"That I should go is vital, sir, though I regret I cannot tell you why."
"Rather awkward, though, Forge. Cayton is still away, and Lyon's rule-of-thumb methods do not exactly make him an ideal deputy prefect. Your absence may annoy Mr. Wykeham. Won't you take an afternoon off next week instead?"
"I'm sorry to seem unreasonable, sir. But, with or without a special exeat, I must go to Moston to-day. So you will see how serious the situation is."
The housemaster shrugged his shoulders resignedly. "Well, Forge, if you put it like that, I suppose I must sign," he said. "Here's your exeat. Don't be too long away. Discipline is getting rather slacker than I like. There was an appalling hubbub in the shrubbery yesterday. Luckily, Mr. and Mrs. Wykeham were out to tea.... By the way, Forge, I'm sorry for the stoppage of your sprightly little Rag. It was doing the House good. May I help at all—can I do anything?"
Dick was touched by the kindly offer, and had his difficulty been other than a financial one, he would have gladly confided in Mr. Rooke. But he knew the house-master had no private means, and it would be embarrassing to refuse any money that might be volunteered.
"You're awfully good, sir," he said, "and I may take advantage of your kind offer if nothing comes of my visit to Moston."
An hour later Dick had discovered Chuck Smithies in a dark little office at the top of some very steep stairs. On the door was a small brass plate, bearing the words "Smithies' Advance Bank and Commission Agency".
"Hallo, sonny! Got your eye back to its normal colour, I see," was the bookmaker's cheery greeting. "Wanting me particularly?"
"I want you badly," said Dick. Then, having made up his mind to take the plunge, he told Smithies the full story of his editorial dilemma, and anxiously waited to see what his sporting friend would say.
"Sonny," said Smithies, "you're in the clutches of a dangerous man. Mawdster's all 'butter' to your face, all vinegar behind your back. Chairman of 'Welfare' Societies, yet the most uncharitable hypocrite you could meet in a month of Sundays. Always trying to worm himself in with the nobility and gentry—you know the sort of viper I mean. He'll give you short shrift, lad, if you don't steal a march on him."
"But what can I do?" asked Dick, gloomily.
"Pay his bill and have done with him."
"As easy as catching trout with a bent pin. I haven't the money."
"Pooh! That's soon settled. Wait there till I count it out. How much? Shall we say ten or twenty pounds? We'll be on the safe side and call it thirty."
Dick sprang to his feet in evident concern.
"Oh, I say, you know, this will never do. I—I didn't come here to cadge. I wanted you to give me your advice—not your money."
"Softly, softly, my young friend. You've made me count 'em wrong—I must begin again. Who the dickens said I was going to give you money? This is a business transaction, pure and simple. I'm going to lend you the cash to pay off that loathsome toady, Aaron Mawdster. You're just shifting your obligations, lad, from a black man to a 'white' one."
"But I really can't accept your—your splendid generosity," Dick managed to say. He was almost stupefied by the bookmaker's immediate and practical response to his tale of woe. "What guarantee have you that I shall ever pay you back? None whatever!"
"Lad, I prefer some people's honest faces to other people's dishonest signatures. I'll trust you with my money—I'd trust you with my life. Still, don't run away with the idea that this is a favour I'm doing you. It isn't. You'll pay me five per cent on the money when you return it, and that's more than I'd get on it if it were lying idle in the bank. Choose your own time for repayment—I shan't miss that little lot for a year or two. Now, run off and get out of Mawdster's debt, there's a dear lad. I only wish I could come with you, and see his ugly face drop when you pay him!"
Isn't it aggravating how completely words fail you when you want most of all to be profuse in your gratitude? Dick felt an absolute dummy as the bookmaker forced the banknotes into his fingers and hustled him downstairs. This was the man whom, on his journey from King's Cross, he had practically called a liar and a thief! This was the man whose methods of business he had denounced with withering scorn—yet here he stood, clutching a fistful of notes from Smithies' safe, a party to one of those very transactions which he had so emphatically condemned in the train!
"No, no, I can't take this money," he cried, making a last fight against the temptation that was weakening him. "Do have it back, there's a good fellow!"
"Look here, youngster, stop rotting," fiercely replied Mr. Smithies. "I'm a bit of a boxer myself, let me tell you, and, old as I am, I'll set about you and give you worse than you gave Juddy Stockgill if you throw that wretched packet o' money in my teeth again. Are we pals or aren't we? Didn't we shake hands, like two Britons, in the train? And what good's a pal if he won't get his hand down when his pard's in a deuce of a mess? But it ain't a favour in any case—it's a commercial transaction. I've got a mortgage on your honour, so to speak, and that's as safe as the Bank of England!"
Again exhorting Dick to rush straight down to the printer's with the cash, Smithies withdrew smartly into his office and shut the door. Dick heard the key turning in the lock and the scraping of a chair as the bookmaker resumed his seat. He knocked hard and obstinately, pleading for admission.
"Not in!" was the equally stubborn response. "Come another day, sonny, and tell me how old Mawdster takes the swipe you're going to give him!"
Out in the street, Dick looked at the notes he was tightly holding, and placed them in his safest pocket. That was an elementary precaution for a boy who had lost so much loose cash before. Then he turned mechanically in the direction of the printing-office, struggling at every step with his severely unyielding conscience, which was all against his acceptance of the favour, though his heart would fain have acquiesced in it.
To be done with this load of debt which pressed so heavily on his mind—to be free to sleep dreamlessly again, to face the morrow with a head held high! The passport to such happiness was on his person—he had only to sink his perverse pride, and he could be done for ever with the manager of the Moston Cleartype Press!
