12 Mike Read online

  “Exactly, sir,” said Psmith. “My theory, if I may–-?”

  “Certainly, Smith.”

  Psmith bowed courteously and proceeded.

  “My theory, sir, is that Mr. Downing was deceived by the light and shade effects on the toe of the boot. The afternoon sun, streaming in through the window, must have shone on the boot in such a manner as to give it a momentary and fictitious aspect of redness. If Mr. Downing recollects, he did not look long at the boot. The picture on the retina of the eye, consequently, had not time to fade. I remember thinking myself, at the moment, that the boot appeared to have a certain reddish tint. The mistake–-“

  “Bah!” said Mr. Downing shortly.

  “Well, really,” said the headmaster, “it seems to me that that is the only explanation that will square with the facts. A boot that is really smeared with red paint does not become black of itself in the course of a few minutes.”

  “You are very right, sir,” said Psmith with benevolent approval. “May I go now, sir? I am in the middle of a singularly impressive passage of Cicero’s speech De Senectute.”

  “I am sorry that you should leave your preparation till Sunday, Smith. It is a habit of which I altogether disapprove.”

  “I am reading it, sir,” said Psmith, with simple dignity, “for pleasure. Shall I take the boot with me, sir?”

  “If Mr. Downing does not want it?”

  The housemaster passed the fraudulent piece of evidence to Psmith without a word, and the latter, having included both masters in a kindly smile, left the garden.

  Pedestrians who had the good fortune to be passing along the road between the housemaster’s house and Mr. Outwood’s at that moment saw what, if they had but known it, was a most unusual sight, the spectacle of Psmith running. Psmith’s usual mode of progression was a dignified walk. He believed in the contemplative style rather than the hustling.

  On this occasion, however, reckless of possible injuries to the crease of his trousers, he raced down the road, and turning in at Outwood’s gate, bounded upstairs like a highly trained professional athlete.

  On arriving at the study, his first act was to remove a boot from the top of the pile in the basket, place it in the small cupboard under the bookshelf, and lock the cupboard. Then he flung himself into a chair and panted.

  “Brain,” he said to himself approvingly, “is what one chiefly needs in matters of this kind. Without brain, where are we? In the soup, every time. The next development will be when Comrade Downing thinks it over, and is struck with the brilliant idea that it’s just possible that the boot he gave me to carry and the boot I did carry were not one boot but two boots. Meanwhile–-“

  He dragged up another chair for his feet and picked up his novel.

  He had not been reading long when there was a footstep in the passage, and Mr. Downing appeared.

  The possibility, in fact the probability, of Psmith having substituted another boot for the one with the incriminating splash of paint on it had occurred to him almost immediately on leaving the headmaster’s garden. Psmith and Mike, he reflected, were friends. Psmith’s impulse would be to do all that lay in his power to shield Mike. Feeling aggrieved with himself that he had not thought of this before, he, too, hurried over to Outwood’s.

  Mr. Downing was brisk and peremptory.

  “I wish to look at these boots again,” he said. Psmith, with a sigh, laid down his novel, and rose to assist him.

  “Sit down, Smith,” said the housemaster. “I can manage without your help.”

  Psmith sat down again, carefully tucking up the knees of his trousers, and watched him with silent interest through his eyeglass.

  The scrutiny irritated Mr. Downing.

  “Put that thing away, Smith,” he said.

  “That thing, sir?”

  “Yes, that ridiculous glass. Put it away.”

  “Why, sir?”

  “Why! Because I tell you to do so.”

  “I guessed that that was the reason, sir,” sighed Psmith replacing the eyeglass in his waistcoat pocket. He rested his elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands, and resumed his contemplative inspection of the boot-expert, who, after fidgeting for a few moments, lodged another complaint.

  “Don’t sit there staring at me, Smith.”

  “I was interested in what you were doing, sir.”

  “Never mind. Don’t stare at me in that idiotic way.”

  “May I read, sir?” asked Psmith, patiently.

