# The Little Nugget/Part Two/Chapter 8
## I

That Buck MacGinnis was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet in a situation like the present one, I would have gathered from White's remarks if I had not already done so from personal observation. The world is divided into dreamers and men of action. From what little I had seen of him I placed Buck MacGinnis in the latter class. Every day I expected him to act, and was agreeably surprised as each twenty-four hours passed and left me still unfixed. But I knew the hour would come, and it did.
I looked for frontal attack from Buck, not subtlety; but, when the attack came, it was so excessively frontal that my chief emotion was a sort of paralysed amazement. It seemed incredible that such peculiarly Wild Western events could happen in peaceful England, even in so isolated a spot as Sanstead House.
It had been one of those interminable days which occur only at schools. A school, more than any other institution, is dependent on the weather. Every small boy rises from his bed of a morning charged with a definite quantity of devilry; and this, if he is to sleep the sound sleep of health, he has got to work off somehow before bedtime. That is why the summer term is the one a master longs for, when the intervals between classes can be spent in the open. There is no pleasanter sight for an assistant-master at a private school than that of a number of boys expending their venom harmlessly in the sunshine.
On this particular day, snow had begun to fall early in the morning, and, while his pupils would have been only too delighted to go out and roll in it by the hour, they were prevented from doing so by Mr Abney's strict orders. No schoolmaster enjoys seeing his pupils running risks of catching cold, and just then Mr Abney was especially definite on the subject. The Saturnalia which had followed Mr MacGinnis' nocturnal visit to the school had had the effect of giving violent colds to three lords, a baronet, and the younger son of an honourable. And, in addition to that, Mr Abney himself, his penetrating tenor changed to a guttural croak, was in his bed looking on the world with watering eyes. His views, therefore, on playing in the snow as an occupation for boys were naturally prejudiced.
The result was that Glossop and I had to try and keep order among a mob of small boys, none of whom had had any chance of working off his superfluous energy. How Glossop fared I can only imagine. Judging by the fact that I, who usually kept fair order without excessive effort, was almost overwhelmed, I should fancy he fared badly. His classroom was on the opposite side of the hall from mine, and at frequent intervals his voice would penetrate my door, raised to a frenzied fortissimo.
Little by little, however, we had won through the day, and the boys had subsided into comparative quiet over their evening preparation, when from outside the front door there sounded the purring of the engine of a large automobile. The bell rang.
I did not, I remember, pay much attention to this at the moment. I supposed that somebody from one of the big houses in the neighbourhood had called, or, taking the lateness of the hour into consideration, that a motoring party had come, as they did sometimes—Sanstead House standing some miles from anywhere in the middle of an intricate system of by-roads—to inquire the way to Portsmouth or London. If my class had allowed me, I would have ignored the sound. But for them it supplied just that break in the monotony of things which they had needed. They welcomed it vociferously.
A voice: 'Sir, please, sir, there's a motor outside.'
Myself (austerely): T know there's a motor outside. Get on with your work.'
Various voices: 'Sir, have you ever ridden in a motor?'
'Sir, my father let me help drive our motor last Easter, sir.'
'Sir, who do you think it is?'
An isolated genius (imitating the engine): 'Pr-prr! Pr-prr! Pr-prr!'
I was on the point of distributing bad marks (the schoolmaster's stand-by) broadcast, when a curious sound checked me. It followed directly upon the opening of the front door. I heard White's footsteps crossing the hall, then the click of the latch, and then—a sound that I could not define. The closed door of the classroom deadened it, but for all that it was audible. It resembled the thud of a falling body, but I knew it could not be that, for in peaceful England butlers opening front doors did not fall with thuds.
My class, eager listeners, found fresh material in the sound for friendly conversation.
'Sir, what was that, sir?'
'Did you hear that, sir?'
'What do you think's happened, sir?'
'Be quiet,' I shouted. 'Will you be—'
There was a quick footstep outside, the door flew open, and on the threshold stood a short, sturdy man in a motoring coat and cap. The upper part of his face was covered by a strip of white linen, with holes for the eyes, and there was a Browning pistol in his hand.
It is my belief that, if assistant-masters were allowed to wear white masks and carry automatic pistols, keeping order in a school would become child's play. A silence such as no threat of bad marks had ever been able to produce fell instantaneously upon the classroom. Out of the corner of my eye, as I turned to face our visitor, I could see small boys goggling rapturously at this miraculous realization of all the dreams induced by juvenile adventure fiction. As far as I could ascertain, on subsequent inquiry, not one of them felt a tremor of fear. It was all too tremendously exciting for that. For their exclusive benefit an illustration from a weekly paper for boys had come to life, and they had no time to waste in being frightened.
