Mike, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse [e books for reading txt] 📗

>would 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 his

wake, till he reached the entrance to the school grounds. He dashed in

and took cover behind a tree.

 

Presently the sergeant turned the corner, going badly and evidently

cured of a good deal of the fever of the chase. Mike heard him toil on

for 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. They

passed 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 was

simple. He would give Sergeant Collard about half an hour, in case the

latter 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, and

so to bed. It had just struck a quarter to something—twelve, he

supposed—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 the

pavilion. Having arrived there, he sat on the steps, looking out on to

the cricket field.

 

His thoughts were miles away, at Wrykyn, when he was recalled to

Sedleigh by the sound of somebody running. Focussing his gaze, he saw

a dim figure moving rapidly across the cricket field straight for him.

 

His first impression, that he had been seen and followed, disappeared

as the runner, instead of making for the pavilion, turned aside, and

stopped at the door of the bicycle shed. Like Mike, he was evidently

possessed of a key, for Mike heard it grate in the lock. At this point

he left the pavilion and hailed his fellow rambler by night in a

cautious 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 expected

to meet at midnight obviously on the point of going for a bicycle

ride.

 

“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 and

dashing?”

 

“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 through

the gate. The school clock struck the quarter.

 

It seemed to Mike that Sergeant Collard, even if he had started to

wait for him at the house, would not keep up the vigil for more than

half 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 the

news, conveyed to him by Adair, that MacPhee, one of the junior

members of Adair’s dormitory, was groaning and exhibiting other

symptoms of acute illness, was disturbed in his mind. Most

housemasters feel uneasy in the event of illness in their houses, and

Mr. Downing was apt to get jumpy beyond the ordinary on such

occasions. All that was wrong with MacPhee, as a matter of fact, was a

very fair stomach-ache, the direct and legitimate result of eating six

buns, half a cocoa-nut, three doughnuts, two ices, an apple, and a

pound of cherries, and washing the lot down with tea. But Mr. Downing

saw in his attack the beginnings of some deadly scourge which would

sweep through and decimate the house. He had despatched Adair for the

doctor, and, after spending a few minutes prowling restlessly about

his room, was now standing at his front gate, waiting for Adair’s

return.

 

It came about, therefore, that Mike, sprinting lightly in the

direction of home and safety, had his already shaken nerves further

maltreated by being hailed, at a range of about two yards, with a cry

of “Is that you, Adair?” The next moment Mr. Downing emerged from his

gate.

 

Mike stood not upon the order of his going. He was off like an

arrow—a flying figure of Guilt. Mr. Downing, after the first

surprise, seemed to grasp the situation. Ejaculating at intervals

the words, “Who is that? Stop! Who is that? Stop!” he dashed after

the much-enduring Wrykynian at an extremely creditable rate of

speed. Mr. Downing was by way of being a sprinter. He had won

handicap events at College sports at Oxford, and, if Mike had

not got such a good start, the race might have been over in the

first fifty yards. As it was, that victim of Fate, going well,

kept ahead. At the entrance to the school grounds he led by a

dozen yards. The procession passed into the field, Mike heading

as before for the pavilion.

 

As they raced across the soft turf, an idea occurred to Mike which he

was accustomed in after years to attribute to genius, the one flash of

it which had ever illumined his life.

 

It was this.

 

One of Mr. Downing’s first acts, on starting the Fire Brigade at

Sedleigh, had been to institute an alarm bell. It had been rubbed into

the school officially—in speeches from the da�s—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 quickest

possible way, and make for the open. The bell might mean that the

school was on fire, or it might mean that one of the houses was on

fire. In any case, the school had its orders—to get out into the open

at once.

 

Nor must it be supposed that the school was without practice at this

feat. Every now and then a notice would be found posted up on the

board to the effect that there would be fire drill during the dinner

hour that day. Sometimes the performance was bright and interesting,

as on the occasion when Mr. Downing, marshalling the brigade at his

front gate, had said, “My house is supposed to be on fire. Now let’s

do a record!” which the Brigade, headed by Stone and Robinson,

obligingly did. They fastened the hose to the hydrant, smashed a

window on the ground floor (Mr. Downing having retired for a moment to

talk 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 the

light furniture of which was floating on a miniature lake. That

episode had rather discouraged his passion for realism, and fire drill

since then had taken the form, for the most part, of “practising

escaping.” This was done by means of canvas shoots, kept in the

dormitories. At the sound of the bell the prefect of the dormitory

would heave one end of the shoot out of window, the other end being

fastened to the sill. He would then go down it himself, using his

elbows as a brake. Then the second man would follow his example, and

these two, standing below, would hold the end of the shoot so that the

rest of the dormitory could fly rapidly down it without injury, except

to their digestions.

 

After the first novelty of the thing had worn off, the school

had taken a rooted dislike to fire drill. It was a matter for

self-congratulation among them that Mr. Downing had never been

able to induce the headmaster to allow the alarm bell to be sounded

for fire drill at night. The headmaster, a man who had his views on

the amount of sleep necessary for the growing boy, had drawn the line

at night operations. “Sufficient unto the day” had been the gist of

his reply. If the alarm bell were to ring at night when there was no

fire, the school might mistake a genuine alarm of fire for a bogus

one, 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-way

up the wall.

 

Mike, as he raced over the cricket field, made up his mind in a flash

that his only chance of getting out of this tangle was to shake his

pursuer off for a space of time long enough to enable him to get to

the rope and tug it. Then the school would come out. He would mix with

them, and in the subsequent confusion get back to bed unnoticed.

 

The task was easier than it would have seemed at the beginning of the

chase. Mr. Downing, owing to the two facts that he was not in the

strictest training, and that it is only an Alfred Shrubb who can run

for any length of time at top speed shouting “Who is that? Stop! Who

is that? Stop!” was beginning to feel distressed. There were bellows

to mend in the Downing camp. Mike perceived this, and forced the pace.

He rounded the pavilion ten yards to the good. Then, heading for the

gate, he put all he knew into one last sprint. Mr. Downing was not

equal to the effort. He worked gamely for a few strides, then fell

behind. 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 nice

calculations—he had about four seconds in which to get busy with that

bell rope.

 

Probably nobody has ever crammed more energetic work into four seconds

than he did then.

 

The night was as still as only an English summer night can be, and the

first clang of the clapper sounded like a million iron girders falling

from a height on to a sheet of tin. He tugged away furiously, with an

eye on the now rapidly advancing and loudly shouting figure of the

housemaster.

 

And from the darkened house beyond there came a gradually swelling

hum, as if a vast hive of bees had been disturbed.

 

The school was awake.