Part 18 (1/2)
”All the same,” said Daubeny, ”you needn't have dragged us into it.”
”I couldn't help it. He made me.”
”Awful a.s.s, Scott,” admitted Green.
Pillingshot welcomed this sign that the focus of popular indignation was being s.h.i.+fted.
”Shoving himself into other people's business,” grumbled Pillingshot.
”Trying to be funny,” Berkeley summed up.
”Rotten at cricket, too.”
”Can't play a yorker for nuts.”
”See him drop that sitter on Sat.u.r.day?”
So that was all right. As far as the junior day-room was concerned, Pillingshot felt himself vindicated.
But his employer was less easily satisfied. Pillingshot had hoped that by the next day he would have forgotten the subject. But, when he went into the study to get tea ready, up it came again.
”Any clues yet, Pillingshot?”
Pillingshot had to admit that there were none.
”Hullo, this won't do. You must bustle about. You must get your nose to the trail. Have you cross-examined Trent yet? No? Well, there you are, then. Nip off and do it now.”
”But, I say, Scott! He's a prefect!”
”In the dictionary of crime,” said Scott sententiously, ”there is no such word as prefect. All are alike. Go and take down Trent's statement.”
To tax a prefect with having stolen a sovereign was a task at which Pillingshot's imagination boggled. He went to Trent's study in a sort of dream.
A hoa.r.s.e roar answered his feeble tap. There was no doubt about Trent being in. Inspection revealed the fact that the prefect was working and evidently ill-attuned to conversation. He wore a haggard look and his eye, as it caught that of the collector of statements, was dangerous.
”Well?” said Trent, scowling murderously.
Pillingshot's legs felt perfectly boneless.
”_Well_?” said Trent.
Pillingshot yammered.
”_Well_?”
The roar shook the window, and Pillingshot's presence of mind deserted him altogether.
”Have you bagged a sovereign?” he asked.
There was an awful silence, during which the detective, his limbs suddenly becoming active again, banged the door, and shot off down the pa.s.sage.