"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 paintbrush 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 shoes?"
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 shoes, by a devious and snaky route. As it was, he rushed straight on.
"His shoes, sir? He has them on. I noticed them as he went out just now."
"Where is the pair he wore yesterday?"
"Where are the shoes of yesteryear?" 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 maneuvers, 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 all 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 shoes 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. Shoes flew about the room. Mr. Downing knelt on the floor beside the basket, and dug like a terrier at a rathole.
At last he made a dive, and, with an exclamation of triumph, rose to his feet. In his hand he held a shoe.
"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 shoe, 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 house master wandering abroad on the public highway, carrying a dirty shoe, might be a trifle undignified. You never knew whom you might meet on Sunday afternoon.
Psmith took the shoe, and doing so, understood what before had puzzled him.
Across the toe of the shoe 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 shoe, one puts two and two together. Psmith looked at the name inside the shoe. It was "Brown bootmaker, Bridgnorth." Bridgnorth was only a few miles from his own home and Mike's. Undoubtedly it was Mike's shoe.
"Can you tell me whose shoe 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 shoe-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 shoe 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 shoe?"
"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 shoe 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 shoe with a wild, fixed stare. Of any suspicion of paint, red or otherwise, it was absolutely and entirely innocent.
21
THE DESTROYER OF EVIDENCE
The shoe became the center of attention, 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 shoe," 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 shoe?"
"Paint, sir?"
"What! Do you mean to tell me that you did not see it?"
"No, sir. There was no paint on this shoe."
"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 shoe. These momentary optical delusions are,