A CHECK
The only two members of the house not out in the grounds when he
arrived were Mike and Psmith. They were standing on the gravel drive
in front of the boys’ entrance. Mike had a deck-chair in one hand and
a book in the other. Psmith--for even the greatest minds will
sometimes unbend--was playing diabolo. That is to say, he was trying
without success to raise the spool from the ground.
“There’s a kid in France,” said Mike disparagingly, as the bobbin
rolled off the string for the fourth time, “who can do it three
thousand seven hundred and something times.”
Psmith smoothed a crease out of his waistcoat and tried again. He had
just succeeded in getting the thing to spin when Mr. Downing arrived.
The sound of his footsteps disturbed Psmith and brought the effort to
nothing.
“Enough of this spoolery,” said he, flinging the sticks through the
open window of the senior day-room. “I was an ass ever to try it. The
philosophical mind needs complete repose in its hours of leisure.
Hullo!”
He stared after the sleuth-hound, who had just entered the house.
“What the dickens,” said Mike, “does he mean by barging in as if he’d
bought the place?”
“Comrade Downing looks pleased with himself. What brings him round in
this direction, I wonder! Still, no matter. The few articles which he
may sneak from our study are of inconsiderable value. He is welcome to
them. Do you feel inclined to wait awhile till I have fetched a chair
and book?”
“I’ll be going on. I shall be under the trees at the far end of the
ground.”
“’Tis well. I will be with you in about two ticks.”
Mike walked on towards the field, and Psmith, strolling upstairs to
fetch his novel, found Mr. Downing standing in the passage with the
air of one who has lost his bearings.
“A warm afternoon, sir,” murmured Psmith courteously, as he passed.
“Er--Smith!”
“Sir?”
“I--er--wish to go round the dormitories.”
It was Psmith’s guiding rule in life never to be surprised at
anything, so he merely inclined his head gracefully, and said nothing.
“I should be glad if you would fetch the keys and show me where the
rooms are.”
“With acute pleasure, sir,” said Psmith. “Or shall I fetch Mr.
Outwood, sir?”
“Do as I tell you, Smith,” snapped Mr. Downing.
Psmith said no more, but went down to the matron’s room. The matron
being out, he abstracted the bunch of keys from her table and rejoined
the master.
“Shall I lead the way, sir?” he asked.
Mr. Downing nodded.
“Here, sir,” said Psmith, opening a door, “we have Barnes’ dormitory.
An airy room, constructed on the soundest hygienic principles. Each
boy, I understand, has quite a considerable number of cubic feet of
air all to himself. It is Mr. Outwood’s boast that no boy has ever
asked for a cubic foot of air in vain. He argues justly----”
He broke off abruptly and began to watch the other’s manoeuvres in
silence. Mr. Downing was peering rapidly beneath each bed in turn.
“Are you looking for Barnes, sir?” inquired Psmith politely. “I think
he’s out in the field.”
Mr. Downing rose, having examined the last bed, crimson in the face
with the exercise.
“Show me the next dormitory, Smith,” he said, panting slightly.
“This,” said Psmith, opening the next door and sinking his voice to an
awed whisper, “is where _I_ sleep!”
Mr. Downing glanced swiftly beneath the three beds. “Excuse me, sir,”
said Psmith, “but are we chasing anything?”
“Be good enough, Smith,” said Mr. Downing with asperity, “to keep your
remarks to yourself.”
“I was only wondering, sir. Shall I show you the next in order?”
“Certainly.”
They moved on up the passage.
Drawing blank at the last dormitory, Mr. Downing paused, baffled.
Psmith waited patiently by. An idea struck the master.
“The studies, Smith,” he cried.
“Aha!” said Psmith. “I beg your pardon, sir. The observation escaped
me unawares. The frenzy of the chase is beginning to enter into my
blood. Here we have----”
Mr. Downing stopped short.
“Is this impertinence studied, Smith?”
“Ferguson’s study, sir? No, sir. That’s further down the passage. This
is Barnes’.”
Mr. Downing looked at him closely. Psmith’s face was wooden in its
gravity. The master snorted suspiciously, then moved on.
“Whose is this?” he asked, rapping a door.
“This, sir, is mine and Jackson’s.”
“What! Have you a study? You are low down in the school for it.”
“I think, sir, that Mr. Outwood gave it us rather as a testimonial to
our general worth than to our proficiency in school-work.”
Mr. Downing raked the room with a keen eye. The absence of bars from
the window attracted his attention.
“Have you no bars to your windows here, such as there are in my
house?”
“There appears to be no bar, sir,” said Psmith, putting up his
eyeglass.
Mr Downing was leaning out of the window.
“A lovely view, is it not, sir?” said Psmith. “The trees, the field,
the distant hills----”
Mr. Downing suddenly started. His eye had been caught by the water-pipe
at the side of the window. The boy whom Sergeant Collard had seen
climbing the pipe must have been making for this study.
He spun round and met Psmith’s blandly inquiring gaze. He looked at
Psmith carefully for a moment. No. The boy he had chased last night
had not been Psmith. That exquisite’s figure and general appearance
were unmistakable, even in the dusk.
“Whom did you say you shared this study with, Smith?”
“Jackson, sir. The cricketer.”
“Never mind about his cricket, Smith,” said Mr. Downing with
irritation.
