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I cannot even faintly imagine what were Mr Abney's emotions at that moment. He was a man who, from boyhood up, had led a quiet and regular life. Things like Buck had appeared to him hitherto, if they appeared at all, only in dreams after injudicious suppers. Even in the ordinary costume of the Bowery gentleman, without such adventitious extras as masks and pistols, Buck was no beauty.
There is no pleasanter sight for an assistant-master at a private school than that of a number of boys expending their venom harmlessly in the sunshine. On this particular day, snow had begun to fall early in the morning, and, while his pupils would have been only too delighted to go out and roll in it by the hour, they were prevented from doing so by Mr Abney's strict orders.
My companion sprang to his feet almost convulsively, returned the salutation, and subsided slowly into his chair again. 'The Duke of Devizes, he said in an undertone. 'A most able man. Most able. His nephew, Lord Ronald Stokeshaye, was one of my pupils. A charming boy. I gathered that the old feudal spirit still glowed to some extent in Mr Abney's bosom. We came to business.
'Does Mountry know about this business? Have you told him why I want to go to Abney's? 'Nesta told him. He thought it was very sporting of you. He will tell Mr Abney anything we like. By the way, Peter, you will have to pay a premium or something, I suppose. But Nesta will look after all expenses, of course. On this point I made my only stand of the afternoon.
On the table in Mr Abney's study certain papers were found which explained the situation to Stephen Elliott when he was of an age to understand them.
One result of the adventure was that Ogden's bed was moved to a sort of cubby-hole adjoining my room. In the house, as originally planned, this had evidently been a dressing-room. Under Mr Abney's rule it had come to be used as a general repository for lumber. My boxes were there, and a portmanteau of Glossop's.
With that hideous strip of dingy white linen on his face, he was a walking nightmare. Mr Abney's eyebrows had risen and his jaw had fallen to their uttermost limits. His hair, disturbed by contact with the pillow, gave the impression of standing on end. His eyes seemed to bulge like a snail's. He stared at Buck, fascinated. 'Say, you, quit rubberin'. Youse ain't in a dime museum.
Mr and Mrs Ford, as of course you know, sir, are divorced. Mr Burns was trying to get the boy away and take him back to his mother. I heard Audrey give a little gasp. Mr Abney's anger became modified by a touch of doubt. I could see that these words, by lifting the accusation from the wholly absurd to the somewhat plausible, had impressed him.
Suffice it to say that the "dry-plate" process, with which such wonderful results have been obtained, appears to have been first made available by Sir William Huggins in photographing the spectrum of Vega in 1876, and was then successively adopted by Common, Draper, and Janssen. Nor should Captain Abney's remarkable extension of the powers of the camera be left unnoticed.
I have said that it was the custom of the staff of masters at Sanstead House School in other words, of every male adult in the house except Mr Fisher himself to assemble in Mr Abney's study after dinner of an evening to drink coffee. It was a ceremony, like most of the ceremonies at an establishment such as a school, where things are run on a schedule, which knew of no variation.
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