The Head of Kay's/Chapter 21

"Thanks," said Fenn.

He stood twirling the cap round in his hand as Spencer closed the door. Then he threw it on to the table. He did not feel particularly disturbed at the thought of the interview that was to come. He had been expecting the cap to turn up, like the corpse of Eugene Aram's victim, at some inconvenient moment. It was a pity that it had come just as things looked as if they might be made more or less tolerable in Kay's. He had been looking forward with a grim pleasure to the sensation that would be caused in the house when it became known that he and Kennedy had formed a combine for its moral and physical benefit. But that was all over. He would be sacked, beyond a doubt. In the history of Eckleton, as far as he knew it, there had never been a case of a fellow breaking out at night and not being expelled when he was caught. It was one of the cardinal sins in the school code. There had been the case of Peter Brown, which his brother had mentioned in his letter. And in his own time he had seen three men vanish from Eckleton for the same offence. He did not flatter himself that his record at the school was so good as to make it likely that the authorities would stretch a point in his favour.

"So long, Kennedy," he said. "You'll be here when I get back, I suppose?"

"What does he want you for, do you think?" asked Kennedy, stretching himself, with a yawn. It never struck him that Fenn could be in any serious trouble. Fenn was a prefect; and when the headmaster sent for a prefect, it was generally to tell him that he had got a split infinitive in his English Essay that week.

"Glad I'm not you," he added, as a gust of wind rattled the sash, and the rain dashed against the pane. "Beastly evening to have to go out."

"It isn't the rain I mind," said Fenn; "it's what's going to happen when I get indoors again," and refused to explain further. There would be plenty of time to tell Kennedy the whole story when he returned. It was better not to keep the headmaster waiting.

The first thing he noticed on reaching the School House was the strange demeanour of the butler. Whenever Fenn had had occasion to call on the headmaster hitherto, Watson had admitted him with the air of a high priest leading a devotee to a shrine of which he was the sole managing director. This evening he seemed restless, excited.

"Good evening, Mr Fenn," he said. "This way, sir."

Those were his actual words. Fenn had not known for certain until now that he could talk. On previous occasions their conversations had been limited to an "Is the headmaster in?" from Fenn, and a stately inclination of the head from Watson. The man was getting a positive babbler.

With an eager, springy step, distantly reminiscent of a heading a procession of customers, with a touch of the style of the winner in a walking-race to Brighton, the once slow-moving butler led the way to the headmaster's study.

For the first time since he started out, Fenn was conscious of a tremor. There is something about a closed door, behind which somebody is waiting to receive one, which appeals to the imagination, especially if the ensuing meeting is likely to be an unpleasant one.

"Ah, Fenn," said the headmaster. "Come in."

Fenn wondered. It was not in this tone of voice that the Head was wont to begin a conversation which was going to prove painful.

"You've got your cap, Fenn? I gave it to a small boy in your house to take to you."

"Yes, sir."

He had given up all hope of understanding the Head's line of action. Unless he was playing a deep game, and intended to flash out suddenly with a keen question which it would be impossible to parry, there seemed nothing to account for the strange absence of anything unusual in his manner. He referred to the cap as if he had borrowed it from Fenn, and had returned it by bearer, hoping that its loss had not inconvenienced him at all.

"I daresay," continued the Head, "that you are wondering how it came into my possession. You missed it, of course?"

"Very much, sir," said Fenn, with perfect truth.

"It has just been brought to my house, together with a great many other things, more valuable, perhaps,"—here he smiled a head-magisterial smile—"by a policeman from Eckleton."

Fenn was still unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation. He could understand, in a vague way, that for some unexplained reason things were going well for him, but beyond that his mind was in a whirl.

"You will remember the unfortunate burglary of Mr Kay's house and mine. Your cap was returned with the rest of the stolen property."

"Just so," thought Fenn. "The rest of the stolen property? Exactly. Go on. Don't mind me. I shall begin to understand soon, I suppose."

He condensed these thoughts into the verbal reply, "Yes, sir."

"I sent for you to identify your own property. I see there is a silver cup belonging to you. Perhaps there are also other articles. Go and see. You will find them on that table. They are in a hopeless state of confusion, having been conveyed here in a sack. Fortunately, nothing is broken."

He was thinking of certain valuables belonging to himself which had been abstracted from his drawing-room on the occasion of the burglar's visit to the School House.

Fenn crossed the room, and began to inspect the table indicated. On it was as mixed a collection of valuable and useless articles as one could wish to see. He saw his cup at once, and attached himself to it. But of all the other exhibits in this private collection, he could recognise nothing else as his property.

