Mike by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (most popular novels .TXT) 📕
He was alone in the carriage. Bob, who had been spending the last week of the holidays with an aunt further down the line, was to board the train at East Wobsley, and the brothers were to make a state entry into Wrykyn together. Meanwhile, Mike was left to his milk chocolate, his magazines, and his reflections.
The latter were not numerous, nor profound. He was excited. He had been petitioning the home authorities for the past year to be allowed to leave his private school and go to Wrykyn, and now the thing had come about. He wondered what sort of a house Wain's was, and whether they had any chance of the cricket cup. According to Bob they had no earthly; but then Bob only recognised one house, Donaldson's. He wondered if Bob would get his first eleven cap this year, and if he himself were likely to do anything at cricket. Marjory had faithfully reported e
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the quarters chime from the school clock; and the second time he gave
up the struggle. He got out of bed and went to the window. It was a
lovely night, just the sort of night on which, if he had been at home,
he would have been out after moths with a lantern.
A sharp yowl from an unseen cat told of Wyatt’s presence somewhere in
the big garden. He would have given much to be with him, but he
realised that he was on parole. He had promised not to leave the
house, and there was an end of it.
He turned away from the window and sat down on his bed. Then a
beautiful, consoling thought came to him. He had given his word that
he would not go into the garden, but nothing had been said about
exploring inside the house. It was quite late now. Everybody would be
in bed. It would be quite safe. And there must be all sorts of things
to interest the visitor in Wain’s part of the house. Food, perhaps.
Mike felt that he could just do with a biscuit. And there were bound
to be biscuits on the sideboard in Wain’s dining-room.
He crept quietly out of the dormitory.
He had been long enough in the house to know the way, in spite of the
fact that all was darkness. Down the stairs, along the passage to the
left, and up a few more stairs at the end The beauty of the position
was that the dining-room had two doors, one leading into Wain’s part
of the house, the other into the boys’ section. Any interruption that
there might be would come from the further door.
To make himself more secure he locked that door; then, turning up the
incandescent light, he proceeded to look about him.
Mr. Wain’s dining-room repaid inspection. There were the remains of
supper on the table. Mike cut himself some cheese and took some
biscuits from the box, feeling that he was doing himself well. This
was Life. There was a little soda-water in the syphon. He finished it.
As it swished into the glass, it made a noise that seemed to him like
three hundred Niagaras; but nobody else in the house appeared to have
noticed it.
He took some more biscuits, and an apple.
After which, feeling a new man, he examined the room.
And this was where the trouble began.
On a table in one corner stood a small gramophone. And gramophones
happened to be Mike’s particular craze.
All thought of risk left him. The soda-water may have got into his
head, or he may have been in a particularly reckless mood, as indeed
he was. The fact remains that he inserted the first record that
came to hand, wound the machine up, and set it going.
The next moment, very loud and nasal, a voice from the machine
announced that Mr. Godfrey Field would sing “The Quaint Old Bird.”
And, after a few preliminary chords, Mr. Field actually did so.
“Auntie went to Aldershot in a Paris pom-pom hat.”
Mike stood and drained it in.
“… Good gracious (sang Mr. Field), what was that?”
It was a rattling at the handle of the door. A rattling that turned
almost immediately into a spirited banging. A voice accompanied the
banging. “Who is there?” inquired the voice. Mike recognised it as Mr.
Wain’s. He was not alarmed. The man who holds the ace of trumps has no
need to be alarmed. His position was impregnable. The enemy was held
in check by the locked door, while the other door offered an admirable
and instantaneous way of escape.
Mike crept across the room on tip-toe and opened the window. It had
occurred to him, just in time, that if Mr. Wain, on entering the room,
found that the occupant had retired by way of the boys’ part of the
house, he might possibly obtain a clue to his identity. If, on the
other hand, he opened the window, suspicion would be diverted. Mike
had not read his “Raffles” for nothing.
The handle-rattling was resumed. This was good. So long as the frontal
attack was kept up, there was no chance of his being taken in the
rear—his only danger.
He stopped the gramophone, which had been pegging away patiently at
“The Quaint Old Bird” all the time, and reflected. It seemed a pity to
evacuate the position and ring down the curtain on what was, to date,
the most exciting episode of his life; but he must not overdo the
thing, and get caught. At any moment the noise might bring
reinforcements to the besieging force, though it was not likely, for
the dining-room was a long way from the dormitories; and it might
flash upon their minds that there were two entrances to the room. Or
the same bright thought might come to Wain himself.
“Now what,” pondered Mike, “would A. J. Raffles have done in a case
like this? Suppose he’d been after somebody’s jewels, and found that
they were after him, and he’d locked one door, and could get away by
the other.”
The answer was simple.
“He’d clear out,” thought Mike.
Two minutes later he was in bed.
He lay there, tingling all over with the consciousness of having
played a masterly game, when suddenly a gruesome idea came to him, and
he sat up, breathless. Suppose Wain took it into his head to make a
tour of the dormitories, to see that all was well! Wyatt was still
in the garden somewhere, blissfully unconscious of what was going on
indoors. He would be caught for a certainty!
