The Changeling Read online

  The hole in the glass had to be as small and neat as possible. Glass falling was noisy, and the janitor’s black dog in its kennel had keen ears. Todd’s room was first. With a screwdriver he gently broke the glass with the handle. He had a cloth ready to catch any fragments that fell outside. With the cloth wrapped round his wrist he thrust in his hand and withdrew the bolt. Going along to the handle of the door he tugged it, and so simply, as if the whole mechanism was in league with him it slid open. In a moment he was inside, the door shut again.

  There was plenty of light from the lamps in the street. Yonder, in the second row, was his own desk. Here, by the blackboard, was the teacher’s, containing, he hoped, that bag of money. On the board was chalked the sum worked out by Todd days ago. As he glanced at desk after desk he recalled who sat at each; none of them was his friend or comrade.

  He did not hurry. Panic meant mistakes. That weakness shown in the playground must be overcome.

  At last he approached Todd’s desk. Prising open the drawer took longer than was necessary, not just because he didn’t want to make a noise, but also because he wanted to do as little damage as possible. Not even anxiety lest Todd after all had taken the money home caused him to become reckless.

  The lock was broken, the drawer ready to be opened. Calmly he opened it and felt inside. Sure enough, there under some papers was the bag of coins, reminding him of the great lump that old Jack Tomkin who lived in the Court had under his chin. But Jack’s lump was without value, except in the imaginations of fascinated children where it was spent again and again. It could not buy steamer tickets or food or camp equipment. This other lump, growing out of Mr Todd’s astonished mouth, could buy all those things. As Tom picked it up he held it against his throat, and during that moment seemed to become old Jack with his kitten’s voice, his painful laughter, and his lifetime of disease and hardship in the Court. With a shudder he took the bag away from his throat and crammed it into his pocket. To stop it jingling he stuffed in with it some pages from an old jotter.

  Though he hadn’t allowed Peerie and Chick to come with him because they might play tell-tale tricks, he could not resist playing one himself. There was a bottle of red ink in the desk. Taking it out, and removing the cap, he went over to the door and let ink drip on to the floor and broken glass under the hole. From there to the desk he laid a trail of ink spots, smiling as he imagined Todd’s satisfaction that one of the burglars at any rate had had to pay in blood.

  It was while he was wiping his finger-prints off the ink bottle that he realised how unwise he had been. He had offered two suggestions to his enemies. They would look for blood on his hands and on the soles of his shoes. So far he had avoided that, but what if, in entering one of the other rooms, he scratched his hand, however slightly? It would be as good as a confession. Todd would examine the wrists of every boy in the school. It would be safer not to try to enter any other room.

  Yet there was one room he must enter: Forbes’s room. To pass it would be to show himself in some way afraid of the fat English teacher. It would be like admitting he was grateful, and he knew that if ever he were to be grateful to anybody, his confidence in himself would be destroyed.

  In Forbes’s drawer, in a little box, were six half-crowns. As Tom picked them up he remembered how the photographer, a small, thick-lipped Jew in a bowler hat, had arranged the boys according to size, making good-humoured jokes about each in turn. When he had come to Tom he had noticed, with one soft brown-eyed glance, how more poorly dressed than the others he was, and had, without a joke, pushed him into a position where only his face would be visible. Perhaps it had been done out of a desire to make the photograph more saleable. But with the half-crowns in his hand Tom wondered whether it would be the small Jew who would lose them.

  He tried two other rooms but got nothing. The teachers, one of them Mr Duncan, must have taken their money home with them. It was a precaution he would have taken himself; yet somehow, in the silent classrooms at two in the morning, it disturbed him. It represented what might keep him in Donaldson’s Court all his life. The sensible calculation of the world was in this obvious removing of the money to a safe place, this trusting of nobody even for a night. Everybody did it, except simpletons like Forbes. People put their money in banks for safety. Shillings were never found, like dandelions, in cracks in the pavement. Why then should he be concerned by this customary act on the part of Mr Duncan and Mr Timpson? He knew it was foolishness, caused perhaps by want of sleep, yet he could not help picturing the two teachers standing by their desks, laughing as he looked in vain. ‘Nothing for you, Curdie, nothing at all, nothing.’ He might grin at his own stupidity in letting his imagination tease him thus, he might slap the bag in his pocket, it was no good, he couldn’t throw off the burden of all those millions of people who kept their money safe, with none for him.

