Mike - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗
- Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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that he interrupted him before–-”
“I mean he must have been one of the boys in your house.”
“But what was he doing out at that hour?”
“He had broken out.”
“Impossible, I think. Oh yes, quite impossible! I went round the
dormitories as usual at eleven o’clock last night, and all the boys
were asleep—all of them.”
Mr. Downing was not listening. He was in a state of suppressed
excitement and exultation which made it hard for him to attend to his
colleague’s slow utterances. He had a clue! Now that the search had
narrowed itself down to Outwood’s house, the rest was comparatively
easy. Perhaps Sergeant Collard had actually recognised the boy. Or
reflection he dismissed this as unlikely, for the sergeant would
scarcely have kept a thing like that to himself; but he might very
well have seen more of him than he, Downing, had seen. It was only
with an effort that he could keep himself from rushing to the sergeant
then and there, and leaving the house lunch to look after itself. He
resolved to go the moment that meal was at an end.
Sunday lunch at a public-school house is probably one of the longest
functions in existence. It drags its slow length along like a languid
snake, but it finishes in time. In due course Mr. Downing, after
sitting still and eyeing with acute dislike everybody who asked for a
second helping, found himself at liberty.
Regardless of the claims of digestion, he rushed forth on the trail.
*
Sergeant Collard lived with his wife and a family of unknown
dimensions in the lodge at the school front gate. Dinner was just over
when Mr. Downing arrived, as a blind man could have told.
The sergeant received his visitor with dignity, ejecting the family,
who were torpid after roast beef and resented having to move, in order
to ensure privacy.
Having requested his host to smoke, which the latter was about to do
unasked, Mr. Downing stated his case.
“Mr. Outwood,” he said, “tells me that last night, sergeant, you saw a
boy endeavouring to enter his house.”
The sergeant blew a cloud of smoke. “Oo-oo-oo, yer,” he said; “I did,
sir—spotted ‘im, I did. Feeflee good at spottin’, I am, sir. Dook of
Connaught, he used to say, ”Ere comes Sergeant Collard,’ he used to
say, ”e’s feeflee good at spottin’.’”
“What did you do?”
“Do? Oo-oo-oo! I shouts ‘Oo-oo-oo yer, yer young monkey, what yer
doin’ there?’”
“Yes?”
“But ‘e was off in a flash, and I doubles after ‘im prompt.”
“But you didn’t catch him?”
“No, sir,” admitted the sergeant reluctantly.
“Did you catch sight of his face, sergeant?”
“No, sir, ‘e was doublin’ away in the opposite direction.”
“Did you notice anything at all about his appearance?”
“‘E was a long young chap, sir, with a pair of legs on him—feeflee
fast ‘e run, sir. Oo-oo-oo, feeflee!”
“You noticed nothing else?”
“‘E wasn’t wearing no cap of any sort, sir.”
“Ah!”
“Bare-‘eaded, sir,” added the sergeant, rubbing the point in.
“It was undoubtedly the same boy, undoubtedly! I wish you could have
caught a glimpse of his face, sergeant.”
“So do I, sir.”
“You would not be able to recognise him again if you saw him, you
think?”
“Oo-oo-oo! Wouldn’t go so far as to say that, sir, ‘cos yer see, I’m
feeflee good at spottin’, but it was a dark night.”
Mr. Downing rose to go.
“Well,” he said, “the search is now considerably narrowed down,
considerably! It is certain that the boy was one of the boys in Mr.
Outwood’s house.”
“Young monkeys!” interjected the sergeant helpfully.
“Good-afternoon, sergeant.”
“Good-afternoon to you, sir.”
“Pray do not move, sergeant.”
The sergeant had not shown the slightest inclination of doing anything
of the kind.
“I will find my way out. Very hot to-day, is it not?”
“Feeflee warm, sir; weather’s goin’ to break—workin’ up for thunder.”
“I hope not. The school plays the M.C.C. on Wednesday, and it would be
a pity if rain were to spoil our first fixture with them. Good
afternoon.”
And Mr. Downing went out into the baking sunlight, while Sergeant
Collard, having requested Mrs. Collard to take the children out for a
walk at once, and furthermore to give young Ernie a clip side of the
‘ead, if he persisted in making so much noise, put a handkerchief over
his face, rested his feet on the table, and slept the sleep of the
just.
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.)
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