IN WHICH A TIGHT CORNER IS EVADED
For a moment the situation paralysed Mike. Then he began to be equal
to it. In times of excitement one thinks rapidly and clearly. The main
point, the kernel of the whole thing, was that he must get into the
garden somehow, and warn Wyatt. And at the same time, he must keep Mr.
Wain from coming to the dormitory. He jumped out of bed, and dashed
down the dark stairs.
He had taken care to close the dining-room door after him. It was open
now, and he could hear somebody moving inside the room. Evidently his
retreat had been made just in time.
He knocked at the door, and went in.
Mr. Wain was standing at the window, looking out. He spun round at the
knock, and stared in astonishment at Mike’s pyjama-clad figure. Mike,
in spite of his anxiety, could barely check a laugh. Mr. Wain was a
tall, thin man, with a serious face partially obscured by a grizzled
beard. He wore spectacles, through which he peered owlishly at Mike.
His body was wrapped in a brown dressing-gown. His hair was ruffled.
He looked like some weird bird.
“Please, sir, I thought I heard a noise,” said Mike.
Mr. Wain continued to stare.
“What are you doing here?” said he at last.
“Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”
“A noise?”
“Please, sir, a row.”
“You thought you heard–-!”
The thing seemed to be worrying Mr. Wain.
“So I came down, sir,” said Mike.
The housemaster’s giant brain still appeared to be somewhat clouded.
He looked about him, and, catching sight of the gramophone, drew
inspiration from it.
“Did you turn on the gramophone?” he asked.
“Me, sir!” said Mike, with the air of a bishop accused of
contributing to the Police News.
“Of course not, of course not,” said Mr. Wain hurriedly. “Of course
not. I don’t know why I asked. All this is very unsettling. What are
you doing here?”
“Thought I heard a noise, please, sir.”
“A noise?”
“A row, sir.”
If it was Mr. Wain’s wish that he should spend the night playing Massa
Tambo to his Massa Bones, it was not for him to baulk the housemaster’s
innocent pleasure. He was prepared to continue the snappy dialogue till
breakfast time.
“I think there must have been a burglar in here, Jackson.”
“Looks like it, sir.”
“I found the window open.”
“He’s probably in the garden, sir.”
Mr. Wain looked out into the garden with an annoyed expression, as if
its behaviour in letting burglars be in it struck him as unworthy of a
respectable garden.
“He might be still in the house,” said Mr. Wain, ruminatively.
“Not likely, sir.”
“You think not?”
“Wouldn’t be such a fool, sir. I mean, such an ass, sir.”
“Perhaps you are right, Jackson.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if he was hiding in the shrubbery, sir.”
Mr. Wain looked at the shrubbery, as who should say, _”Et tu,
Brute!“_
“By Jove! I think I see him,” cried Mike. He ran to the window, and
vaulted through it on to the lawn. An inarticulate protest from Mr.
Wain, rendered speechless by this move just as he had been beginning
to recover his faculties, and he was running across the lawn into the
shrubbery. He felt that all was well. There might be a bit of a row on
his return, but he could always plead overwhelming excitement.
Wyatt was round at the back somewhere, and the problem was how to get
back without being seen from the dining-room window. Fortunately a
belt of evergreens ran along the path right up to the house. Mike
worked his way cautiously through these till he was out of sight, then
tore for the regions at the back.
The moon had gone behind the clouds, and it was not easy to find a way
through the bushes. Twice branches sprang out from nowhere, and hit
Mike smartly over the shins, eliciting sharp howls of pain.
On the second of these occasions a low voice spoke from somewhere on
his right.
“Who on earth’s that?” it said.
Mike stopped.
“Is that you, Wyatt? I say–-”
“Jackson!”
The moon came out again, and Mike saw Wyatt clearly. His knees were
covered with mould. He had evidently been crouching in the bushes on
all fours.
“You young ass,” said Wyatt. “You promised me that you wouldn’t get
out.”
“Yes, I know, but–-”
“I heard you crashing through the shrubbery like a hundred elephants.
If you must get out at night and chance being sacked, you might
at least have the sense to walk quietly.”
“Yes, but you don’t understand.”
And Mike rapidly explained the situation.
“But how the dickens did he hear you, if you were in the dining-room?”
asked Wyatt. “It’s miles from his bedroom. You must tread like a
policeman.”
“It wasn’t that. The thing was, you see, it was rather a rotten thing
to do, I suppose, but I turned on the gramophone.”
“You—_what?_”
“The gramophone. It started playing ‘The Quaint Old Bird.’ Ripping it
was, till Wain came along.”
Wyatt doubled up with noiseless laughter.
“You’re a genius,” he said. “I never saw such a man. Well, what’s the
game now? What’s the idea?”
“I think you’d better nip back along the wall and in through the
window, and I’ll go back to the dining-room. Then it’ll be all right
if Wain comes and looks into the dorm. Or, if you like, you might come
down too, as if you’d just woke up and thought you’d heard a row.”
“That’s not a bad idea. All right. You dash along then. I’ll get
back.”
Mr.
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