"Jackson, sir. The cricketer."

"Never mind about his cricket, Smith," said Mr. Downing with
irritation.

"No, sir."

"He is the only other occupant of the room?"

"Yes, sir."

"Nobody else comes into it?"

"If they do, they go out extremely quickly, sir."

"Ah! Thank you, Smith."

"Not at all, sir."

Mr. Downing pondered. Jackson! The boy bore him a grudge. The boy was
precisely the sort of boy to revenge himself by painting the dog
Sammy. And, gadzooks! The boy whom he had pursued last night had been
just about Jackson's size and build!

Mr. Downing was as firmly convinced at that moment that Mike's had
been the hand to wield the paint-brush as he had ever been of anything
in his life.

"Smith!" he said excitedly.

"On the spot, sir," said Psmith affably.

"Where are Jackson's boots?"

There are moments when the giddy excitement of being right on the
trail causes the amateur (or Watsonian) detective to be incautious.
Such a moment came to Mr. Downing then. If he had been wise, he would
have achieved his object, the getting a glimpse of Mike's boots, by a
devious and snaky route. As it was, he rushed straight on.

"His boots, sir? He has them on. I noticed them as he went out just
now."

"Where is the pair he wore yesterday?"

"Where are the boots of yester-year?" murmured Psmith to himself. "I
should say at a venture, sir, that they would be in the basket
downstairs. Edmund, our genial knife-and-boot boy, collects them, I
believe, at early dawn."

"Would they have been cleaned yet?"

"If I know Edmund, sir--no."

"Smith," said Mr. Downing, trembling with excitement, "go and bring
that basket to me here."

Psmith's brain was working rapidly as he went downstairs. What exactly
was at the back of the sleuth's mind, prompting these manoeuvres, he
did not know. But that there was something, and that that something
was directed in a hostile manner against Mike, probably in connection
with last night's wild happenings, he was certain. Psmith had noticed,
on leaving his bed at the sound of the alarm bell, that he and
Jellicoe were alone in the room. That might mean that Mike had gone
out through the door when the bell sounded, or it might mean that he
had been out all the time. It began to look as if the latter solution
were the correct one.

* * * * *

He staggered back with the basket, painfully conscious the while that
it was creasing his waistcoat, and du