The shoe became the center of attention, the cynosure of all eyes. Mr. Downing fixed it with the piercing stare of one who feels that his brain is tottering. The headmaster looked at it with a mildly puzzled expression. Psmith, putting up his eyeglass, gazed at it with a sort of affectionate interest, as if he were waiting for it to do a trick of some kind.
Mr. Downing was the first to break the silence.
"There was paint on this shoe," he said vehemently. "I tell you there was a splash of red paint across the toe. Smith will bear me out in this. Smith, you saw the paint on this shoe?"
"Paint, sir?"
"What! Do you mean to tell me that you didnotsee it?"
"No, sir. There was no paint on this shoe."
"This is foolery. I saw it with my own eyes. It was a broad splash right across the toe."
The headmaster interposed.
"You must have made a mistake, Mr. Downing. There is certainly no trace of paint on this shoe. These momentary optical delusions are, I fancy, not uncommon. Any doctor will tell you—"
"I had an aunt, sir," said Psmith chattily, "who was remarkably subject—"
"It is absurd. I cannot have been mistaken," said Mr. Downing. "I am positively certain the toe of this shoe was red when I found it."
"It is undoubtedly black now, Mr. Downing."
"A sort of chameleon shoe," murmured Psmith.
The goaded housemaster turned on him.
"What did you say, Smith?"
"Did I speak, sir?" said Psmith, with the start of one coming suddenly out of a trance.
Mr. Downing looked searchingly at him.
"You had better be careful, Smith."
"Yes, sir."
"I strongly suspect you of having something to do with this."
"Really, Mr. Downing," said the headmaster, "this is surely improbable. Smith could scarcely have cleaned the shoe on his way to my house. On one occasion I inadvertently spilled some paint on a shoe of my own. I can assure you that it does not brush off. It needs a very systematic cleaning before all traces are removed."
"Exactly, sir," said Psmith. "My theory, if I may...?"
"Certainly Smith."
Psmith bowed courteously and proceeded.
"My theory, sir, is that Mr. Downing was deceived by the light-and-shade effects on the toe of the shoe. The afternoon sun, streaming in through the window, must have shone on the shoe in such a manner as to give it a momentary and fictitious aspect of redness. If Mr. Downing recollects, he did not look long at the shoe. The picture on the retina of the eye, consequently, had not time to fade. I remember thinking myself, at the moment, that the shoe appeared to have a certain reddish tint. The mistake...."
"Bag!" said Mr. Downing shortly.
"Well, really," said the headmaster, "it seems to me that that is the only explanation that will square with the facts. A shoe that is really smeared with red paint does not become black of itself in the course of a few minutes."
"You are very right, sir," said Psmith with benevolent approval. "May I go now, sir? I am in the middle of a singularly impressive passage of Cicero's speechDe senectute."
"I am sorry that you should leave your preparation till Sunday, Smith. It is a habit of which I altogether disapprove."
"I am reading it, sir," said Psmith, with simple dignity, "for pleasure. Shall I take the shoe with me, sir?"
"If Mr. Downing does not want it?"
The housemaster passed the fraudulent piece of evidence to Psmith without a word, and the latter, having included both masters in a kindly smile, left the garden.
Pedestrians who had the good fortune to be passing along the road between the headmaster's house and Mr. Outwood's at that moment saw what, if they had but known it, was a most unusual sight, the spectacle of Psmith running. Psmith's usual mode of progression was a dignified walk. He believed in the contemplative style rather than the hustling.
On this occasion, however, reckless of possible injuries to the crease of his trousers, he raced down the road, and turning in at Outwood's gate, bounded upstairs like a highly trained professional athlete.
On arriving at the study, his first act was to remove a shoe from the top of the pile in the basket, place it in the small cupboard under the bookshelf, and lock the cupboard. Then he flung himself into a chair and panted.
"Brain," he said to himself approvingly, "is what one chiefly needs in matters of this kind. Without brain, where are we? In the soup, every time. The next development will be when Comrade Downing thinks it over, and is struck with the brilliant idea that it's just possible that the shoe he gave me to carry and the shoe I did carry were not one shoe but two shoes. Meanwhile ..."
He dragged up another chair for his feet and picked up his novel.
He had not been reading long when there was a footstep in the passage, and Mr. Downing appeared.
The possibility, in fact the probability, of Psmith's having substituted another shoe for the one with the incriminating splash of paint on it had occurred to him almost immediately on leaving the headmaster's garden. Psmith and Mike, he reflected, were friends. Psmith's impulse would be to do all that lay in his power to shield Mike. Feeling aggrieved with himself that he had not thought of this before, he, too, hurried over to Outwood's.
Mr. Downing was brisk and peremptory.
"I wish to look at these shoes again," he said. Psmith, with a sigh, laid down his novel, and rose to assist him.
"Sit down, Smith," said the housemaster. "I can manage without your help."
Psmith sat down again, carefully tucking up the knees of his trousers, and watched him with silent interest through his eyeglass.
The scrutiny irritated Mr. Downing.
"Put that thing away, Smith," he said.
"That thing, sir?"
"Yes, that ridiculous glass. Put it away."
"Why, sir?"
"Why! Because I tell you to do so."
"I guessed that that was the reason, sir," sighed Psmith, replacing the eyeglass in his waistcoat pocket. He rested his elbows on his knees, and his chin on his hands, and resumed his contemplative inspection of the shoe expert, who, after fidgeting for a few moments, lodged another complaint.
"Don't sit there staring at me, Smith."
"I was interested in what you were doing, sir."
"Never mind. Don't stare at me in that idiotic way."
"May I read, sir?" asked Psmith, patiently.
"Yes, read if you like."
"Thank you, sir."
