‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Think so. All the others managed to escape, except for Gordon Latimer. His housemaster was waiting for him when he got back, worse luck. He was beaten, but he hasn’t squealed. How he avoided being thrown out of school I’ll never know.’

‘I think you will find,’ said Pritpal, ‘that his father is distantly related to the king.’

Pritpal was one of the two boys James messed with. This meant that they took it in turns to cook their tea together in each other’s rooms and generally looked out for one another. Pritpal and Tommy Chong, his other messmate, were the only other people in the house who knew about James’s involvement with the Danger Society.

Pritpal was a clever and slightly round Indian boy who loved to hear James’s tales of adventure, but would never have dreamed of joining him.

‘And where exactly was this mysterious building with the shadowy figures speaking in Latin?’ he asked, sitting down in a wicker armchair and rubbing a speck of dust from one of his highly polished shoes.

‘I’m not sure,’ James replied. ‘I’ve been back to try and find it a couple of times, but no luck. It was dark that night, and I was being chased, so I couldn’t say for certain exactly where it was.’

Pritpal whistled. ‘You are one lucky boy, James,’ he said.

‘Am I?’ James laughed. ‘Maybe if I was lucky I wouldn’t have been chased in the first place.’

James checked his appearance in the little mirror on his mantelpiece. He saw a slim boy with grey-blue eyes and an unruly lock of black hair that, no matter how hard he tried to keep it in place, always fell forward over his forehead. He licked a hand and pushed it back. It would have to do for now.

‘Are you ready?’ Pritpal was eager to be off. He was studying his pocket watch and impatiently tapping its glass with a fingernail.

‘Think so,’ said James, checking himself one last time.

Most boys in their first year at the school wore short ‘Eton’ jackets and clownish shirts with huge stiff ‘Eton’ collars. The cut-off jackets were more commonly known as ‘bum-freezers’ – for obvious reasons – and the shirts were awkward and uncomfortable. However, once a boy was taller than five foot four, he could wear the same uniform as the older boys – a black coat with long tails, a shirt with a more ordinary collar and a fiddly little white tie.

James had recently been measured by the Dame and it was discovered that he was now fractionally over the required height. As was the custom, he had saved changing into his new clothes until today – the Fourth of June. It was one of the most important days in the Eton calendar, and the only day of the year when the younger boys were allowed to dress up.

Pritpal, who was only just over five foot, still wore his bum-freezer but he had put on a smart grey waistcoat and was wearing a shirt collar with folded wingtips called a ‘stick-up’.