Somebody was coming downstairs.
“Who is that? Is anybody there?”
It was Mr. Kay’s voice, unmistakably nervous. Fenn darted from the door and across the passage. At the other side was a boot-cupboard. It was his only refuge in that direction. What he ought to have done was to leave the dining-room by the opposite door, which led via a corridor to the junior dayroom. But he lost his head, and instead of bolting away from the enemy, went towards him.
The stairs down which Mr. Kay was approaching were at the end of the passage. To reach the dining-room one turned to the right. Beyond the stairs on the left the passage ended in a wall, so that Mr. Kay was bound to take the right direction in the search. Fenn wondered if he had a pistol. Not that he cared very much. If the housemaster was going to find him, it would be very little extra discomfort to be shot at. And Mr. Kay’s talents as a marksman were in all probability limited to picking off sitting haystacks. The important point was that he had a candle. A faint yellow glow preceded him down the stairs. Playing hide-and-seek with him in the dark, Fenn might have slipped past in safety; but the candle made that impossible.
He found the boot-room door and slipped through just as Mr. Kay turned the corner. With a thrill of pleasure he found that there was a key inside. He turned it as quietly as he could, but nevertheless it grated. Having done this, and seeing nothing else that he could do except await developments, he sat down on the floor among the boots. It was not a dignified position for a man who had played for his county while still at school, but just then he would not have exchanged it for a throne—if the throne had been placed in the passage or the dining-room.
The only question was—had he been seen or heard? He thought not; but his heart began to beat furiously as the footsteps stopped outside the cupboard door and unseen fingers rattled the handle.
Twice Mr. Kay tried the handle, but, finding the cupboard locked, passed on into the dining-room. The light of the candle ceased to shine under the door, and Fenn was once more in inky darkness.
He listened intently. A minute later he had made his second mistake. Instead of waiting, as he should have done, until Mr. Kay had retired for good, he unlocked the door directly he had passed, and when a muffled crash told him that the housemaster was in the dining-room among the chairs, out he came and fled softly upstairs towards his bedroom. He thought that Mr. Kay might possibly take it into his head to go round the dormitories to make certain that all the members of his house were in. In which case all would be discovered.
When he reached his room he began to fling off his clothes with feverish haste. Once in bed all would be well.
He had got out of his boots, his coat, and his waistcoat, and was beginning to feel that electric sensation of triumph which only comes to the man who just pulls through, when he heard Mr. Kay coming down the corridor towards his room. The burglar-hunter, returning from the dining-room in the full belief that the miscreant had escaped through the open window, had had all his ardour for the chase redoubled by the sight of the cupboard door, which Fenn in his hurry had not remembered to close. Mr. Kay had made certain by two separate trials that that door had been locked. And now it was wide open. Ergo, the apostle of the jemmy and the skeleton key must still be in the house. Mr. Kay, secure in the recollection that burglars never show fight if they can possibly help it, determined to search the house.
Fenn made up his mind swiftly. There was no time to finish dressing. Mr. Kay, peering round, might note the absence of the rest of his clothes from their accustomed pegs if he got into bed as he was. There was only one thing to be done. He threw back the bedclothes, ruffled the sheets till the bed looked as if it had been slept in, and opened the door just as Mr. Kay reached the threshold.
“Anything the matter, sir?” asked Fenn, promptly. “I heard a noise downstairs. Can I help you?”
Mr. Kay looked carefully at the ex-head of his house. Fenn was a finely-developed youth. He stood six feet, and all of him that was not bone was muscle. A useful colleague to have by one in a hunt for a possibly ferocious burglar.
So thought Mr. Kay.
“So you heard the noise?” he said. “Well, perhaps you had better come with me. There is no doubt that a burglar has entered the house tonight, in spite of the fact that I locked all the windows myself. Your study window was unlocked, Fenn. It was extremely careless of you to leave it in such a condition, and I hope you will be more careful in future. Why, somebody might have got in through it.”
Fenn thought it was not at all unlikely.
“Come along, then. I am sure the man is still in the house. He was hiding in the cupboard by the dining-room. I know it. I am sure he is still in the house.”
But, in spite of the fact that Fenn was equally sure, half an hour’s search failed to discover any lurking evildoer.
“You had better go to bed, Fenn,” said Mr. Kay, disgustedly, at the end of that period. “He must have got back in some extraordinary manner.”
“Yes,
