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 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 to strike. The immediate cause
of revolt was early-morning fielding-practice, that searching test of
cricket keenness. Mike himself, to whom cricket was the great and
serious interest of life, had shirked early-morning fielding-practice
in his first term at Wrykyn. And Stone and Robinson had but a luke-warm
attachment to the game, compared with Mike's.
As a rule, Adair had contented himself with practice in the afternoon
after school, which nobody objects to; and no strain, consequently,
had been put upon Stone's and Robinson's allegiance. In view of the
M.C.C. match on the Wednesday, however, he had now added to this an
extra dose to be taken before breakfast. Stone and Robinson had left
their comfortable beds that day at six o'clock, yawning and heavy-eyed,
and had caught catches and fielded drives which, in the cool morning
air, had stung like adders and bitten like serpents. Until the sun has
really got to work, it is no joke taking a high catch. Stone's dislike
of the experiment was only equalled by Robinson's. They were neither of
them of the type which likes to undergo hardships for the common good.
They played well enough when on the field, but neither cared greatly
whether the school had a good season or not. They played the game
entirely for their own sakes.
The result was that they went back to the house for breakfast with a
never-again feeling, and at the earliest possible moment met to debate
as to what was to be done about it. At all costs another experience
like to-day's must be avoided.
"It's all rot," said Stone. "What on earth's the good of sweating
about before breakfast? It only makes you tired."
"I shouldn't wonder," said Robinson, "if it wasn't bad for the heart.
Rushing about on an empty stomach, I mean, and all that sort of
thing."
"Personally," said Stone, gnawing his bun, "I don't intend to stick
it."
"Nor do I."
"I mean, it's such absolute rot. If we aren't good enough to play for
the team without having to get up overnight to catch catches, he'd
better find somebody else."
"Yes."
At this moment Adair came into the shop.
"Fielding-practice again to-morrow," he said briskly, "at six."
"Before breakfast?" said Robinson.
"Rather. You two must buck up, you know. You were rotten to-day." And
he passed on, leaving the two malcontents speechless.
Stone was the first to recover.
"I'm hanged if I turn out to-morrow," he said, as they left the shop.
"He can do what he likes about it. Besides, what can he do, after all?
Only kick us out of the team. And I don't mind that."
"Nor do I."
"I don't think he will kick us out, either. He can't play the M.C.C.
with a scratch team. If he does, we'll go and play for that village
Jackson plays for. We'll get Jackson to shove us into the team."
"All right," said Robinson. "Let's."
Their position was a strong one. A cricket captain may seem to be an
autocrat of tremendous power, but in reality he has only one weapon,
the keenness of those under him. With the majority, of course, the
fear of being excluded or ejected from a team is a spur that drives.
The majority, consequently, are easily handled. But when a cricket
captain runs up against a boy who does not much care whether he plays
for the team or not, then he finds himself in a difficult position,
and, unless he is a man of action, practically helpless.
Stone and Robinson felt secure. Taking it all round, they felt that
they would just as soon play for Lower Borlock as for the school. The
bowling of the opposition would be weaker in the former case, and the
chance of making runs greater. To a certain type of cricketer runs are
runs, wherever and however made.
The result of all this was that Adair, turning out with the team next
morning for fielding-practice, found himself two short. Barnes was
among those present, but of the other two representatives of Outwood's
house there were no signs.
Barnes, questioned on the subject, had no information to give, beyond
the fact that he had not seen them about anywhere. Which was not a
great help. Adair proceeded with the fielding-practice without further
delay.
At breakfast that morning he was silent and apparently wrapped in
thought. Mr. Downing, who sat at the top of the table with Adair on
his right, was accustomed at the morning meal to blend nourishment of
the body with that of the mind. As a rule he had ten minutes with the
daily paper before the bell rang, and it was his practice to hand on
the results of his reading to Adair and the other house-prefects, who,
not having seen the paper, usually formed an interested and
appreciative audience. To-day, however, though the house-prefects
expressed varying degrees of excitement at the news that Tyldesley had
made a century against Gloucestershire, and that a butter famine was
expected in the United States, these world-shaking news-items seemed
to leave Adair cold. He champed his bread and marmalade with an
abstracted air.
