Billy Bunter of Greyfriars School and Billy Bunter's ... (18 page)

CHAPTER XXXV

THE WORM WILL TURN!

“
JACTA
est alea
!” said Peter Todd.
“Don’t bung rotten Latin at me, Toddy.”
“—which being interpreted, means that the die is cast—.”
“Oh, shut up!”
“Or more colloquially, the jolly old game’s up!”
“Beast!”
“And you jolly well deserve it!” added Peter.
“Oh, really, Toddy—!”
Billy Bunter could not see that he deserved it. Billy Bunter never believed
that he got his real deserts. Certainly he did not believe that he had them
now.
But there was no doubt that, as Peter put it, the die was cast, and the game
was up! Bunter’s report that term was settled now in advance.
Quelch was fed up. Quelch, of course, would not have expressed it like that.
Probably he would have said that his patience was exhausted.
Bunter had had his chance. Of all his sins—and their name was Legion—not one
had been amended.
He was as lazy at prep, as slack in class, as unpunctual, as remiss, as ever.
He was still an incorrigible snooper of tuck. In matters of food he still
failed to distinguish the difference between “
meum
” and “
tuum
”;
and in matters of veracity, the difference between facts and fibs. And at
games, he was still the slacker he had always been: not merely dodging
practice, but even when picked to play in a match, preferring jam in the study!
Even Quelch’s gimlet-eye failed, it seemed, to discern a single redeeming
quality in the fattest member of his form. Bunter had had his warning. He had passed
that warning by, like the idle wind that he regarded not. So the die was cast!
Bunter could not help feeling indignant.
He hadn’t intended to cut that Form match. He could not, of course, resist jam.
But, really and truly, he had intended to take only a sample of it, before
going down to cricket. Unluckily, once Bunter started on jam, it was impossible
for him to stop so long as any jam remained. He admitted that he had overdone
it. But surely a fellow who was ill—and Bunter really had felt quite ill after
that cargo
—was entitled to sympathy! Bunter did not get any sympathy at all.
On Monday, in form, he read his fate in Quelch’s gimlet-eye. When, in the
geography lesson, he stated that Brussels, on the Tiber, was the capital of Poland, Quelch only gave him a look. The rest of the Remove expected the thunder to
roll—but there was icy calm. It was really as if Quelch
considered himself already practically done with that member of his
form.
That evening Bunter made a desperate effort to do some work at prep. On Tuesday
he was prepared to hand out
a construe with only two or three howlers in
it. And he was not called on for “con”! His unaccustomed stores of knowledge
remained bottled up, as it were. His luck was out.
“Fat lot of good trying to please Quelch!” he told Peter, when the
Remove came out. “That’s what comes of slogging at prep!”
“Quelch isn’t a magician!” Peter pointed out. “He couldn’t guess that you’d
done a spot of work.”
form.
“Yah!” was Bunter’s reply to that.
At tea-time
 a morose Owl rolled into No. 1 Study. Harry Wharton reached
for a cushion. But he remembered that Bunter was down on his luck, and dropped
it again.
There was a cake on the table. Bunter’s eyes, and spectacles, glued on
it, and for the moment he forgot his troubles.
“I say
, you fellows, that looks a decent cake,” he remarked “Not like
the cakes I get from Bunter Court, of course—but good. I’ll have a slice, if
you like.”
 
“Oh! Do!”
 
