CHAPTER I

THE INTERRUPTED RITE

“Come in!” exclaimed Peter Annesley, Prefect of the Lower Fifth, at the
sound of a timorous knock upon the door of his study. “Oh, it’s you,
is it, you little tick? What have you come to speak to me about now,
eh?”

The “little tick,” otherwise Eric Mond, stood irresolutely in the
doorway, blinking with bulging eyes at the Prefect.

Peter Annesley, a big-framed lad of sixteen, shrugged his broad
shoulders with a show of bored disinterestedness. Popular with the
majority of the scholars at Broadwinton School, his antipathy to young
Mond was shared by almost every other boy. Eric, a little,
preposterously fat kid, lacking those characteristics that fall
naturally to the lot of a healthy, normal British schoolboy, was
notoriously addicted to the deplorable habit of sneaking to the masters
and prefects whenever an opportunity occurred. It seemed hopeless to
snub him. It was impossible to impress upon him the fact that sneaking
is one of the worst offences imaginable against the schoolboy code of
honour. More than once young Mond had been booted and cuffed by his
justly indignant form-mates, but the habit of tale-bearing was so
strongly ingrained upon the boy’s character that corporal chastisement
as administered by the rank and file of Broadwinton School had no
appreciable effect.

“Get it off your chest, do,” pleaded Annesley.

“If you please, I have come to report—-” began Mond, speaking with
the slow deliberation and choice of words that he had acquired by
contact with grown-ups. Until he had entered Broadwinton School two
terms previously he had never come in close contact with children of
his own age.

“I could have guessed that,” interrupted Peter grimly. “Cut that out
and get to rock-bottom.”

“If you please, I have come to report,” reiterated Eric stubbornly,
“that there is a most remarkable odour coming from Li Fan’s study.
Unless I am greatly mistaken, I imagine that he is burning.”

“Burning what?” demanded the Prefect, his interest in his official
capacity being aroused. “Himself or something?”

“Something, I think, Annesley,” replied the “little tick” demurely.
“That’s all, Annesley: good-night.”

Shutting up the book he was reading, the Prefect went to the door and
waited until Mond had shuffled down the corridor. Satisfied that the
informer should not enjoy the fruits of his enterprise, Annesley made
tracks for the study occupied by Li Fan.

Li Fan was a Chinese lad of about fifteen. It was his first term at
Broadwinton, whither he had been sent to improve his knowledge of
English before entering a public school. His father was a member of
the Chinese Embassy in London, having recently relinquished the
Governorship of the province of Nan-ngan.

Everything considered, Li Fan was not having a bad term at Broadwinton
School. He was docile, easy-going, and intelligent. At cricket he was
a rotten bat, but his agility as a fielder more than atoned for his
shortcomings with the willow. As a bowler he showed promise of
becoming a regular demon. Equally at home with the right hand and the
left, he could deliver swift bowls that had a disconcerting knack of
finding the middle stump, or provokingly slow ones that invited a
terrific “swipe” on the part of the disillusioned batsman, whose
amazement at finding that he had eluded the “leather” was only excelled
by his chagrin at the sight of the bails lying on the ground.

It had taken some time to get Li Fan out of the habit of bowling at the
batsman, but once he had conquered that homicidal tendency and decided
that there was almost as much fun to be got out of knocking over the
stumps as there was in delivering the ball in the midriff of the
flannelled young gentleman guarding the wicket, then he made rapid
strides. As a bowler who could–and did–accomplish the hat-trick, Li
Fan was a much-desired acquisition to the Broadwinton First Eleven, and
on that account he was spared the indignity that schoolboys
thoughtlessly show towards foreigners, especially those of a different
colour.

Arriving outside the door of Li Fan’s study, Annesley waited, listening
and sniffing. It was part of his job to check all irregularities in
the various studies. He did so with the utmost impartiality; but
rarely, very rarely, did he have to take the extreme step of reporting
delinquents to the Head. The Prefect had a firm and compelling way
with him. Usually a caution was sufficient. If a culprit showed signs
of resentment to the Prefect’s authority and refused to take a hint,
then Peter went a step further, inflicting temperate corporal
punishment. If that failed to attain the desired result, the
delinquent was reluctantly obliged to present himself in the
Headmaster’s room.

Through the closed door Annesley could hear Li Fan talking softly in a
strange tongue. A waft of sickly-smelling incense assailed the
Prefect’s nostrils. Evidently, he decided, Li Fan was smoking scented
tobacco, and smoking was a grave offence at Broadwinton.

