"Exactly, your lordship," said Ashe approvingly. "You have touched the spot."
"It all has to do with the theft of your scarab, Lord Emsworth.
Somebody got into the museum and stole the scarab."
"Ah, yes; ah, yes--so they did. I remember now. You told me.
Bad business that, my dear Baxter. Mr. Peters gave me that scarab. He will be most deucedly annoyed if it"s lost. Yes, indeed."
"Whoever stole it upset the can of red paint and stepped in it."
"Devilish careless of them. It must have made the d.i.c.kens of a mess. Why don"t people look where they are walking?"
"I suspect this man of shielding the criminal by hiding her shoe in this closet."
"Oh, it"s not his own shoes that this young man keeps in closets?"
"It is a woman"s shoe, Lord Emsworth."
"The deuce it is! Then it was a woman who stole the scarab? Is that the way you figure it out? Bless my soul, Baxter, one wonders what women are coming to nowadays. It"s all this movement, I suppose. The Vote, and all that--eh? I recollect having a chat with the Marquis of Petersfield some time ago. He is in the Cabinet, and he tells me it is perfectly infernal the way these women carry on. He said sometimes it got to such a pitch, with them waving banners and presenting pet.i.tions, and throwing flour and things at a fellow, that if he saw his own mother coming toward him, with a hand behind her back, he would run like a rabbit. Told me so himself."
"So," said the Efficient Baxter, cutting in on the flow of speech, "what I wish to do is to break open this closet."
"Eh? Why?"
"To get the shoe."
"The shoe? ... Ah, yes, I recollect now. You were telling me."
"If your lordship has no objection."
"Objection, my dear fellow? None in the world. Why should I have any objection? Let me see! What is it you wish to do?"
"This," said Baxter shortly.
He seized the poker from the fireplace and delivered two rapid blows on the closet door. The wood was splintered. A third blow smashed the flimsy lock. The closet, with any skeletons it might contain, was open for all to view.
It contained a corkscrew, a box of matches, a paper-covered copy of a book ent.i.tled "Mary, the Beautiful Mill-Hand," a bottle of embrocation, a spool of cotton, two pencil-stubs, and other useful and entertaining objects. It contained, in fact, almost everything except a paint-splashed shoe, and Baxter gazed at the collection in dumb disappointment.
"Are you satisfied now, my dear Baxter," said the earl, "or is there any more furniture that you would like to break? You know, this furniture breaking is becoming a positive craze with you, my dear fellow. You ought to fight against it. The night before last, I don"t know how many tables broken in the hall; and now this closet. You will ruin me. No purse can stand the constant drain."
Baxter did not reply. He was still trying to rally from the blow.
A chance remark of Lord Emsworth"s set him off on the trail once more. Lord Emsworth, having said his say, had dismissed the affair from his mind and begun to potter again. The course of his pottering had brought him to the fireplace, where a little pile of soot on the fender caught his eye. He bent down to inspect it.
"Dear me!" he said. "I must remember to tell Beach to have his chimney swept. It seems to need it badly."
No trumpet-call ever acted more instantaneously on old war-horse than this simple remark on the Efficient Baxter. He was still convinced that Ashe had hidden the shoe somewhere in the room, and, now that the closet had proved an alibi, the chimney was the only spot that remained unsearched. He dived forward with a rush, nearly knocking Lord Emsworth off his feet, and thrust an arm up into the unknown. The startled peer, having recovered his balance, met Ashe"s respectfully pitying gaze.
"We must humor him," said the gaze, more plainly than speech.
Baxter continued to grope. The chimney was a roomy chimney, and needed careful examination. He wriggled his hand about clutchingly. From time to time soot fell in gentle showers.
"My dear Baxter!"
Baxter was baffled. He withdrew his hand from the chimney, and straightened himself. He brushed a bead of perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. Unfortunately, he used the sooty hand, and the result was too much for Lord Emsworth"s politeness.
He burst into a series of pleased chuckles.
"Your face, my dear Baxter! Your face! It is positively covered with soot--positively! You must go and wash it. You are quite black. Really, my dear fellow, you present rather an extraordinary appearance. Run off to your room."
Against this crowning blow the Efficient Baxter could not stand up. It was the end.
"Soot!" he murmured weakly. "Soot!"
"Your face is covered, my dear fellow--quite covered."
"It certainly has a faintly sooty aspect, sir," said Ashe.
His voice roused the sufferer to one last flicker of spirit.
"You will hear more of this," he said. "You will--"
At this moment, slightly m.u.f.fled by the intervening door and pa.s.sageway, there came from the direction of the hall a sound like the delivery of a ton of coal. A heavy body b.u.mped down the stairs, and a voice which all three recognized as that of the Honorable Freddie uttered an oath that lost itself in a final crash and a musical splintering sound, which Baxter for one had no difficulty in recognizing as the dissolution of occasional china.
Even if they had not so able a detective as Baxter with them, Lord Emsworth and Ashe would have been at no loss to guess what had happened. Doctor Watson himself could have deduced it from the evidence. The Honorable Freddie had fallen downstairs.
With a little ingenuity this portion of the story of Mr. Peters"
scarab could be converted into an excellent tract, driving home the perils, even in this world, of absenting one"s self from church on Sunday morning. If the Honorable Freddie had gone to church he would not have been running down the great staircase at the castle at this hour; and if he had not been running down the great staircase at the castle at that hour he would not have encountered Muriel.
Muriel was a Persian cat belonging to Lady Ann Warblington. Lady Ann had breakfasted in bed and lain there late, as she rather fancied she had one of her sick headaches coming on. Muriel had left her room in the wake of the breakfast tray, being anxious to be present at the obsequies of a fried sole that had formed Lady Ann"s simple morning meal, and had followed the maid who bore it until she had reached the hall.
At this point the maid, who disliked Muriel, stopped and made a noise like an exploding pop bottle, at the same time taking a little run in Muriel"s direction and kicking at her with a menacing foot. Muriel, wounded and startled, had turned in her tracks and sprinted back up the staircase at the exact moment when the Honorable Freddie, who for some reason was in a great hurry, ran lightly down.
There was an instant when Freddie could have saved himself by planting a number-ten shoe on Muriel"s spine, but even in that crisis he bethought him that he hardly stood solid enough with the authorities to risk adding to his misdeeds the slaughter of his aunt"s favorite cat, and he executed a rapid swerve. The spared cat proceeded on her journey upstairs, while Freddie, touching the staircase at intervals, went on down.
Having reached the bottom, he sat amid the occasional china, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, and endeavored to ascertain the extent of his injuries. He had a dazed suspicion that he was irretrievably fractured in a dozen places. It was in this att.i.tude that the rescue party found him. He gazed up at them with silent pathos.
"In the name of goodness, Frederick," said Lord Emsworth peevishly, "what do you imagine you are doing?"
Freddie endeavored to rise, but sank back again with a stifled howl.
"It was that bally cat of Aunt Ann"s," he said. "It came legging it up the stairs. I think I"ve broken my leg."
"You have certainly broken everything else," said his father unsympathetically. "Between you and Baxter, I wonder there"s a stick of furniture standing in the house."
"Thanks, old chap," said Freddie gratefully as Ashe stepped forward and lent him an arm. "I think my bally ankle must have got twisted. I wish you would give me a hand up to my room."
"And, Baxter, my dear fellow," said Lord Emsworth, "you might telephone to Doctor Bird, in Market Blandings, and ask him to be good enough to drive out. I am sorry, Freddie," he added, "that you should have met with this accident; but--but everything is so--so disturbing nowadays that I feel--I feel most disturbed."