As for me, I was dazed. Motor bandits may terrorize France, and desperadoes hold up trains in America, but this was peaceful England. The fact that Buck MacGinnis was at large in the neighbourhood did not make the thing any the less incredible. I had looked on my affair with Buck as a thing of the open air and the darkness. I had figured him lying in wait in lonely roads, possibly, even, lurking about the grounds; but in my most apprehensive moments I had not imagined him calling at the front door and holding me up with a revolver in my own classroom.
And yet it was the simple, even the obvious, thing for him to do. Given an automobile, success was certain. Sanstead House stood absolutely alone. There was not even a cottage within half a mile. A train broken down in the middle of the Bad Lands was not more cut off.
Consider, too, the peculiar helplessness of a school in such a case. A school lives on the confidence of parents, a nebulous foundation which the slightest breath can destroy. Everything connected with it must be done with exaggerated discretion. I do not suppose Mr MacGinnis had thought the thing out in all its bearings, but he could not have made a sounder move if he had been a Napoleon. Where the owner of an ordinary country-house raided by masked men can raise the countryside in pursuit, a schoolmaster must do precisely the opposite. From his point of view, the fewer people that know of the affair the better. Parents are a jumpy race. A man may be the ideal schoolmaster, yet will a connection with melodrama damn him in the eyes of parents. They do not inquire. They are too panic-stricken for that. Golden-haired Willie may be receiving the finest education conceivable, yet if men with Browning pistols are familiar objects at his shrine of learning they will remove him. Fortunately for schoolmasters it is seldom that such visitors call upon them. Indeed, I imagine Mr MacGinnis's effort to have been the first of its kind.
I do not, as I say, suppose that Buck, whose forte was action rather than brain-work, had thought all this out. He had trusted to luck, and luck had stood by him. There would be no raising of the countryside in his case. On the contrary, I could see Mr Abney becoming one of the busiest persons on record in his endeavour to hush the thing up and prevent it getting into the papers. The man with the pistol spoke. He sighted me—I was standing with my back to the mantelpiece, parallel with the door—made a sharp turn, and raised his weapon.
'Put 'em up, sport,' he said.
It was not the voice of Buck MacGinnis. I put my hands up.
'Say, which of dese is de Nugget?'
He half turned his head to the class.
'Which of youse kids is Ogden Ford?'
The class was beyond speech. The silence continued.
'Ogden Ford is not here,' I said.
Our visitor had not that simple faith which is so much better than Norman blood. He did not believe me. Without moving his head he gave a long whistle. Steps sounded outside. Another, short, sturdy form, entered the room.
'He ain't in de odder room,' observed the newcomer. 'I been rubberin'!'
This was friend Buck beyond question. I could have recognized his voice anywhere!
'Well dis guy,' said the man with the pistol, indicating me, 'says he ain't here. What's de answer?'
'Why, it's Sam!' said Buck. 'Howdy, Sam? Pleased to see us, huh? We're in on de ground floor, too, dis time, all right, all right.'
His words had a marked effect on his colleague.
'Is dat Sam? Hell! Let me blow de head off'n him!' he said, with simple fervour; and, advancing a step nearer, he waved his disengaged fist truculently. In my role of Sam I had plainly made myself very unpopular. I have never heard so much emotion packed into a few words.
Buck, to my relief, opposed the motion. I thought this decent of Buck.
'Cheese it,' he said curtly.
The other cheesed it. The operation took the form of lowering the fist. The pistol he kept in position.
Mr MacGinnis resumed the conduct of affairs.
'Now den, Sam,' he said, 'come across! Where's de Nugget?'
'My name is not Sam,' I said. 'May I put my hands down?'
'Yep, if you want the top of your damn head blown off.'
Such was not my desire. I kept them up.
'Now den, you Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis again, 'we ain't got time to burn. Out with it. Where's dat Nugget?'
Some reply was obviously required. It was useless to keep protesting that I was not Sam.
'At this time in the evening he is generally working with Mr Glossop.'
'Who's Glossop? Dat dough-faced dub in de room over dere?'
'Exactly. You have described him perfectly.'
'Well, he ain't dere. I bin rubberin.' Aw, quit yer foolin', Sam, where is he?'
'I couldn't tell you just where he is at the present moment,' I said precisely.
'Ahr chee! Let me swot him one!' begged the man with the pistol; a most unlovable person. I could never have made a friend of him.
'Cheese it, you!' said Mr MacGinnis.
The other cheesed it once more, regretfully.
'You got him hidden away somewheres, Sam,' said Mr MacGinnis. 'You can't fool me. I'm com' t'roo dis joint wit a fine-tooth comb till I find him.'
'By all means,' I said. 'Don't let me stop you.'
'You? You're coming wit me.'
'If you wish it. I shall be delighted.'
'An' cut out dat dam' sissy way of talking, you rummy,' bellowed Buck, with a sudden lapse into ferocity. 'Spiel like a regular guy! Standin' dere, pullin' dat dude stuff on me! Cut it out!'