  “Yes, read if you like.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Psmith took up his book again, and Mr. Downing, now thoroughly irritated, pursued his investigations in the boot-basket.

  He went through it twice, but each time without success. After the second search, he stood up, and looked wildly round the room. He was as certain as he could be of anything that the missing piece of evidence was somewhere in the study. It was no use asking Psmith point-blank where it was, for Psmith’s ability to parry dangerous questions with evasive answers was quite out of the common.

  His eye roamed about the room. There was very little cover there, even for so small a fugitive as a number nine boot. The floor could be acquitted, on sight, of harbouring the quarry.

  Then he caught sight of the cupboard, and something seemed to tell him that there was the place to look.

  “Smith!” he said.

  Psmith had been reading placidly all the while.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “What is in this cupboard?”

  “That cupboard, sir?”

  “Yes. This cupboard.” Mr. Downing rapped the door irritably.

  “Just a few odd trifles, sir. We do not often use it. A ball of string, perhaps. Possibly an old note-book. Nothing of value or interest.”

  “Open it.”

  “I think you will find that it is locked, sir.”

  “Unlock it.”

  “But where is the key, sir?”

  “Have you not got the key?”

  “If the key is not in the lock, sir, you may depend upon it that it will take a long search to find it.”

  “Where did you see it last?”

  “It was in the lock yesterday morning. Jackson might have taken it.”

  “Where is Jackson?”

  “Out in the field somewhere, sir.”

  Mr. Downing thought for a moment.

  “I don’t believe a word of it,” he said shortly. “I have my reasons for thinking that you are deliberately keeping the contents of that cupboard from me. I shall break open the door.”

  Psmith got up.

  “I’m afraid you mustn’t do that, sir.”

  Mr. Downing stared, amazed.

  “Are you aware whom you are talking to, Smith?” he inquired acidly.

  “Yes, sir. And I know it’s not Mr. Outwood, to whom that cupboard happens to belong. If you wish to break it open, you must get his permission. He is the sole lessee and proprietor of that cupboard. I am only the acting manager.”

  Mr. Downing paused. He also reflected. Mr. Outwood in the general rule did not count much in the scheme of things, but possibly there were limits to the treating of him as if he did not exist. To enter his house without his permission and search it to a certain extent was all very well. But when it came to breaking up his furniture, perhaps–-!

  On the other hand, there was the maddening thought that if he left the study in search of Mr. Outwood, in order to obtain his sanction for the house-breaking work which he proposed to carry through, Smith would be alone in the room. And he knew that, if Smith were left alone in the room, he would instantly remove the boot to some other hiding-place. He thoroughly disbelieved the story of the lost key. He was perfectly convinced that the missing boot was in the cupboard.

  He stood chewing these thoughts for awhile, Psmith in the meantime standing in a graceful attitude in front of the cupboard, staring into vacancy.

  Then he was seized with a happy idea. Why should he leave the room at all? If he sent
Smith, then he himself could wait and make certain that the cupboard was not tampered with.

  “Smith,” he said, “go and find Mr. Outwood, and ask him to be good enough to come here for a moment.”

  CHAPTER LI

  MAINLY ABOUT BOOTS

  “Be quick, Smith,” he said, as the latter stood looking at him without making any movement in the direction of the door.

  “Quick, sir?” said Psmith meditatively, as if he had been asked a conundrum.

  “Go and find Mr. Outwood at once.”

  Psmith still made no move.

  “Do you intend to disobey me, Smith?” Mr. Downing’s voice was steely.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was one of those you-could-have-heard-a-pin-drop silences. Psmith was staring reflectively at the ceiling. Mr. Downing was looking as if at any moment he might say, “Thwarted to me face, ha, ha! And by a very stripling!”

  It was Psmith, however, who resumed the conversation. His manner was almost too respectful; which made it all the more a pity that what he said did not keep up the standard of docility.

  “I take my stand,” he said, “on a technical point. I say to myself, ‘Mr. Downing is a man I admire as a human being and respect as a master. In–-’”

  “This impertinence is doing you no good, Smith.”

