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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 is 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.

CHAPTER L

THE DESTROYER OF EVIDENCE

 

The boot became the centre of attraction, the cynosure of all eyes.

Mr. Downing fixed it with the piercing stare of one who feels that his

brain is tottering. The headmaster looked at it with a mildly puzzled

expression. Psmith, putting up his eyeglass, gazed at it with a sort

of affectionate interest, as if he were waiting for it to do a trick

of some kind.

 

Mr. Downing was the first to break the silence.

 

“There was paint on this boot,” he said vehemently. “I tell you there

was a splash of red paint across the toe. Smith will bear me out in

this. Smith, you saw the paint on this boot?”

 

“Paint, sir!”

 

“What! Do you mean to tell me that you did not see it?”

 

“No, sir. There was no paint on this boot.”

 

“This is foolery. I saw it with my own eyes. It was a broad splash

right across the toe.”

 

The headmaster interposed.

 

“You must have made a mistake, Mr. Downing. There is certainly no

trace of paint on this boot. These momentary optical delusions are,

I fancy, not uncommon. Any doctor will tell you–-”

 

“I had an aunt, sir,” said Psmith chattily, “who was remarkably

subject–-”

 

“It is absurd. I cannot have been mistaken,” said Mr. Downing. “I am

positively certain the toe of this boot was red when I found it.”

 

“It is undoubtedly black now, Mr. Downing.”

 

“A sort of chameleon boot,” murmured Psmith.

 

The goaded housemaster turned on him.

 

“What did you say, Smith?”

 

“Did I speak, sir?” said Psmith, with the start of one coming suddenly

out of a trance.

 

Mr. Downing looked searchingly at him.

 

“You had better be careful, Smith.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“I strongly suspect you of having something to do with this.”

 

“Really, Mr. Downing,” said the headmaster, “that is surely

improbable. Smith could scarcely have cleaned the boot on his way to

my house. On one occasion I inadvertently spilt some paint on a shoe

of my own. I can assure you that it does not brush off. It needs a

very systematic cleaning before all traces are removed.”

 

“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

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