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  The Launching of Roger Brook

  ( Roger Brook - 1 )

  Dennis Wheatley

  DENNIS WHEATLEY

  THE LAUNCHING OF ROGER BROOK

  Original Frontispiece by MARK GERSON

  Distributed by HERON BOOKS

  CHAPTER I

  THE HAPPIEST DAYS . . .

  WHITE-FACED and tense, his blue eyes smouldering under their dark lashes, young Roger Brook glared at the older and much sturdier lad who stood grinning at him in the narrow corridor.

  "Give me my cap, Gunston! Come on; give me my cap!" he demanded angrily.

  George Gunston was a broad-shouldered youngster of sixteen with a crop of coarse red curls which grew low down on his forehead, and a round, freckled face. He showed the mortar-board that he had just snatched from Roger's head provocatively for a moment, then thrust it again behind his back as he began to chant:

  "Bookworm Brook, bookworm Brook. He's a toady to the ushers, is bookworm Brook."

  "That's a lie!" exclaimed Roger, "I don't toady."

  "So you give me the lie, do you, you little swot. All right! Come outside and fight."

  Roger strove to control the fear that suddenly made his heart beat faster, passed the tip of his tongue over his dry lips, and muttered: "I only said I don't toady—and I'm not a swot. I've simply found that it saves trouble in the long run to do my prep properly and keep my books neat. It's not my fault that you're always in hot water because you're too lazy to do either. Now stop behaving like a second-form kid, and give me back my cap."

  "If you want it, come and get it."

  For a moment Roger considered the challenge. On two previous occasions, baited beyond endurance by Gunston, who was the bully of his year, he had fought him, and each time received a thorough licking. To fight again was only to court disaster; yet he must have his mortar-board back, and quickly, as his House Master had just sent for him, and there would be trouble if he did not present himself before "Old Toby" decorously clad in cap and gown.

  As they stood there eyeing one another, Roger with the hot, bitter resentment of one who knows himself to be superior in every way to his tormentor, except for physical strength, and George, taking an oaf-like delight in the power that physical strength gave him to humiliate his cleverer class-mate, a jumble of sounds came to them, muted by the thick walls of the one-time Benedictine monastery, that for countless generations had housed Sherborne School in Dorset.

  Normally, at this evening hour, the school was hushed while its scholars unwillingly bent their minds to construe the passages of Caesar, Horace or Cicero that they had been set for their prep, but this was the last night of term and the boys were packing to leave next morning for their summer holidays.

  Sherborne is a very early foundation, its charter having been granted by Edward VI in 1550; yet there is evidence to show that its roots go much farther back, and that it had its beginnings in the days of St. Aldhelm, who lived in the eighth century.

  Already, therefore, on this 28th day of July, in the year 1783, the venerable buildings had known the joyous atmosphere that pervades a school on the last night of term for something like a thousand years.

  Such term endings differ little with the passing of the centuries, except in the very gradual change in the clothes worn and the language used by masters, staff and pupils—and such minor points as that, where the boys had once washed down their supper with a draught of mead, they now took strong ale and in less virile times yet to come, would drink plain water. The boys themselves altered not at all, and now that discipline was relaxed they were shouting, playing pranks and throwing their hated lesson books at one another in the exuberance engendered by this eve of freedom. Snatches of song, squeals of mirth and running footsteps penetrated faintly to the secluded corridors in which Gunston had met Roger and seized this last chance to provoke him to a fight that would mean an easy victory.

  "Well! What are you waiting for?" Gunston sneered.

  Roger still hesitated, torn between the urgent necessity to get back his cap and his dread of physical pain. His hatred of Gunston was such that he would have risked a fight if only he could have been certain of landing one good hard blow on his tormentor's fat, stupid face, but he knew that the odds were all against his being able to £et in first. Moreover, he was loath to go home to his mother next day with a black eye or a badly cut lip.