  Psmith waved a hand deprecatingly.

  “If you will let me explain, sir. I was about to say that in any other place but Mr. Outwood’s house, your word would be law. I would fly to do your bidding. If you pressed a button, I would do the rest. But in Mr. Outwood’s house I cannot do anything except what pleases me or what is ordered by Mr. Outwood. I ought to have remembered that before. One cannot,” he continued, as who should say, “Let us be reasonable,” “one cannot, to take a parallel case, imagine the colonel commanding the garrison at a naval station going on board a battleship and ordering the crew to splice the jibboom spanker. It might be an admirable thing for the Empire that the jibboom spanker should be spliced at that particular juncture, but the crew would naturally decline to move in the matter until the order came from the commander of the ship. So in my case. If you will go to Mr. Outwood, and explain to him how matters stand, and come back and say to me, ‘Psmith, Mr. Outwood wishes you to ask him to be good enough to come to this study,’ then I shall be only too glad to go and find him. You see my difficulty, sir?”

  “Go and fetch Mr. Outwood, Smith. I shall not tell you again.”

  Psmith flicked a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve.

  “Very well, Smith.”

  “I can assure you, sir, at any rate, that if there is a boot in that cupboard now, there will be a boot there when you return.”

  Mr. Downing stalked out of the room.

  “But,” added Psmith pensively to himself, as the footsteps died away, “I did not promise that it would be the same boot.”

  He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the cupboard, and took out the boot. Then he selected from the basket a particularly battered specimen. Placing this in the cupboard, he re-locked the door.

  His next act was to take from the shelf a piece of string. Attaching one end of this to the boot that he had taken from the cupboard, he went to the window. His first act was to fling the cupboard-key out into the bushes. Then he turned to the boot. On a level with the sill the water-pipe, up which Mike had started to climb the night before, was fastened to the wall by an iron band. He tied the other end of the string to this, and let the boot swing free. He noticed with approval, when it had stopped swinging, that it was hidden from above by the window-sill.

  He returned to his place at the mantelpiece.

  As an after-thought he took another boot from the basket, and thrust it up the chimney. A shower of soot fell into the grate, blackening his hand.

  The bathroom was a few yards down the corridor. He went there, and washed off the soot.

  When he returned, Mr. Downing was in the study, and with him Mr. Outwood, the latter looking dazed, as if he were not quite equal to the intellectual pressure of the situation.

  “Where have you been, Smith?” asked Mr. Downing sharply.

  “I have been washing my hands, sir.”

  “H’m!” said Mr. Downing suspiciously.

  “Yes, I saw Smith go into the bathroom,” said Mr. Outwood. “Smith, I cannot quite understand what it is Mr. Downing wishes me to do.”

  “My dear Outwood,” snapped the sleuth, “I thought I had made it perfectly clear. Where is the difficulty?”

  “I cannot understand why you should suspect Smith of keeping his boots in a cupboard, and,” added Mr. Outwood with spirit, catching sight of a Good-Gracious-has-the-man-_no_-sense look on the other’s face,” why he should not do so if he wishes it.”

  “Exactly, sir,” said Psmith, approvingly. “You have touched the spot.”

  “If I must explain again, my dear Outwood, will you kindly give me your attention for a moment. Last night a boy broke out of your house, and painted my dog Sampson red.”

  “He painted—!” said Mr. Outwood, round-eyed. “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. At any rate, he did. During the escapade one of his boots was splashed with the paint. It is that boot which I believe Smith to be concealing in this cupboard. Now, do you understand?”

  Mr. Outwood looked amazedly at Smith, and Psmith shook his head sorrowfully at Mr. Outwood. Psmith’a expression said, as plainly as if he had spoken the words, “We must humour him.”

  “So with your permission, as Smith declares that he has lost the key, I propose to break open the door of this cupboard. Have you any objection?”

  Mr. Outwood started.

