ave 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 spanker _should_ be 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