  It seemed that Gunston had almost read his thoughts, as he said suddenly: "So you're afraid you'll have a bitten tongue to-morrow night when you drink the health of that old Popish schemer 'over the water,' eh?"

  The gibe, Roger knew, was directed at his mother, as she was of Scottish parentage, and so obviously suspect of Jacobite sympathies. It was still less than forty years since Bonnie Prince Charlie had had his father, the Old Pretender, proclaimed King in Edinburgh, and civil war had sown bitter discord through the length and breadth of Britain. Gunston's shot had been fired at random, but it was all the more telling because Roger's mother did still regard the now elderly Stuart Prince who lived in Rome as her legal sovereign, and, at times, toasted him in silent symbolism by passing her glass of wine over the water in her finger bowl.

  Roger's own vivid imagination also inclined him secretly towards the romantic Stuart cause. The fact that his mother had often told him that he must not prejudice his career by championing the side that had lost in this quarrel of an older generation, but should follow the loyalty of his English father to the Hanoverian line, made no difference. Political hatreds and the persecution resulting from them died hard in those slow-moving times, and Roger knew that he dared not allow the imputation of Jacobitism to pass.

  Tensing his slender body he clenched his fists and suddenly struck out at Gunston with a yell of: "You dastard! I'll teach you to speak ill of my family!"

  After their two previous encounters Gunston had actually had small hope of inciting young "Bookworm Brook" to fighting pitch, so when the attack came it took him by surprise. He was, moreover, temporarily at a disadvantage in that his right hand was still behind him holding Roger's cap.

  Dropping it he stepped back a pace, but not quickly enough to avoid a savage jab on the nose. Tears started to his eyes and the mocking grin was wiped from his pudgy face. But George Gunston was not the type of bully who is a coward, and promptly caves in when stood up to. Swiftly throwing himself into the attitude he had often admired in semi-professional pugs during knuckle fights at fairs and on village greens, he easily parried the unscientific rain of blows that Roger aimed at his head.

  After a moment Roger stepped back to regain his breath. Instantly his red-headed antagonist took the initiative. Closing in he landed a heavy punch on Roger's chest that drove him back another pace towards the angle of the corridor. Following up Gunston swung a right hook to Roger's jaw, missed it by a fraction, but landed another left on his body.

  Roger gasped, threw up his arms to protect his head and retreated another couple of steps. His one advantage lay in the fact that he was much the nimbler of the two and, had he had more space he might have dodged some of Gunston's blows, but here, in the narrow corridor, he was deprived of any chance to use his agility.

  He knew, too, that without losing his balance, he could easily have thrown his adversary into confusion by giving him a swift kick on the shin, and he had never been able to understand why, if one was set upon by a bigger fellow, one should not resort to any such trick for one's own protection. But a strange unwritten law of England forbade such tactics, just as it also ordained that he must not turn and run. To have done either would have been thought worse than spitting on the floor of the Chapel during Holy Communion.

  Yet he was seized now wit
h a blind, despairing misery. He fought on automatically, but knew that he had no hope of escaping a thorough drubbing. In another moment Gunston would have him in the corner and lam into him with those freckled, brutal fists until he fell to his knees and cried for quarter.

  As through a haze he saw that Gunston's nose was bleeding, but before he had any chance to feel elation at the sight he received a terrific wallop on the ear that knocked him sideways and made his head sing. For a moment he was deafened and as he ducked to avoid another blow he did not hear a quiet voice drawl:

  "What's this? Fighting on end of term night? For shame now! Desist at once! Who have you in that corner, Gunston?"

  As the expected blow did not fall, Roger lowered his arm, raised his head and realised the cause of his deliverance.

  A tall, thin young man, with an elegant air, narrow shoulders and a pronounced stoop had appeared on the scene. He had a large fleshy nose and a pair of very pale blue eyes, which now surveyed the still breathless combatants with an expression of indolent disapproval. Although he was some two years older than either of them, he was so frail that Gunston could have laid him out with a single blow; yet the habitual bully almost cringed before him.