“No, sir.”
“He is the only other occupant of the room?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nobody else comes into it?”
“If they do, they go out extremely quickly, sir.”
“Ah! Thank you, Smith.”
“Not at all, sir.”
Mr. Downing pondered. Jackson! The boy bore him a grudge. The boy was
precisely the sort of boy to revenge himself by painting the dog
Sammy. And, gadzooks! The boy whom he had pursued last night had been
just about Jackson’s size and build!
Mr. Downing was as firmly convinced at that moment that Mike’s had
been the hand to wield the paint-brush as he had ever been of anything
in his life.
“Smith!” he said excitedly.
“On the spot, sir,” said Psmith affably.
“Where are Jackson’s boots?”
There are moments when the giddy excitement of being right on the
trail causes the amateur (or Watsonian) detective to be incautious.
Such a moment came to Mr. Downing then. If he had been wise, he would
have achieved his object, the getting a glimpse of Mike’s boots, by a
devious and snaky route. As it was, he rushed straight on.
“His boots, sir? He has them on. I noticed them as he went out just
now.”
“Where is the pair he wore yesterday?”
“Where are the boots of yester-year?” murmured Psmith to himself. “I
should say at a venture, sir, that they would be in the basket
downstairs. Edmund, our genial knife-and-boot boy, collects them, I
believe, at early dawn.”
“Would they have been cleaned yet?”
“If I know Edmund, sir--no.”
“Smith,” said Mr. Downing, trembling with excitement, “go and bring
that basket to me here.”
Psmith’s brain was working rapidly as he went downstairs. What exactly
was at the back of the sleuth’s mind, prompting these manoeuvres, he
did not know. But that there was something, and that that something
was directed in a hostile manner against Mike, probably in connection
with last night’s wild happenings, he was certain. Psmith had noticed,
on leaving his bed at the sound of the alarm bell, that he and
Jellicoe were alone in the room. That might mean that Mike had gone
out through the door when the bell sounded, or it might mean that he
had been out all the time. It began to look as if the latter solution
were the correct one.
* * * * *
He staggered back with the basket, painfully conscious the while that
it was creasing his waistcoat, and dumped it down on the study floor.
Mr. Downing stooped eagerly over it. Psmith leaned against the wall,
and straightened out the damaged garment.
“We have here, sir,” he said, “a fair selection of our various
bootings.”
Mr. Downing looked up.
“You dropped none of the boots on your way up, Smith?”
“Not one, sir. It was a fine performance.”
Mr. Downing uttered a grunt of satisfaction, and bent once more to his
task. Boots flew about the room. Mr. Downing knelt on the floor beside
the basket, and dug like a terrier at a rat-hole.
At last he made a dive, and, with an exclamation of triumph, rose to
his feet. In his hand he held a boot.
“Put those back again, Smith,” he said.
The ex-Etonian, wearing an expression such as a martyr might have worn
on being told off for the stake, began to pick up the scattered
footgear, whistling softly the tune of “I do all the dirty work,” as
he did so.
“That’s the lot, sir,” he said, rising.
“Ah. Now come across with me to the headmaster’s house. Leave the
basket here. You can carry it back when you return.”
“Shall I put back that boot, sir?”
“Certainly not. I shall take this with me, of course.”
“Shall I carry it, sir?”
Mr. Downing reflected.
“Yes, Smith,” he said. “I think it would be best.”
It occurred to him that the spectacle of a housemaster wandering
abroad on the public highway, carrying a dirty boot, might be a trifle
undignified. You never knew whom you might meet on Sunday afternoon.
Psmith took the boot, and doing so, understood what before had puzzled
him.
Across the toe of the boot was a broad splash of red paint.
He knew nothing, of course, of the upset tin in the bicycle shed;
but when a housemaster’s dog has been painted red in the night, and
when, on the following day, the housemaster goes about in search of a
paint-splashed boot, one puts two and two together. Psmith looked at
the name inside the boot. It was “Brown, boot-maker, Bridgnorth.”
Bridgnorth was only a few miles from his own home and Mike’s.
Undoubtedly it was Mike’s boot.
“Can you tell me whose boot that is?” asked Mr. Downing.
Psmith looked at it again.
“No, sir. I can’t say the little chap’s familiar to me.”
“Come with me, then.”
Mr. Downing left the room. After a moment Psmith followed him.
The headmaster was in his garden. Thither Mr. Downing made his way,
the boot-bearing Psmith in close attendance.
The Head listened to the amateur detective’s statement with interest.
“Indeed?” he said, when Mr. Downing had finished.
“Indeed? Dear me! It certainly seems--It is a curiously well-connected
thread of evidence. You are certain that there was red paint on this
boot you discovered in Mr. Outwood’s house?”
“I have it with me. I brought it on purpose to show to you. Smith!”
“Sir?”
“You have the boot?”
“Ah,” said the headmaster, putting on a pair of pince-nez, “now let me
look at--This, you say, is the--? Just so. Just so. Just.... But, er,
Mr. Downing, it may be that I have not examined this boot with
sufficient care, but--Can _you_ point out to me exactly where
this paint is that you speak of?”
Mr. Downing stood staring at the boot with a wild, fixed stare. Of any
suspicion of paint, red or otherwise, it was absolutely and entirely
innocent.