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one corner stood a small gramophone. And gramophones happened to be
Mike’s particular craze.
    All
thought of risk left him. The soda-water may have got into his head, or he may
have been in a particularly reckless mood, as indeed he was. The fact remains
that he put on the first record that came to hand and switched on.
    The
next moment, a very loud voice announced that Mr. Godfrey Field would sing “The
Quaint Old Bird.” And, after a few preliminary chords, Mr. Field actually did
so.
    “Auntie
went to Aldershot in a Paris pom-pom bat.”
    Mike
stood and drained it in.
    “… Good
gracious [sang Mr. Field], what was that?”
    It was
a rattling at the handle of the door. A rattling that turned almost immediately
into a spirited banging.
    A voice
accompanied the banging. “Who is there?” inquired the voice. Mike recognized it
as Mr. Wain’s. He was not alarmed. The man who holds the ace of trumps has no
need to be alarmed. His position was impregnable. The enemy was held in check
by the locked door, while the other door offered an admirable and instantaneous
way of escape.
    Mike
crept across the room on tiptoe and opened the window. It had occurred to him,
just in time, that if Mr. Wain, on entering the room, found that the occupant
had retired by way of the boys’ part of the house, he might possibly obtain a
clue to his identity. If, on the other hand, he opened the window, suspicion
would be diverted. Mike had not read his “Raffles” for nothing.
    The
hand-rattling was resumed. This was good. So long as the frontal attack was
kept up, there was no chance of his being taken in the rear—his only danger.
    He
stopped the gramophone, which had been pegging away patiently at “The Quaint
Old Bird” all the time, and reflected. It seemed a pity to evacuate the
position and ring down the curtain on what was, to date, the most exciting
episode of his life; but he must not overdo the thing, and get caught. At any
moment the noise might bring reinforcements to the besieging force, though it
was not likely, for the dining-room was a long way from the dormitories; and it
might flash upon their minds that there were two entrances to the room. Or the
same bright thought might come to Wain himself.
    “Now
what,” pondered Mike, “would A. J. Raffles have done in a case like this?
Suppose he’d been after somebody’s jewels, and found that they were after him,
and he’d locked one door, and could get away by the other.”
    The
answer was simple.
    “He’d
clear out,” thought Mike.
    Two
minutes hater he was in bed.
    He lay
there, tingling all over with the consciousness of having played a masterly
game, when suddenly a gruesome idea came to him, and he sat up, breathless.
Suppose Wain took it into his head to make a tour of the dormitories, to see
that all was well! Wyatt was still in the garden somewhere, blissfully
unconscious of what was going on indoors. He would be caught for a certainty!

 
     
     
    CHAPTER
VI
     
    IN WHICH A TIGHT CORNER IS EVADED
     
    FOR a moment the situation
paralysed Mike. Then he began to be equal to it. In times of excitement one thinks
rapidly and clearly. The main point, the kernel of the whole thing, was that he
must get into the garden somehow, and warn Wyatt. And at the same time, he must
keep Mr. Wain from coming to the dormitory. He jumped out of bed, and dashed
down the dark stairs.
    He had
taken care to close the dining-room door after him. It was open now, and he
could hear somebody moving inside the room. Evidently his retreat had been made
just in time.
    He
knocked at the door, and went in.
    Mr.
Wain was standing at the window, looking out. He spun round at the knock, and
stared in astonishment at Mike’s pyjama-clad figure. Mike, in spite of his
anxiety, could barely check a laugh. Mr. Wain was a tall, thin man, with a
serious face partially obscured by a grizzled beard. He wore spectacles, through
which he peered owlishly at Mike. His body was wrapped in a