  The interrupter of the fight was known as "Droopy Ned" and he held a highly privileged, if curious, position in the school. This was not alone because he was a member of one of those great families which, in that heyday of the aristocracy, collectively wielded a far more potent power in the governance of England than the occupant of the throne. In fact, the century was approaching in which any son of a peer was to be given an extra kick at his public school, just because he was the son of a peer; so, even in this era when patronage counted for so much, Droopy Ned's prestige had little connection with the fact that he was the younger son of the Most Noble the Marquess of Amesbury, and that his proper style was Lord Edward FitzDeverel.

  His real, although quite unorthodox, authority—since for some reason best known to themselves the school authorities had repeatedly passed him over in their selection of prefects—was based upon his most unusual personality. He differed so abnormally from his school­fellows that they were quite incapable of understanding him but, recognising instinctively that he possessed the brain of a mature man, they accepted his idiosyncrasies and deferred to his judgments without question.

  In some ways he shocked them unutterably. In an age when blood sports occupied nine-tenths of the thoughts and leisure of every English gentleman, Droopy Ned made no secret of the fact that he abhorred bull-baiting, fox-hunting and cock-fighting; he also displayed an aloof disregard for all schoolboy crazes, ball games and field sports. Instead, he concerned himself with strange expensive hobbies, such as the collecting of antique jewellery, the study of ancient religions and experimenting on himself with eastern drugs: the latter then being neither forbidden by law nor frowned on morally. Without appearing to concern himself with his studies he mastered them with ease and Would always give his help to more backward class-mates with the utmost readiness. He possessed great charm of manner and was extremely generous but, on occasions when provoked by the bumptious or offensive, his lazy good nature gave place to a bitter, devastating wit, of which both the masters and his school-fellows went in dread.

  Droopy airily waved a fine cambric handkerchief under his big nose and both the boys caught a whiff of the French scent that was on it, as he inquired: "What were you two fighting about?"

  Gunston would no more have challenged the speaker's right to put the question than he would have thrown an inkpot at the Head.

  "I took the little fool's cap," he answered sheepishly.

  "Why, may I ask?"

  "Oh, it was just a rag."

  Droopy's pale blue eyes hardened. "I vow you had a deeper reason. You did it to force a fight upon young Brook. The love of fighting for fighting's sake is forgivable in the little savages of Lower School, but you will be moving into Upper School next term, and it ill becomes a fellow of your age to act the bully and the bore. Retrieve Brook's cap now, and give it to him."

  Gunston hesitated only a second, then he picked up Roger's cap and handed it over.

  "Now shake hands," Droopy ordered.

  As they obeyed, with ill-concealed reluctance, he looked at Roger and went on: "You are about to wait on Old Toby, are you not? I have just come from him and he was speaking of you. He was saying that you show great promise, particularly in languages and English composition. Such gifts may incline you to enter public life. As you may know, I am leaving this term to start on the Tour, but I shall be back in England in three or four years' time. If in the future I can be of any service to you, pray command me. You will always be able to obtain news of my whereabouts from Amesbury House, in Arlington Street."

  Roger made him a little formal bow. "That is most kind of you, Lord Edward." His quick wit led him to use the title deliberately in recognition of the fact that Droopy Ned was virtually no longer a schoolfellow, but, on leaving, had become a man.

  A smile of appreciation showed in the pale blue eyes. "I see you have the making of a man of parts, Mr. Brook, but I shall always remain 'Droopy' to my friends, and I hope that I may count you among them."

  Gunston had been standing by with a surly look on his face, and he now shuffled his feet awkwardly. Droopy glanced at him and went on: "I must continue my farewells, so I will not detain either of you longer."

  As Gunston turned away with a muttered "Good-bye" Roger said: "I envy you vastly going abroad. I would give anything to travel."

