Happy-go-lucky. Ian Hay
game on; and when The Jebber had removed himself, Wicky explained what he wanted us to do. He's a silent bird, Wicky, but he thinks a lot. Here are his digs."
We had reached a house in Jesus Lane, which we now entered, ascending to the first floor.
Dicky rapidly introduced me to Mr. Wickham, who had just finished luncheon. He proved to be a young gentleman of diminutive stature and few words, in a Leander tie. He was, it appeared, a coxswain of high degree, and was only talkative when afloat. Then, one learned, he was a terror. It was credibly reported that on one occasion a freshman rowing bow in a trial eight, of a sensitive temperament and privately educated, had burst into tears and tried to throw away his oar after listening to Mr. Wickham's blistering comments upon the crew in general and himself in particular during a particularly unsteady half-minute round Grassy Corner.
He silently furnished us with cigarettes, and my somewhat unexpected inclusion in the coming revels was explained to him.
"Good egg!" he remarked, when Dicky had finished. "Go round to the kitchen presently. Have dinner in these rooms, Freak. May be awkward for the men to get into College all togged up."
"You see the idea now, Tiny?" said Dicky to me. "Wicky is going to be host, and the rest of us are going to dress up as influential young members of the University. We shall pull The Jebber's leg right off!"
"Do you think you will be able to keep up your assumed characters all dinner-time?" I asked. "You know what sometimes happens towards the end of--"
"That's all right," said The Freak. "We are n't going to keep it up right to the end. At a given signal we shall unveil."
"What then?" I enquired, not without concern.
"We shall hold a sort of court martial. After that I don't quite know what we will do, but we ought to be able to think of something pretty good by then," replied The Freak confidently.
Mr. Wickham summed up the situation.
"The man Jebson," he said briefly, "must die."
"What character are you going to assume?" I enquired of The Freak. "Athlete, politician, peer, scholar--?"
"I am the Marquis of Puddox," said my friend, with simple dignity.
"Only son," added Mr. Wickham, "of the Duke of Damsillie. Scotland for ever!"
"A Highlander?" I asked.
"Yes," said The Freak gleefully. "I am going to wear a red beard and talk Gaelic."
"Who are to be the other--inmates?" I asked.
"You'll see when the time comes," replied Dicky. "At present we have to decide on a part for you, my lad."
"I think I had better be Absent Friends," I said. "Then I need not come, but you can drink my health."
Mr. Wickham said nothing, but rose to his feet and crossed the room to the mantelpiece. On the corner of the mirror which surmounted it hung a red Turkish fez, with a long black tassel. This my host reached down and handed to me.
"Wear that," he said briefly--"with your ordinary evening things."
"What shall I be then?" I enquired meekly.
"Junior Egyptologist to the Fitzwilliam Museum," replied the fertile Mr. Wickham.
II
That shrinking but helpless puppet, the Junior Egyptologist to the Fitzwilliam Museum, duly presented himself at Mr. Wickham's at seven-thirty that evening, surmounted by the fez.
Here I was introduced to the guest of the evening, Mr. Jebson. He was a pasty-faced, pig-eyed youth of about four-and-twenty, in an extravagantly cut dress suit with a velvet collar. He wore a diamond ring and a soft shirt. He looked like an unsuccessful compromise between a billiard-marker and a casino croupier at a French watering-place. His right forefinger was firmly embedded in the buttonhole of a shaggy monster in a kilt, whom, from the fact that he spoke a language which I recognised as that of Mr. Harry Lauder, I took to be the heir of the Duke of Damsillie.
The Freak was certainly playing his part as though he enjoyed it, but the other celebrities, who stood conversing in a sheepish undertone in various corners, looked too like stage conspirators to be entirely convincing. However, Mr. Jebson appeared to harbour no suspicion as to the bona fides of the company in which he found himself, which was the main point.
I was now introduced to the President of the Cambridge University Boat Club, a magnificent personage in a made-up bow tie of light-blue satin; to the Sultan of Cholerabad, a coffee-coloured potentate in sweeping Oriental robes, in whom the dignity that doth hedge a king was less conspicuous than a thoroughly British giggle; and to the Senior Wrangler of the previous year, who wore a turn-down collar, trousers the bagginess of which a music-hall comedian would have envied, and blue spectacles.
Mesmerised by Mr. Wickham's cold eye and correct deportment, we greeted one another with stately courtesy: but the President of the Boat Club winked at me cheerfully; the Sultan of Cholerabad, scrutinising my fez, enquired in broken English the exact date of my escape from the cigarette factory; and the Senior Wrangler invited my opinion, sotto voce, upon the cut of his trousers.
In a distant corner of the room, which was very dimly lighted,--probably for purposes of theatrical effect,--I descried two more guests--uncanny figures both. One was a youth in semi-clerical attire, with short trousers and white cotton socks, diligently exercising what is best described as a Private Secretary voice upon his companion, a scarlet-faced gentleman in an exaggerated hunting-kit--horn and all. The latter I identified (rightly) as The Master of the University Bloodhounds, but I was at a loss to assign a character to The Private Secretary. I learned during the evening, from his own lips, that he was the Assistant Professor of Comparative Theology.
The party was completed by the arrival of a stout young gentleman with a strong German accent and fluffy hair. He was presented to us as The Baron Guldenschwein. (He actually was a Baron, as it turned out, but not a German. However, he possessed a strong sense of humour--a more priceless possession than sixty-four quarterings or a castle on the Rhine.)
Dinner was announced, and we took our places. Wickham sat at the head of the table, with Mr. Jebson on his right and the Marquis of Puddox on his left. I took the foot, supported on either hand by the President of the Boat Club and the Assistant Professor of Comparative Theology. The other four disposed themselves in the intervening places, the Sultan taking his seat upon Jebson's right, with the Baron opposite.
The dinner was served in the immaculate fashion customary at undergraduate feasts and other functions where long-suffering parents loom in the background with cheque-books. The table decorations had obviously been selected upon the principle that what is most expensive must be best, and each guest was confronted with a much beribboned menu with his title printed upon it. Champagne, at the covert but urgent representation of the Assistant Professor of Comparative Theology, was served with the hors d'oeuvres.
At first we hardly lived up to our costumes. A practical joke which begins upon an empty stomach does not usually speed from the mark. Fortunately The Freak, who was not as other men are in these matters, had entered upon his night's work at the very top of his form, and he gave us all an invaluable lead. The fish found him standing with one foot upon the table, pledging Mr. Jebson in language which may have been Gaelic, but more nearly resembled the baying of one of the University bloodhounds. This gave us courage, and presently the Assistant Theologian and the M.B.H. abandoned a furtive interchange of Rugby football "shop" and entered into a heated discussion with the Senior Wrangler upon certain drastic alterations which, apparently, the mathematical savants of the day contemplated making in the multiplication table.
I devoted my attention chiefly to observing the masterly fashion in which The Freak and the saturnine Mr. Wickham handled Jebson. The latter was without doubt a most unpleasant creature. The undergraduate tolerates and, too often, admires the vicious individual who is reputed to be a devil of a fellow. Still, that individual usually has some redeeming qualities. In the ordinary way of business he probably pulls an oar and shoves in the scrimmage as heartily as his neighbour: his recourses to riotous