'Say, why mayn't I hand him one?' demanded the pistol-bearer pathetically. 'What's your kick against pushin' his face in?'
I thought the question in poor taste. Buck ignored it.
'Gimme dat canister,' he said, taking the Browning pistol from him. 'Now den, Sam, are youse goin' to be good, and come across, or ain't you—which?'
'I'd be delighted to do anything you wished, Mr MacGinnis,' I said, 'but—'
'Aw, hire a hall!' said Buck disgustedly. 'Step lively, den, an' we'll go t'roo de joint. I t'ought youse 'ud have had more sense, Sam, dan to play dis fool game when you know you're beat. You—'
Shooting pains in my shoulders caused me to interrupt him.
'One moment,' I said. 'I'm going to put my hands down. I'm getting cramp.'
'I'll blow a hole in you if you do!'
'Just as you please. But I'm not armed.'
'Lefty,' he said to the other man, 'feel around to see if he's carryin' anyt'ing.'
Lefty advanced and began to tap me scientifically in the neighbourhood of my pockets. He grunted morosely the while. I suppose, at this close range, the temptation to 'hand me one' was almost more than he could bear.
'He ain't got no gun,' he announced gloomily.
'Den youse can put 'em down,' said Mr MacGinnis.
'Thanks,' I said.
'Lefty, youse stay here and look after dese kids. Get a move on, Sam.'
We left the room, a little procession of two, myself leading, Buck in my immediate rear administering occasional cautionary prods with the faithful 'canister'.

## II

The first thing that met my eyes as we entered the hall was the body of a man lying by the front door. The light of the lamp fell on his face and I saw that it was White. His hands and feet were tied. As I looked at him, he moved, as if straining against his bonds, and I was conscious of a feeling of relief. That sound that had reached me in the classroom, that thud of a falling body, had become, in the light of what had happened later, very sinister. It was good to know that he was still alive. I gathered—correctly, as I discovered subsequently—that in his case the sand-bag had been utilized. He had been struck down and stunned the instant he opened the door.
There was a masked man leaning against the wall by Glossop's classroom. He was short and sturdy. The Buck MacGinnis gang seemed to have been turned out on a pattern. Externally, they might all have been twins. This man, to give him a semblance of individuality, had a ragged red moustache. He was smoking a cigar with the air of the warrior taking his rest.
'Hello!' he said, as we appeared. He jerked a thumb towards the classroom. 'I've locked dem in. What's doin', Buck?' he asked, indicating me with a languid nod.
'We're going t'roo de joint,' explained Mr MacGinnis. 'De kid ain't in dere. Hump yourself, Sam!'
His colleague's languor disappeared with magic swiftness.
'Sam! Is dat Sam? Here, let me beat de block off'n him!'
Few points in this episode struck me as more remarkable than the similarity of taste which prevailed, as concerned myself, among the members of Mr MacGinnis's gang. Men, doubtless of varying opinions on other subjects, on this one point they were unanimous. They all wanted to assault me.
Buck, however, had other uses for me. For the present, I was necessary as a guide, and my value as such would be impaired were the block to be beaten off me. Though feeling no friendlier towards me than did his assistants, he declined to allow sentiment to interfere with business. He concentrated his attention on the upward journey with all the earnestness of the young gentleman who carried the banner with the strange device in the poem.
Briefly requesting his ally to cheese it—which he did—he urged me on with the nozzle of the pistol. The red-moustached man sank back against the wall again with an air of dejection, sucking his cigar now like one who has had disappointments in life, while we passed on up the stairs and began to draw the rooms on the first floor.
These consisted of Mr Abney's study and two dormitories. The study was empty, and the only occupants of the dormitories were the three boys who had been stricken down with colds on the occasion of Mr MacGinnis's last visit. They squeaked with surprise at the sight of the assistant-master in such questionable company.
Buck eyed them disappointedly. I waited with something of the feelings of a drummer taking a buyer round the sample room.
'Get on,' said Buck.
'Won't one of those do?'
'Hump yourself, Sam.'
'Call me Sammy,' I urged. 'We're old friends now.'
'Don't get fresh,' he said austerely. And we moved on.
The top floor was even more deserted than the first. There was no one in the dormitories. The only other room was Mr Abney's; and, as we came opposite it, a sneeze from within told of the sufferings of its occupant.
The sound stirred Buck to his depths. He 'pointed' at the door like a smell-dog.
'Who's in dere?' he demanded.
'Only Mr Abney. Better not disturb him. He has a bad cold.'
He placed a wrong construction on my solicitude for my employer. His manner became excited.
'Open dat door, you,' he cried.
'It'll give him a nasty shock.'
'G'wan! Open it!'
