r member of
his house.

Riglett slunk up in the shamefaced way peculiar to some boys, even when
they have done nothing wrong, and, having "capped" Mr. Downing with the
air of one who had been caught in the act of doing something
particularly shady, requested that he might be allowed to fetch his
bicycle from the shed.

"Your bicycle?" snapped Mr. Downing. Much thinking had made him
irritable. "What do you want with your bicycle?"

Riglett shuffled, stood first on his left foot, then on his right,
blushed, and finally remarked, as if it were not so much a sound reason
as a sort of feeble excuse for the low and blackguardly fact that he
wanted his bicycle, that he had got leave for tea that afternoon.

Then Mr. Downing remembered. Riglett had an aunt resident about three
miles from the school, whom he was accustomed to visit occasionally on
Sunday afternoons during the term.

He felt for his bunch of keys, and made his way to the shed, Riglett
shambling behind at an interval of two yards.

Mr. Downing unlocked the door, and there on the floor was the Clue!

A clue that even Doctor Watson could not have overlooked.

Mr. Downing saw it, but did not immediately recognize it for what it
was. What he saw at first was not a clue, but just a mess. He had a tidy
soul and abhorred messes. And this was a particularly messy mess. The
greater part of the flooring in the neighborhood of the door was a sea
of red paint. The tin from which it had flowed was lying on its side in
the middle of the shed. The air was full of the pungent scent.

"Pah!" said Mr. Downing.

Then suddenly, beneath the disguise of the mess, he saw the clue. A
footmark! No less. A crimson footmark on the gray concrete!

Riglett, who had been waiting patiently two yards away, now coughed
plaintively. The sound recalled Mr. Downing to mundane matters.

"Get your bicycle, Riglett," he said, "and be careful where you tread.
Somebody has upset a pot of paint on the floor."

Riglett, walking delicately through dry places, extracted his bicycle
from the rack, and presently departed to gladden the heart of his aunt,
leaving Mr. Downing, his brain fizzing with the enthusiasm of the
detective, to lock the door and resume his perambulation of the
cricket field.

Give Doctor Watson a fair start, and he is a demon at the game. Mr.
Downing's brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which a
professional sleuth might have envied.

Paint. Red paint. O