The Yellow Room Conspiracy Read Online Free Page A

though of course that kind of startling early talent can disappear as quickly as it came. We were never to know. The boy was drowned at Dunkirk.
    The score rattled up, Tommy was brought back on, but the ball had lost its shine and barely swung. He was no threat, and suffered. In apparent desperation the captain, a boy called Thayer, put himself on to bowl at the other end. He was mainly an opening bat, but could at need bowl slow leg tweakers, spinning them a mile but without much control of length and line. Dirty Dan hummed with excitement—Thayer was in his house. The first two balls spun all right but were such long-hops that I felt I could have hooked them for six myself. The batsman did so with disdain.
    â€œGround bait,” muttered Dirty Dan.
    Another master, I forget who, chuckled derisively from the chair beyond.
    The third ball was no improvement but spun far enough across the wicket for the batsman to decide to pull rather than hook it. His stroke was beautifully timed, and hit by a powerful young man from the meat of the bat.
    Gerry Grantworth was fielding at short leg. This was in the days before helmets, and it was lunacy to have left him there against such a hitter with such erratic bowling. I have no idea how fast the ball was travelling. I saw Gerry leap, his hands full stretch above his head. His upper body whipped back so that for an instant I, and others to judge by the gasp, thought the ball must have caught him in the face. Then he had landed and was tossing the ball back to Thayer as unconcernedly as if he’d picked it up in a net. I was on my feet and yelling, and so was the master beyond Dirty Dan and most of the other spectators.
    â€œThat’s the most extraordinary catch I’ve ever seen,” said the other master as he settled into his chair. “You know, I believe that boy is capable of anything.”
    Dirty Dan was relighting his pipe (he expended far more matches than tobacco) so his answer came late enough to seem isolated from what had prompted it, and thus vaguely oracular.
    â€œIncluding, ultimately, his own destruction,” he said.
    The other master grunted questioningly. Further pipe-suckings repeated the pause.
    â€œHe believes himself invulnerable,” said Dirty Dan.
    â€œAll adolescents do,” said the other master. “What’s more he broke his thumb in last year’s Winchester match.”
    (We all remembered this event, because Gerry had retired hurt, but returned at eighth wicket down to bat one-handed, scoring thirty-odd and achieving a draw.)
    â€œMorally invulnerable,” said Dirty Dan. “Automaton in armour, eh?”
    I heard another grumble of incomprehension from the master. Dirty Dan sighed.
    â€œAdolescent invulnerability, I grant you,” he said. “This one’s different. Cap-à-pie on the outside, no moral innards. What’s he for, eh? Merely to be Master Grantworth. His own purpose, that’s all. All bets are certs, because he’s risking nothing, his side. Only they ain’t. As he’ll find out. But a sly bit of bowling from young Thayer, eh?”
    As I say, we considered Dirty Dan a figure of fun, and I didn’t take his comments seriously. I don’t believe I’ve thought about them again until I came to write these words, and even now I am not sure what weight to give them.
    I think that’s all about Eton, except that I remember having the Vereker girls pointed out to me at Lord’s in my last year. They were all five there. Nancy was already in the gossip-columns and Harriet occasionally mentioned. The story as told at Eton—as reliable as any other gossip among adolescents—was that old Vereker had explained when he proposed that the object was to produce a male heir to Blatchards, and that the future Lady Vereker, a lawyer’s daughter, had replied that she would bear five children and no more, and that that done he should keep her in hunters for as