Mr. Flaggon first talked the boy into a calmer mood and then showed him, quietly and sympathetically, what his duty was. He must remove the seal of confidence and endure the unpopularity. The moral welfare of countless boys, present and to come, was at stake. And so, before he left the study, Dennison had braced himself to the most difficult act of courage that a boy can be called on to perform--namely, to defy a traditional code of honour and to face social ostracism. An inquiry into Mr. Chowdler’s house was necessarily a much more difficult business than an inquiry into Mr. Chase’s. It was obviously impossible for the headmaster to take Mr. Chowdler into his confidence; so, boys had to be sent for separately and interviewed in his own study. There was much coming and going, much leakage of knowledge and consequent reticence or denial. Mr. Flaggon felt that he had never sifted things quite to the bottom. But Dennison stuck to his guns; and, in the end, two boys, one of whom was a Prefect, were expelled at once, and four others were told that they must leave at the end of the Term. In the Prefect, Mr. Flaggon had long ago recognised one of the three youths who had impressed him so unfavourably on his first visit to Chiltern. In spite of the clearest evidence, this boy persisted in asserting his innocence, and on hearing his sentence he attempted a piece of insolent bluff. “I shall appeal to Mr. Chowdler,” he said, “and, if he keeps me, I shall stay.” Mr. Flaggon made no reply, but stepped quickly to the telephone. “Number 92 A ... is the police inspector in? ... no? will he be in at six o’clock this evening?... Thanks. I may have to give somebody into custody.... No thanks, there’s no immediate hurry ... if I want him then, I’ll ring him up.” And before he had readjusted the receiver, the boy, with a white face, blurted out, “All right, sir, don’t do that. I’ll go at once.” And he left the study with his tail between his legs. And on the following morning the school were summoned into the Great Hall at the end of first lesson and heard some words which nobody ever forgot. Anybody but Mr. Chowdler would have been overwhelmed by the sudden discovery of his own blindness; for, in the two boys who had to leave so abruptly and for such hideous offences, he had always seen the true Chiltern type, the best product of the Lanchester tradition. But Mr. Chowdler was not an ordinary man. For a short time indeed he did feel as if the solid ground were crumbling again under his feet; but, within a few days, he had persuaded himself, first, that if there _had_ been mischief in his house it was because “the man Flaggon” had taken the control of it out of the proper hands; secondly, that boys had been bullied into confessing to crimes that they had never committed; and, thirdly, that there had been a great deal of hysteria and exaggeration about the whole business.