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more, and one could imagine him giving Mr. Downing a

good, hard knock.

 

The sleuth-hound stood still for a moment, baffled. But his brain was

working with the rapidity of a buzz-saw. A chance remark of Mr.

Outwood’s set him fizzing off on the trail once more. Mr. Outwood had

caught sight of the little pile of soot in the grate. He bent down to

inspect it.

 

“Dear me,” he said, “I must remember to have the chimneys swept. It

should have been done before.”

 

Mr. Downing’s eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, from

earth to heaven, also focussed itself on the pile of soot; and a

thrill went through him. Soot in the fireplace! Smith washing his

hands! (“You know my methods, my dear Watson. Apply them.”)

 

Mr. Downing’s mind at that moment contained one single thought; and

that thought was “What ho for the chimney!”

 

He dived forward with a rush, nearly knocking Mr. Outwood off his

feet, and thrust an arm up into the unknown. An avalanche of soot fell

upon his hand and wrist, but he ignored it, for at the same instant

his fingers had closed upon what he was seeking.

 

“Ah,” he said. “I thought as much. You were not quite clever enough,

after all, Smith.”

 

“No, sir,” said Psmith patiently. “We all make mistakes.”

 

“You would have done better, Smith, not to have given me all this

trouble. You have done yourself no good by it.”

 

“It’s been great fun, though, sir,” argued Psmith.

 

“Fun!” Mr. Downing laughed grimly. “You may have reason to change your

opinion of what constitutes–-”

 

His voice failed as his eye fell on the all-black toe of the boot. He

looked up, and caught Psmith’s benevolent gaze. He straightened

himself and brushed a bead of perspiration from his face with the back

of his hand. Unfortunately, he used the sooty hand, and the result was

like some gruesome burlesque of a nigger minstrel.

 

“Did—you—put—that—boot—there, Smith?” he asked slowly.

 

[Illustration: “DID—YOU—PUT—THAT—BOOT—THERE, SMITH?”]

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“Then what did you MEAN by putting it there?” roared Mr.

Downing.

 

“Animal spirits, sir,” said Psmith.

 

“WHAT!”

 

“Animal spirits, sir.”

 

What Mr. Downing would have replied to this one cannot tell, though

one can guess roughly. For, just as he was opening his mouth, Mr.

Outwood, catching sight of his Chirgwin-like countenance, intervened.

 

“My dear Downing,” he said, “your face. It is positively covered with

soot, positively. You must come and wash it. You are quite black.

Really, you present a most curious appearance, most. Let me show you

the way to my room.”

 

In all times of storm and tribulation there comes a breaking-point, a

point where the spirit definitely refuses, to battle any longer

against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Mr. Downing could

not bear up against this crowning blow. He went down beneath it. In

the language of the Ring, he took the count. It was the knock-out.

 

“Soot!” he murmured weakly. “Soot!”

 

“Your face is covered, my dear fellow, quite covered.”

 

“It certainly has a faintly sooty aspect, sir,” said Psmith.

 

His voice roused the sufferer to one last flicker of spirit.

 

“You will hear more of this, Smith,” he said. “I say you will hear

more of it.”

 

Then he allowed Mr. Outwood to lead him out to a place where there

were towels, soap, and sponges.

 

*

 

When they had gone, Psmith went to the window, and hauled in the

string. He felt the calm after-glow which comes to the general after a

successfully conducted battle. It had been trying, of course, for a

man of refinement, and it had cut into his afternoon, but on the whole

it had been worth it.

 

The problem now was what to do with the painted boot. It would take a

lot of cleaning, he saw, even if he could get hold of the necessary

implements for cleaning it. And he rather doubted if he would be able

to do so. Edmund, the boot-boy, worked in some mysterious cell, far

from the madding crowd, at the back of the house. In the boot-cupboard

downstairs there would probably be nothing likely to be of any use.

 

His fears were realised. The boot-cupboard was empty. It seemed to him

that, for the time being, the best thing he could do would be to place

the boot in safe hiding, until he should have thought out a scheme.

 

Having restored the basket to its proper place, accordingly, he went

up to the study again, and placed the red-toed boot in the chimney, at

about the same height where Mr. Downing had found the other. Nobody

would think of looking there a second time, and it was improbable that

Mr. Outwood really would have the chimneys swept, as he had said. The

odds were that he had forgotten about it already.

 

Psmith went to the bathroom to wash his hands again, with the feeling

that he had done a good day’s work.

CHAPTER LII

ON THE TRAIL AGAIN

 

The most massive minds are apt to forget things at times. The most

adroit plotters make their little mistakes. Psmith was no exception to

the rule. He made the mistake of not telling Mike of the afternoon’s

happenings.

 

It was not altogether forgetfulness. Psmith was one of those people

who like to carry through their operations entirely by themselves.

Where there is only one in a secret the secret is more liable to

remain unrevealed. There was nothing, he thought, to be gained from

telling Mike. He forgot what the consequences might be if he did not.

 

So Psmith kept his own counsel, with the result that Mike went over to

school on the Monday morning in pumps.