  Droopy nodded. "No doubt you will, one day. In the meantime all good fortune to you. Pray remember to come and see me on my return."

  "Indeed, I will. The best of fortune on your journey and my duty to you for rescuing me just now."

  " 'Twas a pleasure." With another airy wave of his scented hand­kerchief Droopy Ned followed Gunston down the corridor.

  The three were not destined to meet again for several years, but if Roger could have seen into the future it would have been revealed to him that both the others were to enter his life at many of the most important crises in it.

  Again and again he was to come up against the pig-headed stupidity of Gunston, as Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Colonel, and, finally, as General Sir George on the field of Waterloo. While Droopy Ned was to prove a powerful friend and wise counsellor in the tortuous path that he, Roger Brook, was to tread, as Mr. Pitt's principal secret agent during the dark days of the French Revolution and the mighty struggle against Napoleon.

  CHAPTER II

  A KNOTTY PROBLEM

  THE Reverend Mr. Tobias Chapwode, or "Old Toby" as he was called by the boys of his House, was by no means one of the most popular masters. His real interest lay in his own special subject, English History, upon which he had written several scholarly books. Had he had an income of his own he would have retired to devote himself exclusively to these studies, but he was dependent on his stipend and so compelled to remain at Sherborne although his duties there often conflicted with his private work.

  In consequence, whenever he was immersed in a particularly tricky passage of his writings he became extremely lax and discipline suffered. Then, suddenly becoming aware of this, to restore the situation he would pounce and punish with considerable severity. As the boys were unaware of the cause of this inconsistency in his treatment of them, they were naturally apt to resent it, and some even regarded him as a malicious old man who delighted in deliberately playing a cat and mouse game for his own amusement.

  The belief was fostered owing to the fact that few of his pupils ever got to know him. He regarded boys in the main as young animals, whom time alone could change from barbarous little savages into reasoning human beings. Moreover, he considered that his responsibility consisted only in keeping the worst of their natural vices in check and sending them out into the world stuffed with enough knowledge, acquired parrot fashion, to form a basis for further education should they later choose to develop any talents they might have.
r />   Yet to the few of whom he took conscious notice he presented a very different personality. In the seclusion of his untidy, book-bestrewn study he was no longer the reserved and apparently dreamy individual, who nine times out of ten failed to take notice of minor misdemeanours but on the tenth occasion would deal out birchings and impositions with startling suddenness. Those whom he invited there, occasionally for purposes other than inflicting punishment, always found him both tolerant and kindly; moreover, he had a strange facility for setting them at their ease and talking to them, not as their House Master, but as a friend.

  These favoured few were always boys who had attracted his notice by the promise they showed of becoming something worthwhile later in life. His historical studies had long since made him aware that these were by no means always the youngsters who did best at their lessons and he had an uncanny knack of singling out those showing incipient strength of character, regardless of their talents or lack of them. Among those with whom during the past year he had felt it worth while to bother was Roger Brook.

  Roger, therefore, had been in no trepidation on being sent for and, even had he not just been reassured by Droopy Ned, would have felt no qualms as he knocked on Old Toby's door.

  "Come in,' boomed a sonorous voice, and on entering the study, Roger saw that, as usual for such interviews, Old Toby had dispensed with all formality. He was a fat, elderly man, with a round face, sharp nose and rather fine green eyes. The desk behind which he sat was covered with a disorderly mass of parchments, his ill-curled grey wig reposed on a wig-stand beside his chair, the double lappets of his white clerical collar were undone and his rusty black gown was stained with spilt snuff.

  "Ah, 'tis you, Brook," he said. "Come in and sit down. Take that armchair and make yourself comfortable."

  As Roger obeyed, Old Toby scratched his shaven pate and went on with a smile: "Now, why did I send for you? For the life of me I can't remember, but 'twill come back in a minute; that is, if you don't grudge me the time from your packing for a little conversation."