Mike by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (dar e dil novel online reading .TXT) 📖

THE SLEUTH-HOUND

For the Doctor Watsons of this world, as opposed to the Sherlock

Holmeses, success in the province of detective work must always be, to

a very large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract a

clue from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar-ash. But Doctor Watson

has got to have it taken out for him, and dusted, and exhibited

clearly, with a label attached.

The average man is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a

patronising manner at that humble follower of the great investigator,

but, as a matter of fact, we should have been just as dull ourselves.

We should not even have risen to the modest level of a Scotland Yard

Bungler. We should simply have hung around, saying:

“My dear Holmes, how—?” and all the rest of it, just as the

downtrodden medico did.

It is not often that the ordinary person has any need to see what he

can do in the way of detection. He gets along very comfortably in the

humdrum round of life without having to measure footprints and smile

quiet, tight-lipped smiles. But if ever the emergency does arise, he

thinks naturally of Sherlock Holmes, and his methods.

Mr. Downing had read all the Holmes stories with great attention, and

had thought many times what an incompetent ass Doctor Watson was; but,

now that he had started to handle his own first case, he was compelled

to admit that there was a good deal to be said in extenuation of

Watson’s inability to unravel tangles. It certainly was uncommonly

hard, he thought, as he paced the cricket field after leaving Sergeant

Collard, to detect anybody, unless you knew who had really done the

crime. As he brooded over the case in hand, his sympathy for Dr.

Watson increased with every minute, and he began to feel a certain

resentment against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was all very well for

Sir Arthur to be so shrewd and infallible about tracing a mystery to

its source, but he knew perfectly well who had done the thing before

he started!

Now that he began really to look into this matter of the alarm bell

and the painting of Sammy, the conviction was creeping over him that

the problem was more difficult than a casual observer might imagine.

He had got as far as finding that his quarry of the previous night was

a boy in Mr. Outwood’s house, but how was he to get any farther? That

was the thing. There were, of course, only a limited number of boys in

Mr. Outwood’s house as tall as the one he had pursued; but even if

there had been only one other, it would have complicated matters. If

you go to a boy and say, “Either you or Jones were out of your house

last night at twelve o’clock,” the boy does not reply, “Sir, I cannot

tell a lie—I was out of my house last night at twelve o’clock.” He

simply assumes the animated expression of a stuffed fish, and leaves

the next move to you. It is practically Stalemate.

All these things passed through Mr. Downing’s mind as he walked up and

down the cricket field that afternoon.

What he wanted was a clue. But it is so hard for the novice to tell

what is a clue and what isn’t. Probably, if he only knew, there were

clues lying all over the place, shouting to him to pick them up.

What with the oppressive heat of the day and the fatigue of hard

thinking, Mr. Downing was working up for a brainstorm, when Fate once

more intervened, this time in the shape of Riglett, a junior member of

his house.

Riglett slunk up in the shamefaced way peculiar to some boys, even

when they have done nothing wrong, and, having capped Mr. Downing with

the air of one who has been caught in the act of doing something

particularly shady, requested that he might be allowed to fetch his

bicycle from the shed.

“Your bicycle?” snapped Mr. Downing. Much thinking had made him

irritable. “What do you want with your bicycle?”

Riglett shuffled, stood first on his left foot, then on his right,

blushed, and finally remarked, as if it were not so much a sound

reason as a sort of feeble excuse for the low and blackguardly fact

that he wanted his bicycle, that he had got leave for tea that

afternoon.

Then Mr. Downing remembered. Riglett had an aunt resident about three

miles from the school, whom he was accustomed to visit occasionally on

Sunday afternoons during the term.

He felt for his bunch of keys, and made his way to the shed, Riglett

shambling behind at an interval of two yards.

Mr. Downing unlocked the door, and there on the floor was the Clue!

A clue that even Dr. Watson could not have overlooked.

Mr. Downing saw it, but did not immediately recognise it for what it

was. What he saw at first was not a Clue, but just a mess. He had a

tidy soul and abhorred messes. And this was a particularly messy mess.

The greater part of the flooring in the neighbourhood of the door was

a sea of red paint. The tin from which it had flowed was lying on its

side in the middle of the shed. The air was full of the pungent scent.

“Pah!” said Mr. Downing.

Then suddenly, beneath the disguise of the mess, he saw the clue. A

foot-mark! No less. A crimson foot-mark on the grey concrete!

Riglett, who had been waiting patiently two yards away, now coughed

plaintively. The sound recalled Mr. Downing to mundane matters.

“Get your bicycle, Riglett,” he said, “and be careful where you tread.

Somebody has upset a pot of paint on the floor.”

Riglett, walking delicately through dry places, extracted his bicycle

from the rack, and presently departed to gladden the heart of his

aunt, leaving Mr. Downing, his brain fizzing with the enthusiasm of

the detective, to lock the door and resume his perambulation of the

cricket field.

Give Dr. Watson a fair start, and he is a demon at the game. Mr.

Downing’s brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which a

professional sleuth might have envied.

Paint. Red paint. Obviously the same paint with which Sammy had been

decorated. A foot-mark. Whose foot-mark? Plainly that of the criminal

who had done the deed of decoration.

Yoicks!

There were two things, however, to be considered. Your careful

detective must consider everything. In the first place, the paint

might have been upset by the ground-man. It was the ground-man’s

paint. He had been giving a fresh coating to the wood-work in front of

the pavilion scoring-box at the conclusion of yesterday’s match. (A

labour of love which was the direct outcome of the enthusiasm for work

which Adair had instilled into him.)