  “Objection? None at all, my dear fellow, none at all. Let me see, what is it you wish to do?”

  “This,” said Mr. Downing shortly.

  There was a pair of dumb-bells on the floor, belonging to Mike. He never used them, but they always managed to get themselves packed with the rest of his belongings on the last day of the holidays. Mr. Downing seized one of these, and delivered two rapid blows at the cupboard-door. The wood splintered. A third blow smashed the flimsy lock. The cupboard, with any skeletons it might contain, was open for all to view.

  Mr. Downing uttered a cry of triumph, and tore the boot from its resting-place.

  “I told you,” he said. “I told you.”

  “I wondered where that boot had got to,” said Psmith. “I’ve been looking for it for days.”

  Mr. Downing was examining his find. He looked up with an exclamation of surprise and wrath.

  “This boot has no paint on it,” he said, glaring at Psmith. “This is not the boot.”

  “It certainly appears, sir,” said Psmith sympathetically, “to be free from paint. There’s a sort of reddish glow just there, if you look at it sideways,” he added helpfully.

  “Did you place that boot there, Smith?”

  “I must have done. Then, when I lost the key–-“

  “Are you satisfied now, Downing?” interrupted Mr. Outwood with asperity, “or is there any more furniture you wish to break?”

  The excitement of seeing his household goods smashed with a dumb-bell had made the archaeological student quite a swashbuckler for the moment. A little more, and one could imagine him giving Mr. Downing a good, hard knock.

  The sleuth-hound stood still for a moment, baffled. But his brain was working with the rapidity of a buzz-saw. A chance remark of Mr. Outwood’s set him fizzing off on the trail once more. Mr. Outwood had caught sight of the little pile of soot in the grate. He bent down to inspect it.

  “Dear me,” he said, “I must remember to have the chimneys swept. It should have been done before.”

  Mr. Downing’s eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, also focussed itself on the pile of soot; and a thrill went through him. Soot in the fireplace! Smith washing his hands! (“You know my methods, my dear Watson. Apply them.”)


  Mr. Downing’s mind at that moment contained one single thought; and that thought was “What ho for the chimney!”

  He dived forward with a rush, nearly knocking Mr. Outwood off his feet, and thrust an arm up into the unknown. An avalanche of soot fell upon his hand and wrist, but he ignored it, for at the same instant his fingers had closed upon what he was seeking.

  “Ah,” he said. “I thought as much. You were not quite clever enough, after all, Smith.”

  “No, sir,” said Psmith patiently. “We all make mistakes.”

  “You would have done better, Smith, not to have given me all this trouble. You have done yourself no good by it.”

  “It’s been great fun, though, sir,” argued Psmith.

  “Fun!” Mr. Downing laughed grimly. “You may have reason to change your opinion of what constitutes–-“

  His voice failed as his eye fell on the all-black toe of the boot. He looked up, and caught Psmith’s benevolent gaze. He straightened himself and brushed a bead of perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. Unfortunately, he used the sooty hand, and the result was like some gruesome burlesque of a nigger minstrel.

  “Did—you—put—that—boot—there, Smith?” he asked slowly.

  [Illustration: “DID—YOU—PUT—THAT—BOOT—THERE, SMITH?”]

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then what did you MEAN by putting it there?” roared Mr. Downing.

  “Animal spirits, sir,” said Psmith.

  “WHAT!”

  “Animal spirits, sir.”

  What Mr. Downing would have replied to this one cannot tell, though one can guess roughly. For, just as he was opening his mouth, Mr. Outwood, catching sight of his Chirgwin-like countenance, intervened.

  “My dear Downing,” he said, “your face. It is positively covered with soot, positively. You must come and wash it. You are quite black. Really, you present a most curious appearance, most. Let me show you the way to my room.”

  In all times of storm and tribulation there comes a breaking-point, a point where the spirit definitely refuses, to battle any longer against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Mr. Downing could not bear up against this crowning blow. He went down beneath it. In the language of the Ring, he took the count. It was the knock-out.