Tom, Dick and Harry Part 42

"Yes, please, sir. You said you were expecting me, Mr Jarman. What made you do that?"

"I expected, from my knowledge of your conduct, that you would come and try and get the blazer."

"When have I disobeyed you before?"

"You know as well as I do, Tempest."

"Yes, but I don't," said the magistrate. "Answer the question."

Mr Jarman thereupon gave his version of the affair at Camp Hill Bottom.

"The offence being," said the magistrate, "that the boys, Tempest among them, were out, on the afternoon of a holiday, half an hour from the school, with only a one quarter of an hour to get back. You punished the boys, I understand."

"Yes."

"And Tempest took his punishment with the rest."

"Yes."

"I suppose it is a special indignity to a senior boy, captain of his house, to be paraded for extra drill with a lot of small boys, eh, Dr England?"

"I should consider it so," said the doctor.

"I did not feel myself called upon to make any difference," said Mr Jarman.

"Apparently not. And on account of this affair, you say you expected Tempest would attempt to defy you last night?"

Mr Jarman bit his lips and did not reply.

Tempest resumed his questions with a coolness that surprised us.

"You were smoking, I think, Mr Jarman?"

"What if I was?"

"Nothing, only I wanted the magistrate to know it. And you locked me into the gymnasium for half an hour till I kicked myself out. I say you had no right to do that. What did you do while I was inside?"

"I walked up and down."

"Did you try to stop me when I got out?"

"No."

"Why?" asked Tempest, with a sneer that made us all contrast his broad shoulders with the master's slouch.

"I decided to deal with the matter to-day."

"How did you see what I had done to the door in the dark?"

"I saw by the light of a match."

"You say it was two minutes after I left that the explosion took place, and immediately after you left?"

"That's what I said."

"And you were striking matches during the interval?"

"Yes."

"And yet you suggest that it was I who blew the place up?"

"I say it was suspicious, knowing your frame of mind and the pa.s.sion you were in at the time."

"How could I blow up the place without explosives?"

"There must have been some there already."

"He didn't know anything about that! That was our affair, wasn't it, you chaps?" blurted out Trimble.

"Rather," chimed in all of us.

The sensation in the court at this announcement may be better imagined than described.

The magistrate put on his gla.s.ses and stared at us. Mr Jarman looked startled. The doctor looked bewildered.

"You see, it was this way," said Trimble, who had been working himself up to the point all through the previous cross-examination. "We had--"

"Wait a moment, my boy," said the magistrate. But the witness was too eager to listen to the remark.

"It was this way. We had a guy belonging to the Ph.C.C, you know, and he was chock-full of fireworks. We were keeping him for Guy Fawkes'

Day, you know. You wouldn't have known he was Jarman (Mr Jarman, I mean), to look at him, but he was, and Sarah, being president, offered to look after him. It was too big to stick under the bed, so--"

"So," continued I, "I thought the safest place to stick him would be in the lumber room under the gym.; and I never thought any one would be dropping matches through the grating on his touch-paper tongue. Tempest didn't know anything about it, and--"

"You see," said Langrish, taking up the parable, "we meant to keep it dark, and only the Philosophers were in it; he had on Sarah's hat and boots, and a top-coat we found somewhere about. He'd have never gone off of himself, and he wouldn't have done any harm on the Fifth, when we should have hung and blown him up in the open. Tempest--"

"Tempest," broke in d.i.c.ky Brown, putting in his oar, "isn't the kind of chap to do a thing like that on purpose; and it must have been Mr Jarman blew him up by mistake, with one of his matches or the end of a cigar or something--"

"It was a mulish thing of Sarah to stick him there," said Trimble, "but he knows no better, and thought it was all right. So did we, and Pridgin says it was quite an accident, sir, and--"

"And if any one's to get in a row," said I, "we'd better, because he was our guy, and the mistake we made was letting his touch-paper tongue hang out so far. He'd have never blown up if it hadn't been for that."

Here there was a general pause for breath, and the magistrate, who evidently had a sense of humour, said,--

"And pray who is Sarah, my man?"

"That's what they call me when they're fooling; it's not my real name, really, sir. Jones iv. is my real name."