this might be a chance of getting back at him.
“Oh,” said Kennedy, quietly, “Walton? Did you? Thanks.”
Spencer was disappointed at his lack of excitement. His news did not seem to interest him.
Kennedy went back to the football field to inform Jimmy Silver of the result of his investigations.
XII
KENNEDY INTERVIEWS WALTON
“I’m very sorry,” he said, when he rejoined the shivering group, “but I’m afraid we shall have to call this match off. There seems to have been a mistake. None of my team are anywhere about. I’m awfully sorry, sir,” he added, to Mr Blackburn, “to have given you all this trouble for nothing.”
“Not at all, Kennedy. We must try another day.”
Mr Blackburn suspected that something untoward had happened in Kay’s to cause this sudden defection of the first fifteen of the house. He knew that Kennedy was having a hard time in his new position, and he did not wish to add to his discomfort by calling for an explanation before an audience. It could not be pleasant for Kennedy to feel that his enemies had scored off him. It was best to preserve a discreet silence with regard to the whole affair, and leave him to settle it for himself.
Jimmy Silver was more curious. He took Kennedy off to tea in his study, sat him down in the best chair in front of the fire, and proceeded to urge him to confess everything.
“Now, then, what’s it all about?” he asked, briskly, spearing a muffin on the fork and beginning to toast.
“It’s no good asking me,” said Kennedy. “I suppose it’s a put-up job to make me look a fool. I ought to have known something of this kind would happen when I saw what they did to my first notice.”
“What was that?”
Kennedy explained.
“This is getting thrilling,” said Jimmy. “Just pass that plate. Thanks. What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. What would you do?”
“My dear chap, I’d first find out who was at the bottom of it—there’s bound to be one man who started the whole thing—and I’d make it my aim in life to give him the warmest ten minutes he’d ever had.”
“That sounds all right. But how would you set about it?”
“Why, touch him up, of course. What else would you do? Before the whole house, too.”
“Supposing he wouldn’t be touched up?”
“Wouldn’t be! He’d have to.”
“You don’t know Kay’s, Jimmy. You’re thinking what you’d do if this had happened in Blackburn’s. The two things aren’t the same. Here the man would probably take it like a lamb. The feeling of the house would be against him. He’d find nobody to back him up. That’s because Blackburn’s is a decent house instead of being a sink like Kay’s. If I tried the touching-up before the whole house game with our chaps, the man would probably reply by going for me, assisted by the whole strength of the company.”
“Well, dash it all then, all you’ve got to do is to call a prefects’ meeting, and he’ll get ten times worse beans from them than he’d have got from you. It’s simple.”
Kennedy stared into the fire pensively.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I bar that prefects’ meeting business. It always seems rather feeble to me, lugging in a lot of chaps to help settle some one you can’t manage yourself. I want to carry this job through on my own.”
“Then you’d better scrap with the man.”
“I think I will.”
Silver stared.
“Don’t be an ass,” he said. “I was only rotting. You can’t go fighting all over the shop as if you were a fag. You’d lose your prefect’s cap if it came out.”
“I could wear my topper,” said Kennedy, with a grin. “You see,” he added, “I’ve not much choice. I must do something. If I took no notice of this business there’d be no holding the house. I should be ragged to death. It’s no good talking about it. Personally, I should prefer touching the chap up to fighting him, and I shall try it on. But he’s not likely to meet me half-way. And if he doesn’t there’ll be an interesting turn-up, and you shall hold the watch. I’ll send a kid round to fetch you when things look like starting. I must go now to interview my missing men. So long. Mind you slip round directly I send for you.”
“Wait a second. Don’t be in such a beastly hurry. Who’s the chap you’re going to fight?”
“I don’t know yet. Walton, I should think. But I don’t know.”
“Walton! By Jove, it’ll be worth seeing, anyhow, if we are both sacked for it when the Old Man finds out.”
Kennedy returned to his study and changed his football boots for a pair of gymnasium shoes. For the job he had in hand it was necessary that he should move quickly, and football boots are a nuisance on a board floor. When he had changed, he called Spencer.
“Go down to the senior dayroom,” he said, “and tell MacPherson I want to see him.”
MacPherson was a long, weak-looking youth. He had been put down to play for the house that day, and had not appeared.
“MacPherson!” said the fag, in a tone of astonishment, “not Walton?”