In a word, at the “Blue Boar” he sparred. At Aldershot he would have to fight. Was he capable of fighting?
Then there was another difficulty. How was he to get himself appointed as the Wrykyn lightweight representative? Now that Drummond was unable to box, Stanning would go down, as the winner of the School Competition. These things were worked by an automatic process. Sheen felt that he could beat Stanning, but he had no means of publishing this fact to the school. He could not challenge him to a trial of skill. That sort of thing was not done.
He explained this to Joe Bevan.
“Well, it’s a pity,” said Joe regretfully. “It’s a pity.”
At this moment Jack Bruce appeared.
“What’s a pity, Joe?” he asked.
“Joe wants me to go to Aldershot as a lightweight,” explained Sheen, “and I was just saying that I couldn’t, because of Stanning.”
“What about Stanning?”
“He won the School Competition, you see, so they’re bound to send him down.”
“Half a minute,” said Jack Bruce. “I never thought of Aldershot for you before. It’s a jolly good idea. I believe you’d have a chance. And it’s all right about Stanning. He’s not going down. Haven’t you heard?”
“I don’t hear anything. Why isn’t he going down?”
“He’s knocked up one of his wrists. So he says.”
“How do you mean—so he says?” asked Sheen.
“I believe he funks it.”
“Why? What makes you think that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s only my opinion. Still, it’s a little queer. Stanning says he crocked his left wrist in the final of the House Competition.”
“Well, what’s wrong with that? Why shouldn’t he have done so?”
Sheen objected strongly to Stanning, but he had the elements of justice in him, and he was not going to condemn him on insufficient evidence, particularly of a crime of which he himself had been guilty.
“Of course he may have done,” said Bruce. “But it’s a bit fishy that he should have been playing fives all right two days running just after the competition.”
“He might have crocked himself then.”
“Then why didn’t he say so?”
A question which Sheen found himself unable to answer.
“Then there’s nothing to prevent you fighting, sir,” said Joe Bevan, who had been listening attentively to the conversation.
“Do you really think I’ve got a chance?”
“I do, sir.”
“Of course you have,” said Jack Bruce. “You’re quite as good as Drummond was, last time I saw him box.”
“Then I’ll have a shot at it,” said Sheen.
“Good for you, sir,” cried Joe Bevan.
“Though it’ll be a bit of a job getting leave,” said Sheen. “How would you start about it, Bruce?”
“You’d better ask Spence. He’s the man to go to.”
“That’s all right. I’m rather a pal of Spence’s.”
“Ask him tonight after prep.,” suggested Bruce.
“And then you can come here regular,” said Joe Bevan, “and we’ll train you till you’re that fit you could eat bricks, and you’ll make babies of them up at Aldershot.”
XIX
Paving the Way
Bruce had been perfectly correct in his suspicions. Stanning’s wrist was no more sprained than his ankle. The advisability of manufacturing an injury had come home to him very vividly on the Saturday morning following the Ripton match, when he had read the brief report of that painful episode in that week’s number of the Field in the school library. In the list of the Ripton team appeared the name R. Peteiro. He had heard a great deal about the dusky Riptonian when Drummond had beaten him in the Featherweights the year before. Drummond had returned from Aldershot on that occasion cheerful, but in an extremely battered condition. His appearance as he limped about the field on Sports Day had been heroic, and, in addition, a fine advertisement for the punishing powers of the Ripton champion. It is true that at least one of his injuries had been the work of a Pauline whom he had met in the opening bout; but the great majority were presents from Ripton, and Drummond had described the dusky one, in no uncertain terms, as a holy terror.
These things had sunk into Stanning’s mind. It had been generally understood at Wrykyn that Peteiro had left school at Christmas. When Stanning, through his study of the Field, discovered that the redoubtable boxer had been one of the team against which he had played at Ripton, and realised that, owing to Drummond’s illness, it would fall to him, if he won the House Competition, to meet this man of wrath at Aldershot, he resolved on the instant that the most persuasive of wild horses should not draw him to that military centre on the day of the Public Schools Competition. The difficulty was that he particularly wished to win the House Cup. Then it occurred to him that he could combine the two things—win the competition and get injured while doing so.
Accordingly, two days after the House Boxing he was observed to issue from Appleby’s with his left arm slung in a first fifteen scarf. He was too astute to injure his right wrist. What happens to one’s left wrist at school is one’s own private business. When one injures one’s right arm, and so incapacitates oneself for form work, the authorities begin to make awkward investigations.
Mr. Spence, who looked after the school’s efforts to win medals at Aldershot, was the most disappointed person in the place. He was an enthusiastic boxer—he had represented Cambridge in the Middleweights in his day—and with no small trouble had succeeded in making boxing a going concern at Wrykyn. Years of
