Mike, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse [e books for reading txt] 📗
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it as a sort of affectation to go out by the door. I suppose none of
you merchants can give me any idea when the next knockabout
entertainment of this kind is likely to take place?”
“I wonder who rang that bell!” said Stone. “Jolly sporting idea.”
“I believe it was Downing himself. If it was, I hope he’s satisfied.”
Jellicoe, who was appearing in society supported by a stick, looked
meaningly at Mike, and giggled, receiving in answer a stony stare.
Mike had informed Jellicoe of the details of his interview with Mr.
Barley at the “White Boar,” and Jellicoe, after a momentary splutter
of wrath against the practical joker, was now in a particularly
light-hearted mood. He hobbled about, giggling at nothing and at
peace with all the world.
“It was a stirring scene,” said Psmith. “The agility with which
Comrade Jellicoe boosted himself down the shoot was a triumph of mind
over matter. He seemed to forget his ankle. It was the nearest thing
to a Boneless Acrobatic Wonder that I have ever seen.”
“I was in a beastly funk, I can tell you.”
Stone gurgled.
“So was I,” he said, “for a bit. Then, when I saw that it was all a
rag, I began to look about for ways of doing the thing really well. I
emptied about six jugs of water on a gang of kids under my window.”
“I rushed into Downing’s, and ragged some of the beds,” said Robinson.
“It was an invigorating time,” said Psmith. “A sort of pageant. I was
particularly struck with the way some of the bright lads caught hold
of the idea. There was no skimping. Some of the kids, to my certain
knowledge, went down the shoot a dozen times. There’s nothing like
doing a thing thoroughly. I saw them come down, rush upstairs, and be
saved again, time after time. The thing became chronic with them. I
should say Comrade Downing ought to be satisfied with the high state
of efficiency to which he has brought us. At any rate I hope–-”
There was a sound of hurried footsteps outside the door, and Sharpe, a
member of the senior day-room, burst excitedly in. He seemed amused.
“I say, have you chaps seen Sammy?”
“Seen who?” said Stone. “Sammy? Why?”
“You’ll know in a second. He’s just outside. Here, Sammy, Sammy,
Sammy! Sam! Sam!”
A bark and a patter of feet outside.
“Come on, Sammy. Good dog.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then a great yell of laughter burst
forth. Even Psmith’s massive calm was shattered. As for Jellicoe, he
sobbed in a corner.
Sammy’s beautiful white coat was almost entirely concealed by a thick
covering of bright red paint. His head, with the exception of the
ears, was untouched, and his serious, friendly eyes seemed to
emphasise the weirdness of his appearance. He stood in the doorway,
barking and wagging his tail, plainly puzzled at his reception. He was
a popular dog, and was always well received when he visited any of the
houses, but he had never before met with enthusiasm like this.
“Good old Sammy!”
“What on earth’s been happening to him?”
“Who did it?”
Sharpe, the introducer, had no views on the matter.
“I found him outside Downing’s, with a crowd round him. Everybody
seems to have seen him. I wonder who on earth has gone and mucked him
up like that!”
Mike was the first to show any sympathy for the maltreated animal.
“Poor old Sammy,” he said, kneeling on the floor beside the victim,
and scratching him under the ear. “What a beastly shame! It’ll take
hours to wash all that off him, and he’ll hate it.”
“It seems to me,” said Psmith, regarding Sammy dispassionately through
his eyeglass, “that it’s not a case for mere washing. They’ll either
have to skin him bodily, or leave the thing to time. Time, the Great
Healer. In a year or two he’ll fade to a delicate pink. I don’t see
why you shouldn’t have a pink bull-terrier. It would lend a touch of
distinction to the place. Crowds would come in excursion trains to see
him. By charging a small fee you might make him self-supporting. I
think I’ll suggest it to Comrade Downing.”
“There’ll be a row about this,” said Stone.
“Rows are rather sport when you’re not mixed up in them,” said
Robinson, philosophically. “There’ll be another if we don’t start off
for chapel soon. It’s a quarter to.”
There was a general move. Mike was the last to leave the room. As he
was going, Jellicoe stopped him. Jellicoe was staying in that Sunday,
owing to his ankle.
“I say,” said Jellicoe, “I just wanted to thank you again about
that–-”
“Oh, that’s all right.”
“No, but it really was awfully decent of you. You might have got into
a frightful row. Were you nearly caught?”
“Jolly nearly.”
“It was you who rang the bell, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, it was. But for goodness sake don’t go gassing about it, or
somebody will get to hear who oughtn’t to, and I shall be sacked.”
“All right. But, I say, you are a chap!”
“What’s the matter now?”
“I mean about Sammy, you know. It’s a jolly good score off old
Downing. He’ll be frightfully sick.”
“Sammy!” cried Mike. “My good man, you don’t think I did that, do you?
What absolute rot! I never touched the poor brute.”
“Oh, all right,” said Jellicoe. “But I wasn’t going to tell any one,
of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“You are a chap!” giggled Jellicoe.