"There is nothing of mine here except the cup, sir," he said.

"Ah. Then that is all, I think. You are going back to Mr Kay's. Then please send Kennedy to me. Good night, Fenn."

"Good night, sir."

Even now Fenn could not understand it. The more he thought it over, the more his brain reeled. He could grasp the fact that his cap and his cup were safe again, and that there was evidently going to be no sacking for the moment. But how it had all happened, and how the police had got hold of his cap, and why they had returned it with the loot gathered in by the burglar who had visited Kay's and the School House, were problems which, he had to confess, were beyond him.

He walked to Kay's through the rain with the cup under his mackintosh, and freely admitted to himself that there were things in heaven and earth—and particularly earth—which no fellow could understand.

"I don't know," he said, when Kennedy pressed for an explanation of the reappearance of the cup. "It's no good asking me. I'm going now to borrow the matron's smelling-salts: I feel faint. After that I shall wrap a wet towel round my head, and begin to think it out. Meanwhile, you're to go over to the Head. He's had enough of me, and he wants to have a look at you."

"Me?" said Kennedy. "Why?"

"Now, is it any good asking me??" said Fenn. "If you can find out what it's all about, I'll thank you if you'll come and tell me."

Ten minutes later Kennedy returned. He carried a watch and chain.

"I couldn't think what had happened to my watch," he said. "I missed it on the day after that burglary here, but I never thought of thinking it had been collared by a professional. I thought I must have lost it somewhere."

"Well, have you grasped what's been happening?"

"I've grasped my ticker, which is good enough for me. Half a second. The old man wants to see the rest of the prefects. He's going to work through the house in batches, instead of man by man. I'll just go round the studies and rout them out, and then I'll come back and explain. It's perfectly simple."

"Glad you think so," said Fenn.

Kennedy went and returned.

"Now," he said, subsiding into a deck-chair, "what is it you don't understand?"

"I don't understand anything. Begin at the beginning."

"I got the yarn from the butler—what's his name?"

"Those who know him well enough to venture to give him a name—I've never dared to myself—call him Watson," said Fenn.

"I got the yarn from Watson. He was as excited as anything about it. I never saw him like that before."

"I noticed something queer about him."

"He's awfully bucked, and is doing the Ancient Mariner business all over the place. Wants to tell the story to everyone he sees."

"Well, suppose you follow his example. I want to hear about it."

"Well, it seems that the police have been watching a house at the corner of the High Street for some time—what's up?"

"Nothing. Go on."

"But you said, 'By Jove!'"

"Well, why shouldn't I say 'By Jove'? When you are telling sensational yarns, it's my duty to say something of the sort. Buck along."

"It's a house not far from the Town Hall, at the corner of Pegwell Street—you've probably been there scores of times."

"Once or twice, perhaps," said Fenn. "Well?"

"About a month ago two suspicious-looking bounders went to live there. Watson says their faces were enough to hang them. Anyhow, they must have been pretty bad, for they made even the Eckleton police, who are pretty average-sized rotters, suspicious, and they kept an eye on them. Well, after a bit there began to be a regular epidemic of burglary round about here. Watson says half the houses round were broken into. The police thought it was getting a bit too thick, but they didn't like to raid the house without some jolly good evidence that these two men were the burglars, so they lay low and waited till they should give them a decent excuse for jumping on them. They had had a detective chap down from London, by the way, to see if he couldn't do something about the burglaries, and he kept his eye on them, too."

"They had quite a gallery. Didn't they notice any of the eyes?"

"No. Then after a bit one of them nipped off to London with a big bag. The detective chap was after him like a shot. He followed him from the station, saw him get into a cab, got into another himself, and stuck to him hard. The front cab stopped at about a dozen pawnbrokers' shops. The detective Johnny took the names and addresses, and hung on to the burglar man all day, and finally saw him return to the station, where he caught a train back to Eckleton. Directly he had seen him off, the detective got into a cab, called on the dozen pawnbrokers, showed his card, with 'Scotland Yard' on it, I suppose, and asked to see what the other chap had pawned. He identified every single thing as something that had been collared from one of the houses round Eckleton way. So he came back here, told the police, and they raided the house, and there they found stacks of loot of all descriptions."

"Including my cap," said Fenn, thoughtfully. "I see now."

"Rummy the man thinking it worth his while to take an old cap," said Kennedy.

"Very," said Fenn. "But it's been a rum business all along."