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else. They gang round and rag us for half an hour or so, thirty or forty of them sometimes. There’s no reason—they get excited and it just happens. Everything is quiet one minute and then they’re singing “Oily Hogs, Oily Togs, Dirty Dogs and Frenchie Frogs,” throwing things, punching, spitting. Once or twice they pushed the same chap’s head into the wash-room latrine and flushed it. He ran away from school in the end. He got home on the railway somehow and never came back. Most get caught before they get very far. Then they cop it from old Winter for being out of bounds.”
    â€œDo they never complain?”
    â€œWe’re not allowed to sneak or split. That only makes it worse.”
    â€œAnd what of the Ocean Swells?” Holmes inquired.
    â€œThey say they’ll own the decks one day and we’ll be the hogs down in the grease pit.”
    Again I thought he might weep, but I underestimated him.
    â€œDeck officers—children of twelve or fourteen!” I said angrily, “Look, my boy, remember this. So far as names go, sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.”
    â€œIt was my mother’s name,” he said sadly, and then indeed, he began to weep. “Sovran-Phillips is one of the Ocean Swells. He found out that her name was Clemency. They thought it was a funny name. Phillips and the others went ganging round the school after me, shouting it, shouting that my father never died because I never had a father. My mother never had a husband. They ganged round me shouting lies about her. The more I begged them to stop, the more they did it. Now it doesn’t matter, because I shan’t ever go back or see them again.”
    I stood there. For the first time in my life the word “dumbfounded” meant something to me. When our case began I had never imagined such juvenile evil would be unearthed. Forging a postal order was nothing compared with this! But now that Patrick Riley had begun it was hard to stop him going on. What had he to lose? His eyes were dry again, reddened but angry.
    â€œThe worst of it is that I thought some of them were my friends. When it happened, even the ones I thought were friends … I could see them standing on the edge of the gang smiling and laughing at me. I’ll never forget who they were.”
    Sherlock Holmes had listened very quietly to all this.
    â€œAnd Mr Winter?” he inquired, “What does he have to say?”
    Patrick Riley looked up miserably and blew his nose.
    â€œHe won’t have sneaking or splitting. If a boy won’t stand up for himself but goes sneaking on the others, Mr Winter sends him away or beats him for it. That’s what I was warned.”
    The eyes of Sherlock Holmes were dark, glittering ice. His fury, on the few occasions when it overtook him, was terrifyingly quiet and cold. I was more angry than I had been for a very long time. If half of this was true, then the sooner Sir John Fisher had all such places as this closed down the better. Patrick Riley ended his pause.
    â€œJohn Porson is my friend, on the same side in the same class. We share the same desk. Still we daren’t fight Sovran-Phillips and his gang. But Porson is the last person I would steal from.”
    Listening to him, I thought that was the most persuasive argument we had heard in our young client’s favour.
    Holmes nodded and said, “You mention Sovran-Phillips. Tell me about him.”
    â€œHe’s Captain of Boats and prefect of the Deck Swells in the Upper Middle. The new boys act as servants to the captains and they get beaten if they don’t. He knows how to fight, that’s half the trouble. His step-brother’s a lot older, a cruiser captain. Phillips never lets us forget it. His real brother was here a few years ago and at Dartmouth now. He says his grandfather was an admiral, but I don’t know if that’s true. I don’t care now