It was on the Sunday after the sports that Trevor’s connection with the bat ceased—as far, that is to say, as concerned its unpleasant character (as a piece of evidence that might be used to his disadvantage). He had gone to supper with the headmaster, accompanied by Clowes and Milton. The headmaster nearly always invited a few of the house prefects to Sunday supper during the term. Sir Eustace Briggs happened to be there. He had withdrawn his insinuations concerning the part supposedly played by a member of the school in the matter of the tarred statue, and the headmaster had sealed the entente cordiale by asking him to supper.
An ordinary man might have considered it best to keep off the delicate subject. Not so Sir Eustace Briggs. He was on to it like glue. He talked of little else throughout the whole course of the meal.
“My suspicions,” he boomed, towards the conclusion of the feast, “which have, I am rejoiced to say, proved so entirely void of foundation and significance, were aroused in the first instance, as I mentioned before, by the narrative of the man Samuel Wapshott.”
Nobody present showed the slightest desire to learn what the man Samuel Wapshott had had to say for himself, but Sir Eustace, undismayed, continued as if the whole table were hanging on his words.
“The man Samuel Wapshott,” he said, “distinctly asserted that a small gold ornament, shaped like a bat, was handed by him to a lad of age coeval with these lads here.”
The headmaster interposed. He had evidently heard more than enough of the man Samuel Wapshott.
“He must have been mistaken,” he said briefly. “The bat which Trevor is wearing on his watch-chain at this moment is the only one of its kind that I know of. You have never lost it, Trevor?”
Trevor thought for a moment. He had never lost it. He replied diplomatically, “It has been in a drawer nearly all the term, sir,” he said.
“A drawer, hey?” remarked Sir Eustace Briggs. “Ah! A very sensible place to keep it in, my boy. You could have no better place, in my opinion.”
And Trevor agreed with him, with the mental reservation that it rather depended on whom the drawer belonged to.