Was It Murder? Read Online Free Page B

hoping that in due course, and preferably without prompting, Daggat would talk about the dormitory tragedy.  When at length he suggested “a pipe and a pow-wow in my snuggery”, Revell agreed willingly enough.  The snuggery proved to be on the first floor of the main School House block; it was the usual room affected by such an occupant, with its wide-open windows and languishing fire, its sporting trophies, its hackneyed reproductions of too famous paintings, and its mantelpiece full of fixture-cards.  Pinned to the wall by the fireplace was the list of preachers in Oakington School Chapel during the current term. Revell glanced at it.  “So you’re on duty to-day?” he commented.
    “Yes.  They usually book me for the beginning and end of Term.”
    “I hope I’m not taking up your time when you’d rather be preparing?”
    “Oh, not in the least, my dear chap.  I always preach extempore.
    Often I don’t even know my subject till I get into the pulpit.  It’s the only way.  Once let the fellows feel that you’re not speaking straight from the heart, and you lose grip on them.  Don’t you think so?”
    Revell answered vaguely.  He was thinking, as a matter of fact, about Mrs. Ellington, and idly speculating upon how and where she had met Ellington, what in him had attracted her, and whether they had been married long.  Daggat roused him from such problems by asking what years he had been at Oakington.
    “I was here during the War.  ‘Fifteen to ‘eighteen.”
    “You were too young, I suppose, to be in the big scrap?”
    “’Fraid so.”  Revell felt like adding:  “Too young to have had any of those stirring adventures which you are going to tell me about now if I give you half a chance.”  Something of his feeling must have translated itself into a warning glance, for Daggat, after momentary hesitation, twisted the subject to a different angle.  “Ten years ago, by Gad!” he exclaimed.  “To think it’s all as long ago as that!  And yet a pretty good deal’s happened in the interval, I must admit—even at Oakington.  Almost a complete change of staff, you know.  I don’t suppose you’ve seen many familiar faces.”
    “I caught sight of old Longwell this morning, but he didn’t know me—I never took drawing.  Some of the servants’ faces I seem to remember.  But apart from that, everyone’s a stranger.”  He added:
    “I gather there was something like a clean sweep when the new Head came?”
    Daggat nodded.  “I came in ‘twenty-three—a year after the Head.  I heard stories, of course, of what things had been like before . . .”
    They chatted on, coming at length to reminiscences of particular boys whom Revell had known in his time, and whose younger relatives were still at Oakington.  It was easy, in such a connexion, to mention Marshall, and Daggat was only too eager to discuss the tragedy.  “I suppose you read about it at the time?” he queried, and Revell allowed him to presume so.  “Ah, a terrible business.  Queer thing, when you come to think about it, that a gas-thingumbob should come crashing down just when a boy’s head is underneath it.
    Providence, of course—that’s all one can say.  As I’ve told the
    School in my sermons time and time again—WE NEVER KNOW.  With all
    our modern science and invention—with all our much-vaunted—“
    A sharp tap on the door-panel interrupted a peroration whose conclusion seemed reasonably predictable.  “Come in!” yelled Daggat, in a high-pitched, sing-song tenor.  The door opened a few inches, and a man’s voice, deep-toned and rather cultivated, murmured:  “Sorry, Daggat—didn’t know you were busy.  Any other time’ll do.”
    Daggat jumped up hastily.  “No, don’t go, Lambourne—we’re only chatting.  Come in and meet Mr. Revell—he’s an Old Boy.”
    The new-comer made his way into the centre of the room with a sort of nonchalant indifference.  He was a youngish man, rather