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 all the while
that it was creasing his waistcoat, and dumped it down on the study
floor. Mr. Downing stooped eagerly over it. Psmith leaned against the
wall, and straightened out the damaged garment.

"We have here, sir," he said, "a fair selection of our various
bootings."

Mr. Downing looked up.

"You dropped none of the shoes on your way up, Smith?"

"Not one, sir. It was a fine performance."

Mr. Downing uttered a grunt of satisfaction, and bent once more to his
task. Shoes flew about the room. Mr. Downing knelt on the floor beside
the basket, and dug like a terrier at a rathole.

At last he made a dive, and, with an exclamation of triumph, rose to his
feet. In his hand he held a shoe.

"Put those back again, Smith," he said.

The ex-Etonian, wearing an expression such as a martyr might have worn
on being told off for the stake, began to pick up the scattered
footgear, whistling softly the tune of "I do all the dirty work," as
he did so.

"That's the lot, sir," he said, rising.

"Ah. Now come across with me to the headmaster's house. Leave the basket
here. You can carry it back when you return."

"Shall I put back that shoe, sir?"

"Certainly not. I shall take this with me, of course."

"Shall I carry it, sir?"

Mr. Downing reflected.

"Yes, Smith," he said. "I think it would be best."

It occurred to him that the spectacle of a house master wandering abroad
on the public highway, carrying a dirty shoe, might be a trifle
undignified. You never knew whom you might meet on Sunday afternoon.

Psmith took the shoe, and doing so, understood what before had puzzled
him.

Across the toe of the shoe was a broad splash of red paint.

He knew nothing, of course, of the upset tin in the bicycle shed; but
when a housemaster's dog has been painted red in the night, and when, on
the following day, the housemaster goes about in search of a paint
splashed shoe, one puts two and two together. Psmith looked at the name
inside the shoe. It was "Brown bootmaker, Bridgnorth." Bridgnorth was
only a few miles from his own home and Mike's. Undoubtedly it was
Mike's shoe.

"Can you tell me whose shoe that is?" asked Mr. Downing.

Psmith looked at it again.

"No, sir. I can't say the little chap's familiar to me."

"Come with me, then."

M