Scholarships to Spey were not numerous, but there were more than a dozen bursaries offered every year to clever boys of the school who wanted to go to Oxford or Cambridge in what a sadly undemocratic deed of gift referred to as a 'gentlemanly manner'.
The School was very well staffed and the masters were very well paid. Once appointed, they were expected to work for their living, and it was understood (and an article of their signed agreement) that the Headmaster would present a written report on each of them to the governors on every twenty-fifth day of November.
There were so many masters that cliques and parties formed as naturally among them as among a large band of courtiers.
The younger masters at Spey were divided into two main sections. There were, of course, cross-sections, permutations and combinations, pairs, special interests and occasional changes of allegiance, but, speaking generally and in abroad way, there were two main sections, one under the leadership of Mr Conway, and the other under the leadership of Mr Semple.
Mr Semple was an Old Boy. He was modest, firm, and popular, and had destined himself to take a wife and, later, a House. He was a good fellow, a bit of a prig, and more than a bit of an athlete. He had been a double Blue, for he was a footballer and a runner.
He disliked Mr Conway very much, but rarely upset himself about this because Mr Conway was, in point of fact, afraid of him, and so left him alone. He was not subjected to such witticisms and rudeness as made some of the older masters and one or two of the young ones feel like murder, but he was a decent fellow in his rather prim way, and it gave him a feeling of discomfort when Mr Conway's malicious shafts were directed towards others.
When, therefore, Mr Kay, of the doubtful antecedents and unprepossessing appearance, appealed to him to 'come out for a run one morning before breakfast' he was disposed to accede to the request. Mr Conway had been particularly offensive that day, not to Kay, in whom Mr Semple was not interested, but to Mr Loveday, who, although an old dodderer (in Mr Semple's opinion), happened also to be Mr Semple's old Housemaster.
Mr Semple, therefore, accepted the invitation in no uncertain voice, and exchanged an enquiring and challenging stare for an exclamation of mirth from Mr Conway. Mr Conway then went out of the Common Room, and Mr Semple was moved to enquire, in a very loud voice which he knew Mr Conway could hear:
'You're not the Kay who did one fifty-nine point four in the Inter-Clubs, are you?'
'I'm afraid it was some time ago,' replied Mr Kay modestly, 'and, of course, it was a very fast track.'
This settled the question of early morning running, and, after that, Mr Semple turned out, on an average. three times a week for a spin, sometimes on his own, but more often in Mr Kay's company.
The two men became no more intimate because of this, but Mr Semple was glad of someone to run with, and Mr Kay felt less of an outcast than he had done before Semple consented to join his morning pipe-openers.
In the winter the two men sometimes put on dark shorts and football jerseys, and punted a Rugby ball about. Mr Semple was a more than useful three-quarter, and had long cherished an ambition to play a team of masters against the Old Boys. As it was, he himself always turned out for the Old Boys against the School, but no other master was qualified to do this, and there were six or seven good men on the staff who would form the nucleus of quite a useful fifteen if he could find enough others to put with them.
Mr Kay's game was Soccer, another reason for his slight unpopularity in what had always been a Rugby- playing school, but Mr Semple had high hopes of Mr Kay as a Rugby player, for he had safe hands, an intelligent mind, and was developing a 'feel' for the independent and unpredictable foibles of the elongated, egg-like ball.
On the morning following the outbreak by Merrys and Skene, therefore, Mr Semple decided that he would run down to Kay's cottage and see whether he was prepared to turn out early for a punt-about. Accordingly, at just after a quarter to seven he quietly left the School House (where he lived at the end of a corridor for whose order and quietness he was responsible), and walked briskly towards Mr Kay's cottage near the School gate.
He was a little earlier than usual, and, from the School drive, saw the curtains of the cottage were not drawn back and that there was no sign of Mr Kay. He did as he usually did on such occasions. He called out Mr Kay's name twice, and then trotted on to the grass at the verge of the drive, leaned against a tree, exchanged his football boots for his spikes, and then called again.
