“Never mind,” said Dunstable, “I’m good for six shillings.”
“Free list?” said Merrett, as the manager retired, “I didn’t know there was one.”
“There isn’t. Only he and I palled up so much the other day that he offered me a tea for nothing.”
“Didn’t you take it?”
“No. I went to Cook’s.”
“Rotten hole, Cook’s. I’m never going there again,” said Chadwick. “You take my tip, Dun, old chap, and come here.”
“Dun, old chap,” smiled amiably.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up from the tea-pot, into which he had been pouring water; “you can be certain of the food at Cook’s.”
“What do you mean? So you can here.”
“Oh,” said Dunstable, “I didn’t know. I’ve never had tea here before. But I’ve often heard that American food upsets one sometimes.”
By this time, the tea having stood long enough, he poured out, and the meal began.
Merrett and his friends were hearty feeders, and conversation languished for some time. Then Chadwick leaned back in his chair, and breathed heavily.
“You couldn’t get stuff like that at Cook’s,” he said.
“I suppose it is a bit different,” said Dunstable. “Have any of you … noticed something queer…?”
Merrett stared at Ruthven. Ruthven stared at Merrett.
“I….” said Merrett.
“D’you know….” said Ruthven.
Chadwick’s face was a delicate green.
“I believe,” said Dunstable, “the stuff … was … poisoned. I….”
“Drink this,” said the school doctor, briskly, bending over Dunstable’s bed with a medicine-glass in his hand, “and be ashamed of yourself. The fact is you’ve over-eaten yourself. Nothing more and nothing less. Why can’t you boys be content to feed moderately?”
“I don’t think I ate much, sir,” protested Dunstable. “It must have been what I ate. I went to that new American place.”
“So you went there, too? Why, I’ve just come from attending a bilious boy in Mr. Seymour’s house. He said he had been at the American place, too.”
“Was that Merrett, sir? He was one of the party. We were all bad. We can’t all have eaten too much.”
The doctor looked thoughtful.
“H’m. Curious. Very curious. Do you remember what you had?”
“I had some things the man called buckwheat cakes, with some stuff he said was maple syrup.”
“Bah. American trash.” The doctor was a staunch Briton, conservative in his views both on politics and on food. “Why can’t you boys eat good English food? I must tell the headmaster of this. I haven’t time to look after the school if all the boys are going to poison themselves. You lie still and try to go to sleep, and you’ll be right enough in no time.”
But Dunstable did not go to sleep. He stayed awake to interview Linton, who came to pay him a visit.
“Well,” said Linton, looking down at the sufferer with an expression that was a delicate blend of pity and contempt, “you’ve made a nice sort of ass of yourself, haven’t you! I don’t know if it’s any consolation to you, but Merrett’s just as bad as you are. And I hear the others are, too. So now you see what comes of going to Ring’s instead of Cook’s.”
“And now,” said Dunstable, “if you’ve quite finished, you can listen to me for a bit….”
“So now you know,” he concluded.
Linton’s face beamed with astonishment and admiration.
“Well, I’m hanged,” he said. “You’re a marvel. But how did you know it wouldn’t poison you?”
“I relied on you. You said it wasn’t poison when I asked you in the lab. My faith in you is touching.”
“But why did you take any yourself?”
“Sort of idea of diverting suspicion. But the thing isn’t finished yet. Listen.”
Linton left the dormitory five minutes later with a look of a young disciple engaged on some holy mission.
PART 3
“You think the food is unwholesome, then?” said the headmaster after dinner that night.
“Unwholesome!” said the school doctor. “It must be deadly. It must be positively lethal. Here we have six ordinary, strong, healthy boys struck down at one fell swoop as if there were a pestilence raging. Why–-“
“One moment,” said the headmaster. “Come in.”
A small figure appeared in the doorway.
“Please, sir,” said the figure in the strained voice of one speaking a “piece” which he has committed to memory. “Mr. Seymour says please would you mind letting the doctor come to his house at once because Linton is ill.”
“What!” exclaimed the doctor. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Please, sir, I believe it’s buckwheat cakes.”
“What! And here’s another of them!”
A second small figure had appeared in the doorway.
“Sir, please, sir,” said the newcomer, “Mr. Bradfield says may the doctor–-“
“And what boy is it this time?”
“Please, sir, it’s Brown. He went to Ring’s Stores–-“
The headmaster rose.
“Perhaps you had better go at once, Oakes,” he said. “This is becoming serious. That place is a positive menace to the community. I shall put it out of bounds tomorrow morning.”
And when Dunstable and Linton, pale but cheerful, made their way—slowly, as befitted convalescents—to Cook’s two days afterwards, they had to sit on the counter. All the other seats were occupied.
THE GUARDIAN
In his Sunday suit (with ten shillings in specie in the right-hand trouser pocket) and a brand-new bowler hat, the youngest of the Shearnes, Thomas Beauchamp Algernon, was being launched by the combined strength of the family on his public-school career. It was a solemn moment. The landscape was dotted with relatives—here a small sister, awed by the occasion into refraining from insult; there an aunt, vaguely admonitory. “Well, Tom,” said Mr. Shearne, “you’ll soon be off now. You’re sure to like Eckleton. Remember to cultivate your bowling. Everyone can bat nowadays. And play forward, not outside. The outsides get most of the fun, certainly, but then if you’re a forward, you’ve got eight chances of getting into a team.”
“All right, father.”
“Oh, and work hard.” This by way of an afterthought.
“All right, father.”
“And, Tom,” said Mrs. Shearne, “you are sure to be comfortable at school, because I asked Mrs. Davy to write to her sister, Mrs. Spencer, who has a son at Eckleton, and tell her to tell him to look after you when you get there. He is in Mr. Dencroft’s house, which is next door to Mr. Blackburn’s, so you will be quite close to one another. Mind you write directly you get there.”
“All right, mother.”
“And look here, Tom.” His eldest brother stepped to the front and spoke earnestly. “Look here, don’t you forget what I’ve been telling you?”
“All right.”
“You’ll be right enough if you don’t go sticking on side. Don’t forget that, however much of a blood you may have been at that rotten little private school of yours, you’re not one at Eckleton.”
“All right.”
“You look clean, which is the great thing. There’s nothing much wrong with you except cheek. You’ve got enough of that to float a ship. Keep it under.”
“All right. Keep your hair on.”
“There you go,” said the expert, with gloomy triumph. “If you say that sort of thing at Eckleton, you’ll get jolly well sat on, by Jove!”
“Bai Jove, old chap!” murmured the younger brother, “we’re devils in the Forty-twoth!”
The other, whose chief sorrow in life was that he could not get the smaller members of the family to look with proper awe on the fact that he had just passed into Sandhurst, gazed wistfully at the speaker, but, realising that there was a locked door between them, tried no active measures.