He was wondering what to do in this matter of Stone and Robinson.
Many captains might have passed the thing over. To take it for granted
that the missing pair had overslept themselves would have been a safe
and convenient way out of the difficulty. But Adair was not the sort
of person who seeks for safe and convenient ways out of difficulties.
He never shirked anything, physical or moral.
He resolved to interview the absentees.
It was not until after school that an opportunity offered itself. He
went across to Outwood's and found the two non-starters in the senior
day-room, engaged in the intellectual pursuit of kicking the wall and
marking the height of each kick with chalk. Adair's entrance coincided
with a record effort by Stone, which caused the kicker to overbalance
and stagger backwards against the captain.
"Sorry," said Stone. "Hullo, Adair!"
"Don't mention it. Why weren't you two at fielding-practice this
morning?"
Robinson, who left the lead to Stone in all matters, said nothing.
Stone spoke.
"We didn't turn up," he said.
"I know you didn't. Why not?"
Stone had rehearsed this scene in his mind, and he spoke with the
coolness which comes from rehearsal.
"We decided not to."
"Oh?"
"Yes. We came to the conclusion that we hadn't any use for early-morning
fielding."
Adair's manner became ominously calm.
"You were rather fed-up, I suppose?"
"That's just the word."
"Sorry it bored you."
"It didn't. We didn't give it the chance to."
Robinson laughed appreciatively.
"What's the joke, Robinson?" asked Adair.
"There's no joke," said Robinson, with some haste. "I was only
thinking of something."
"I'll give you something else to think about soon."
Stone intervened.
"It's no good making a row about it, Adair. You must see that you
can't do anything. Of course, you can kick us out of the team, if you
like, but we don't care if you do. Jackson will get us a game any
Wednesday or Saturday for the village he plays for. So we're all
right. And the school team aren't such a lot of flyers that you can
afford to go chucking people out of it whenever you want to. See what
I mean?"
"You and Jackson seem to have fixed it all up between you."
"What are you going to do? Kick us out?"
"No."
"Good. I thought you'd see it was no good making a beastly row. We'll
play for the school all right. There's no earthly need for us to turn
out for fielding-practice before breakfast."
"You don't think there is? You may be right. All the same, you're
going to to-morrow morning."
"What!"
"Six sharp. Don't be late."
"Don't be an ass, Adair. We've told you we aren't going to."
"That's only your opinion. I think you are. I'll give you till five
past six, as you seem to like lying in bed."
"You can turn out if you feel like it. You won't find me there."
"That'll be a disappointment. Nor Robinson?"
"No," said the junior partner in the firm; but he said it without any
deep conviction. The atmosphere was growing a great deal too tense for
his comfort.
"You've quite made up your minds?"
"Yes," said Stone.
"Right," said Adair quietly, and knocked him down.
He was up again in a moment. Adair had pushed the table back, and was
standing in the middle of the open space.
"You cad," said Stone. "I wasn't ready."
"Well, you are now. Shall we go on?"
Stone dashed in without a word, and for a few moments the two might
have seemed evenly matched to a not too intelligent spectator. But
science tells, even in a confined space. Adair was smaller and lighter
than Stone, but he was cooler and quicker, and he knew more about the
game. His blow was always home a fraction of a second sooner than his
opponent's. At the end of a minute Stone was on the floor again.
He got up slowly and stood leaning with one hand on the table.
"Suppose we say ten past six?" said Adair. "I'm not particular to a
minute or two."
Stone made no reply.
"Will ten past six suit you for fielding-practice to-morrow?" said
Adair.
"All right," said Stone.
"Thanks. How about you, Robinson?"
Robinson had been a petrified spectator of the Captain-Kettle-like
manoeuvres of the cricket captain, and it did not take him long to
make up his mind. He was not altogether a coward. In different
circumstances he might have put up a respectable show. But it takes a
more than ordinarily courageous person to embark on a fight which he
knows must end in his destruction. Robinson knew that he was nothing
like a match even for Stone, and Adair had disposed of Stone in a
little over one minute. It seemed to Robinson that neither pleasure
nor profit was likely to come from an encounter with Adair.
