CHAPTER XLV
PURSUIT
These things are Life's Little Difficulties. One can never tellprecisely how one will act in a sudden emergency. The right thing forMike to have done at this crisis was to have ignored the voice,carried on up the water-pipe, and through the study window, and goneto bed. It was extremely unlikely that anybody could have recognisedhim at night against the dark background of the house. The positionthen would have been that somebody in Mr. Outwood's house had beenseen breaking in after lights-out; but it would have been verydifficult for the authorities to have narrowed the search down anyfurther than that. There were thirty-four boys in Outwood's, of whomabout fourteen were much the same size and build as Mike.
The suddenness, however, of the call caused Mike to lose his head. Hemade the strategic error of sliding rapidly down the pipe, andrunning.
There were two gates to Mr. Outwood's front garden. The carriage driveran in a semicircle, of which the house was the centre. It was fromthe right-hand gate, nearest to Mr. Downing's house, that the voicehad come, and, as Mike came to the ground, he saw a stout figuregalloping towards him from that direction. He bolted like a rabbit forthe other gate. As he did so, his pursuer again gave tongue.
"Oo-oo-oo yer!" was the exact remark.
Whereby Mike recognised him as the school sergeant.
"Oo-oo-oo yer!" was that militant gentleman's habitual way ofbeginning a conversation.
With this knowledge, Mike felt easier in his mind. Sergeant Collardwas a man of many fine qualities, (notably a talent for what he waswont to call "spott'n," a mysterious gift which he exercised on therifle range), but he could not run. There had been a time in his hotyouth when he had sprinted like an untamed mustang in pursuit ofvolatile Pathans in Indian hill wars, but Time, increasing his girth,had taken from him the taste for such exercise. When he moved now itwas at a stately walk. The fact that he ran to-night showed how theexcitement of the chase had entered into his blood.
"Oo-oo-oo yer!" he shouted again, as Mike, passing through the gate,turned into the road that led to the school. Mike's attentive earnoted that the bright speech was a shade more puffily delivered thistime. He began to feel that this was not such bad fun after all. Hewould have liked to be in bed, but, if that was out of the question,this was certainly the next best thing.
He ran on, taking things easily, with the sergeant panting in hiswake, till he reached the entrance to the school grounds. He dashed inand took cover behind a tree.
Presently the sergeant turned the corner, going badly and evidentlycured of a good deal of the fever of the chase. Mike heard him toil onfor a few yards and then stop. A sound of panting was borne to him.
Then the sound of footsteps returning, this time at a walk. Theypassed the gate and went on down the road.
The pursuer had given the thing up.
Mike waited for several minutes behind his tree. His programme now wassimple. He would give Sergeant Collard about half an hour, in case thelatter took it into his head to "guard home" by waiting at the gate.Then he would trot softly back, shoot up the water-pipe once more, andso to bed. It had just struck a quarter to something--twelve, hesupposed--on the school clock. He would wait till a quarter past.
Meanwhile, there was nothing to be gained from lurking behind a tree.He left his cover, and started to stroll in the direction of thepavilion. Having arrived there, he sat on the steps, looking out on tothe cricket field.
His thoughts were miles away, at Wrykyn, when he was recalled toSedleigh by the sound of somebody running. Focussing his gaze, he sawa dim figure moving rapidly across the cricket field straight for him.
His first impression, that he had been seen and followed, disappearedas the runner, instead of making for the pavilion, turned aside, andstopped at the door of the bicycle shed. Like Mike, he was evidentlypossessed of a key, for Mike heard it grate in the lock. At this pointhe left the pavilion and hailed his fellow rambler by night in acautious undertone.
The other appeared startled.
"Who the dickens is that?" he asked. "Is that you, Jackson?"
Mike recognised Adair's voice. The last person he would have expectedto meet at midnight obviously on the point of going for a bicycleride.
"What are you doing out here, Jackson?"
"What are you, if it comes to that?"
Adair was lighting his lamp.
"I'm going for the doctor. One of the chaps in our house is bad."
"Oh!"
"What are you doing out here?"
"Just been for a stroll."
"Hadn't you better be getting back?"
"Plenty of time."
"I suppose you think you're doing something tremendously brave anddashing?"
"Hadn't you better be going to the doctor?"
"If you want to know what I think----"
"I don't. So long."
Mike turned away, whistling between his teeth. After a moment's pause,Adair rode off. Mike saw his light pass across the field and throughthe gate. The school clock struck the quarter.
It seemed to Mike that Sergeant Collard, even if he had started towait for him at the house, would not keep up the vigil for more thanhalf an hour. He would be safe now in trying for home again.
He walked in that direction.
Now it happened that Mr. Downing, aroused from his first sleep by thenews, conveyed to him by Adair, that MacPhee, one of the juniormembers of Adair's dormitory, was groaning and exhibiting othersymptoms of acute illness, was disturbed in his mind. Mosthousemasters feel uneasy in the event of illness in their houses, andMr. Downing was apt to get jumpy beyond the ordinary on suchoccasions. All that was wrong with MacPhee, as a matter of fact, was avery fair stomach-ache, the direct and legitimate result of eating sixbuns, half a cocoa-nut, three doughnuts, two ices, an apple, and apound of cherries, and washing the lot down with tea. But Mr. Downingsaw in his attack the beginnings of some deadly scourge which wouldsweep through and decimate the house. He had despatched Adair for thedoctor, and, after spending a few minutes prowling restlessly abouthis room, was now standing at his front gate, waiting for Adair'sreturn.