Bunter sliced a
slice—leaving nearly half the cake on the plate. Five
fellows looked expressively at the cake, and more expressively at Bunter.
Bunter did not notice it. He was deep in cake.
“I say, you fellows.” His voice came a little muffled through cake. “I say, it
looks as if I’m for it! Queer that Quelch should be down on me as he is, ain’t
it?”
“The queerfulness is terrific!” grinned Hurree Jamset Ram Singh.
“It’s prejudice,” said Bunter, sadly. “Schoolmasters get these prejudices, you
know. Not much good a fellow trying to please a beak when he’s prejudiced. I
don’t say I’m a perfect character—.”
“You don’t!” gasped Johnny Bull.
“Why not?” inquired Frank Nugent.
“Well, we’re none of us perfect,” said Bunter. “I don’t claim to be perfect. A
cut above any other fellow in the Remove, that’s all. But Quelch can’t see it.
None so blind as those who won’t see!”, added Bunter, bitterly. “I could
understand him being down on one of you fellows. But is he? No fear—he’s down
on me! It’s queer, but there it is.”
Bunter munched cake, and the Famous Five gazed at him.
“Looks as if I’m going to get a bad report, after all I’ve done,” said Bunter.
“That means that you won’t see me next term. I shouldn’t wonder if you fellows
get quite good reports. I’m going to get a bad one. That’s the sort of justice
a fellow gets here!”
“Oh, crumbs!”
“Well, perhaps Quelch will have something to remember me by!” said Bunter.
“I’ve done my best—you fellows know that—and it’s made no difference. But the
worm will turn!” said Bunter, darkly.
“Eh! What have you got in your fat head now?” exclaimed Harry Wharton.
“Oh! Nothing!”
“Ha, ha, ha!”
“I mean, I’m not going to tell you fellows,” said the fat Owl. “Least said
soonest mended. I may be going to make Quelch feel sorry for himself, and I may
not. That’s telling. I don’t want to wind up here with a Head’s flogging, of
course. I shall have to keep it dark.”
“Keep what dark?” asked Bob.
“Oh! Nothing! I’m not going to talk about it—it might get out: and I don’t want
Quelch to know what’s coming to him.” explained Bunter. “Still, Quelch may get
a surprise when he walks over to Highcliffe tomorrow afternoon. He’s certain to
take the footpath across Courtfield Common isn’t he?”
“I suppose so, as it saves half the distance,” said Harry, “but what the
dickens—.”
“Well, you know where the footpath goes through the Common Wood, in the middle
of the common!” grinned  Bunter. “Branches right over the path, thick as
billy-o—who’d spot a chap in a tree over the footpath?”
“In a tree over the footpath?” repeated Bob Cherry, blankly, “and what are you
going to do in a tree over the footpath, you frabjous Owl?”
Oh! Nothing! I’m not telling you fellows anything— might tattle—you know what
you are!” said Bunter, “but when Quelch comes stalking by under those branches,
he may get a surprise, or he may not. A fellow may be perched up there with a
bag of soot, and he may not——.”
“A bag of soot!” yelled the Famous Five, with one voice.
“Don’t shout it all over the Remove,” said Bunter, peevishly “I shall have to
keep it dark—I don’t want to finish here with a flogging, as I’ve told you.
Think Quelch will feel sorry for himself when a bag of soot drops all of a
sudden and bursts over his napper? What? He, he, he.”
“You—you dangerous lunatic!” gasped the captain of  the Remove. “Quelch would
skin you like an eel if you mopped soot over his napper—!”
‘How will he know?” grinned Bunter. “He won’t see me up in the tree. He won’t
see anything, with his eyes and nose and mouth bunged up with soot. He, he,
he.”
You can’t do it, you mad ass!” gasped Bob.
“Can t I?” jeered Bunter. “Think I’m going to have Quelch down on me all the
term, and giving me a bad report, for nothing, without giving him something to
remember me by? You fellows will hear some news when you get back from
Highcliffe after the cricket match tomorrow.”
“Look here you potty porpoise—.”
“Any more cake?”
“No, you cormorant. But look here—.”
“Sorry I can’t stop—I’ve got to see Mauly.” And Billy Bunter rolled out of No.
1 Study, leaving the Famous Five exchanging uneasy looks.
“Nothing in it,” said Bob, shaking his head. “Bunter’s too jolly lazy to walk a
mile to the Common Wood, and too jolly lazy to climb a tree if he did.”
“Yes, that’s so,” agreed Wharton.
And the chums of the Remove dismissed Bunter and his vengeful schemes from
their minds and resumed discussions of a much more important matter—the cricket
match at Highcliffe School on the morrow.
And when, the next day, the Greyfriars cricketers rolled over to Highcliffe,
they did not even remember the fat existence of Billy Bunter—and the worm was
left to turn if the spirit moved him so to do!

CHAPTER XXXVI

TWO IN AMBUSH!