  ~

  He was so tired and so oppressed by the loneliness of the streets, that as he opened the door and smelled the familiar fug, and heard his mother snore, he was almost betrayed into a sigh of relief, at being back again. Home was a word he would not use: all that it seemed to signify, comfort, security, help, and permanence, were absent there.

  As he was undressing Molly stirred and whimpered for a drink. He went over and held her up to give her one.

  His mother spoke from the bed. ‘Whit’s that? Wha is it?’

  ‘It’s me,’ he said. ‘Molly wanted a drink.’

  ‘Did you gie her one?’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘That’s a good boy. You’re a good boy at hert. I didnae mean whit I said to you the night. You’ve got to look after yourself. Christ pity us.’ Repeating that prayer, with a long yawn, she sank back into sleep.

  Within five minutes he was asleep, too.

  Chapter Five

  Forbes was always one of the earliest teachers to arrive in the morning. It was not only hypocritical, he said, it was downright dishonest, to inculcate punctuality in children, indeed to punish them for not observing it, and then not observe it oneself. His colleagues agreed, even those who frequently enough sneaked in by the back entrance after prayers had started; but in their prayers no blessings were asked for him.

  The morning after the burglary, half an hour to the good, he walked up the steps at the front door, passed under the mitred head of the patron saint of the city, and entered the hall, where he was at once pounced on by Bud the janitor and informed that his room and the other three rooms in that wing of the building had been broken into and the locks of the desk-drawers forced. Bud then wanted to know if Forbes had left anything valuable in his desk, hinting strongly that, if he had, he was a mug.

  ‘You teachers are too damned soft with them nooadays,’ said Bud.

  ‘You wouldn’t want to put the clock back,’ said Forbes.

  It was a brave utterance, for he was wondering what had happened to the half-crowns which he had left in his drawer, an offering on the altar of trust.

  ‘It’d be some boyish prank,’ he said, laughing. ‘How many straps are missing?’

  ‘None. One of them cut his hand. There’s blood all over Mr Todd’s room. By God, he’s one that’ll make a proper song about it.’

  Todd’s song, in one respect, was quite improper; it contained several oaths. Legs apart, he stood in the middle of the staffroom, pouring bucketfuls of ashes over his big bald commissar’s head. As a green student, he roared, he had had a lead pencil, worth one penny, lifted from under his eyes. From that day he had made a vow that, all children being by nature tarry-fingered, nothing of his must ever be allowed near enough them to stick. Now at an age of ripest discretion and maturest cynicism, he had blundered, he had depended on trust. He deserved his arse kicked, but if it was left to him he would see to it that the arses of the culprits would be flayed and pulverised.

  At first the headmaster would not leave it to him: the police were brought in. Two detectives came, looked, discovered the blood was red ink, found fault with the system of b
olting the sliding door, and left with the insinuation that if any boys in the school were suspected it might be more profitable to leave their cross- examination in the hands of the teachers, in the first place at any rate. Altogether the police gave the impression that in the hundred or so burglaries perpetrated in the city that week, with the culprits still unearthed, this one was negligible, well down the list. As for Todd’s four pounds eighteen shillings and fivepence ha’penny, they did not directly say they regarded its loss as a penance for his naïve trustfulness, but they implied it clearly enough to choke him with exasperation. They said nothing at all about Forbes’s half-crowns, for the good reason that they did not know about these, he having decided to keep quiet about them to prevent ridicule, not of himself, but of the faith embodied in him. That Todd’s trust had been violated was not surprising; the high proportion of cynicism in it made violation almost pardonable. But that his own had been was unaccountable and tragic. Todd had many ill-wishers in the district; but Forbes’s former pupils, as well as his present ones, respected him, he knew, and appreciated his fairness towards them.