The Prefect tapped on the door. Then he waited. He wanted to give the
culprit a chance.

He knocked again. There was no reply. Li Fan was crooning away in
utter indifference to the impending invasion of his study.

With a quick movement Annesley threw open the door. Then he stood
stock-still, rather mystified at the sight that met his eyes.

Li Fan was squatting on a small square of carpet in the centre of the
room. Over his European clothes he was wearing a short jacket with
wide sleeves, the whole fashioned out of diminutive lengths of bamboo
threaded together. On his head was a cap somewhat resembling a
saucepan lid. In front of him was a little Chinese cup and saucer,
three ivory sticks about four inches in height and square-sectioned, a
fan, a pipe with a bowl no bigger than an acorn, and a brass bowl. In
the latter, something was smouldering and emitting a not altogether
unpleasant and somewhat sleepifying odour.

Li took not the slightest notice of the interruption; or if he did, he
betrayed neither interest nor resentment at the Prefect’s presence. He
was crooning softly to himself, his obliquely-set eyes fixed vacantly
on the brass bowl.

“What are you fooling about with?” demanded Peter sharply. “You’re
smoking, Li. That’s not allowed, you know.”

Still no answer.

“Wonder if the young ass has got hold of some opium?” thought the
Prefect. “He seems completely off his rocker. Li, you idiot,” he said
aloud, “pull yourself together. Fat lot of good you’ll be in the match
to-morrow. Get up at once.”

This exhortation meeting with no response, Peter felt fully convinced
that Li was helpless under the influence of dope.

With a quick, decisive movement, Annesley grasped the young Chinaman by
the waist and placed him on the bed, scattering the ivory pillars and
the other articles as he did so. Li offered no resistance, and since
he weighed seven-stone-three to Peter’s ten-stone-nine, the latter had
a comparatively easy task. Then, grasping a water-jug, the Prefect
flooded the smouldering contents of the brass bowl, and having
satisfied himself that there was no risk of fire, he went out and shut
the door.

Li Fan lay motionless. He was far from being doped. His brain was
working rapidly.

“If I live for a hundred thousand years,” he muttered in the flowery
language of the Far East, “I will never forget the insult offered to
the spirits of my illustrious ancestors by this foreign devil.”

A hundred plans for revenge flitted across his mind as he lay outwardly
impassive upon his bed. He, a high-class Chinaman, son of a mandarin
of the Yellow Button, had been subjected to the deepest indignities by
a foreigner. How could he, Li Fan, be admitted into the Inner Circle
of the Celestial Chi-Ka unless he had wiped out the insufferable insult?

Meanwhile Peter Annesley, in happy ignorance of the hornet’s nest he
had disturbed, returned to his study.

“I won’t report this to the Head,” he decided. “I’ll see what Li has
to say about it in the morning, when he’s slept off his fat head.”

A moment or so later Peter’s particular chum, Marsden, “blew in.”

“Hello, old son!” exclaimed the newcomer breezily, “that little sneak
Mond has been spinning a yarn that you’ve caught Li Fan smoking, or
something like that. Is that so?”

“Sort of,” admitted Peter. “I had to tick him off.”

“And what did he say?”

“Nothing,” replied Peter, and proceeded to describe what had taken
place.

“It strikes me, old son,” remarked Marsden, “that you’ve interrupted
young Li in the midst of his religious exercises. Don’t know for
certain, mind you; but if you have, there’ll be trouble.”

Annesley looked a bit concerned.

“Never thought of that,” he admitted. “P’r’aps you’re right. But
there’s no getting away from the fact that he broke the rules by
messing about with fire in his study. What’s the use of making rules
if that little Chink can break ’em with impunity? If I’ve trodden on
his corns about his religion, I’m sorry. I’ll apologise to him in the
morning for _that_, but he’ll have to understand that Broadwinton isn’t
Pekin, or wherever he hails from. So that’s that.”

But Peter Annesley had no opportunity for apologising to Li Fan in the
morning.

At roll-call the young Chinaman was missing. He never again showed up
at Broadwinton, and the only explanation for his departure was a
courteous letter from his father–His Excellency, Hai Ling–stating
that unavoidable circumstances had compelled him to remove his son from
the school.

And at the end of that term, Peter Annesley answered for the last time
to his name at Broadwinton. He left to join one of the noted
training-ships for officers of the Mercantile Marine.