for a few moments the two might
have seemed evenly matched to a not too intelligent spectator. But
science tells, even in a confined space. Adair was smaller and lighter
than Stone, but he was cooler and quicker, and he knew more about the
game. His blow was always home a fraction of a second sooner than his
opponent's. At the end of a minute Stone was on the floor again.

He got up slowly and stood leaning with one hand on the table.

"Suppose we say ten past six?" said Adair. "I'm not particular to a
minute or two."

Stone made no reply.

"Will ten past six suit you for fielding-practice to-morrow?" said
Adair.

"All right," said Stone.

"Thanks. How about you, Robinson?"

Robinson had been a petrified spectator of the Captain-Kettle-like
manoeuvres of the cricket captain, and it did not take him long to
make up his mind. He was not altogether a coward. In different
circumstances he might have put up a respectable show. But it takes a
more than ordinarily courageous person to embark on a fight which he
knows must end in his destruction. Robinson knew that he was nothing
like a match even for Stone, and Adair had disposed of Stone in a
little over one minute. It seemed to Robinson that neither pleasure
nor profit was likely to come from an encounter with Adair.

"All right," he said hastily, "I'll turn up."

"Good," said Adair. "I wonder if either of you chaps could tell me
which is Jackson's study."

Stone was dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief, a task which
precluded anything in the shape of conversation; so Robinson replied
that Mike's study was the first you came to on the right of the
corridor at the top of the stairs.

"Thanks," said Adair. "You don't happen to know if he's in, I
suppose?"

"He went up with Smith a quarter of an hour ago. I don't know if he's
still there."

"I'll go and see," said Adair. "I should like a word with him if he
isn't busy."

CHAPTER LIV

ADAIR HAS A WORD WITH MIKE

Mike, all unconscious of the stirring proceedings which had been going
on below stairs, was peacefully reading a letter he had received that
morning from Strachan at Wrykyn, in which the successor to the cricket
captaincy which should have been Mike's had a good deal to say in a
lugubrious strain. In Mike's absence things had been going badly with
Wrykyn. A broken arm, contracted in the course of some rash
experiments with a day-boy's motor-bicycle, had deprived the team of
the servic