  In the staff room it was suggested it might have been done by strangers.

  ‘No,’ said Todd. ‘The buggers knew their way around too well for that. Besides, didn’t they know the money was in the desk?’ He turned round to look for Forbes, despondent in a corner. ‘Charlie,’ he cried, ‘I congratulate you.’

  ‘On what?’ asked Forbes coldly.

  ‘On having the intelligent meanness to keep your drawer like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. On not being like me, a simple trusting gomeril.’

  Forbes said nothing.

  Todd addressed the company. ‘If he allows me a free hand, I’ll have the truth, and the money, by four o’clock.’

  ‘Do you mean,’ asked Forbes hoarsely, ‘the map-room?’

  ‘Yes, by God, Charlie, I do mean the map-room. In the old days we treated rogues as rogues. One at a time in the map- room, with a big Lochgelly. It never failed.’

  ‘Gestapo methods,’ said Forbes. ‘In your eyes is civilisation worth only four pounds eighteen and fivepence ha’penny?’

  ‘Less than that, Charlie, when it’s my money.’

  ‘At least you’re frank.’

  ‘And that’s better than being smug and phoney.’

  Some of the others were uneasy. One hurried in to divert Todd.

  ‘Whom do you suspect, Bill?’

  ‘You mean, number one?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Curdie, of IA.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s as sleekit as your granny’s cat; and because he was almost cracking his dirty little ears to listen to what Jimmy Duncan and me were saying yesterday afternoon. That right, Jimmy?’

  Duncan smiled. ‘He was doing his sums too, Bill.’

  ‘Of course. You’ll never catch Curdie if you take him at his face value.’

  Forbes stood up. ‘I’m warning you now that if this boy is bullied over this I shall take it to the highest authorities.’

  ‘Who have, as we all know, Charlie, such a high opinion of your talents.’

  At that insult Forbes, with a dignity enhanced by his flowing black gown, left the room.

  ‘Bloody fool,’ muttered Todd. ‘No wonder the public have no respect for us. No wonder we’re looked on as a shower of auld wives.’

  ‘I can understand Charlie’s feeling about Curdie,’ said Duncan.

  ‘Jimmy, if I can pin this theft on the little bastard, Charlie ought to give me a public apology, and thank me into the bargain.’

  ‘Yes, but you’ve still to pin it on him.’

  ‘That red ink trick proved it. There’s not another boy in this school with that kind of humour.’

  Two or three smiled as they recollected how, as blood, it had appeased his pride, and how, as red ink, it had outraged it.

  ‘Bud and I have drawn up a list of the most likely,’ said Todd.

  ‘Is it the total school roll you’ve got, Bill? Nothing else surely would satisfy Bud.’

  ‘Eleven names so far; but I’m open to suggestions.’

  ‘Alboe for a cert.’

  ‘And Johnstone of IIE.’

  ‘And big Alison.’

  ‘And Docherty of IIIB.’

  Other names were suggested.

  ‘Got them all,’ cried Todd proudly, ‘every damned one. I’ve got a nose for rogues. Charlie would say it’s because I’m one myself. Curdie’s third on the list.’

  ‘I thought you said he was number one?’

  ‘He is. But after a couple have been put through it he’ll be in a sweat. Psychology.’

  ‘I can’t say I’ve ever seen Curdie in a sweat,’ said Duncan.

  Others agreed.

  ‘Well, you’ll see him in one today,’ said Todd.

  When he went out there was a short silence.

  ‘I can’t help feeling sorry for wee Curdie,’ said someone.

  ‘Yes,’ said another, ‘I find him harmless. I admit he’s deep, but what’s in him he keeps to himself, as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘What’s Charlie going to do?’ asked a third. ‘If ever there was a crusader without a sword it’s poor Charlie; and without a shield.’

  Forbes’s request to be present at the interrogation of Tom Curdie was granted by Mr Fisher.