No one who is digging a Browning pistol into the small of my back will ever find me disobliging. I opened the door—knocking first, as a mild concession to the conventions—and the procession passed in.
My stricken employer was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, and our entrance did not at first cause him to change this position.
'Yes?' he said thickly, and disappeared beneath a huge pocket-handkerchief. Muffled sounds, as of distant explosions of dynamite, together with earthquake shudderings of the bedclothes, told of another sneezing-fit.
'I'm sorry to disturb you,' I began, when Buck, ever the man of action, with a scorn of palaver, strode past me, and, having prodded with the pistol that part of the bedclothes beneath which a rough calculation suggested that Mr Abney's lower ribs were concealed, uttered the one word, 'Sa-a-ay!'
Mr Abney sat up like a Jack-in-the-box. One might almost say that he shot up. And then he saw Buck.
I cannot even faintly imagine what were Mr Abney's emotions at that moment. He was a man who, from boyhood up, had led a quiet and regular life. Things like Buck had appeared to him hitherto, if they appeared at all, only in dreams after injudicious suppers. Even in the ordinary costume of the Bowery gentleman, without such adventitious extras as masks and pistols, Buck was no beauty. With that hideous strip of dingy white linen on his face, he was a walking nightmare.
Mr Abney's eyebrows had risen and his jaw had fallen to their uttermost limits. His hair, disturbed by contact with the pillow, gave the impression of standing on end. His eyes seemed to bulge like a snail's. He stared at Buck, fascinated.
'Say, you, quit rubberin'. Youse ain't in a dime museum. Where's dat Ford kid, huh?'
I have set down all Mr MacGinnis's remarks as if they had been uttered in a bell-like voice with a clear and crisp enunciation; but, in doing so, I have flattered him. In reality, his mode of speech suggested that he had something large and unwieldy permanently stuck in his mouth; and it was not easy for a stranger to follow him. Mr Abney signally failed to do so. He continued to gape helplessly till the tension was broken by a sneeze.
One cannot interrogate a sneezing man with any satisfaction to oneself. Buck stood by the bedside in moody silence, waiting for the paroxysm to spend itself.
I, meanwhile, had remained where I stood, close to the door. And, as I waited for Mr Abney to finish sneezing, for the first time since Buck's colleague Lefty had entered the classroom the idea of action occurred to me. Until this moment, I suppose, the strangeness and unexpectedness of these happenings had numbed my brain. To precede Buck meekly upstairs and to wait with equal meekness while he interviewed Mr Abney had seemed the only course open to me. To one whose life has lain apart from such things, the hypnotic influence of a Browning pistol is irresistible.
But now, freed temporarily from this influence, I began to think; and, my mind making up for its previous inaction by working with unwonted swiftness, I formed a plan of action at once.
It was simple, but I had an idea that it would be effective. My strength lay in my acquaintance with the geography of Sanstead House and Buck's ignorance of it. Let me but get an adequate start, and he might find pursuit vain. It was this start which I saw my way to achieving.
To Buck it had not yet occurred that it was a tactical error to leave me between the door and himself. I supposed he relied too implicitly on the mesmeric pistol. He was not even looking at me.
The next moment my fingers were on the switch of the electric light, and the room was in darkness.
There was a chair by the door. I seized it and swung it into the space between us. Then, springing back, I banged the door and ran.
I did not run without a goal in view. My objective was the study. This, as I have explained, was on the first floor. Its window looked out on to a strip of lawn at the side of the house ending in a shrubbery. The drop would not be pleasant, but I seemed to remember a waterspout that ran up the wall close to the window, and, in any case, I was not in a position to be deterred by the prospect of a bruise or two. I had not failed to realize that my position was one of extreme peril. When Buck, concluding the tour of the house, found that the Little Nugget was not there—as I had reason to know that he would—there was no room for doubt that he would withdraw the protection which he had extended to me up to the present in my capacity of guide. On me the disappointed fury of the raiders would fall. No prudent consideration for their own safety would restrain them. If ever the future was revealed to man, I saw mine. My only chance was to get out into the grounds, where the darkness would make pursuit an impossibility.
It was an affair which must be settled one way or the other in a few seconds, and I calculated that it would take Buck just those few seconds to win his way past the chair and find the door-handle.
I was right. Just as I reached the study, the door of the bedroom flew open, and the house rang with shouts and the noise of feet on the uncarpeted landing. From the hall below came answering shouts, but with an interrogatory note in them. The assistants were willing, but puzzled. They did not like to leave their posts without specific instructions, and Buck, shouting as he clattered over the bare boards, was unintelligible.
I was in the study, the door locked behind me, before they could arrive at an understanding. I sprang to the window.
The handle rattled. Voices shouted. A panel splintered beneath a kick, and the door shook on its hinges.
