`We were just rallying, sir.'
`Where did you get the ball? I understood the balls were locked up in my desk.'
`They are, sir.'
`Where did you get the one you were playing with?'
`I don't know, sir.'
Deering fumbled at his windbreaker. He was a gawky youth with an Adam's apple that looked like a hidden Ping-Pong ball. `I think I must of found it.'
`Where did you find it? In my desk?'
`No sir. On the grounds, I think it was.'
Mr. Patch walked toward him with a kind of melodramatic stealth. As he moved across the room, the boys behind him made faces, waved their arms, did bumps and grinds. One boy, one of the dancers, fell silently to the floor with a throat-slitting gesture, held the pose of a dying gladiator for a single frozen second, then got back onto his feet.
Patch was saying in a long-suffering tone: `You bought it, didn't you, Deering? You know that regulations forbid you fellows to bring in private Ping-Pong balls of your own. You know that, don't you? You're president of the East Hall Legislative Assembly, you helped to frame those regulations yourself. Didn't you?'
'Yessir.'
`Then give it to me, Deering.'
The boy handed Patch the ball. Patch stooped to place it on the floor - while a boy behind him pretended to kick him - and squashed it under his heel. He gave Deering the misshapen ball.
`I'm sorry, Deering. I have to obey the regulations just as you do.'
He turned to the roomful of boys, who snapped into conformity under his eyes, and said mildly: `Well, fellows, what's on the agenda-?'
`I think I am,' I said, getting up from the couch. I gave him my name and asked if I could talk to him in private.
`I suppose so,' he said with a worried smile, as if I might in fact be his successor. `Come into my office, such as it is. Deering and Bronson, I'm leaving you in charge.'
His office was a windowless cubicle containing a cluttered desk and two straight chairs. He closed the door on the noise that drifted down the corridor from the lounge, turned on a desk lamp, and sat down sighing.
`You've got to stay on top of them.'
He sounded like a man saying his prayers. `You wanted to discuss one of my boys?'
`Tom Hillman.'
The name depressed him. `You represent his father?'
`No. Dr Sponti sent me to talk to you. I'm a private detective.'
`I see.'
He pushed out his lips in a kind of pout. `I suppose Sponti's been blaming me, as usual.'
`He did say something about unnecessary violence.'
`That's nonsense!'
He pounded the desk between us with his clenched fist. His face became congested with blood. Then it went starkly pale, like a raw photograph. Only the reddish whites of his eyes held their color. `Sponti doesn't work down here with the animals. I ought to know when physical discipline is necessary. I've been in juvenile work for twenty- five years.'
`It seems to be getting you down.'
With an effort that crumpled up his face, he brought himself under control. `Oh no, I love the work, I really do. Anyway, it's the only thing I'm trained for. I love the boys. And they love me.'
`I could see that.'
He wasn't listening for my irony. `I'd have been pals with Tom Hillman if he'd lasted.'
`Why didn't he?'
`He ran away. You know that. He stole a pair of shears from the gardener and used it to cut the screen on his bedroom window.'
`Exactly when was this?'
`Sometime Saturday night, between my eleven-o'clock bedcheck and my early-morning one.'
`And what happened before that?'
`Saturday night, you mean? He was stirring up the other boys, inciting them to attack the resident staff: I'd left the common room after dinner, and I heard him from in here, making a speech. He was trying to convince the boys that they had been deprived of their rights and should fight for them. Some of the more excitable ones were affected. But when I ordered Hillman to shut up, he was the only one who rushed me.'
`Did he hit you?'
`I hit him first,' Patch said. `I'm not ashamed of it. I had to preserve my authority with the others.'
