Jackson was amazed.
“Great Scott! what a wad of stuff! When did you do it all?”
“Oh, at odd times. Dunstable’s got just as much over at Day’s. So you see the Trust is a jolly big show. Here are your two pages. That looks just like your scrawl, doesn’t it? These would be fourpence in the ordinary way, but you can have ’em for nothing this time.”
“Oh, I say,” said Jackson gratefully, “that’s awfully good of you.”
After that the Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd. went ahead with a rush. The brilliant success which attended its first specimen—M. Gaudinois took Jackson’s imposition without a murmur—promoted confidence in the public, and they rushed to buy. Orders poured in from all the houses, and by the middle of the term the organisers of the scheme were able to divide a substantial sum.
“How are you getting on round your way?” asked Linton of Dunstable at the end of the sixth week of term.
“Ripping. Selling like hot cakes.”
“So are mine,” said Linton. “I’ve almost come to the end of my stock. I ought to have written some more, but I’ve been a bit slack lately.”
“Yes, buck up. We must keep a lot in hand.”
“I say, did you hear that about Merrett in our house?” asked Linton.
“What about him?”
“Why, he tried to start a rival show. Wrote a prospectus and everything. But it didn’t catch on a bit. The only chap who bought any of his lines was young Shoeblossom. He wanted a couple of hundred for Appleby. Appleby was on to them like bricks. Spotted Shoeblossom hadn’t written them, and asked who had. He wouldn’t say, so he got them doubled. Everyone in the house is jolly sick with Merrett. They think he ought to have owned up.”
“Did that smash up Merrett’s show? Is he going to turn out any more?”
“Rather not. Who’d buy ’em?”
It would have been better for the Lines Supplying Trust if Merrett had not received this crushing blow and had been allowed to carry on a rival business on legitimate lines. Locksley was conservative in its habits, and would probably have continued to support the old firm.
As it was, the baffled Merrett, a youth of vindictive nature, brooded over his defeat, and presently hit upon a scheme whereby things might be levelled up.
One afternoon, shortly before lockup, Dunstable was surprised by the advent of Linton to his study in a bruised and dishevelled condition. One of his expressive eyes was closed and blackened. He also wore what is known in ring circles as a thick ear.
“What on earth’s up?” inquired Dunstable, amazed at these phenomena. “Have you been scrapping?”
“Yes—Merrett—I won. What are you up to—writing lines? You may as well save yourself the trouble. They won’t be any good.” Dunstable stared.
“The Trust’s bust,” said Linton.
He never wasted words in moments of emotion.
“What!”
“ ‘Bust’ was what I said. That beast Merrett gave the show away.”
“What did he do? Surely he didn’t tell a master?”
“Well, he did the next thing to it. He hauled out that prospectus, and started reading it in form. I watched him do it. He kept it under the desk and made a foul row, laughing over it. Appleby couldn’t help spotting him. Of course, he told him to bring him what he was reading. Up went Merrett with the prospectus.”
“Was Appleby sick?”
“I don’t believe he was, really. At least, he laughed when he read the thing. But he hauled me up after school and gave me a long jaw, and made me take all the lines I’d got to his house. He burnt them. I had it out with Merrett just now. He swears he didn’t mean to get the thing spotted, but I knew he did.”
“Where did you scrag him!”
“In the dormitory. He chucked it after the third round.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in,” shouted Dunstable.
Buxton appeared, a member of Appleby’s house.
“Oh, Dunstable, Appleby wants to see you.”
“All right,” said Dunstable wearily.
Mr. Appleby was in facetious mood. He chaffed Dunstable genially about his prospectus, and admitted that it had amused him. Dunstable smiled without enjoyment. It was a good thing, perhaps, that Mr. Appleby saw the humorous rather than the lawless side of the Trust; but all the quips in the world could not save that institution from ruin.
Presently Mr. Appleby’s manner changed. “I am a funny dog, I know,” he seemed to say; “but duty is duty, and must be done.”
“How many lines have you at your house, Dunstable?” he asked.
“About eight hundred, sir.”
“Then you had better write me eight hundred lines, and show them up to me in this room at—shall we say at ten minutes to five? It is now a quarter to, so that you will have plenty of time.”
Dunstable went, and returned five minutes later, bearing an armful of manuscript.
“I don’t think I shall need to count them,” said Mr. Appleby. “Kindly take them in batches of ten sheets, and tear them in half, Dunstable.”
“Yes, sir.”
The last sheet fluttered in two sections into the surfeited waste-paper basket.
“It’s an awful waste, sir,” said Dunstable regretfully.
Mr. Appleby beamed.
“We must, however,” he said, “always endeavour to look on the bright side, Dunstable. The writing of these eight hundred lines will have given you a fine grip of the rhythm of Virgil, the splendid prose of Victor Hugo, and the unstudied majesty of the Greek Numerals. Good night, Dunstable.”
“Good night, sir,” said the President of the Locksley Lines Supplying Trust, Ltd.
Dunstable had his reasons for wishing to obtain Mr. Montagu Watson’s autograph, but admiration for that gentleman’s novels was not one of them.
It was nothing to him that critics considered Mr. Watson one of the most remarkable figures in English literature since Scott. If you had told him of this, he would merely have wondered in his coarse, material way how much
