The Case of the Headmaster's Terrier
Chapter 7: The lion's den
My mind rapidly recovered from the shock of finding myself in the lion's den, and I observed that Stubbs and his acolytes looked highly anxious, as well as aggressive. A quick scan of the room also revealed no Odysseus. There was a fence post driven into the ground with a rope tied around it. The end of the rope was frayed, as if it had been gnawed through. There were claw marks upon the ground by the door, where a frantic small dog had evidently unsuccessfully attempted to dig his way out. A solid bench where boys had once sat above the pit below lay along one side of the room, the top nailed down. The room was otherwise empty apart from myself, and the angry youths closing in upon me.
Stubbs grabbed the front of my shirt.
"Alright Holmes, you little ponce, what have you done with him?" I was tired of being addressed by the prefix of "you little", followed by something insulting, tired of being pushed, pulled, beaten and abused. I spat out my reply contemptuously.
"I've done nothing! I just worked out where you were keeping him! He's probably escaped."
"If he's escaped, then why isn't he back at the school?" Stubbs looked frightened. As I had suspected, this juvenile bully did not have the stomach for more daring criminal enterprises, and if the little dog turned up dead, the consequences if he were ever implicated would be more than he cared to contemplate.
"I don't know. Maybe you scared him, and he's hiding in the woods. Why don't you look for him, instead of mis-shaping my shirt?" Stubbs knocked me down, and Brentwood aimed a kick at my stomach, which I curled up to avoid. Rawlings picked me back up again by the hair, and Osgood twisted my arm behind my back.
"Where – is – he?" snarled Stubbs, threateningly.
"I – don't – know." I panted in reply, although I thought my arm might break, and I tipped forward onto my toes to relieve the awful strain.
"I don't think he can know anything about it, Stubbs" said Larkin, one of the less obtuse of the gaggle. "He hasn't had time to get here, has he? And why would he come back, if he'd already set the dog free? I think he must have escaped. There's scratch marks under this door. He must have dug his way out."
"He might have got caught in one of Mr Vine's fox traps." said Rawlings, turning pale at the thought.
"We have to look for him" gasped Stubbs, picturing, no doubt, the retribution he would reap if the dog were to expire with his paw trapped in a vicious metal gin. He knocked me down again, almost as an afterthought, and the boys rushed out, en masse, no doubt to conduct a highly unsystematic and inefficient search of the woods.
I rose slowly to my feet, dusting down my trousers, feeling glad my reception hadn't been worse. I then smiled secretly to myself.
I knew there was no way Odysseus could have escaped under the door. There wasn't nearly enough room. I had told the truth when I said I did not know where he was. However, I had not bothered to add that I knew where he must have escaped from. There were no other possibilities. There was a gap between the edge of the bench and the corner of the room. There was nowhere for any creature to hide, but I walked around to the hidden edge, and crouched down to look. There was a hole in the old woodwork, big enough for a dog to fit through. Claw marks surrounded it. I had brought a small lantern with me; I lit it now, and peered down into the hole, my heart giving a little lurch as I realised the depth of the pit beneath.
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Poor Odysseus – fallen down an ancient toilet pit. Has he survived this extreme dunking? Continued in chapter 8.
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