And then, for the first time, I think, in my life, panic gripped me, the sheer, blind fear which destroys the reason. It swept over me in a wave, that numbing terror which comes to one in dreams. Indeed, the thing had become dream-like. I seemed to be standing outside myself, looking on at myself, watching myself heave and strain with bruised fingers at a window that would not open.

## III

The arm-chair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means catastrophe might have been averted.
He would have made short work of my present difficulty, I feel certain. It was ridiculously simple. But I had lost my head, and had ceased for the moment to be a reasoning creature. In the end, indeed, it was no presence of mind but pure good luck which saved me. Just as the door, which had held out gallantly, gave way beneath the attack from outside, my fingers, slipping, struck against the catch of the window, and I understood why I had failed to raise it.
I snapped the catch back, and flung up the sash. An icy wind swept into the room, bearing particles of snow. I scrambled on to the window-sill, and a crash from behind me told of the falling of the door.
The packed snow on the sill was drenching my knees as I worked my way out and prepared to drop. There was a deafening explosion inside the room, and simultaneously something seared my shoulder like a hot iron. I cried out with the pain of it, and, losing my balance, fell from the sill.
There was, fortunately for me, a laurel bush immediately below the window, or I should have been undone. I fell into it, all arms and legs, in a way which would have meant broken bones if I had struck the hard turf. I was on my feet in an instant, shaken and scratched and, incidentally, in a worse temper than ever in my life before. The idea of flight, which had obsessed me a moment before, to the exclusion of all other mundane affairs, had vanished absolutely. I was full of fight, I might say overflowing with it. I remember standing there, with the snow trickling in chilly rivulets down my face and neck, and shaking my fist at the window. Two of my pursuers were leaning out of it, while a third dodged behind them, like a small man on the outskirts of a crowd. So far from being thankful for my escape, I was conscious only of a feeling of regret that there was no immediate way of getting at them.
They made no move towards travelling the quick but trying route which had commended itself to me. They seemed to be waiting for something to happen. It was not long before I was made aware of what this something was. From the direction of the front door came the sound of one running. A sudden diminution of the noise of his feet told me that he had left the gravel and was on the turf. I drew back a pace or two and waited.
It was pitch dark, and I had no fear that I should be seen. I was standing well outside the light from the window.
The man stopped just in front of me. A short parley followed.
'Can'tja see him?'
The voice was not Buck's. It was Buck who answered. And when I realized that this man in front of me, within easy reach, on whose back I was shortly about to spring, and whose neck I proposed, under Providence, to twist into the shape of a corkscrew, was no mere underling, but Mr MacGinnis himself, I was filled with a joy which I found it hard to contain in silence.
Looking back, I am a little sorry for Mr MacGinnis. He was not a good man. His mode of speech was not pleasant, and his manners were worse than his speech. But, though he undoubtedly deserved all that was coming to him, it was nevertheless bad luck for him to be standing just there at just that moment. The reactions after my panic, added to the pain of my shoulder, the scratches on my face, and the general misery of being wet and cold, had given me a reckless fury and a determination to do somebody, whoever happened to come along, grievous bodily hurt, such as seldom invades the bosoms of the normally peaceful. To put it crisply, I was fighting mad, and I looked on Buck as something sent by Heaven.
He had got as far, in his reply, as 'Naw, I can't—' when I sprang.
I have read of the spring of the jaguar, and I have seen some very creditable flying-tackles made on the football field. My leap combined the outstanding qualities of both. I connected with Mr MacGinnis in the region of the waist, and the howl he gave as we crashed to the ground was music to my ears.
But how true is the old Roman saying, 'Surgit amari aliquid '. Our pleasures are never perfect. There is always something. In the programme which I had hastily mapped out, the upsetting of Mr MacGinnis was but a small item, a mere preliminary. There were a number of things which I had wished to do to him, once upset. But it was not to be. Even as I reached for his throat I perceived that the light of the window was undergoing an eclipse. A compact form had wriggled out on to the sill, as I had done, and I heard the grating of his shoes on the wall as he lowered himself for the drop.
There is a moment when the pleasantest functions must come to an end. I was loath to part from Mr MacGinnis just when I was beginning, as it were, to do myself justice; but it was unavoidable. In another moment his ally would descend upon us, like some Homeric god swooping from a cloud, and I was not prepared to continue the battle against odds.
I disengaged myself—Mr MacGinnis strangely quiescent during the process—and was on my feet in the safety of the darkness just as the reinforcement touched earth. This time I did not wait. My hunger for fight had been appeased to some extent by my brush with Buck, and I was satisfied to have achieved safety with honour.
Making a wide detour I crossed the drive and worked my way through the bushes to within a few yards of where the automobile stood, filling the night with the soft purring of its engines. I was interested to see what would be the enemy's next move. It was improbable that they would attempt to draw the grounds in search of me. I imagined that they would recognize failure and retire whence they had come.
