Mike - Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (the reading strategies book TXT) 📗
- Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
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the boot-expert, who, after fidgeting for a few moments, lodged
another complaint.
“Don’t sit there staring at me, Smith.”
“I was interested in what you were doing, sir.”
“Never mind. Don’t stare at me in that idiotic way.”
“May I read, sir?” asked Psmith, patiently.
“Yes, read if you like.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Psmith took up his book again, and Mr. Downing, now thoroughly
irritated, pursued his investigations in the boot-basket.
He went through it twice, but each time without success. After the
second search, he stood up, and looked wildly round the room. He was
as certain as he could be of anything that the missing piece of
evidence was somewhere in the study. It was no use asking Psmith
point-blank where it was, for Psmith’s ability to parry dangerous
questions with evasive answers was quite out of the common.
His eye roamed about the room. There was very little cover there, even
for so small a fugitive as a number nine boot. The floor could be
acquitted, on sight, of harbouring the quarry.
Then he caught sight of the cupboard, and something seemed to tell him
that there was the place to look.
“Smith!” he said.
Psmith had been reading placidly all the while.
“Yes, sir?”
“What is in this cupboard?”
“That cupboard, sir?”
“Yes. This cupboard.” Mr. Downing rapped the door irritably.
“Just a few odd trifles, sir. We do not often use it. A ball of
string, perhaps. Possibly an old note-book. Nothing of value or
interest.”
“Open it.”
“I think you will find that it is locked, sir.”
“Unlock it.”
“But where is the key, sir?”
“Have you not got the key?”
“If the key is not in the lock, sir, you may depend upon it that it
will take a long search to find it.”
“Where did you see it last?”
“It was in the lock yesterday morning. Jackson might have taken it.”
“Where is Jackson?”
“Out in the field somewhere, sir.”
Mr. Downing thought for a moment.
“I don’t believe a word of it,” he said shortly. “I have my reasons
for thinking that you are deliberately keeping the contents of that
cupboard from me. I shall break open the door.”
Psmith got up.
“I’m afraid you mustn’t do that, sir.”
Mr. Downing stared, amazed.
“Are you aware whom you are talking to, Smith?” he inquired acidly.
“Yes, sir. And I know it’s not Mr. Outwood, to whom that cupboard
happens to belong. If you wish to break it open, you must get his
permission. He is the sole lessee and proprietor of that cupboard. I
am only the acting manager.”
Mr. Downing paused. He also reflected. Mr. Outwood in the general rule
did not count much in the scheme of things, but possibly there were
limits to the treating of him as if he did not exist. To enter his
house without his permission and search it to a certain extent was all
very well. But when it came to breaking up his furniture, perhaps–-!
On the other hand, there was the maddening thought that if he left
the study in search of Mr. Outwood, in order to obtain his sanction
for the house-breaking work which he proposed to carry through,
Smith would be alone in the room. And he knew that, if Smith were
left alone in the room, he would instantly remove the boot to some
other hiding-place. He thoroughly disbelieved the story of the lost
key. He was perfectly convinced that the missing boot was in the
cupboard.
He stood chewing these thoughts for awhile, Psmith in the meantime
standing in a graceful attitude in front of the cupboard, staring into
vacancy.
Then he was seized with a happy idea. Why should he leave the room at
all? If he sent Smith, then he himself could wait and make certain
that the cupboard was not tampered with.
“Smith,” he said, “go and find Mr. Outwood, and ask him to be good
enough to come here for a moment.”
MAINLY ABOUT BOOTS
“Be quick, Smith,” he said, as the latter stood looking at him without
making any movement in the direction of the door.
“Quick, sir?” said Psmith meditatively, as if he had been asked
a conundrum.
“Go and find Mr. Outwood at once.”
Psmith still made no move.
“Do you intend to disobey me, Smith?” Mr. Downing’s voice was steely.
“Yes, sir.”
“What!”
“Yes, sir.”
There was one of those you-could-have-heard-a-pin-drop silences.
Psmith was staring reflectively at the ceiling. Mr. Downing was
looking as if at any moment he might say, “Thwarted to me face, ha,
ha! And by a very stripling!”
It was Psmith, however, who resumed the conversation. His manner was
almost too respectful; which made it all the more a pity that what he
said did not keep up the standard of docility.
“I take my stand,” he said, “on a technical point. I say to myself,
‘Mr. Downing is a man I admire as a human being and respect as a
master. In–-’”
“This impertinence is doing you no good, Smith.”
Psmith waved a hand deprecatingly.
“If you will let me explain, sir. I was about to say that in any
other place but Mr. Outwood’s house, your word would be law. I would
fly to do your bidding. If you pressed a button, I would do the rest.