"All right," he said hastily, "I'll turn up."
"Good," said Adair. "I wonder if either of you chaps could tell me
which is Jackson's study."
Stone was dabbing at his mouth with a handkerchief, a task which
precluded anything in the shape of conversation; so Robinson replied
that Mike's study was the first you came to on the right of the
corridor at the top of the stairs.
"Thanks," said Adair. "You don't happen to know if he's in, I
suppose?"
"He went up with Smith a quarter of an hour ago. I don't know if he's
still there."
"I'll go and see," said Adair. "I should like a word with him if he
isn't busy."
CHAPTER LIV
ADAIR HAS A WORD WITH MIKE
Mike, all unconscious of the stirring proceedings which had been going
on below stairs, was peacefully reading a letter he had received that
morning from Strachan at Wrykyn, in which the successor to the cricket
captaincy which should have been Mike's had a good deal to say in a
lugubrious strain. In Mike's absence things had been going badly with
Wrykyn. A broken arm, contracted in the course of some rash
experiments with a day-boy's motor-bicycle, had deprived the team of
the services of Dunstable, the only man who had shown any signs of
being able to bowl a side out. Since this calamity, wrote Strachan,
everything had gone wrong. The M.C.C., led by Mike's brother Reggie,
the least of the three first-class-cricketing Jacksons, had smashed
them by a hundred and fifty runs. Geddington had wiped them off the
face of the earth. The Incogs, with a team recruited exclusively from
the rabbit-hutch - not a well-known man on the side except Stacey,
a veteran who had been playing for the club since Fuller Pilch's
time - had got home by two wickets. In fact, it was Strachan's opinion
that the Wrykyn team that summer was about the most hopeless gang of
dead-beats that had ever made an exhibition of itself on the school
grounds. The Ripton match, fortunately, was off, owing to an outbreak
of mumps at that shrine of learning and athletics - the second outbreak
of the malady in two terms. Which, said Strachan, was hard lines on
Ripton, but a bit of jolly good luck for Wrykyn, as it had saved them
from what would probably have been a record hammering, Ripton having
eight of their last year's team left, including Dixon, the fast
bowler, against whom Mike alone of the Wrykyn team had been able to
make runs in the previous season. Altogether, Wrykyn had struck a bad
patch.
Mike mourned over his suffering school. If only he could have been
there to help. It might have made all the difference. In school
cricket one good batsman, to go in first and knock the bowlers off
their length, may take a weak team triumphantly through a season. In
school cricket the importance of a good start for the first wicket is
incalculable.
As he put Strachan's letter away in his pocket, all his old bitterness
against Sedleigh, which had been ebbing during the past few days,
returned with a rush. He was conscious once more of that feeling of
personal injury which had made him hate his new school on the first
day of term.
And it was at this point, when his resentment was at its height, that
Adair, the concrete representative of everything Sedleighan, entered
the room.
There are moments in life's placid course when there has got to be the
biggest kind of row. This was one of them.
* * * * *
Psmith, who was leaning against the mantelpiece, reading the serial
story in a daily paper which he had abstracted from the senior day-room,
made the intruder free of the study with a dignified wave of the hand,
and went on reading. Mike remained in the deck-chair in which he was
sitting, and contented himself with glaring at the newcomer.
Psmith was the first to speak.
"If you ask my candid opinion," he said, looking up from his paper, "I
should say that young Lord Antony Trefusis was in the soup already. I
seem to see the _consommé_ splashing about his ankles. He's had a
note telling him to be under the oak-tree in the Park at midnight.
He's just off there at the end of this instalment. I bet Long Jack,
the poacher, is waiting there with a sandbag. Care to see the paper,
Comrade Adair? Or don't you take any interest in contemporary
literature?"
"Thanks," said Adair. "I just wanted to speak to Jackson for a
minute."
"Fate," said Psmith, "has led your footsteps to the right place. That
is Comrade Jackson, the Pride of the School, sitting before you."
"What do you want?" said Mike.
He suspected that Adair had come to ask him once again to play for the
school. The fact that the M.C.C. match was on the following day made
this a probable solution of the reason for his visit. He could think
of no other errand that was likely to have set the head of Downing's
paying afternoon calls.