“THAT’S him!” breathed Billy
Bunter, regardless of grammar.
Bunter’s eyes gleamed behind his spectacles, at the sound of a footstep below.
It was a sunny afternoon. But in the little wood in the middle of Courtfield
Common, all was dusky. Harry Wharton and Co., playing cricket at Highcliffe,
did not remember the fat Owl’s existence: but had they remembered him, they
would hardly have supposed that Bunter was where he now was. Generally, it was
a safe bet that if an enterprise required a spot of exertion, it was of no use
to Bunter. Laziness was a lion in the path.
But Billy Bunter was in deadly earnest. He had rolled out of the school after
dinner. By easy stages, taking frequent rests, he had crossed the open common,
to the little wood through which the footpath ran. Under the thick branches,
that met and mingled overhead from either side, that footpath was rather like a
dusky green tunnel. After another long rest, Bunter had clambered up a gnarled
old tree. He crawled out on a thick branch over the footpath. Thick foliage
screened and hid him.
In a fork of the branch, he parked a bag he had brought with him—a paper bag
crammed with soot scraped from the study chimney.
It was quite comfortable lying along that thick branch, among the shady leaves.
The fat junior lay there at ease.
All he had to do, was to watch the footpath below, through interstices in the
foliage. As soon as Mr. Quelch came striding by—or stalking, as Bunter had
described it—all he had to do was to drop the bag of soot.
It was as safe as houses.
Quelch, smothered with soot, would be in no state to seek the soot-hurler.
Moreover, he was long past the tree-climbing stage of life. Quelch, black as a
sweep, spluttering soot, would be left to splutter, while the fat Owl escaped
in the branches, and dropped to safety at a distance. Bunter had it all cut and
dried. His masterly brain had worked it all out.
Bunter had been nearly an hour sprawling on that leafy branch. But sprawling on
a branch was not really hard work, and he was patient.
Now he heard a footstep.
He blinked down through his big spectacles and the slits in the foliage below.
He wanted to make sure, of course, that it was Quelch, before he went into
action. It was a lonely footpath—still, it was used sometimes, and Bunter did
not want to waste his whole supply of soot on some Stranger, leaving him
without any for Quelch.
A figure came into sight below.
It was not Quelch!
‘Oh!” breathed Bunter, and his fat heart gave a little jump, as he saw who it
was.
He recognized that stubbly face, with its red-rimmed eyes, and twisted nose. It
was the footpad who had robbed him weeks ago in Friardale Lane, when Mr.
Quelch’s walking-stick had come into play—the ruffian who had attacked the
Remove master near Redclyffe, and on whose account the Courtfield constable had
called at the school.
Bunter knew him again, at once: and he was deeply thankful that he was safe out
of sight up a tree.
The man was coming along hurriedly, as if he had suddenly run into the little
wood from the open common. Bunter was anxious for him to pass on and disappear.
But Nosey Jenkins did not pass on.
He came to a halt, looking back, and listening. Then, to Billy Bunter’s
surprise, he moved off the footpath, and blotted himself out of view behind a
massive trunk—the trunk of the very tree whose branches concealed Billy Bunter.
He vanished from Bunter’s view, leaving the fat junior staring. Hardly a sound
came from him, after he had parked himself behind the tree. Only an occasional
faint rustle showed that he was still there.
“Beast!” breathed Bunter.
This unlooked-for occurrence looked like disconcerting all Billy Bunter’s
well-laid plans. Quelch could not be much longer, if he was going to see
anything of his boys playing cricket at Highcliffe. And Bunter did not want to
go into action with that awful ruffian on the spot. He was inclined rather to
understudy the mouse with the cat at hand.
What the man’s game was, was a puzzle to the fat Owl. Bunter’s powerful brain
was not quick on the uptake.
But slowly it dawned upon him what the man’s action meant—what it could only
mean!
The footpad was lying in wait!
Bunter felt his fat heart jump again, as he realised that he was about to look
down upon a scene of violence.
“Oh, scissors!” breathed Bunter. “Oh, crikey!”
But he dared not breathe a sound aloud. The mere sight of Nosey Jenkins
terrified him. The idea of drawing his attention, made Bunter’s fat heart
almost die in his breast.
He gave a little start, as footsteps again came to his ear.
Someone was coming!
Obviously it was the “someone” whom the footpad had ‘spotted on the common and
for whom he was lying in wait!
Billy Bunter shuddered. From the bottom of his fat heart, he wished that he bad
never thought of this masterly scheme for making Quelch sorry for himself.
He wondered who the coming man was. Then, suddenly, guessed! Quelch of course!
He had been expecting Quelch every minute. That awful ruffian had attacked
Quelch near Redclyffe, from motives of revenge. Now be had found another
chance—and Quelch was walking fairly into his hands.
‘Oh. lor’!” breathed Bunter.
A moment more, and a tall, lean, angular figure came in sight. It was Mr.
Quelch, coming along with his vigorous stride, his walking-stick under his arm.
Billy Bunter was there to soot Quelch! But he was not thinking of sooting
Quelch now!
Even as he blinked down, in terror, through the leaves, at the tall figure
passing under the tree, there was a rustle, a sudden spring, and Quelch wert
over headlong in the grip of the man who had leaped from cover.
“Oh!” gasped Mr. Quelch.
“Oh!” groaned Bunter.
He blinked down, frozen with horror.
Quelch was sprawling in the grass, on his back. His stick had fallen under him.
The man with the twisted nose was upon him, a knee planted on his chest,
pinning him down.
“Gotcher!” snarled Nosey Jenkins.
Mr. Quelch, utterly helpless, stared up at the threatening stubbly face. He
made an effort to throw the ruffian off and Nosey Jenkins rocked.
But it was in vain. Quelch was taken at too utter a disadvantage. He was
helpless, at the malicious ruffian’s mercy.
“Setting the coppers arter a bloke!” said Nosey Jenkins.
“Laying into a covey with a walking stick, and setting the coppers arter him!
Wot? If I don’t crack your blinking  nut this time—!”
Up went the ruffian’s right arm. There was a short, thick cudgel in his grip.
And cracked Mr. Quelch’s “nut” indubitably would have been, but for a sudden
and wholly unexpected interruption.