“Can’t you see everything there is?”
Ruthven hated Clowes as much as Clowes hated him.
Trevor cut into the conversation again.
“It’s like this, Ruthven,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry, but the Old Man’s just told me to search the studies in case any of the fellows have got baccy.”
Ruthven jumped up, pale with consternation.
“You can’t. I won’t have you disturbing my study.”
“This is rot,” said Trevor, shortly, “I’ve got to. It’s no good making it more unpleasant for me than it is.”
“But I’ve no tobacco. I swear I haven’t.”
“Then why mind us searching?” said Clowes affably.
“Come on, Ruthven,” said Trevor, “chuck us over the keys. You might as well.”
“I won’t.”
“Don’t be an ass, man.”
“We have here,” observed Clowes, in his sad, solemn way, “a stout and serviceable poker.” He stooped, as he spoke, to pick it up.
“Leave that poker alone,” cried Ruthven.
Clowes straightened himself.
“I’ll swop it for your keys,” he said.
“Don’t be a fool.”
“Very well, then. We will now crack our first crib.”
Ruthven sprang forward, but Clowes, handing him off in football fashion with his left hand, with his right dashed the poker against the lock of the drawer of the table by which he stood.
The lock broke with a sharp crack. It was not built with an eye to such onslaught.
“Neat for a first shot,” said Clowes, complacently. “Now for the Umustaphas and shag.”
But as he looked into the drawer he uttered a sudden cry of excitement. He drew something out, and tossed it over to Trevor.
“Catch, Trevor,” he said quietly. “Something that’ll interest you.”
Trevor caught it neatly in one hand, and stood staring at it as if he had never seen anything like it before. And yet he had—often. For what he had caught was a little golden bat, about an inch long by an eighth of an inch wide.
XXI. THE LEAGUE REVEALED
“What do you think of that?” said Clowes.
Trevor said nothing. He could not quite grasp the situation. It was not only that he had got the idea so firmly into his head that it was Rand-Brown who had sent the letters and appropriated the bat. Even supposing he had not suspected Rand-Brown, he would never have dreamed of suspecting Ruthven. They had been friends. Not very close friends—Trevor’s keenness for games and Ruthven’s dislike of them prevented that—but a good deal more than acquaintances. He was so constituted that he could not grasp the frame of mind required for such an action as Ruthven’s. It was something absolutely abnormal.
Clowes was equally surprised, but for a different reason. It was not so much the enormity of Ruthven’s proceedings that took him aback. He believed him, with that cheerful intolerance which a certain type of mind affects, capable of anything. What surprised him was the fact that Ruthven had had the ingenuity and even the daring to conduct a campaign of this description. Cribbing in examinations he would have thought the limit of his crimes. Something backboneless and underhand of that kind would not have surprised him in the least. He would have said that it was just about what he had expected all along. But that Ruthven should blossom out suddenly as quite an ingenious and capable criminal in this way, was a complete surprise.
“Well, perhaps you’ll make a remark?” he said, turning to Ruthven.
Ruthven, looking very much like a passenger on a Channel steamer who has just discovered that the motion of the vessel is affecting him unpleasantly, had fallen into a chair when Clowes handed him off. He sat there with a look on his pasty face which was not good to see, as silent as Trevor. It seemed that whatever conversation there was going to be would have to take the form of a soliloquy from Clowes.
Clowes took a seat on the corner of the table.
“It seems to me, Ruthven,” he said, “that you’d better say something. At present there’s a lot that wants explaining. As this bat has been found lying in your drawer, I suppose we may take it that you’re the impolite letter-writer?”