It came about, therefore, that Mike, sprinting lightly in thedirection of home and safety, had his already shaken nerves furthermaltreated by being hailed, at a range of about two yards, with a cryof "Is that you, Adair?" The next moment Mr. Downing emerged from hisgate.
Mike stood not upon the order of his going. He was off like anarrow--a flying figure of Guilt. Mr. Downing, after the firstsurprise, seemed to grasp the situation. Ejaculating at intervalsthe words, "Who is that? Stop! Who is that? Stop!" he dashed afterthe much-enduring Wrykynian at an extremely creditable rate ofspeed. Mr. Downing was by way of being a sprinter. He had wonhandicap events at College sports at Oxford, and, if Mike hadnot got such a good start, the race might have been over in thefirst fifty yards. As it was, that victim of Fate, going well,kept ahead. At the entrance to the school grounds he led by adozen yards. The procession passed into the field, Mike headingas before for the pavilion.
As they raced across the soft turf, an idea occurred to Mike which hewas accustomed in after years to attribute to genius, the one flash ofit which had ever illumined his life.
It was this.
One of Mr. Downing's first acts, on starting the Fire Brigade atSedleigh, had been to institute an alarm bell. It had been rubbed intothe school officially--in speeches from the dais--by the headmaster,and unofficially--in earnest private conversations--by Mr. Downing,that at the sound of this bell, at whatever hour of day or night,every member of the school must leave his house in the quickestpossible way, and make for the open. The bell might mean that theschool was on fire, or it might mean that one of the houses was onfire. In any case, the school had its orders--to get out into the openat once.
Nor must it be supposed that the school was without practice at thisfeat. Every now and then a notice would be found posted up on theboard to the effect that there would be fire drill during the dinnerhour that da
y. Sometimes the performance was bright and interesting,as on the occasion when Mr. Downing, marshalling the brigade at hisfront gate, had said, "My house is supposed to be on fire. Now let'sdo a record!" which the Brigade, headed by Stone and Robinson,obligingly did. They fastened the hose to the hydrant, smashed awindow on the ground floor (Mr. Downing having retired for a moment totalk with the headmaster), and poured a stream of water into the room.When Mr. Downing was at liberty to turn his attention to the matter,he found that the room selected was his private study, most of thelight furniture of which was floating on a miniature lake. Thatepisode had rather discouraged his passion for realism, and fire drillsince then had taken the form, for the most part, of "practisingescaping." This was done by means of canvas shoots, kept in thedormitories. At the sound of the bell the prefect of the dormitorywould heave one end of the shoot out of window, the other end beingfastened to the sill. He would then go down it himself, using hiselbows as a brake. Then the second man would follow his example, andthese two, standing below, would hold the end of the shoot so that therest of the dormitory could fly rapidly down it without injury, exceptto their digestions.
After the first novelty of the thing had worn off, the schoolhad taken a rooted dislike to fire drill. It was a matter forself-congratulation among them that Mr. Downing had never beenable to induce the headmaster to allow the alarm bell to be soundedfor fire drill at night. The headmaster, a man who had his views onthe amount of sleep necessary for the growing boy, had drawn the lineat night operations. "Sufficient unto the day" had been the gist ofhis reply. If the alarm bell were to ring at night when there was nofire, the school might mistake a genuine alarm of fire for a bogusone, and refuse to hurry themselves.
So Mr. Downing had had to be content with day drill.
The alarm bell hung in the archway leading into the school grounds.The end of the rope, when not in use, was fastened to a hook half-wayup the wall.
Mike, as he raced over the cricket field, made up his mind in a flashthat his only chance of getting out of this tangle was to shake hispursuer off for a space of time long enough to enable him to get tothe rope and tug it. Then the school would come out. He would mix withthem, and in the subsequent confusion get back to bed unnoticed.
The task was easier than it would have seemed at the beginning of thechase. Mr. Downing, owing to the two facts that he was not in thestrictest training, and that it is only an Alfred Shrubb who can runfor any length of time at top speed shouting "Who is that? Stop! Whois that? Stop!" was beginning to feel distressed. There were bellowsto mend in the Downing camp. Mike perceived this, and forced the pace.He rounded the pavilion ten yards to the good. Then, heading for thegate, he put all he knew into one last sprint. Mr. Downing was notequal to the effort. He worked gamely for a few strides, then fellbehind. When Mike reached the gate, a good forty yards separated them.
As far as Mike could judge--he was not in a condition to make nicecalculations--he had about four seconds in which to get busy with thatbell rope.
Probably nobody has ever crammed more energetic work into four secondsthan he did then.
The night was as still as only an English summer night can be, and thefirst clang of the clapper sounded like a million iron girders fallingfrom a height on to a sheet of tin. He tugged away furiously, with aneye on the now rapidly advancing and loudly shouting figure of thehousemaster.
And from the darkened house beyond there came a gradually swellinghum, as if a vast hive of bees had been disturbed.
The school was awake.
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