“I thought it had been scotched, and by Medlar himself.”
“I know. And, of course, Gassie, I feel certain, would be loth to ask Jonah to go. I have an idea that, apart from being his brother-in-law, Jones has some special reason for having earned Gassie’s gratitude. What it is I don’t know and should never attempt to find out, but, shortly before you came, Miss Yale and I made representations to him to get rid of the mischievous, unpleasant fellow. Some of the women students had tackled us about his little ways, you know. It was then that Gassie told me privately that he owed Jones a living and could never sufficiently indulge him for something he had done for him in the past. Personally, I cannot visualize Jones’s doing anything for anybody unless he had to, but one never knows, of course, and therefore one should not judge, I suppose.”
He was about to rise from the table to pronounce the customary Latin grace when Richard, flushed and sweating, came up to the high table and said,
“Would you make an announcement, Harry boy?‘
“Now?” asked Henry.
“Well, everybody seems to be here except Gassie.”
“And Jonah,” said Henry, glancing towards Jones’s vacant chair.
“Well, that’s it,” said Richard. “They shoved Jonah down the stoke-hole. We’ve just been along to get him out. He isn’t there. They didn’t leave him any more grub after yesterday, so you might ask the chaps who’ve moved him whether they’ve fed him or not. Nobody wants the poor poop to starve to death.”
“I think you’d better speak to Mr. Medlar,” said Henry formally, “but, as he isn’t at lunch, I’ll make an announcement if you like.” He rose and tapped on the table. “Look,” he said to the students, “a joke’s all right, but it might be as well to produce Jonah and let him eat. No questions will be asked, provided he makes his reappearance immediately this meal is over.
There was a stir among the students and a girl called out, “Nobody here knows where Jonah is. There were six of us in it. We’re prepared to give you our names. Nobody else is involved. We intended to let him out last night after dinner, but when we went along he wasn’t there.”
“He was there up to tea-time yesterday,” said a boy, leaving his place and walking round to stand beside the girl. “I spoke to him and told him all the reasons why we’d dealt with him, and I let him know when he’d be released. He couldn’t possibly have freed himself. He cursed me pretty much, but he was perfectly all right, I’m sure of that. And none of us knows what happened to him.”
“The people concerned must come to my room,” said Henry.“ Come now, at once, please, before you go on to the field.”
The six students who entered Henry’s lecture-room consisted of the youth and the girl who had spoken in hall and four other young men. Henry civilly requested them to be seated and they took the three desks in front of his dais and the three immediately behind these.
“Well, now,” he said, “who wants to speak first?”
“Ladies first,” said one of the men.
“Kathleen, isn’t it?” said Henry. “Right. Fire away.”
“Well, we’re the committee,” she said. “We had a mass meeting after Colin got hurt. There was a lot of feeling about it.”
“A vote was taken,” said one of the boys, “and it was decided that something must be done about Jonah.”
“So various people got up and made suggestions,” put in another youth, “and the one that got the most votes was this belly-of-the-whale thing because it seemed appropriate and it sort of appealed to people.” He turned to a young man behind him. “Go on. Your turn. We’re all in on this.”
“Right, then. Well, it seemed a committee—an action committee—was called for, and the six of us were voted on to it. We only wanted one girl because of the rough stuff, Jonah being a gorilla when forced to defend himself.”
“It was a free vote,” said another boy in the second row, “but volunteers were called for who would be willing to serve, and there was a big response from the men.”
“Less from the girls, of course,” said the last to speak, “but that’s only natural. So everybody voted and the six of us were in. It was thought better not to have more than five men, because otherwise we’d only get in each other’s way.”
“And the lady? What was her part to be?” asked Henry. Hamish, who had accompanied him with some idea of helping him if the students got out of hand, admired his attitude of grave and non-committal interest.
“Well, rather important,” said the girl. “Somebody had to get the key out of Jackson’s cottage, so while Bill, John and Julian got Jackson out of the way by asking him to come and hold the stop-watch while they did a five thousand metres run…”
“Nearly killed us, incidentally,” put in Bill, “but we knew we’d better allow Kath a quarter of an hour to do her stuff, and even more if we could manage it…”
“So we strolled over to the track with Jackson. He’ll always hold the watch if he’s off duty and there’s no coach or one of the chaps or girls available,” said John. “And we took our time about changing down, and putting our spikes on, and warming up, and all that…”
“You shouldn’t have changed down until you’d warmed up in your track suits and were ready to begin the race,” said Henry. “You know that.”
“Oh, that’s all right, Harry boy,” said Julian. “We’ll remember. Well, then we stationed Jackson and started off, telling him to watch the lap times. That was just to give him something to think about, because his cottage, although a long way off, stands in the open and is visible from the running-track, and we didn’t want him to notice what Kath was up to.”
“It was my job to get busy on Mrs Jackson and get her out of the cottage, too, while Benjy and Shaun sneaked the stoke-hole key,” put in Kathleen, “that was the tricky bit. She’s a simple soul, like Jackson himself, though, so I asked her whether she’d counted her chickens that morning, because I was pretty certain I’d heard a fox bark in the night.”
