‘Extraordinary things people will do to make nuisances of themselves! I will get Mr Burke to check again that nothing has been stolen from the building itself and then I shall question the two boys.’
He interviewed Travis and Maycock in break, an unpopular practice with the boys, but which had the advantage, in his own view, of not interrupting lessons. Two young boys who had hastily combed their hair presented themselves at his door and were bidden to enter his sanctum.
‘Well?’ said Mr Ronsonby, who was a firm believer in putting the ball into an opponent’s court. ‘What have you to say for yourselves?’
Travis, eyeing the storm lantern which was on the headmaster’s desk, said, ‘Please, sir, it was my ballpoint, sir, rather a decent one, sir, I was given it for Christmas with my name on it and I didn’t want to lose it, sir.’
‘Well, go on. So far I remain in the dark.’
‘Please, sir, it fell out of the library window on Monday afternoon, sir. It fell into the quad and I asked Mr Scaife if I could go and get it, but he said the quad was out of bounds and always would be, and whatever of mine was in the quad would have to stay there unless some authorised person found it and returned it to me.’
‘I do not understand, Travis, how your property came to fall out of the library window. Most of the windows remain closed at this time of year to conserve the central heating, do they not?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So how did your writing implement get out of a closed window into the quad?’
‘I don’t know, sir.’ Mr Ronsonby did not know, either, but he could guess. He knew a great deal about boys and it seemed to him that the likeliest explanation was that some irresponsible and playful classmate had impounded the ballpoint and had taken advantage of the enormous possibilities of playing the fool in the library, partitioned off as it was into bays. This meant that most of the class was never in view of the teacher-in-charge at any one time, so that it was possible to sneak to a window, open it and throw something out.
‘So this precious object fell out of a closed window into the quad. How mysteriously these things happen, do they not?’ said Mr Ronsonby.
‘Yes, sir.’
Mr Ronsonby addressed himself to the party of the second part.
‘And what was your interest in all this, Maycock?’
‘We thought we would go and get the ballpoint, sir.’
‘Even though Mr Scaife had quite rightly vetoed such a course?’
‘We knew we couldn’t go and get it in school time, sir, but we thought after school would be all right.’
‘My sister saved up her pocket money, sir, to give it to me. You can get them at Baker’s, sir. They were special for Christmas. She would be rather cheesed off if I lost it, sir, so we thought it wouldn’t do any harm to go round and pick it up after school.’
‘I see. So you broke into enclosed premises at night —’
‘Please, sir, we only climbed over the fence into the field, sir. Lots of boys do it, sir, not our boys, but —’
‘But now that all the outer doors to the building are in place and, if I know Sparshott, securely locked each day when the cleaners have gone, how did you propose to get into school and into the quad?’
The boys looked down at the floor and were silent. Mr Ronsonby waited a full minute and then said that this was not the end of the matter, but that the bell had gone and they would be wanted in class. Then he sent a prefect to find the caretaker.
Appealed to to furnish a likely explanation, Sparshott said, ‘A long acquaintance with the criminal classes when I was in the force, sir, has left me with the thought that they can be devious, sir, very, very devious, and boys, to my way of thinking, being born criminals at heart, sir, until they reaches man’s estate, is the same and behaves according.’
‘You have something there, Sparshott. So?’
‘Well, sir, I been turning last night over in my mind, sir, and what I asks myself is why two boys what must of necessity be miscreants, sir, else they wouldn’t have been of no disposition to invade the field and come knocking at my front door at eight o’clock at night, sir —’
The headmaster did not need to hear the rest of the explanation.
‘Ah,’ he said, ‘these boys employed a Machiavellian ruse to lure you from your cottage on the plea that there was somebody in the school —’
‘And got me to unlock the school, yes, sir, so’s they could slip in behind me without my knowledge and consent, sir. That’s about the size of it. They banked on me going the whole rounds of the school, I reckon, while they done whatever it was they come to do, havin’ no knowledge as they had told the truth without knowing it, meanin’ as there was intruders on the premises.
‘I unlocked the front door to get in, because that isn’t bolted now, whereas the back door and the door at the end of the washroom corridor was both bolted up by me when I makes my rounds after the cleaners have finished for the day, which is my routine, sir —’
‘So you went up to the front door of the school, unlocked it—’
‘And found as I had not been misinformed by them two boys, sir. There was men in the quad, not as I believe the boys knew that, as 1 say, when they come and knocked on my door. I reckon that was only a try-on to get me to open up the school.’
‘So the boys slipped into the building behind you, but the intruders escaped, it seems.’
‘They had both them doors on to the quad open, sir, likewise, as I reported to you, the door on to the vestibule corridor. One run one way and the other run another way, but I reckon they met up again in the vestibule. The front door was wide open because me and my lad come in that way. They pushed past Ron and that there hurricane lamp, sir, is the only evidence they was ever in the quad at all except for a bit of roughing-up as they give to the ground, sir, like as if they was going to dig it up.’
‘I see. I wonder how they got into the quad?’
‘I makes my inspection this morning, sir, before school goes in, and there’s a broken window in the boys’ washroom, sir.’
‘Couldn’t that have been done by Travis and Maycock?’
‘I don’t reckon they done it, not for a minute, sir. It had been done with treacle and brown paper, sir, which is why I never heard the sound of breaking glass. It’s an old burglar’s trick, sir. If them two boys had done it there would have been no need for them to come to my cottage, sir, and inveigle me into opening up the front door of the school.’
‘I wish, Sparshott, that you would go out into the quad again and look for a ballpoint pen with Travis’s name on it.’
‘Which is the object as I was just a-going to present to your notice, sir. It had fell just under the library windows and I reckon as there was some larking about and somebody throwed it out. It wasn’t nowhere near where them trespassers had roughed up the ground, sir. I never noticed as the biro had a name on it, but that accounts for the two boys, sir, I reckon, although, not noticing the name, I never connected it with young Travis. I seen it laying there and I picked it up and put it in me pocket and forgot all about it till you mentioned it just now.’
‘You had better see at once about getting that washroom window mended.’
‘Which I have already put it in hand, sir, knowing the necessity, sir.’
Travis got his Christmas present back coupled with dire warnings to both boys of what would happen if they stepped out of line again, but Mr Ronsonby was puzzled. He called Mr Burke into consultation after he had asked him to check on all stock which might attract a thief.
‘It’s been the quad both times,’ he said. ‘What on earth can these intruders be after?’