"I'll tell you in a minute. It won't take long."
"That," said Psmith approvingly, "is right. Speed is the key-note of
the present age. Promptitude. Despatch. This is no time for loitering.
We must be strenuous. We must hustle. We must Do It Now. We - - "
"Buck up," said Mike.
"Certainly," said Adair. "I've just been talking to Stone and
Robinson."
"An excellent way of passing an idle half-hour," said Psmith.
"We weren't exactly idle," said Adair grimly. "It didn't last long,
but it was pretty lively while it did. Stone chucked it after the
first round."
Mike got up out of his chair. He could not quite follow what all this
was about, but there was no mistaking the truculence of Adair's
manner. For some reason, which might possibly be made dear later,
Adair was looking for trouble, and Mike in his present mood felt that
it would be a privilege to see that he got it.
Psmith was regarding Adair through his eyeglass with pain and
surprise.
"Surely," he said, "you do not mean us to understand that you have
been _brawling_ with Comrade Stone! This is bad hearing. I
thought that you and he were like brothers. Such a bad example for
Comrade Robinson, too. Leave us, Adair. We would brood. Oh, go thee,
knave, I'll none of thee. Shakespeare."
Psmith turned away, and resting his elbows on the mantelpiece, gazed
at himself mournfully in the looking-glass.
"I'm not the man I was," he sighed, after a prolonged inspection.
"There are lines on my face, dark circles beneath my eyes. The fierce
rush of life at Sedleigh is wasting me away."
"Stone and I had a discussion about early-morning fielding-practice,"
said Adair, turning to Mike.
Mike said nothing.
"I thought his fielding wanted working up a bit, so I told him to turn
out at six to-morrow morning. He said he wouldn't, so we argued it
out. He's going to all right. So is Robinson."
Mike remained silent.
"So are you," added Adair.
"I get thinner and thinner," said Psmith from the mantelpiece.
Mike looked at Adair, and Adair looked at Mike, after the manner of
two dogs before they fly at one another. There was an electric silence
in the study. Psmith peered with increased earnestness into the glass.
"Oh?" said Mike at last. "What makes you think that?"
"I don't think. I know."
"Any special reason for my turning out?"
"Yes."
"What's that?"
"You're going to play for the school against the M.C.C. to-morrow, and
I want you to get some practice."
"I wonder how you got that idea!"
"Curious I should have done, isn't it?"
"Very. You aren't building on it much, are you?" said Mike politely.
"I am, rather," replied Adair with equal courtesy.
"I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."
"I don't think so."
"My eyes," said Psmith regretfully, "are a bit close together.
However," he added philosophically, "it's too late to alter that now."
Mike drew a step closer to Adair.
"What makes you think I shall play against the M.C.C.?" he asked
curiously.
"I'm going to make you."
Mike took another step forward. Adair moved to meet him.
"Would you care to try now?" said Mike.
For just one second the two drew themselves together preparatory to
beginning the serious business of the interview, and in that second
Psmith, turning from the glass, stepped between them.
"Get out of the light, Smith," said Mike.
Psmith waved him back with a deprecating gesture.
"My dear young friends," he said placidly, "if you _will_ let
your angry passions rise, against the direct advice of Doctor Watts,
I suppose you must, But when you propose to claw each other in my
study, in the midst of a hundred fragile and priceless ornaments, I
lodge a protest. If you really feel that you want to scrap, for
goodness sake do it where there's some room. I don't want all the
study furniture smashed. I know a bank whereon the wild thyme grows,
only a few yards down the road, where you can scrap all night if you
want to. How would it be to move on there? Any objections? None? Then
shift ho! and let's get it over."
CHAPTER LV
CLEARING THE AIR
Psmith was one of those people who lend a dignity to everything they
touch. Under his auspices the most unpromising ventures became somehow
enveloped in an atmosphere of measured stateliness. On the present
occasion, what would have been, without his guiding hand, a mere
unscientific scramble, took on something of the impressive formality
of the National Sporting Club.