Mike walked to chapel rather thoughtfully.
MR. DOWNING ON THE SCENT
There was just one moment, the moment in which, on going down to the
junior day-room of his house to quell an unseemly disturbance, he was
boisterously greeted by a vermilion bull terrier, when Mr. Downing was
seized with a hideous fear lest he had lost his senses. Glaring down
at the crimson animal that was pawing at his knees, he clutched at his
reason for one second as a drowning man clutches at a lifebelt.
Then the happy laughter of the young onlookers reassured him.
“Who—” he shouted, “WHO has done this?”
[Illustration: “WHO—” HE SHOUTED, “WHO HAS DONE THIS?”]
“Please, sir, we don’t know,” shrilled the chorus.
“Please, sir, he came in like that.”
“Please, sir, we were sitting here when he suddenly ran in, all red.”
A voice from the crowd: “Look at old Sammy!”
The situation was impossible. There was nothing to be done. He could
not find out by verbal inquiry who had painted the dog. The
possibility of Sammy being painted red during the night had never
occurred to Mr. Downing, and now that the thing had happened he had no
scheme of action. As Psmith would have said, he had confused the
unusual with the impossible, and the result was that he was taken by
surprise.
While he was pondering on this the situation was rendered still more
difficult by Sammy, who, taking advantage of the door being open,
escaped and rushed into the road, thus publishing his condition to all
and sundry. You can hush up a painted dog while it confines itself to
your own premises, but once it has mixed with the great public this
becomes out of the question. Sammy’s state advanced from a private
trouble into a row. Mr. Downing’s next move was in the same direction
that Sammy had taken, only, instead of running about the road, he went
straight to the headmaster.
The Head, who had had to leave his house in the small hours in his
pyjamas and a dressing-gown, was not in the best of tempers. He had a
cold in the head, and also a rooted conviction that Mr. Downing, in
spite of his strict orders, had rung the bell himself on the previous
night in order to test the efficiency of the school in saving
themselves in the event of fire. He received the housemaster frostily,
but thawed as the latter related the events which had led up to the
ringing of the bell.
“Dear me!” he said, deeply interested. “One of the boys at the school,
you think?”
“I am certain of it,” said Mr. Downing.
“Was he wearing a school cap?”
“He was bare-headed. A boy who breaks out of his house at night would
hardly run the risk of wearing a distinguishing cap.”
“No, no, I suppose not. A big boy, you say?”
“Very big.”
“You did not see his face?”
“It was dark and he never looked back—he was in front of me all the
time.”
“Dear me!”
“There is another matter–-”
“Yes?”
“This boy, whoever he was, had done something before he rang the
bell—he had painted my dog Sampson red.”
The headmaster’s eyes protruded from their sockets. “He—he—what,
Mr. Downing?”
“He painted my dog red—bright red.” Mr. Downing was too angry to see
anything humorous in the incident. Since the previous night he had
been wounded in his tenderest feelings. His Fire Brigade system had
been most shamefully abused by being turned into a mere instrument in
the hands of a malefactor for escaping justice, and his dog had been
held up to ridicule to all the world. He did not want to smile, he
wanted revenge.
The headmaster, on the other hand, did want to smile. It was not his
dog, he could look on the affair with an unbiased eye, and to him
there was something ludicrous in a white dog suddenly appearing as a
red dog.
“It is a scandalous thing!” said Mr. Downing.
“Quite so! Quite so!” said the headmaster hastily. “I shall punish the
boy who did it most severely. I will speak to the school in the Hall
after chapel.”
Which he did, but without result. A cordial invitation to the criminal
to come forward and be executed was received in wooden silence by the
school, with the exception of Johnson III., of Outwood’s, who,
suddenly reminded of Sammy’s appearance by the headmaster’s words,
broke into a wild screech of laughter, and was instantly awarded two
hundred lines.
The school filed out of the Hall to their various lunches, and Mr.
Downing was left with the conviction that, if he wanted the criminal
discovered, he would have to discover him for himself.
The great thing in affairs of this kind is to get a good start, and
Fate, feeling perhaps that it had been a little hard upon Mr. Downing,
gave him a most magnificent start. Instead of having to hunt for a
needle in a haystack, he found himself in a moment in the position of
being set to find it in a mere truss of straw.
It was Mr. Outwood who helped him. Sergeant Collard had waylaid the
archaeological expert on his way to chapel, and informed him that at
close on twelve the night before he had observed a youth, unidentified,
attempting to get into his house via the water-pipe. Mr. Outwood,
whose thoughts were occupied with apses and plinths, not to mention
cromlechs, at the time, thanked the sergeant with absent-minded
politeness and passed on. Later he remembered the fact � propos
of some reflections on the subject of burglars in mediaeval England,
and passed it on to Mr. Downing as they walked back to lunch.
“Then the boy was in your house!” exclaimed Mr. Downing.
“Not actually in, as
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