covering up for him and has invented these astrakhan and fur-coat visitors. Still, we can’t ignore the Springdale angle, in case she is telling the truth. After all, Pythias is a Greek and may well have had foreign friends. I wonder whether the neighbours can tell us anything about the time Pythias left the house that Friday evening? He seems to have been all right then and also quite in health while he was at school. Those visitors still sound damned fishy to me. We’ll try tackling the neighbours, don’t you think?’
‘I doubt whether the neighbours saw anything, either of Pythias or those visitors, sir. The houses along there are all old Victorian family residences set in big gardens and widely-spaced from one another, and there are matured trees and shrubberies in all the gardens.’
‘That’s true, and on the other side of the road is the park, so the houses can’t be overlooked from across the street. This time of the year the park closes at half-four, anyway, so there wouldn’t have been any loiterers, even if we could trace them. Oh, well, it’s no part of our job to trace people who simply choose to disappear. If it were, we should be having nothing to do but get on the trail of missing husbands. If only Ronsonby would accuse Pythias we could take action, but he prefers to keep the good name of the school intact, it seems, and put up the money himself.’
That this was the case Mr Ronsonby demonstrated on the following morning when, the assembly hymn and prayer having been got out of the way, he addressed the whole school.
‘I know you will all be sorry to hear that Mr Pythias was taken seriously ill during the Christmas holidays. There is every hope that he will be with us again by next term. Whether he will be fit enough to lead the expedition to Greece we do not, of course, yet know, but, if he cannot do so, there will be others to take his place and see that all the arrangements are carried out just as Mr Pythias has planned them.’
The head boy accompanied him to his room.
‘Could the school send a card and some flowers, sir?’
This artless question put Mr Ronsonby in a quandary. It was impossible to tell the boy that he had no idea of where to locate Mr Pythias. He hedged in diplomatic fashion.
‘It is a kind thought, Hobson, but I think it might be better to wait a bit until Mr Pythias is in a fit state to appreciate it. He is extremely ill at present. Make it a celebration of his convalescence, eh?’
His next caller was Margaret Wirrell. She had news to impart. A number of cheques had been sent to the bank in an envelope postmarked Springdale. They were all made out to the special journey fund. The bank had just rung to say so. No covering letter and no paying-in slip had come with the cheques, but the signatures were genuine and had been compared with those of the bank’s customers whose names they bore. Among them were the names of three masters, Mr Scaife, Mr Marmont and Mr Whitby.
‘The bank,’ said Margaret, ‘are a bit puzzled. They ask whether the three masters could make it convenient to call in and verify that the cheques signed by them are genuine. They have no reason to think otherwise, but would like to be sure.’
The three young men called at the bank during their dinner-hour. They and the rest of the staff were well known there, since their salaries were paid direct to the bank and there they had to apply to get their money out. The cheques were genuine enough. Scaife asked where the rest of the tour money was.
‘I know some of my boys brought ten and twenty-pound notes and fivers,’ he said. However, apart from the cheques, the bank had received no other tour funds.
Having received the report just before afternoon school, Mr Ronsonby thought he had better get in contact again with the police.
‘It’s so extraordinary,’ he said to Mr Burke. ‘I don’t understand it at all.’
‘Well, at least we know where Pythias is,’ said Burke. ‘The people where he’s staying may not have liked the idea of sending treasury notes through the post.’
‘They could have enclosed a slip with the cheques to say so. Well, I’m going to let the police sort it out. They are far more able to track down these people than we are. I am not normally a suspicious man, but I feel there is something extremely odd about this whole business and I cannot help thinking that, whereas to guilty minds those cheques might appear to be a liability, the rest of the money would be readily negotiable and could not be traced very easily.’
Nothing had been said to the three schoolmasters about keeping dark the reason for their visit to the bank, so, before afternoon classes began, the staffroom was buzzing with gossip and speculation.
‘I wondered whether we were going to be charged with forgery,’ said Scaife.
‘I felt like a shoplifter,’ said Marmont, a red-haired young man who taught history.
‘The only forger on this staff would be Pythias,’ said a middle-aged man of mild aspect. At the sound of this name the exchanges became more animated.
‘Pythias?’ said Whitby. ‘So that’s the nigger in the woodpile, is it? He’s paid in our cheques, but the bank, for some reason, wasn’t satisfied. Well, they are now, I hope. We had our chequebooks on us, of course, so we were able to match the counterfoils against the cheques they showed us, as well as verifying our signatures.’
‘And emerged from the ordeal without a stain on your characters,’ said Phillips, the only master who kept his hair touching his shirt collar. This poetic affectation was tolerated by Mr Ronsonby because Phillips was not only an intolerant, fiery, rather red Welshman, but a brilliant musician and teacher whom the easy-going headmaster was wary of upsetting.
‘So all’s well that ends well,’ said Mr Burke.
‘Not by a long chalk it isn’t,’ said Scaife. ‘This here is what Marmont calls “one of the myst’ries of ’istory”. There’s something very peculiar about this continuous absence of Pythias from our midst. I’ll tell you something you may not know. Once or twice I’ve looked out of my window and spotted a plain-clothes Robert coming up the drive.’
‘Shouldn’t be looking out of windows when you’re supposed to be teaching maths, my lad,’ said Whitby, with mock severity.
‘It’s only to rest my fevered brow against the cool glass when Jenkins can’t give me the factors of