I was right. I had not been watching long, before a little group advanced into the light of the automobile's lamps. There were four of them. Three were walking, the fourth, cursing with the vigour and breadth that marks the expert, lying on their arms, of which they had made something resembling a stretcher.
The driver of the car, who had been sitting woodenly in his seat, turned at the sound.
'Ja get him?' he inquired.
'Get nothing!' replied one of the three moodily. 'De Nugget ain't dere, an' we was chasin' Sam to fix him, an' he laid for us, an' what he did to Buck was plenty.'
They placed their valuable burden in the tonneau, where he lay repeating himself, and two of them climbed in after him. The third seated himself beside the driver.
'Buck's leg's broke,' he announced.
'Hell!' said the chauffeur.
No young actor, receiving his first round of applause, could have felt a keener thrill of gratification than I did at those words. Life may have nobler triumphs than the breaking of a kidnapper's leg, but I did not think so then. It was with an effort that I stopped myself from cheering.
'Let her go,' said the man in the front seat.
The purring rose to a roar. The car turned and began to move with increasing speed down the drive. Its drone grew fainter, and ceased. I brushed the snow from my coat and walked to the front door.
My first act on entering the house, was to release White. He was still lying where I had seen him last. He appeared to have made no headway with the cords on his wrists and ankles. I came to his help with a rather blunt pocket-knife, and he rose stiffly and began to chafe the injured arms in silence.
'They've gone,' I said.
He nodded.
'Did they hit you with a sand-bag?'
He nodded again.
'I broke Buck's leg,' I said, with modest pride.
He looked up incredulously. I related my experiences as briefly as possible, and when I came to the part where I made my flying tackle, the gloom was swept from his face by a joyful smile. Buck's injury may have given its recipient pain, but it was certainly the cause of pleasure to others. White's manner was one of the utmost enthusiasm as I described the scene.
'That'll hold Buck for a while,' was his comment. 'I guess we shan't hear from him for a week or two. That's the best cure for the headache I've ever struck.'
He rubbed the lump that just showed beneath his hair. I did not wonder at his emotion. Whoever had wielded the sand-bag had done his work well, in a manner to cause hard feelings on the part of the victim.
I had been vaguely conscious during this conversation of an intermittent noise like distant thunder. I now perceived that it came from Glossop's classroom, and was caused by the beating of hands on the door-panels. I remembered that the red-moustached man had locked Glossop and his young charges in. It seemed to me that he had done well. There would be plenty of confusion without their assistance.
I was turning towards my own classroom when I saw Audrey on the stairs and went to meet her.
'It's all right,' I said. 'They've gone.'
'Who was it? What did they want?'
'It was a gentleman named MacGinnis and some friends. They came after Ogden Ford, but they didn't get him.'
'Where is he? Where is Ogden?'
Before I could reply, babel broke loose. While we had been talking, White had injudiciously turned the key of Glossop's classroom which now disgorged its occupants, headed by my colleague, in a turbulent stream. At the same moment my own classroom began to empty itself. The hall was packed with boys, and the din became deafening. Every one had something to say, and they all said it at once.
Glossop was at my side, semaphoring violently.
'We must telephone,' he bellowed in my ear, 'for the police.'
Somebody tugged at my arm. It was Audrey. She was saying something which was drowned in the uproar. I drew her towards the stairs, and we found comparative quiet on the first landing.
'What were you saying?' I asked.
'He isn't there.'
'Who?'
'Ogden Ford. Where is he? He is not in his room. They must have taken him.'
Glossop came up at a gallop, springing from stair to stair like the chamois of the Alps.
'We must telephone for the police!' he cried.
'I have telephoned,' said Audrey, 'ten minutes ago. They are sending some men at once. Mr Glossop, was Ogden Ford in your classroom?'
'No, Mrs Sheridan. I thought he was with you, Burns.'
I shook my head.
'Those men came to kidnap him, Mr Glossop,' said Audrey.
'Undoubtedly the gang of scoundrels to which that man the other night belonged! This is preposterous. My nerves will not stand these repeated outrages. We must have police protection. The villains must be brought to justice. I never heard of such a thing! In an English school!'
Glossop's eyes gleamed agitatedly behind their spectacles. Macbeth's deportment when confronted with Banquo's ghost was stolid by comparison. There was no doubt that Buck's visit had upset the smooth peace of our happy little community to quite a considerable extent.
