"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 b.u.t.ton, 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, 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 a.s.sure you, sir, at any rate, that if there is a shoe in that cupboard now, there will be a shoe 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 shoe."
He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the cupboard, and took out the shoe. Then he selected from the basket a particularly battered specimen.
Placing this in the cupboard, he relocked the door.
His next act was to take from the shelf a piece of string. Attaching one end of this to the shoe 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 shoe. 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 shoe swing free. He noticed with approval, when it had stopped swinging, that it was hidden from above by the windowsill.
He returned to his place at the mantelpiece.
As an afterthought he took another shoe 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 shoes 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 shoes was splashed with the paint. It is that shoe which I believe Smith to be concealing in this cupboard. Now, do you understand?"
Mr. Outwood looked amazedly at Psmith, and Psmith shook his head sorrowfully at Mr. Outwood. Psmith"s expression said, as plainly as if he had spoken the words, "We must humor 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 dumbbells 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 shoe from its resting place.
"I told you," he said. "I told you."
"I wondered where that shoe 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 shoe has no paint on it," he said, glaring at Psmith. "This is not the shoe."