Psmith took up his book again, and Mr. Downing, now thoroughly irritated, pursued his investigations in the boot basket.
He went through it twice, but each time without success. After the second search, he stood up, and looked wildly round the room. He was as certain as he could be of anything that the missing piece of evidence was somewhere in the study. It was no use asking Psmith point-blank where it was, for Psmith's ability to parry dangerous questions with evasive answers was quite out of the common.
His eye roamed about the room. There was very little cover there, even for so small a fugitive as a number nine shoe. The floor could be acquitted, on sight, of harboring the quarry.
Then he caught sight of the cupboard, and something seemed to tell him that there was the place to look.
"Smith!" he said.
Psmith had been reading placidly all the while.
"Yes, sir?"
"What is in this cupboard?"
"That cupboard, sir?"
"Yes. This cupboard." Mr. Downing rapped the door irritably.
"Just a few odd trifles, sir. We do not often use it. A ball of string, perhaps. Possibly an old notebook. Nothing of value or interest.
"Open it."
"I think you will find that it is locked, sir."
"Unlock it."
"But where is the key, sir?"
"Have you not got the key?"
"If the key is not in the lock, sir, you may depend upon it that it will take a long search to find it."
"Where did you see it last?"
"It was in the lock yesterday morning. Jackson might have taken it."
"Where is Jackson?"
"Out in the field somewhere, sir."
Mr. Downing thought for a moment.
"I don't believe a word of it," he said shortly. "I have my reasons for thinking that you are deliberately keeping the contents of that cupboard from me. I shall break open the door."
Psmith got up.
"I'm afraid you mustn't do that, sir."
Mr. Downing stared, amazed.
"Are you aware whom you are talking to, Smith?" he inquired icily.
"Yes, sir. And I know it's not Mr. Outwood, to whom that cupboard happens to belong. If you wish to break it open, you must get his permission. He is the sole lessee and proprietor of that cupboard. I am only the acting manager."
Mr. Downing paused. He also reflected. Mr. Outwood in the general rule did not count much in the scheme of things, but possibly there were limits to the treating of him as if he did not exist. To enter his house without his permission and search it to a certain extent was all very well. But when it came to breaking up his furniture, perhaps...!
On the other hand, there was the maddening thought that if he left the study in search of Mr. Outwood, in order to obtain his sanction for the house-breaking work which he proposed to carry through, Smith would be alone in the room. And he knew that if Smith were left alone in the room, he would instantly remove the shoe to some other hiding place. He thoroughly disbelieved the story of the lost key. He was perfectly convinced that the missing shoe was in the cupboard.
He stood chewing these thoughts for a while, Psmith in the meantime standing in a graceful attitude in front of the cupboard, staring into vacancy.
Then he was seized with a happy idea. Why should he leave the room at all? If he sent Smith, then he himself could wait and make certain that the cupboard was not tampered with.
"Smith," he said, "go and find Mr. Outwood, and ask him to be good enough to come here for a moment."
"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 button, 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 spankershouldbe 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 assure 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,whatis 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."
"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 shoe 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 dumbbell 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 focused 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 shoe. 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 that he looked like a chimney sweep at work.
"Did—you—put—that—shoe—there, Smith?" he asked slowly.
"Yes, sir."
"Then what did youMEANby putting it there?" roared Mr. Downing.
"Animal spirits, sir," said Psmith.
"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 soot-covered 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 knockout.
"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 afterglow 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 shoe. 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 realized. 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 shoe in safe hiding, until he would 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 shoe 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.
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 gym shoes.
Edmund, summoned from the hinterland of the house to give his opinion why only one of Mike's shoes was to be found, had no views on the subject. He seemed to look on it as one of these 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 shoe."
Edmund turned this over in his mind, and then said, "No, sir," as much as to say, "I may have lost a shoe, but, thank goodness, I can still understand sound reasoning."
"Well, what am I to do? Whereisthe other shoe?"
"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 gym shoes 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 realize 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 sandbagged the headmaster. So in the case of shoes. School rules decree that a boy shall go to his form room in shoes. There is no real reason why, if the day is fine, he should not wear gym shoes, should he prefer them. But, if he does, the thing creates a perfect sensation. Boys say, "Great Scott, whathaveyou got on?" Masters say, "Jones,whatare 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 gym 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 circumstance. 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 gym shoes instead of the more formal kind, 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-gym-shoeist in the whole list of English schoolmasters. He waged war remorselessly against gym 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 gym 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 heelless Turkish bath slippers, of a vivid crimson; and the subsequent proceedings, including his journey over to the house to change the heelless 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.
"Whatare you wearing on your feet, Jackson?"
"Gym shoes, sir."
"You are wearing gym shoes? Are you not aware that gym shoes are not the proper things to come to school in? Why are you wearing gym shoes?"
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 shoes, 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 gym shoes, with the explanation that he had lost a shoe, completed the chain. As Columbus must have felt when his ship ran into harbor, 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.
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 the 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 in life, had shirked early-morning fielding practice in his first term at Wrykyn. And Stone and Robinson had but a lukewarm 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 equaled 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 games 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 today'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 tomorrow," he said briskly, "at six."
"Before breakfast?" said Robinson.
"Rather. You two must buck up, you know. You were rotten today." And he passed on, leaving the two malcontents speechless.
Stone was the first to recover.
"I'm hanged if I turn out tomorrow," 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 around, 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 rapt 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. Today, however, though the house prefects expressed varying degrees of excitement at the news that Sheppard 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 the 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 nonstarters 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 backward against the captain.
"Sorry," said Stone. "Hello, 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow?" said Adair.
"All right," said Stone.
"Thanks. How about you, Robinson?"
Robinson had been a petrified spectator of the Captain-Kettle-like maneuvers 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."