The noise in the hall had increased rather than subsided. A belated sense of professional duty returned to Glossop and myself. We descended the stairs and began to do our best, in our respective styles, to produce order. It was not an easy task. Small boys are always prone to make a noise, even without provocation. When they get a genuine excuse like the incursion of men in white masks, who prod assistant-masters in the small of the back with Browning pistols, they tend to eclipse themselves. I doubt whether we should ever have quieted them, had it not been that the hour of Buck's visit had chanced to fall within a short time of that set apart for the boys' tea, and that the kitchen had lain outside the sphere of our visitors' operations. As in many English country houses, the kitchen at Sanstead House was at the end of a long corridor, shut off by doors through which even pistol-shots penetrated but faintly. Our excellent cook had, moreover, the misfortune to be somewhat deaf, with the result that, throughout all the storm and stress in our part of the house, she, like the lady in Goethe's poem, had gone on cutting bread and butter; till now, when it seemed that nothing could quell the uproar, there rose above it the ringing of the bell.
If there is anything exciting enough to keep the Englishman or the English boy from his tea, it has yet to be discovered. The shouting ceased on the instant. The general feeling seemed to be that inquiries could be postponed till a more suitable occasion, but not tea. There was a general movement in the direction of the dining-room.
Glossop had already gone with the crowd, and I was about to follow, when there was another ring at the front-door bell.
I gathered that this must be the police, and waited. In the impending inquiry I was by way of being a star witness. If any one had been in the thick of things from the beginning it was myself.
White opened the door. I caught a glimpse of blue uniforms, and came forward to do the honours.
There were two of them, no more. In response to our urgent appeal for assistance against armed bandits, the Majesty of the Law had materialized itself in the shape of a stout inspector and a long, lean constable. I thought, as I came to meet them, that they were fortunate to have arrived late. I could see Lefty and the red-moustached man, thwarted in their designs on me, making dreadful havoc among the official force, as here represented.
White, the simple butler once more, introduced us.
'This is Mr Burns, one of the masters at the school,' he said, and removed himself from the scene. There never was a man like White for knowing his place when he played the butler.
The inspector looked at me sharply. The constable gazed into space.
'H'm!' said the inspector.
Mentally I had named them Bones and Johnson. I do not know why, except that they seemed to deserve it.
'You telephoned for us,' said Bones accusingly.
'We did.'
'What's the trouble? What—got your notebook?—has been happening?'
Johnson removed his gaze from the middle distance and produced a notebook.
'At about half past five—' I began.
Johnson moistened his pencil.
'At about half past five an automobile drove up to the front door. In it were five masked men with revolvers.'
I interested them. There was no doubt of that. Bones's healthy colour deepened, and his eyes grew round. Johnson's pencil raced over the page, wobbling with emotion.
'Masked men?' echoed Bones.
'With revolvers,' I said. 'Now aren't you glad you didn't go to the circus? They rang the front-door bell; when White opened it, they stunned him with a sand-bag. Then—'
Bones held up a large hand.
'Wait!'
I waited.
'Who is White?'
'The butler.'
'I will take his statement. Fetch the butler.'
Johnson trotted off obediently.
Left alone with me, Bones became friendlier and less official.
'This is as queer a start as ever I heard of, Mr Burns,' he said. 'Twenty years I've been in the force, and nothing like this has transpired. It beats cock-fighting. What in the world do you suppose men with masks and revolvers was after? First idea I had was that you were making fun of me.'
I was shocked at the idea. I hastened to give further details.
'They were a gang of American crooks who had come over to kidnap Mr Elmer Ford's son, who is a pupil at the school. You have heard of Mr Ford? He is an American millionaire, and there have been several attempts during the past few years to kidnap Ogden.'
At this point Johnson returned with White. White told his story briefly, exhibited his bruise, showed the marks of the cords on his wrists, and was dismissed. I suggested that further conversation had better take place in the presence of Mr Abney, who, I imagined, would have something to say on the subject of hushing the thing up.
We went upstairs. The broken door of the study delayed us a while and led to a fresh spasm of activity on the part of Johnson's pencil. Having disposed of this, we proceeded to Mr Abney's room.
Bones's authoritative rap upon the door produced an agitated 'Who's that?' from the occupant. I explained the nature of the visitation through the keyhole and there came from within the sound of moving furniture. His one brief interview with Buck had evidently caused my employer to ensure against a second by barricading himself in with everything he could find suitable for the purpose. It was some moments before the way was clear for our entrance.
'Cub id,' said a voice at last.
Mr Abney was sitting up in bed, the blankets wrapped tightly about him. His appearance was still disordered. The furniture of the room was in great confusion, and a poker on the floor by the dressing-table showed that he had been prepared to sell his life dearly.
'I ab glad to see you, Idspector,' he said. 'Bister Burds, what is the expladation of this extraordinary affair?'
It took some time to explain matters to Mr Abney, and more to convince Bones and his colleague that, so far from wanting a hue and cry raised over the countryside and columns about the affair in the papers, publicity was the thing we were anxious to avoid. They were visibly disappointed when they grasped the position of affairs. The thing, properly advertised, would have been the biggest that had ever happened to the neighbourhood, and their eager eyes could see glory within easy reach. Mention of a cold snack and a drop of beer, however, to be found in the kitchen, served to cast a gleam of brightness on their gloom, and they vanished in search of it with something approaching cheeriness, Johnson taking notes to the last.
