“They had nothing to do with us, sir. We saw nothing of them.”
“I have no doubt,” said the house-master, “that you imagine that you are doing a very chivalrous thing by trying to hide them, but you will gain nothing by it. You may go.”
He came to the top of the steps, and it seemed as if he intended to plunge into the darkness in search of the suspects. But, probably realising the futility of such a course, he changed his mind, and delivered an ultimatum from the top step.
“O’Hara and Moriarty.”
No reply.
“O’Hara and Moriarty, I know perfectly well that you are down there. Come up immediately.”
Dignified silence from the vault.
“Well, I shall wait here till you do choose to come up. You would be well advised to do so immediately. I warn you you will not tire me out.”
He turned, and the door slammed behind him.
“What’ll we do?” whispered Moriarty. It was at last safe to whisper.
“Wait,” said O’Hara, “I’m thinking.”
O’Hara thought. For many minutes he thought in vain. At last there came flooding back into his mind a memory of the days of his faghood. It was after that that he had been groping all the time. He remembered now. Once in those days there had been an unexpected function in the middle of term. There were needed for that function certain chairs. He could recall even now his furious disgust when he and a select body of fellow fags had been pounced upon by their form-master, and coerced into forming a line from the junior block to the cloisters, for the purpose of handing chairs. True, his form-master had stood ginger-beer after the event, with princely liberality, but the labour was of the sort that gallons of ginger-beer will not make pleasant. But he ceased to regret the episode now. He had been at the extreme end of the chair-handling chain. He had stood in a passage in the junior block, just by the door that led to the masters’ garden, and which—he remembered—was never locked till late at night. And while he stood there, a pair of hands—apparently without a body—had heaved up chair after chair through a black opening in the floor. In other words, a trap-door connected with the vault in which he now was.
He imparted these reminiscences of childhood to Moriarty. They set off to search for the missing door, and, after wanderings and barkings of shins too painful to relate, they found it. Moriarty lit a match. The light fell on the trap-door, and their last doubts were at an end. The thing opened inwards. The bolt was on their side, not in the passage above them. To shoot the bolt took them one second, to climb into the passage one minute. They stood at the side of the opening, and dusted their clothes.
“Bedad!” said Moriarty, suddenly.
“What?”
“Why, how are we to shut it?”
This was a problem that wanted some solving. Eventually they managed it, O’Hara leaning over and fishing for it, while Moriarty held his legs.
As luck would have it—and luck had stood by them well all through—there was a bolt on top of the trap-door, as well as beneath it.
“Supposing that had been shot!” said O’Hara, as they fastened the door in its place.
Moriarty did not care to suppose anything so unpleasant.
Mr Dexter was still prowling about on the junior gravel, when the two Irishmen ran round and across the senior gravel to the gymnasium. Here they put in a few minutes’ gentle sparring, and then marched boldly up to Mr Day (who happened to have looked in five minutes after their arrival) and got their paper.
“What time did O’Hara and Moriarty arrive at the gymnasium?” asked Mr Dexter of Mr Day next morning.
“O’Hara and Moriarty? Really, I can’t remember. I know they left at about a quarter to seven.”
That profound thinker, Mr Tony Weller, was never so correct as in his views respecting the value of an alibi. There are few better things in an emergency.
XVIII. O’HARA EXCELS HIMSELF
It was Renford’s turn next morning to get up and feed the ferrets. Harvey had done it the day before.