 

Edmund, summoned from the hinterland of the house to give his opinion

why only one of Mike’s boots was to be found, had no views on the

subject. He seemed to look on it as one of those things which no

fellow can understand.

 

“‘Ere’s one of ‘em, Mr. Jackson,” he said, as if he hoped that Mike

might be satisfied with a compromise.

 

“One? What’s the good of that, Edmund, you chump? I can’t go over to

school in one boot.”

 

Edmund turned this over in his mind, and then said, “No, sir,” as much

as to say, “I may have lost a boot, but, thank goodness, I can still

understand sound reasoning.”

 

“Well, what am I to do? Where is the other boot?”

 

“Don’t know, Mr. Jackson,” replied Edmund to both questions.

 

“Well, I mean—Oh, dash it, there’s the bell.”

 

And Mike sprinted off in the pumps he stood in.

 

It is only a deviation from those ordinary rules of school life, which

one observes naturally and without thinking, that enables one to

realise how strong public-school prejudices really are. At a school,

for instance, where the regulations say that coats only of black

or dark blue are to be worn, a boy who appears one day in even the

most respectable and unostentatious brown finds himself looked on

with a mixture of awe and repulsion, which would be excessive if he

had sand-bagged the headmaster. So in the case of boots. School rules

decree that a boy shall go to his form-room in boots, There is no real

reason why, if the day is fine, he should not wear shoes, should he

prefer them. But, if he does, the thing creates a perfect sensation.

Boys say, “Great Scott, what have you got on?” Masters say,

“Jones, what are you wearing on your feet?” In the few minutes

which elapse between the assembling of the form for call-over and the

arrival of the form-master, some wag is sure either to stamp on the

shoes, accompanying the act with some satirical remark, or else to

pull one of them off, and inaugurate an impromptu game of football

with it. There was once a boy who went to school one morning in

elastic-sided boots….

 

Mike had always been coldly distant in his relations to the rest of

his form, looking on them, with a few exceptions, as worms; and the

form, since his innings against Downing’s on the Friday, had regarded

Mike with respect. So that he escaped the ragging he would have had to

undergo at Wrykyn in similar circumstances. It was only Mr. Downing

who gave trouble.

 

There is a sort of instinct which enables some masters to tell when a

boy in their form is wearing shoes instead of boots, just as people

who dislike cats always know when one is in a room with them. They

cannot see it, but they feel it in their bones.

 

Mr. Downing was perhaps the most bigoted anti-shoeist in the whole

list of English schoolmasters. He waged war remorselessly against

shoes. Satire, abuse, lines, detention—every weapon was employed by

him in dealing with their wearers. It had been the late Dunster’s

practice always to go over to school in shoes when, as he usually did,

he felt shaky in the morning’s lesson. Mr. Downing always detected him

in the first five minutes, and that meant a lecture of anything from

ten minutes to a quarter of an hour on Untidy Habits and Boys Who

Looked like Loafers—which broke the back of the morning’s work

nicely. On one occasion, when a particularly tricky bit of Livy was on

the bill of fare, Dunster had entered the form-room in heel-less

Turkish bath-slippers, of a vivid crimson; and the subsequent

proceedings, including his journey over to the house to change the

heel-less atrocities, had seen him through very nearly to the quarter

to eleven interval.

 

Mike, accordingly, had not been in his place for three minutes when

Mr. Downing, stiffening like a pointer, called his name.

 

“Yes, sir?” said Mike.

 

What are you wearing on your feet, Jackson?”

 

“Pumps, sir.”

 

“You are wearing pumps? Are you not aware that PUMPS are not the

proper things to come to school in? Why are you wearing PUMPS?”

 

The form, leaning back against the next row of desks, settled itself

comfortably for the address from the throne.

 

“I have lost one of my boots, sir.”

 

A kind of gulp escaped from Mr. Downing’s lips. He stared at Mike for

a moment in silence. Then, turning to Stone, he told him to start

translating.

 

Stone, who had been expecting at least ten minutes’ respite, was taken

unawares. When he found the place in his book and began to construe,

he floundered hopelessly. But, to his growing surprise and

satisfaction, the form-master appeared to notice nothing wrong. He

said “Yes, yes,” mechanically, and finally “That will do,” whereupon

Stone resumed his seat with the feeling that the age of miracles had

returned.

 

Mr. Downing’s mind was in a whirl. His case was complete. Mike’s

appearance in shoes, with the explanation that he had lost a boot,

completed the chain. As Columbus must have felt when his ship ran into

harbour, and the first American interviewer, jumping on board, said,

“Wal, sir, and what are your impressions of our glorious country?” so

did Mr. Downing feel at that moment.

 

When the bell rang at a quarter to eleven, he gathered up his gown,

and sped to the headmaster.

CHAPTER LIII

THE KETTLE METHOD

 

It was during the interval that day that Stone and Robinson,

discussing the subject of cricket over a bun and ginger-beer at the

school shop, came to a momentous decision, to wit, that they were fed

up with Adair administration and meant

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