"The rounds," he said, producing a watch, as they passed through a
gate into a field a couple of hundred yards from the house gate, "will
be of three minutes' duration, with a minute rest in between. A man
who is down will have ten seconds in which to rise. Are you ready,
Comrades Adair and Jackson? Very well, then. Time."
After which, it was a pity that the actual fight did not quite live up
to its referee's introduction. Dramatically, there should have been
cautious sparring for openings and a number of tensely contested
rounds, as if it had been the final of a boxing competition. But
school fights, when they do occur - which is only once in a decade
nowadays, unless you count junior school scuffles - are the outcome of
weeks of suppressed bad blood, and are consequently brief and furious.
In a boxing competition, however much one may want to win, one does
not dislike one's opponent. Up to the moment when "time" was called,
one was probably warmly attached to him, and at the end of the last
round one expects to resume that attitude of mind. In a fight each
party, as a rule, hates the other.
So it happened that there was nothing formal or cautious about the
present battle. All Adair wanted was to get at Mike, and all Mike
wanted was to get at Adair. Directly Psmith called "time," they rushed
together as if they meant to end the thing in half a minute.
It was this that saved Mike. In an ordinary contest with the gloves,
with his opponent cool and boxing in his true form, he could not have
lasted three rounds against Adair. The latter was a clever boxer,
while Mike had never had a lesson in his life. If Adair had kept away
and used his head, nothing could have prevented him winning.
As it was, however, he threw away his advantages, much as Tom Brown
did at the beginning of his fight with Slogger Williams, and the
result was the same as on that historic occasion. Mike had the greater
strength, and, thirty seconds from the start, knocked his man clean
off his feet with an unscientific but powerful right-hander.
This finished Adair's chances. He rose full of fight, but with all the
science knocked out of him. He went in at Mike with both hands. The
Irish blood in him, which for the ordinary events of life made him
merely energetic and dashing, now rendered him reckless. He abandoned
all attempt at guarding. It was the Frontal Attack in its most futile
form, and as unsuccessful as a frontal attack is apt to be. There was
a swift exchange of blows, in the course of which Mike's left elbow,
coming into contact with his opponent's right fist, got a shock which
kept it tingling for the rest of the day; and then Adair went down in
a heap.
He got up slowly and with difficulty. For a moment he stood blinking
vaguely. Then he lurched forward at Mike.
In the excitement of a fight - which is, after all, about the most
exciting thing that ever happens to one in the course of one's life - it
is difficult for the fighters to see what the spectators see. Where
the spectators see an assault on an already beaten man, the fighter
himself only sees a legitimate piece of self-defence against an
opponent whose chances are equal to his own. Psmith saw, as anybody
looking on would have seen, that Adair was done. Mike's blow had taken
him within a fraction of an inch of the point of the jaw, and he was
all but knocked out. Mike could not see this. All he understood was
that his man was on his feet again and coming at him, so he hit out
with all his strength; and this time Adair went down and stayed down.
"Brief," said Psmith, coming forward, "but exciting. We may take that,
I think, to be the conclusion of the entertainment. I will now have a
dash at picking up the slain. I shouldn't stop, if I were you. He'll
be sitting up and taking notice soon, and if he sees you he may want
to go on with the combat, which would do him no earthly good. If it's
going to be continued in our next, there had better be a bit of an
interval for alterations and repairs first."
"Is he hurt much, do you think?" asked Mike. He had seen knock-outs
before in the ring, but this was the first time he had ever effected
one on his own account, and Adair looked unpleasantly corpse-like.
"_He's_ all right," said Psmith. "In a minute or two he'll be
skipping about like a little lambkin. I'll look after him. You go away
and pick flowers."
Mike put on his coat and walked back to the house. He was conscious of
a perplexing whirl of new and strange emotions, chief among which was
a curious feeling that he rather liked Adair. He found himself
thinking that Adair was a good chap, that there was something to be
said for his point of view, and that it was a pity he had knocked him
about so much. At the same time, he felt an undeniable thrill of pride
at having beaten him. The feat presented that interesting person, Mike
Jackson, to him in a fresh and pleasing light, as one who had had a
tough job to face and had carried it through. Jackson, the cricketer,
he knew, but Jackson, the deliverer of knock-out blows, was strange to