A waverer's mind can be made up for him, yea or nay, by the accident of chance. Thus was Dick's indetermination brought to an end on this January afternoon. Stepping off the pavement irresolutely, he bumped into the somewhat insignificant person of Mr. Mawdster himself, and almost sent him sprawling into the gutter.
"Clumsy fool, look where you're going!" snapped the printer. Then, noticing who had accidentally buffeted him, he turned ironically polite, even to the point of raising his hat.
"Ah, bon soir, Mr. Forge, delighted to meet you, sir! I fancy there is a little matter of business which awaits settlement between us. Is an agreement possible before matters go too far?"
"It is quite possible, I think!" said Dick, coldly.
Aaron Mawdster gave him a sharp glance. It was difficult to reckon up this haughty schoolboy, whose pride seemed unbendable.
"Very good, sir; this way, if you please."
Dick followed the printer into his office, resolved now to battle no longer against the inclination to be rid of this man's veiled tyranny. Better by far to owe money to a friendly bookmaker than to a blackmailing enemy!
"Now, young man, I had a letter the other day from my poor son, who still complains of vile ill-treatment and lack of protection. My heart bleeds for his sufferings. I am a kind and generous man, Mr. Forge, as Moston people have good reason to know, but I can be a ruthless foe when I choose."
"I know that," Dick commented, without moving a muscle of his face.
"Oh, you know it, do you, Mr. Head-in-the-air! Very well. For positively the last time, do you intend taking my misjudged and ill-used boy under your wing?"
"On the contrary, Mr. Mawdster, I gave the impudent young cub a well-earned thrashing with a stick yesterday!"
Dick might have hurled a hand-grenade at the wall with less effect than this calmly-blunt declaration produced on the printer. Aaron Mawdster's face passed from its wonted pallor to an angry purple.
"You dared to strike my poor weak boy—you, twice his size, beat him with a stick?" A volley of oaths, in the worst slang of a slum pothouse, relieved his feelings here. "Then, you great, hulking bully, I'll cast you in the dust and trample on you!"
"Not literally, I suppose?" Dick said, with contempt. "Look here, Mr. Mawdster, when you've quite emptied yourself of swear-words, you will oblige me by naming the amount of my bill. I want to pay it and go!"
"Bluff!" scoffed the printer. "Why should I waste time making out a bill—what proof have I that you can pay it?"
"'To Simple Simon said the Pieman,
First show me your penny',"
Dick quoted, with a laugh, which drew the printer into a fresh outburst of abuse. "So be it; here is the money, Mr. Mawdster, in my hand. Take a good look at it."
It was the act of a novice in the game of commercial poker to lay his cards on the table like that. The printer stared at the notes, and with rapid mental arithmetic summed up their approximate value. Then he took full advantage of his opponent's youthful inexperience.
"My account comes to thirty pounds, four shillings, and sixpence," he said. "Very reasonable, too, allowing for the dearness of paper and labour."
A boy of shrewder business instincts—Roger Cayton, for instance—would have haggled over that figure and possibly secured some reduction. But Dick, though suspicious that he was being overcharged, made no protest. Out of his scanty store of pocket-money he added four-and-sixpence to the notes Smithies had lent him, and laid the full amount on the desk.
Mr. Mawdster made for the cash as a greedy sparrow darts down on crumbs of cake, but Dick quietly put his school-cap over the little pile.
"Pardon me, Mr. Mawdster, but I'll keep this company till you bring the receipt," he said.
"Most insulting," snapped the printer.
"Yet most essential," retorted Dick. "Fizz off, Mr. Mawdster; I don't want to take root here!"
Considering how glibly he had arrived at the total it seemed to take the manager of the Cleartype Press an unusual time to arrange the items of the bill. It filled a quarto-memo, before he was satisfied with it, and altogether looked a very imposing document. But the signature over the stamp was all Dick looked at or cared about.
"That'll do," he said. "Good-bye to you, Mr. Mawdster."
"Stop!" cried the printer, still boiling hot. "I don't know where you got this money from—perhaps I ought to enquire—but don't think you've washed out all your obligations by it, my lad. You have brazenly confessed to beating my poorly son, and I know enough about Foxenby's rules to imagine what a row you'll be in when, to-morrow, I tell Mr. Wykeham of your illegal brutality."
On all counts, this would have been a threat permitting no possible repartee, as it was clearly undeniable that Dick had taken the law into his own hands and broken one of Foxenby's strictest regulations. But Dick had a brain-wave worthy of Roger—a happy thought which made him feel almost proud of his intuition.
"Yes, Mr. Mawdster," he replied, "and I know sufficient of Moston's social rules to guess what townspeople would think of you, the local paragon, 'the granny white hen that never laid away', if they learnt that you had taken advantage of a schoolboy's misfortunes to try to blackmail him into showing favour to your namby-pamby son. If you come with any of your sneaking tales to Foxenby to-morrow, I can find ways and means of retaliating."
This sudden turning of the tables visibly upset the printer.
"Don't you have the impertinence to libel me, young feller," he snarled. "I possess the unbounded esteem of everybody in Moston."
"Not quite everybody, as I happen to know," retorted Dick, with kindly thoughts of "Chuck" Smithies, whose estimate of Aaron Mawdster's character had provided him with this verbal weapon.
"I don't care what you say," spluttered the angry printer. "I shall come up to Foxenby to-morrow."
"I'm very sure you won't," cried Dick, putting a bold face on his qualms. "Good-bye, Mr. Mawdster. I trust mine may be the pleasure of never seeing your face again!"