A window on the ground floor was thrust open, so that the curtain swung out, and an unshaven and shock- headed Kay invited him to trot round for a bit, as he himself had overslept.
'I'll be out in five minutes,' he said.
The morning was scarcely come, the air was chilly, and Mr Semple was soon on the running track. He trotted round it four times, then took off his track-suit, sprinted a little, and then put on his track-suit and cantered back towards the cottage.
'Are you coming or not?' he cried encouragingly, and, not wishing to continue his exercise alone, he exchanged his spikes for his football boots, and walked briskly through the School gate. At least, he was about to do so when he heard Kay calling from the cottage side of the railings, and they both saw the body of the black cock at the same moment.
It was lying half on to a flower-bed in front of the railings, and it was not very pretty to look at. There was no sign of the head, and the general appearance of the tufty neck suggested some rather sickening possibilities.
Semple looked horrified and disgusted. Kay licked his lips and smiled in an embarrassed manner like a man who recognizes an insult and is too timid to challenge it.
'Takhobali, should you think?' he enquired.
'I don't know,' Semple replied. With an effort of will he took the cock by one leg and carried it to the end of Kay's garden. Here he laid it down. 'Get a spade, would you?' he said. 'I don't want any boys to see this.'
'Oh, boys aren't squeamish,' said Kay; but he went off at once to his toolshed. 'Ever read that thing by M. R. James?' he asked casually, as he dug a deep hole in the flower-bed.
'Which one?' Semple enquired, trying hard to take his mind off the ritual killing of the corpse and his eyes from its interment.
'Why, the one about young Lord Saul.'
'Oh, that! It wasn't James, though, was it? I thought it was Lord Dunsany.'
Mr Kay made no reply. Methodically he finished shovelling back the earth, then he smoothed it all over and stepped away from the small bush which he had been holding back with his body. The bush sprang back and the spot where the digging had been done was hidden from sight.
'I shall tell Mr Wyck,' said Mr Semple, after they had walked on to the turf of the School field. 'I don't think I'll stay and punt about, after all, this morning. It's getting late and I've got a First Fifteen list to go over with Cranleigh. I'd forgotten all about it. Sorry to have got you out under false pretences.'
*
Mr Wyck, the Headmaster of Spey, was, like all great headmasters, a law unto himself. That is not to say that he was an autocrat; in fact, any type of dictatorship was extremely repugnant to his mind. But Mr Wyck was an original thinker and had his own methods – usually unexpected by the boys – of dealing with every school situation as it arose and of solving its constituent problems almost before others had realized what these were.
He had a sixth sense which kept him informed about events, conversations, and loyalties in the Common Room, too, and he was not surprised, therefore, when, before breakfast on the day of the burial of the black cock, the elderly Mr Loveday came to him and tendered his resignation.
The Headmaster did not accept it; neither did he ask for an explanation. He merely said:
'Sit down, my dear Loveday, and tell me how your sister likes the new boiler you have installed in your delightful Roman Bath.'
'It is about my sister – it is because of my sister – that I wish to resign my post,' said Mr Loveday, refusing to be side-tracked.
'She is well, I trust?' said Mr Wyck, who had the actor's gift of altering face and tone at will.
'Yes, yes. Annette is always well, I am thankful to say. But I am too old a man, Headmaster, to be subjected any longer to the gibes and insults of puppies!'
'Oh, you mustn't take too much notice of Conway,' said Mr Wyck. 'He is a conceited fellow, but useful, you know, quite useful over the games. He and Semple, between them –'
'Oh, I've nothing against Semple,' said Mr Loveday. 'And it isn't connected with the games. I have been insulted in open Common Room, and my sister with me.'
'Unintentionally, unintentionally,' said Mr Wyck.
'I do not agree. Besides, there's another thing,' said Mr Loveday, his face growing even darker. 'Why should