But in Mr. Outwood’s house I cannot do anything except what pleases me
or what is ordered by Mr. Outwood. I ought to have remembered that
before. One cannot,” he continued, as who should say, “Let us be
reasonable,” “one cannot, to take a parallel case, imagine the colonel
commanding the garrison at a naval station going on board a battleship
and ordering the crew to splice the jibboom spanker. It might be an
admirable thing for the Empire that the jibboom spanker should
be spliced at that particular juncture, but the crew would naturally
decline to move in the matter until the order came from the commander
of the ship. So in my case. If you will go to Mr. Outwood, and explain
to him how matters stand, and come back and say to me, ‘Psmith, Mr.
Outwood wishes you to ask him to be good enough to come to this
study,’ then I shall be only too glad to go and find him. You see my
difficulty, sir?”
“Go and fetch Mr. Outwood, Smith. I shall not tell you again.”
Psmith flicked a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve.
“Very well, Smith.”
“I can assure you, sir, at any rate, that if there is a boot in that
cupboard now, there will be a boot there when you return.”
Mr. Downing stalked out of the room.
“But,” added Psmith pensively to himself, as the footsteps died away,
“I did not promise that it would be the same boot.”
He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the cupboard, and took out
the boot. Then he selected from the basket a particularly battered
specimen. Placing this in the cupboard, he re-locked the door.
His next act was to take from the shelf a piece of string. Attaching
one end of this to the boot that he had taken from the cupboard, he
went to the window. His first act was to fling the cupboard-key out
into the bushes. Then he turned to the boot. On a level with the sill
the water-pipe, up which Mike had started to climb the night before,
was fastened to the wall by an iron band. He tied the other end of the
string to this, and let the boot swing free. He noticed with approval,
when it had stopped swinging, that it was hidden from above by the
window-sill.
He returned to his place at the mantelpiece.
As an after-thought he took another boot from the basket, and thrust
it up the chimney. A shower of soot fell into the grate, blackening
his hand.
The bathroom was a few yards down the corridor. He went there, and
washed off the soot.
When he returned, Mr. Downing was in the study, and with him Mr.
Outwood, the latter looking dazed, as if he were not quite equal to
the intellectual pressure of the situation.
“Where have you been, Smith?” asked Mr. Downing sharply.
“I have been washing my hands, sir.”
“H’m!” said Mr. Downing suspiciously.
“Yes, I saw Smith go into the bathroom,” said Mr. Outwood. “Smith, I
cannot quite understand what it is Mr. Downing wishes me to do.”
“My dear Outwood,” snapped the sleuth, “I thought I had made it
perfectly clear. Where is the difficulty?”
“I cannot understand why you should suspect Smith of keeping his boots
in a cupboard, and,” added Mr. Outwood with spirit, catching sight of
a Good-Gracious-has-the-man-_no_-sense look on the other’s face,”
why he should not do so if he wishes it.”
“Exactly, sir,” said Psmith, approvingly. “You have touched the spot.”
“If I must explain again, my dear Outwood, will you kindly give me
your attention for a moment. Last night a boy broke out of your house,
and painted my dog Sampson red.”
“He painted—!” said Mr. Outwood, round-eyed. “Why?”
“I don’t know why. At any rate, he did. During the escapade one of his
boots was splashed with the paint. It is that boot which I believe
Smith to be concealing in this cupboard. Now, do you understand?”
Mr. Outwood looked amazedly at Smith, and Psmith shook his head
sorrowfully at Mr. Outwood. Psmith’a expression said, as plainly as if
he had spoken the words, “We must humour him.”
“So with your permission, as Smith declares that he has lost the key,
I propose to break open the door of this cupboard. Have you any
objection?”
Mr. Outwood started.
“Objection? None at all, my dear fellow, none at all. Let me see,
what is it you wish to do?”
“This,” said Mr. Downing shortly.
There was a pair of dumb-bells on the floor, belonging to Mike. He
never used them, but they always managed to get themselves packed with
the rest of his belongings on the last day of the holidays. Mr.
Downing seized one of these, and delivered two rapid blows at the
cupboard-door. The wood splintered. A third blow smashed the flimsy
lock. The cupboard, with any skeletons it might contain, was open for
all to view.
Mr. Downing uttered a cry of triumph, and tore the boot from its
resting-place.
“I told you,” he said. “I told you.”
“I wondered where that boot had got to,” said Psmith. “I’ve been
looking for it for days.”
Mr. Downing was examining his find. He looked up with an exclamation
of surprise and wrath.
“This boot has no paint on it,” he said, glaring at Psmith. “This is
not the boot.”
“It certainly appears, sir,” said Psmith sympathetically, “to be free
from paint. There’s a sort of reddish glow just there, if you look at
it sideways,” he added helpfully.
“Did you place that boot there, Smith?”
“I must have done. Then, when I lost the key–-”
“Are you satisfied now, Downing?” interrupted Mr. Outwood with
asperity, “or is there any more furniture you wish to break?”
The excitement of seeing his household goods smashed with a dumb-bell
had made the archaeological student quite a swashbuckler for the
moment. A little
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