“Well, but do you accept?” cried David, executing a sort of Indian war-dance round him.
“No,” said Bags. “I don’t want to give you three with a racquet-handle, as we made it up last night. And I don’t want you turning everything upside down in my cubicle.”
Ferrers put on his dressing-gown with the solemnity of a judge assuming the black-cap.
“Then it simply proves the plaintiff’s case, if you won’t have your cubicle searched,” he said. “It’s all rot about your not wanting to whack Blazes because it was _pax_ last night. He’s challenged you: it isn’t _pax_ any longer. State of war!”
Ferrers was in his element, and it seemed to the court generally even as to him, that never at the Old Bailey had the net been woven in such impenetrable fashion round the most palpable criminal. Bags, too, felt that, but the net that really enmeshed him was of very different sort from what it appeared to be. Certainly he was in a hole, but not the hole that every one thought he was in.
“If you don’t accept the challenge,” said Ferrers, “it proves you are guilty.”
“I’ll let you give me six cuts, if I don’t find the Monarch in your cubicle,” he shouted. “You must be guilty, if you refuse six. Mustn’t he, Ferrers?”
Ferrers tore his sock in trying to put it on to a wet foot.
“Not for a cert,” he said. “Bags is beastly cunning. He may be running you up to a higher figure.”
“Then I’ll let him have twelve cuts,” said David, feeling absolutely sure about it, “if I may search his cubicle and not find the Monarch. Oh, and search his dressing-gown, too,” he added quickly, conjecturing a perfectly demoniacal piece of cunning on the part of Bags.
Bags stepped out of his bath with dignity, feeling there was no escape.
“Then I accept Blazes’ challenge of three cuts,” he said, “just to show I didn’t want to run him up. If I did, I should take twelve.”
“Done,” said David. “I’ll go and search at once; there’s another quarter of an hour before school. I may as well search his dressing-gown first. No, not there. Oh, blow! what shall I say if Glanders finds me in his cubicle again? I know: Bags is in the bath-room, and wants his liniment. If Glanders doesn’t think that likely, she can come and look at him.”
Now Bags’s dilemma, the net in which he was really involved, was this. He had lain awake for two hours last night in savage anger with David, whom, in secret boyish fashion, he adored, and who had been so beastly to him. Open vengeance was out of the question, because, if it came to a fight, David was more than his match, and thus his revenge for that infernal kick must be done stealthily. Plan after plan suggested itself to him, but none were suitable until he thought of the very simple one of taking the Monarch and his wife, which, as he knew quite well, lived in David’s washing-basin at night. That was accomplished very easily, without disturbing their owner. But a few hours later he was awakened by David himself, who had conceived the revolting suspicion that Bags had done precisely what he had done. Then at the same moment almost, while he was hot with indignation at being justly accused, he had seen the matron at the far end of the dormitory, and could not resist the temptation to get David into further trouble. This, too, had been successfully accomplished, and David would certainly be caned after morning school. And then Bags began to regret his success: his affection for David, whom no one could help liking even when he was being beastly, and his sense of his own meanness pointed the finger of scorn at him, and, having ensured David a caning, he wished he had not, at any rate, taken his beloved stag-beetles as well. So, lingering behind till the rest of the dormitory had gone to the bath-room, he induced the Monarch and his wife, who were scratching about in his soap-tin, to crawl on to his sponge, and, as he passed David’s cubicle, he had shaken them off on to his bed.