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Adair fished out his watch, and examined it with an elaborate care

born of nervousness.

 

“About nine to.”

 

“Good. We’ve got plenty of time.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“I hate having to hurry over to school.”

 

“So do I.”

 

“I often do cut it rather fine, though.”

 

“Yes. So do I.”

 

“Beastly nuisance when one does.”

 

“Beastly.”

 

“It’s only about a couple of minutes from the houses to the school, I

should think, shouldn’t you?”

 

“Not much more. Might be three.”

 

“Yes. Three if one didn’t hurry.”

 

“Oh, yes, if one didn’t hurry.”

 

Another silence.

 

“Beastly day,” said Adair.

 

“Rotten.”

 

Silence again.

 

“I say,” said Mike, scowling at his toes, “awfully sorry about your

wrist.”

 

“Oh, that’s all right. It was my fault.”

 

“Does it hurt?”

 

“Oh, no, rather not, thanks.”

 

“I’d no idea you’d crocked yourself.”

 

“Oh, no, that’s all right. It was only right at the end. You’d have

smashed me anyhow.”

 

“Oh, rot.”

 

“I bet you anything you like you would.”

 

“I bet you I shouldn’t…. Jolly hard luck, just before the match.”

 

“Oh, no…. I say, thanks awfully for saying you’d play.”

 

“Oh, rot…. Do you think we shall get a game?”

 

Adair inspected the sky carefully.

 

“I don’t know. It looks pretty bad, doesn’t it?”

 

“Rotten. I say, how long will your wrist keep you out of cricket?”

 

“Be all right in a week. Less, probably.”

 

“Good.”

 

“Now that you and Smith are going to play, we ought to have a jolly

good season.”

 

“Rummy, Smith turning out to be a cricketer.”

 

“Yes. I should think he’d be a hot bowler, with his height.”

 

“He must be jolly good if he was only just out of the Eton team last

year.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“What’s the time?” asked Mike.

 

Adair produced his watch once more.

 

“Five to.”

 

“We’ve heaps of time.”

 

“Yes, heaps.”

 

“Let’s stroll on a bit down the road, shall we?”

 

“Right ho!”

 

Mike cleared his throat.

 

“I say.”

 

“Hullo?”

 

“I’ve been talking to Smith. He was telling me that you thought I’d

promised to give Stone and Robinson places in the–-”

 

“Oh, no, that’s all right. It was only for a bit. Smith told me you

couldn’t have done, and I saw that I was an ass to think you could

have. It was Stone seeming so dead certain that he could play for

Lower Borlock if I chucked him from the school team that gave me the

idea.”

 

“He never even asked me to get him a place.”

 

“No, I know.”

 

“Of course, I wouldn’t have done it, even if he had.”

 

“Of course not.”

 

“I didn’t want to play myself, but I wasn’t going to do a rotten trick

like getting other fellows away from the team.”

 

“No, I know.”

 

“It was rotten enough, really, not playing myself.”

 

“Oh, no. Beastly rough luck having to leave Wrykyn just when you were

going to be captain, and come to a small school like this.”

 

The excitement of the past few days must have had a stimulating effect

on Mike’s mind—shaken it up, as it were: for now, for the second time

in two days, he displayed quite a creditable amount of intuition. He

might have been misled by Adair’s apparently deprecatory attitude

towards Sedleigh, and blundered into a denunciation of the place.

Adair had said “a small school like this” in the sort of voice which

might have led his hearer to think that he was expected to say, “Yes,

rotten little hole, isn’t it?” or words to that effect. Mike,

fortunately, perceived that the words were used purely from

politeness, on the Chinese principle. When a Chinaman wishes to pay a

compliment, he does so by belittling himself and his belongings.

 

He eluded the pitfall.

 

“What rot!” he said. “Sedleigh’s one of the most sporting schools I’ve

ever come across. Everybody’s as keen as blazes. So they ought to be,

after the way you’ve sweated.”

 

Adair shuffled awkwardly.

 

“I’ve always been fairly keen on the place,” he said. “But I don’t

suppose I’ve done anything much.”

 

“You’ve loosened one of my front teeth,” said Mike, with a grin, “if

that’s any comfort to you.”

 

“I couldn’t eat anything except porridge this morning. My jaw still

aches.”

 

For the first time during the conversation their eyes met, and the

humorous side of the thing struck them simultaneously. They began to

laugh.

 

“What fools we must have looked!” said Adair.

 

You were all right. I must have looked rotten. I’ve never had

the gloves on in my life. I’m jolly glad no one saw us except Smith,

who doesn’t count. Hullo, there’s the bell. We’d better be moving on.

What about this match? Not much chance of it from the look of the sky

at present.”

 

“It might clear before eleven. You’d better get changed, anyhow, at

the interval, and hang about in case.”

 

“All right. It’s better than doing Thucydides with Downing. We’ve got

math, till the interval, so I don’t see anything of him all day; which

won’t hurt me.”

 

“He isn’t a bad sort of chap, when you get to know him,” said Adair.

 

“I can’t have done, then. I don’t know which I’d least soon be,

Downing or a black-beetle, except that if one was Downing one could

tread on the black-beetle. Dash this rain. I got about half a pint

down my neck just then. We sha’n’t get a game to-day, of anything like

it. As you’re crocked, I’m not sure that I care much. You’ve been

sweating for years to get the match on, and it would be rather rot

playing it without you.”

