"You will do it, then?"

I wished I had been asked, rather than simply expected. Lucius Grenville had much to answer for. "I admit interest," I said. "That these tricks have been perpetrated for three months without anyone being the wiser is intriguing. Someone has been uncommonly clever."

"Uncommonly indecent," Rutledge snarled. "When I put my hands on him- "

I knew the rest. Rutledge, I had learned in the week since my arrival, believed in strict and severe discipline. This was not unusual for a school's headmaster, but Rutledge seemed to enjoy meting out punishment more than did most sergeants in the King's army.

Rutledge's harsh methods so far had produced no result. I could see that the students here feared Rutledge but did not respect him.

He leaned across his desk. "I do not think you grasp the seriousness of the situation, Lacey. The sons of the wealthiest men in England attend the Sudbury School. Their money could buy you, and even Grenville, a dozen times over. I do not wish for fathers to become unhappy at their sons' complaints. Do you understand?"

"I understand well enough."

The Sudbury School did not house the sons of lords and statesmen; rather, their fathers were nabobs and merchants and men prominent in the City. They were the merchant class, the middle class, the sons of men who had started with nothing and gained fortune with the sweat of their brows. Boys finished Sudbury School, went to the City to add to their father's fortunes, and in turn sent their own sons here.

Rutledge did not care a fig about money, personally. The unkempt manner of his clothes, his obliviousness to the comfort of his study, his evenhandedness in dealing out punishment to the boys, told me this. Rutledge would be as much at home in Carleton House as in a hovel-in other words, he'd never notice.