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"Be quiet, there," he growled. "Shut up that noise." Shoeblossom felt that the time was not yet ripe for his departure. Half an hour later he tried again. There was no rebuke. To make certain he emitted a second chuckle, replete with sinister meaning. A slight snore came from the direction of Mill's bed. Shoeblossom crept out of the room, and hurried to his study.
Trevor departed. "Suppose," said Shoeblossom to Barry, as they were walking over to school on the morning following the day on which Milton's study had passed through the hands of the League, "suppose you thought somebody had done something, but you weren't quite certain who, but you knew it was some one, what would you do?" "What on earth do you mean?" inquired Barry.
A babel of voices discussed the match of the afternoon, each trying to outshout the other. In one corner Linton was beating wildly on a biscuit-tin with part of a broken chair. Shoeblossom was busy in the opposite corner executing an intricate step-dance on somebody else's box. M'Todd had got hold of the red-hot poker, and was burning his initials in huge letters on the seat of a chair.
But there were certain inquiring minds who liked to ferret about in odd corners. Among these was one Leather-Twigg, of Seymour's, better known in criminal circles as Shoeblossom. Shoeblossom was a curious mixture of the Energetic Ragger and the Quiet Student.
They were not intellectual enough. In his lucid intervals, he was accustomed to be almost abnormally solemn and respectable. When not promoting some unholy rag, Shoeblossom resembled an elderly gentleman of studious habits. He liked to sit in a comfortable chair and read a book.
But a glance showed him how unjust they had been. There was Shoeblossom fast asleep. Mr Seymour therefore followed the excellent example of my Lord Tomnoddy on a celebrated occasion, and went off to bed. It was the custom for the captain of football at Wrykyn to select and publish the team for the Ripton match a week before the day on which it was to be played.
"You'll keep my name dark?" said Shoeblossom, alarmed. Barry said he would make an A.B. case of it. After school he went to Milton's study, and found him still brooding over its departed glories. "I say, Milton, can I speak to you for a second?" "Hullo, Barry. Come in." Barry came in. "I had forty-three photographs," began Milton, without preamble. "All destroyed.
It was more expensive and not nearly so comfortable there is a romance about a study brew which you can never get anywhere else but it served, and it was not on this score that he grumbled most. What he hated was having to live in a bear-garden. For Shoeblossom was a man of moods. But he liked to choose his accomplices, and the gay sparks of the senior day-room did not appeal to him.
"I was trying to make an A.B. case of it," explained Shoeblossom. "What's an A.B. case?" "I don't know," admitted Shoeblossom, frankly. "But it comes in a book of Stevenson's. I think it must mean a sort of case where you call everyone A. and B. and don't tell their names." "Well, go ahead." "It's about Milton's study." "What! what about it?"
The fat was in the fire with a vengeance. A great sheet of flame rushed out and up. Shoeblossom leaped back with a readiness highly creditable in one who was not a professional acrobat. The covering of the mantelpiece caught fire. The flames went roaring up the chimney.
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