which had just been placed in the car. ‘Help you up with him, shall we?’
The two young men lifted the box and the girls formed up and took it from them.
‘When’s the rag?’ asked Laura.
‘Saturday week, but we wanted a rehearsal of some of the effects, so thought we’d have Dirty as soon as possible. Thanks for looking after him so nicely. Toodle-pip.’
‘Bye-bye,’ said Miss Cartwright. ‘Oh, Lord, my shoulder’s cracking in two. Nighty-night, ducks,’ she added to her brother.
‘Don’t miss your step,’ said he. As the six students began the long and awkward journey back to the sports pavilion they heard the car drive off.
‘Can’t see that it was much of a rag to change them in the first place, really,’ said Miss Cartwright, after a pause, ‘although I lent the affair some slight assistance. But what does puzzle me is how the lads got into that Science Room cupboard. The door’s always locked, and yet they got Twister out and put Dick in.’
The twins, stoutly bearing the hinder end of the box, merely giggled, as usual. Kitty grunted. Only Laura was silent. But then only Laura was suspicious of the
‘Gentlemen on my right,’ said the president of the Students’ Common Room at Wattsdown, ‘will act as Guard of Honour to the skeleton, who will be referred to during this meeting, by his full and correct title of Richard C?ur de Lion, and
There was a chorus of approval.
‘Messires Abbot, Paldock, Rees and F. J. Smith will be responsible for nobbling, disconcerting and generally putting out of action any Robert or Roberts on horseback,’ pursued the chairman, ‘and Mr D. R. Smith will look out for yokels throwing stones. Step out here, gentlemen, please.’
Five rubicund and large-limbed youths, forwards in the College Rugby fifteen and one of them also the College heavyweight boxer, stepped out and bowed to the Chair.
‘And, lastly, gentlemen, two words of warning. If arrested, do not resist. That’s the first and greatest commandment. We don’t want anyone to land up in the jug. Secondly, nothing whatsoever is to be thrown on to the stage. After all, those poor blighters of actors have got their living to earn, the same as we have, and…’ On this note of chivalry the meeting ended.
Cartaret students were not invited to the theatre rag by mutual arrangement between the Principals of the two colleges, for it was thought better that the disorderly proceedings should not be complicated by the presence of girls. The men themselves subscribed so heartily to this view that it was a law of the Wattsdown Common Room that no attempt was ever to be made by the members to ‘smuggle, inveigle, entice, invite or deploy’ the members of Cartaret into the theatre on Rag Night.
In spite of this, however, Cartaret students had been known to attend. There was no embargo, authoritative or brotherly, on their turning up for the Meet, which was held half a mile from Wattsdown at the bus stop. There was no reason, either, if they could get on the public bus — the men hired private buses to take their large party to the theatre — why the Cartaret students should not accompany the procession through the streets of the town. Bold spirits, defying the Cartaret law of late leave, which had to be signed for, and was never granted on Rag Night except in case of family illness or on some such compassionate grounds, had even been known to penetrate the fastnesses and book seats in the theatre, but since the men’s college invariably booked the whole of the circle, whether they could fill it or not, there was not as much excitement in going as the bold spirits would have liked to pretend.
Laura and Kitty, well within the law and proposing to remain so, went into the town on the bus to see the procession form up and move off towards the theatre. The four gentlemen to whom had been delegated the task of occupying the attention of the mounted police found their solitary victim round the second turning. Dressed as fairies in ridiculous ballet frocks which the College housekeeper and maids had been wheedled into ‘making over’ to fit the bulging torsos of the football-playing sprites, and wearing flaxen wigs, fairy crowns with long antennae, gauze and silver wings and carrying fairy wands tipped with lop-sided, outsize stars, the four skipped solemnly round and round the embarrassed officer, giving him no chance to do anything except manage his horse. When he stopped they joined hands in a straight line in front of him and began to sing. When he rode on again, they broke the hold and re-formed their circle.
Following the mounted policeman came a large horse, removed from the College playing-fields, on which a horse-mower was still used. On his back, sitting sideways with both legs over the left side of an embroidered table-cover which served as saddle and saddle-cloth, and held in position by iron supports specially forged in the College workshop and carried by the attendants who were dressed as devils, was the magnificent skeleton of Dirty Dick, until recently an inmate of the Science cupboard at Cartaret. He was conspicuously labelled, to the delight of the local populace,
The Theatre Rag itself passed off in traditional style and without unexpected incident
Chapter l6
BONE
« ^ »
George and the Chief Engineer went down to the sports pavilion to collect the skeleton left there by the six students. They went during the students’ dinner time, and no one except Mrs Bradley and the two men themselves knew when the box was transported to the College. Except that the Science Room was closed to all students for a couple of hours next day (greatly to the annoyance of Second-Years of the Advanced Group), there was no intimation that anything extraordinary was going on, except for the presence in the drive of three large saloon cars. One belonged to the police, one to a famous surgeon and the third to Miss Murchan’s dentist.
The police had come ‘in case there was anything for them’ as the elliptical phrase goes, the surgeon and Mrs Bradley, in consultation, were going to determine, if they could, the age of the bones in question, and the dentist had been invited because upon his evidence would depend the important question of whether the bones were all that remained of Miss Murchan.
The dentist was given the first innings. Twister Marshmallow (or his deputy) was taken carefully out of his box.