  ‘Yes, Charlie,’ he said, ‘in the circumstances I think you’ve a right to hear what Curdie’s got to say.’

  Todd, seated by the headmaster’s side like the sinister adviser to some doted Renaissance prince, didn’t agree. ‘I hope he’s going to keep out of the questioning,’ he said.

  ‘Of course. He just wants to hear what Curdie’s got to say.

  In the circumstances I think it’s reasonable.’

  As Todd grunted a quiet knock was heard at the door.

  ‘Come in,’ called the headmaster.

  Tom Curdie entered. No boy could have been more respectful, and properly aware that he stood in the presence of authority. Yet both Todd and Forbes caught the smile that for an instant flickered across the small earnest face. To Todd it indicated a depth of insolence, to Forbes indomitability. He had shown a little surprise on seeing Forbes there in the corner.

  He addressed the headmaster.

  ‘Did you want to see me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Tom. Mr Todd and I have a few questions to ask you. Just tell the truth.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Todd had been smoking. Elaborately he took the cigarette out of his mouth, stubbed it on the ashtray, and then began to feel through his pockets for his cigarette case. In his search for it he had to take out his black coiled belt, which he laid on the desk under Curdie’s nose. That nose, however, showed no twitch of terror; indeed, the smile came and went again, as swiftly as before.

  ‘You know what this is all about?’ asked Todd, pleasantly.

  ‘Not really, sir.’

  ‘You don’t, eh? You haven’t heard the school was broken into last night?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I heard that. I saw the broken glass, and the detectives.’ ‘You’d recognise them as detectives all right. Now, Curdie, I want you to account for every minute you spent yesterday between four o’clock and the time you went to bed. Now what did you do after you left school?’

  ‘I went for a walk.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Just myself, sir.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Along the banks of the Clyde.’

  ‘You’d arranged to meet somebody there. Who was it?’

  ‘Nobody, sir. I just saw five swans.’

  Todd grinned, appreciating the stroke.

  ‘After that, Tom, what did you do?’ asked Mr Fisher, anxious to do his share of the questioning.

  ‘I went—to where I live.’

  ‘Do you mean, you went home?’

  Again the boy hesitated; then he nodded.

  ‘Then why not say so?’

  ‘All right,’ chipped in Todd. ‘You went home.
Did you meet anybody on the way?’

  ‘Nobody I spoke to, sir.’

  ‘Who was in the house when you got there?’

  ‘Just my brother.’

  ‘What age is he?’

  ‘Nine, sir. He’s at Oldlands school.’

  ‘When did the others come in?’

  ‘My mother and sister came in a wee bit after five.’

  ‘What about your father?’

  ‘He’s not my father.’

  ‘No. But you call him father, don’t you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Then what do you call him?’

  ‘Perhaps guardian?’ suggested the headmaster.

  Tom smiled: the term was never used, but it was so silly it would do.

  ‘Did you all stay in all evening?’ asked Todd.

  ‘No, sir. My mother and guardian’—again he smiled— ‘went out about seven.’

  ‘And when did they come back?’

  ‘Just before eleven, I think, sir. I was in bed.’

  ‘So you stayed in all evening, with your brother and sister? Why? It was a fine sunny evening.’

  ‘No, sir. It was wet.’

  ‘Yes, so it was. And yet you go a walk and talk to swans? What did you do all evening?’

  ‘I read comics to my brother. Then I put my sister to bed— she’s just three.’

  ‘I see.’ The headmaster spoke sadly.

  ‘When they were in bed, what did you do?’ asked Todd sharply.

  ‘I wrote two hundred lines for Miss Strang. Then I read a book.’

  ‘What book?’

  ‘It’s called Martin Rattler. Mr Forbes lent it to me.’

  ‘I did lend him that book,’ said Forbes.

  ‘What time did you go to bed?’

  ‘About ten, sir.’

  Todd paused. ‘I’ll tell you what you did, Curdie. You left your brother and sister sleeping, slipped out, met your pals, and came here. About half-past ten or so.’