They had hardly gone when Glossop whirled into the room in a state of effervescing agitation.
'Mr Abney, Ogden Ford is nowhere to be found!'
Mr Abney greeted the information with a prodigious sneeze.
'What do you bead?' he demanded, when the paroxysm was over. He turned to me. 'Bister Burds, I understood you to—ah—say that the scou'drels took their departure without the boy Ford.'
'They certainly did. I watched them go.'
'I have searched the house thoroughly,' said Glossop, 'and there are no signs of him. And not only that, the Boy Beckford cannot be found.'
Mr Abney clasped his head in his hands. Poor man, he was in no condition to bear up with easy fortitude against this succession of shocks. He was like one who, having survived an earthquake, is hit by an automobile. He had partly adjusted his mind to the quiet contemplation of Mr MacGinnis and friends when he was called upon to face this fresh disaster. And he had a cold in the head, which unmans the stoutest. Napoleon would have won Waterloo if Wellington had had a cold in the head.
'Augustus Beckford caddot be fou'd?' he echoed feebly.
'They must have run away together,' said Glossop.
Mr Abney sat up, galvanized.
'Such a thing has never happened id the school before!' he cried. 'It has aldways beed my—ah—codstant endeavour to make my boys look upod Sadstead House as a happy hobe. I have systebatically edcouraged a spirit of cheerful codtedment. I caddot seriously credit the fact that Augustus Beckford, one of the bost charbig boys it has ever beed by good fortude to have id by charge, has deliberately rud away.'
'He must have been persuaded by that boy Ford,' said Glossop, 'who,' he added morosely, 'I believe, is the devil in disguise.'
Mr Abney did not rebuke the strength of his language. Probably the theory struck him as eminently sound. To me there certainly seemed something in it.
'Subbthig bust be done at once!' Mr Abney exclaimed. 'It is—ah—ibperative that we take ibbediate steps. They bust have gone to Londod. Bister Burds, you bust go to Londod by the next traid. I caddot go byself with this cold.'
It was the irony of fate that, on the one occasion when duty really summoned that champion popper-up-to-London to the Metropolis, he should be unable to answer the call.
'Very well,' I said. 'I'll go and look out a train.'
'Bister Glossop, you will be in charge of the school. Perhaps you had better go back to the boys dow.'
White was in the hall when I got there.
'White,' I said, 'do you know anything about the trains to London?' 'Are you going to London?' he asked, in his more conversational manner. I thought he looked at me curiously as he spoke.
'Yes. Ogden Ford and Lord Beckford cannot be found. Mr Abney thinks they must have run away to London.'
'I shouldn't wonder,' said White dryly, it seemed to me. There was something distinctly odd in his manner. 'And you're going after them.'
'Yes. I must look up a train.'
'There is a fast train in an hour. You will have plenty of time.'
'Will you tell Mr Abney that, while I go and pack my bag? And telephone for a cab.'
'Sure,' said White, nodding.
I went up to my room and began to put a few things together in a suit-case. I felt happy, for several reasons. A visit to London, after my arduous weeks at Sanstead, was in the nature of an unexpected treat. My tastes are metropolitan, and the vision of an hour at a music-hall—I should be too late for the theatres—with supper to follow in some restaurant where there was an orchestra, appealed to me.
When I returned to the hall, carrying my bag, I found Audrey there.
'I'm being sent to London,' I announced.
'I know. White told me. Peter, bring him back.'
'That's why I'm being sent.'
'It means everything to me.'
I looked at her in surprise. There was a strained, anxious expression on her face, for which I could not account. I declined to believe that anybody could care what happened to the Little Nugget purely for that amiable youth's own sake. Besides, as he had gone to London willingly, the assumption was that he was enjoying himself.
'I don't understand,' I said. 'What do you mean?'
'I'll tell you. Mr Ford sent me here to be near Ogden, to guard him. He knew that there was always a danger of attempts being made to kidnap him, even though he was brought over to England very quietly. That is how I come to be here. I go wherever Ogden goes. I am responsible for him. And I have failed. If Ogden is not brought back, Mr Ford will have nothing more to do with me. He never forgives failures. It will mean going back to the old work again—the dressmaking, or the waiting, or whatever I can manage to find.' She gave a little shiver. 'Peter, I can't. All the pluck has gone out of me. I'm afraid. I couldn't face all that again. Bring him back. You must. You will. Say you will.'
I did not answer. I could find nothing to say; for it was I who was responsible for all her trouble. I had planned everything. I had given Ogden Ford the money that had taken him to London. And soon, unless I could reach London before it happened, and prevent him, he, with my valet Smith, would be in the Dover boat-train on his way to Monaco.