'What's up?' Bobby Holhingsworth asked me as we settled down and opened our books. 'I can't explain it,' I said. 'I bet they're finally getting around to throwing out Brick the Prick,' Bobby said happily.
I finished the chapters and went out to my locker for another book. On the way I passed the Senior Room and heard a voice I thought was Terry Peters' uttering a sentence with the word 'Skeleton' in it. I stopped and tried to hear what he was saying, but the door was too thick.
After I got the book from my locker, I looked down across the glassed — in court and saw Mr. Weatherbee rush out of his room and tear down the hall, moving in a kind of agitated scuttle. Mrs. Olinger moved after him.
Mr. Fitz-Hallan, Mr. Weatherbee, Mr. Thorpe — it was the cast that had heard my original accusations.
Out in the hall, a few older boys ran past, lockers slammed, bells went off at irregular intervals.
18
The air of a general but unacknowledged disruption was still present as we trooped into the auditorium. Below the stage on which a piano faced a drum kit and a recumbent bass, the students were standing up in the aisles, moving into little talkative groups, breaking up again, calling to each other. Many of the morning's classes had gone teacherless. Morris saw Hanna and Brown standing together on the far side of the auditorium, and went around to join them in waiting for an announcement. I saw Mr. Thorpe shake his head at Mr. Ridpath, then curtly turn away. His eyes snagged mine, and he pointed at a spot beside the door. Mr. Ridpath too glared at me, but Mr. Thorpe seemed far angrier.
He reached the door before me and expressionlessly watched me come toward him. He looked like a gray-haired icicle — the Mount Rushmore of icicles. He waited a few seconds, making me sweat, before he spoke. 'Be in my office at three-fifteen sharp.' That was all he had intended to say, but he could not keep from releasing some of bis rage. 'You caused more trouble than you will ever know.' When I could not reply, he made a disgusted puffing sound with his lips and said, 'Get out of my sight until three-fifteen.'
He was going to expel me, I knew. I went weakly to the first row of seats and sat down beside Bob Sherman. Most of the school was still standing and talking.
'Boys,' shouted Mrs. Olinger. 'Be seated, please.' She had to repeat herself several times before anybody took any notice. Gradually the buzz of conversation died out, and was replaced by the sound of chairs scraping the floor. Then a few voices picked up again.
'Quiet,' shouted Mr. Thorpe. And then there was silence. Morris, standing on the side of the room with the other members of his trio, looked crippled with stage fright.
Only then did I think to look for Skeleton Ridpath: if he was in the audience, it would mean that he too would be in Thorpe's office at three-fifteen. I turned around and saw that he was not in the seniors' two rows. So perhaps Broome had already expelled him.
From the podium before the stage, Mrs. Olinger was saying, 'We are privileged this morning to witness the first performances by our two clubs. To begin with, please give your full attention to the Morris Fielding Trio, with Phil Hanna playing drums and Derek Brown accompanying on the bull fiddle.'
Morris smiled at her because of the old-fashioned term and I knew that he at least was going to be all right. The three of them filed up the stairs to the stage. Brown picked up his bass, Morris said, 'One . . . one . . . one . . . one,' and they began playing 'Somebody Loves Me.' It sounded like sunlight and gold and fast mountain springs, and I switched off everything else and just listened to the music.
During Morris' last number I heard a startled buzzing and whispering. I turned around to see what had caused it. Laker Broome had just come into the audjtorium. He had one hand clamped on Dave Brick's shoulder. Brick was white-faced, and his eyes were swollen. Morris also turned his head to see what was happening, and then went determinedly back to his piano. I heard him insert a quote from 'Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here' into his solo.
He was having, under trying circumstances, the best time he could, which is one definition of heroism; but looking at Laker Broome's rigid posture and assassin's face, I thought that the bomb I had been expecting all morning had just been tossed into the auditorium.
19
The headmaster applauded with everyone else when Morris nodded and stood up from the bench. Dave Brick had been parked on an empty chair far at the back of the room, apart from the rest of the students. Mr. Ridpath stared at him with loathing for a moment, then began to sidle toward Mr. Broome, hoping for one last word, but Mr. Broome looked straight into the center of his narrow vain face, and Mr. Ridpath froze solid to the floor. 'Attention, boys,' Mr. Broome called out.
When we were all turned around in our seats to face him, he began speaking and walking up the side of the auditorium to the bottom of the stage, and we swiveled to watch him — it was a display of power. 'I hate to interrupt these interesting proceedings, but I want you to bear with me and share a fascinating story. I promise that this will only take a moment of your time, and then we can enjoy the second part of this excellent show. Gentlemen, we have finally been given the answer to the single greatest problem this school has faced since its founding, and I want all of you personally to witness the final act of that problem.' He smiled. By now he was at the podium, and with mock casualness, he leaned one elbow on the blond wood: he was tense as a whippet. 'Some of us will be meeting at three-fifteen in the assistant headmaster's office. That will be a private meeting. At four-fifteen I want the entire school reassembled here just as you are now. This school has been unwell, and it is time to cut back the diseased branches.' He gave that taut, creased smile again, and I saw in him the same devil who had burned in Skeleton Ridpath's face just before he had beaten Del. 'And now I believe we have some magic from two members of the first year.'
It sounded like Broome wanted to stage a full-scale spectacular after school, with limbs lopped off in public and Christians thrown to lions. He wanted to answer the student performances with his own. That devil who had shone from his eyes was a devil of ambition and jealousy, who could not accept being upstaged. Tom and Del quietly left their seats and walked past Mr. Broome to go up the steps to the stage.
Broome drifted off to the side and leaned against the far wall beside one of the big doors, crossing his arms over his chest. He was smiling to himself. Tom and Del pulled the curtains shut, and for several moments we could dimly hear footsteps and the shifting of equipment. The piano, on casters, rolled back with a rumbling like a truck's. For some time we heard the rustling of material. Then the curtain twitched and pulled smoothly back, revealing a painted sign on a stand.
FLANAG1NI AND NIGHT
ILLUSIONISTS
Most of the students seated below the stage began to laugh.
White smoke poured across the stage, billowed and hung, then began to drift up toward the beams and lights, and we could see that the sign had gone. In its place stood Tom Flanagan, dressed in what looked like an Indian bedspread and a turban of the same material. Beside him was the high table draped in black velvet, and on the other side of the table stood Del. He wore black evening dress and a cape. Deep laughter erupted again, and the two boys bowed in unison. When they straightened up, the smoke now entirely gone, their faces revealed their nervousness.
'We are Flanagini and Night,' Tom intoned, sticking to his script in spite of the laughter. 'We are magicians. We come to amaze and entertain, to terrify and delight.' He flicked the velvet cover off the table, and something that looked like a fiery ball or shooting star lifted off from beneath and burned up six feet above their heads and winked out. Laker Broome watched it as if it were as ordinary as a horsefly. 'And to amuse, perhaps.' Del twitched the cape from his shoulders, twirled it over the table, and a four-foot-high stuffed white rabbit bounded off, so lifelike and grotesque that a few boys gasped. We were all in shock for a second, and then Del grasped it by one tall ear, bounced it off his foot, and threw it over his shoulder into the blackness behind him. There was an instinctive professional grace in his movements, and that (and the realization that the rabbit was a stuffed toy) made us all laugh, with them now, not against them.