Mike by P. G. Wodehouse (good fiction books to read .TXT) 📗

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 brain-storm, 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.) In that case the foot-mark might be his.

Note one:  Interview the ground-man on this point.

In the second place Adair might have upset the tin and trodden in its contents when he went to get his bicycle in order to fetch the doctor for the suffering MacPhee.  This was the more probable of the two contingencies, for it would have been dark in the shed when Adair went into it.

Note two Interview Adair as to whether he found, on returning to the house, that there was paint on his boots.

Things were moving.

He resolved to take Adair first.  He could get the ground-man’s address from him.

Passing by the trees under whose shade Mike and Psmith and Dunster had watched the match on the previous day, he came upon the Head of his house in a deck-chair reading a book.  A summer Sunday afternoon is the time for reading in deck-chairs.

“Oh, Adair,” he said.  “No, don’t get up.  I merely wished to ask you if you found any paint on your boots when you returned to the house last night?”

“Paint, sir?” Adair was plainly puzzled.  His book had been interesting, and had driven the Sammy incident out of his head.

“I see somebody has spilt some paint on the floor of the bicycle shed.  You did not do that, I suppose, when you went to fetch your bicycle?”

“No, sir.”

“It is spilt all over the floor.  I wondered whether you had happened to tread in it.  But you say you found no paint on your boots this morning?”

“No, sir, my bicycle is always quite near the door of the shed.  I didn’t go into the shed at all.”

“I see.  Quite so.  Thank you, Adair.  Oh, by the way, Adair, where does Markby live?”

“I forget the name of his cottage, sir, but I could show you in a second.  It’s one of those cottages just past the school gates, on the right as you turn out into the road.  There are three in a row.  His is the first you come to.  There’s a barn just before you get to them.”

“Thank you.  I shall be able to find them.  I should like to speak to Markby for a moment on a small matter.”

A sharp walk took him to the cottages Adair had mentioned.  He rapped at the door of the first, and the ground-man came out in his shirt-sleeves, blinking as if he had just woke up, as was indeed the case.

“Oh, Markby!”

“Sir?”

“You remember that you were painting the scoring-box in the pavilion last night after the match?”

“Yes, sir.  It wanted a lick of paint bad.  The young gentlemen will scramble about and get through the window.  Makes it look shabby, sir.  So I thought I’d better give it a coating so as to look ship-shape when the Marylebone come down.”

“Just so.  An excellent idea.  Tell me, Markby, what did you do with the pot of paint when you had finished?”

“Put it in the bicycle shed, sir.”

“On the floor?”

“On the floor, sir?  No.  On the shelf at the far end, with the can of whitening what I use for marking out the wickets, sir.”

“Of course, yes.  Quite so.  Just as I thought.”

“Do you want it, sir?”

“No, thank you, Markby, no, thank you.  The fact is, somebody who had no business to do so has moved the pot of paint from the shelf to the floor, with the result that it has been kicked over, and spilt.  You had better get some more to-morrow.  Thank you, Markby.  That is all I wished to know.”

Mr. Downing walked back to the school thoroughly excited.  He was hot on the scent now.  The only other possible theories had been tested and successfully exploded.  The thing had become simple to a degree.  All he had to do was to go to Mr. Outwood’s house—­the idea of searching a fellow-master’s house did not appear to him at all a delicate task; somehow one grew unconsciously to feel that Mr. Outwood did not really exist as a man capable of resenting liberties—­find the paint-splashed boot, ascertain its owner, and denounce him to the headmaster.  Picture, Blue Fire and “God Save the King” by the full strength of the company.  There could be no doubt that a paint-splashed boot must be in Mr. Outwood’s house somewhere.  A boy cannot tread in a pool of paint without showing some signs of having done so.  It was Sunday, too, so that the boot would not yet have been cleaned.  Yoicks!  Also Tally-ho!  This really was beginning to be something like business.

Regardless of the heat, the sleuth-hound hurried across to Outwood’s as fast as he could walk.

CHAPTER XLIX

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