 

“I don’t know that so much. I wish we could play, because I’m certain,

with you and Smith, we’d walk into them. They probably aren’t sending

down much of a team, and really, now that you and Smith are turning

out, we’ve got a jolly hot lot. There’s quite decent batting all the

way through, and the bowling isn’t so bad. If only we could have given

this M.C.C. lot a really good hammering, it might have been easier to

get some good fixtures for next season. You see, it’s all right for a

school like Wrykyn, but with a small place like this you simply can’t

get the best teams to give you a match till you’ve done something to

show that you aren’t absolute rotters at the game. As for the schools,

they’re worse. They’d simply laugh at you. You were cricket secretary

at Wrykyn last year. What would you have done if you’d had a challenge

from Sedleigh? You’d either have laughed till you were sick, or else

had a fit at the mere idea of the thing.”

 

Mike stopped.

 

“By jove, you’ve struck about the brightest scheme on record. I never

thought of it before. Let’s get a match on with Wrykyn.”

 

“What! They wouldn’t play us.”

 

“Yes, they would. At least, I’m pretty sure they would. I had a letter

from Strachan, the captain, yesterday, saying that the Ripton match

had had to be scratched owing to illness. So they’ve got a vacant

date. Shall I try them? I’ll write to Strachan to-night, if you like.

And they aren’t strong this year. We’ll smash them. What do you say?”

 

Adair was as one who has seen a vision.

 

“By Jove,” he said at last, “if we only could!”

CHAPTER LVII

MR. DOWNING MOVES

 

The rain continued without a break all the morning. The two teams,

after hanging about dismally, and whiling the time away with

stump-cricket in the changing-rooms, lunched in the pavilion at

one o’clock. After which the M.C.C. captain, approaching Adair,

moved that this merry meeting be considered off and himself and

his men permitted to catch the next train back to town. To which

Adair, seeing that it was out of the question that there should be

any cricket that afternoon, regretfully agreed, and the first

Sedleigh v. M.C.C. match was accordingly scratched.

 

Mike and Psmith, wandering back to the house, were met by a damp

junior from Downing’s, with a message that Mr. Downing wished to see

Mike as soon as he was changed.

 

“What’s he want me for?” inquired Mike.

 

The messenger did not know. Mr. Downing, it seemed, had not confided

in him. All he knew was that the housemaster was in the house, and

would be glad if Mike would step across.

 

“A nuisance,” said Psmith, “this incessant demand for you. That’s the

worst of being popular. If he wants you to stop to tea, edge away. A

meal on rather a sumptuous scale will be prepared in the study against

your return.”

 

Mike changed quickly, and went off, leaving Psmith, who was fond of

simple pleasures in his spare time, earnestly occupied with a puzzle

which had been scattered through the land by a weekly paper. The prize

for a solution was one thousand pounds, and Psmith had already

informed Mike with some minuteness of his plans for the disposition of

this sum. Meanwhile, he worked at it both in and out of school,

generally with abusive comments on its inventor.

 

He was still fiddling away at it when Mike returned.

 

Mike, though Psmith was at first too absorbed to notice it, was

agitated.

 

“I don’t wish to be in any way harsh,” said Psmith, without looking

up, “but the man who invented this thing was a blighter of the worst

type. You come and have a shot. For the moment I am baffled. The

whisper flies round the clubs, ‘Psmith is baffled.’”

 

“The man’s an absolute drivelling ass,” said Mike warmly.

 

“Me, do you mean?”

 

“What on earth would be the point of my doing it?”

 

“You’d gather in a thousand of the best. Give you a nice start in

life.”

 

“I’m not talking about your rotten puzzle.”

 

“What are you talking about?”

 

“That ass Downing. I believe he’s off his nut.”

 

“Then your chat with Comrade Downing was not of the old-College-chums-meeting-unexpectedly-after-years’-separation type? What has he been

doing to you?”

 

“He’s off his nut.”

 

“I know. But what did he do? How did the brainstorm burst? Did he jump

at you from behind a door and bite a piece out of your leg, or did he

say he was a tea-pot?”

 

Mike sat down.

 

“You remember that painting Sammy business?”

 

“As if it were yesterday,” said Psmith. “Which it was, pretty nearly.”

 

“He thinks I did it.”

 

“Why? Have you ever shown any talent in the painting line?”

 

“The silly ass wanted me to confess that I’d done it. He as good as

asked me to. Jawed a lot of rot about my finding it to my advantage

later on if I behaved sensibly.”

 

“Then what are you worrying about? Don’t you know that when a master

wants you to do the confessing-act, it simply means that he hasn’t

enough evidence to start in on you with? You’re all right. The thing’s

a stand-off.”

 

“Evidence!” said Mike, “My dear man, he’s got enough evidence to sink

a ship. He’s absolutely sweating evidence at every pore. As far as I

can see, he’s been crawling about, doing the Sherlock Holmes business

for all he’s worth ever since the thing happened, and now he’s dead

certain that I painted Sammy.”

 

Did you, by the way?” asked Psmith.

 

“No,” said

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