Mike

Psmith!  Mike was more than surprised.  He could not believe it.  There is nothing which affords so clear an index to a boy’s character as the type of rag which he considers humorous.  Between what is a rag and what is merely a rotten trick there is a very definite line drawn.  Masters, as a rule, do not realise this, but boys nearly always do.  Mike could not imagine Psmith doing a rotten thing like covering a housemaster’s dog with red paint, any more than he could imagine doing it himself.  They had both been amused at the sight of Sammy after the operation, but anybody, except possibly the owner of the dog, would have thought it funny at first.  After the first surprise, their feeling had been that it was a scuggish thing to have done and beastly rough luck on the poor brute.  It was a kid’s trick.  As for Psmith having done it, Mike simply did not believe it.

“Smith!” said the headmaster.  “What makes you think that?”

“Simply this,” said Mr. Downing, with calm triumph, “that the boy himself came to me a few moments ago and confessed.”

Mike was conscious of a feeling of acute depression.  It did not make him in the least degree jubilant, or even thankful, to know that he himself was cleared of the charge.  All he could think of was that Psmith was done for.  This was bound to mean the sack.  If Psmith had painted Sammy, it meant that Psmith had broken out of his house at night:  and it was not likely that the rules about nocturnal wandering were less strict at Sedleigh than at any other school in the kingdom.  Mike felt, if possible, worse than he had felt when Wyatt had been caught on a similar occasion.  It seemed as if Fate had a special grudge against his best friends.  He did not make friends very quickly or easily, though he had always had scores of acquaintances—­and with Wyatt and Psmith he had found himself at home from the first moment he had met them.

He sat there, with a curious feeling of having swallowed a heavy weight, hardly listening to what Mr. Downing was saying.  Mr. Downing was talking rapidly to the headmaster, who was nodding from time to time.

Mike took advantage of a pause to get up.  “May I go, sir?” he said.

“Certainly, Jackson, certainly,” said the Head.  “Oh, and er—­, if you are going back to your house, tell Smith that I should like to see him.”

“Yes, sir.”

He had reached the door, when again there was a knock.

“Come in,” said the headmaster.

It was Adair.

“Yes, Adair?”

Adair was breathing rather heavily, as if he had been running.

“It was about Sammy—­Sampson, sir,” he said, looking at Mr. Downing.

“Ah, we know—.  Well, Adair, what did you wish to say?”

“It wasn’t Jackson who did it, sir.”

“No, no, Adair.  So Mr. Downing——­”

“It was Dunster, sir.”

Terrific sensation!  The headmaster gave a sort of strangled yelp of astonishment.  Mr. Downing leaped in his chair.  Mike’s eyes opened to their fullest extent.

“Adair!”

There was almost a wail in the headmaster’s voice.  The situation had suddenly become too much for him.  His brain was swimming.  That Mike, despite the evidence against him, should be innocent, was curious, perhaps, but not particularly startling.  But that Adair should inform him, two minutes after Mr. Downing’s announcement of Psmith’s confession, that Psmith, too, was guiltless, and that the real criminal was Dunster—­it was this that made him feel that somebody, in the words of an American author, had played a mean trick on him, and substituted for his brain a side-order of cauliflower.  Why Dunster, of all people?  Dunster, who, he remembered dizzily, had left the school at Christmas.  And why, if Dunster had really painted the dog, had Psmith asserted that he himself was the culprit?  Why—­why anything?  He concentrated his mind on Adair as the only person who could save him from impending brain-fever.

“Adair!”

“Yes, sir?”

“What—­what do you mean?”

“It was Dunster, sir.  I got a letter from him only five minutes ago, in which he said that he had painted Sammy—­Sampson, the dog, sir, for a rag—­for a joke, and that, as he didn’t want any one here to get into a row—­be punished for it, I’d better tell Mr. Downing at once.  I tried to find Mr. Downing, but he wasn’t in the house.  Then I met Smith outside the house, and he told me that Mr. Downing had gone over to see you, sir.”

“Smith told you?” said Mr. Downing.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you say anything to him about your having received this letter from Dunster?”

“I gave him the letter to read, sir.”

“And what was his attitude when he had read it?”

“He laughed, sir.”

“Laughed!” Mr. Downing’s voice was thunderous.

“Yes, sir.  He rolled about.”

Mr. Downing snorted.

“But Adair,” said the headmaster, “I do not understand how this thing could have been done by Dunster.  He has left the school.”

“He was down here for the Old Sedleighans’ match, sir.  He stopped the night in the village.”

“And that was the night the—­it happened?”

“Yes, sir.”