Something New

For the Doctor Watsons of this world, as opposed to the Sherlock Holmeses, success in the province of detective work must always be, to a very large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract a clew from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar ash; but Doctor Watson has to have it taken out for him and dusted, and exhibited clearly, with a label attached.

The average man is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in a patronizing manner at that humble follower of the great investigator; but as a matter of fact we should have been just as dull ourselves. We should not even have risen to the modest height of a Scotland Yard bungler.

Baxter was a Doctor Watson. What he wanted was a clew; but it is so hard for the novice to tell what is a clew and what is not. And then he happened to look down—and there on the floor was a clew that nobody could have overlooked.

Baxter saw it, but did not immediately recognize it for what it was. What he saw, at first, was not a clew, but just a mess. He had a tidy soul and abhorred messes, and this was a particularly messy mess. A considerable portion of the floor was a sea of red paint. The can from which it had flowed was lying on its side—near the wall. He had noticed that the smell of paint had seemed particularly pungent, but had attributed this to a new freshet of energy on the part of Lord Emsworth. He had not perceived that paint had been spilled.

"Pah!" said Baxter.

Then suddenly, beneath the disguise of the mess, he saw the clew. A footmark! No less. A crimson footmark on the polished wood! It was as clear and distinct as though it had been left there for the purpose of assisting him. It was a feminine footmark, the print of a slim and pointed shoe.

This perplexed Baxter. He had looked on the siege of the scarab as an exclusively male affair. But he was not perplexed long. What could be simpler than that Mr. Peters should have enlisted female aid? The female of the species is more deadly than the male. Probably she makes a better purloiner of scarabs. At any rate, there the footprint was, unmistakably feminine.

Inspiration came to him. Aline Peters had a maid! What more likely than that secretly she should be a hireling of Mr. Peters, on whom he had now come to look as a man of the blackest and most sinister character? Mr. Peters was a collector; and when a collector makes up his mind to secure a treasure, he employs, Baxter knew, every possible means to that end.

Baxter was now in a state of great excitement. He was hot on the scent and his brain was working like a buzz saw in an ice box. According to his reasoning, if Aline Peters' maid had done this thing there should be red paint in the hall marking her retreat, and possibly a faint stain on the stairs leading to the servants' bedrooms.

He hastened from the museum and subjected the hall to a keen scrutiny. Yes; there was red paint on the carpet. He passed through the green-baize door and examined the stairs. On the bottom step there was a faint but conclusive stain of crimson!

He was wondering how best to follow up this clew when he perceived Ashe coming down the stairs. Ashe, like Baxter, and as the result of a night disturbed by anxious thoughts, had also overslept himself.

There are moments when the giddy excitement of being right on the trail causes the amateur—or Watsonian—detective to be incautious. If Baxter had been wise he would have achieved his object—the getting a glimpse of Joan's shoes—by a devious and snaky route. As it was, zeal getting the better of prudence, he rushed straight on. His early suspicion of Ashe had been temporarily obscured. Whatever Ashe's claims to be a suspect, it had not been his footprint Baxter had seen in the museum.

"Here, you!" said the Efficient Baxter excitedly.

"Sir?"

"The shoes!"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I wish to see the servants' shoes. Where are they?"

"I expect they have them on, sir."

"Yesterday's shoes, man—yesterday's shoes. Where are they?"

"Where are the shoes of yesteryear?" murmured Ashe. "I should say at a venture, sir, that they would be in a large basket somewhere near the kitchen. Our genial knife-and-shoe boy collects them, I believe, at early dawn."

"Would they have been cleaned yet?"

"If I know the lad, sir—no."

"Go and bring that basket to me. Bring it to me in this room."

* * *

The room to which he referred was none other than the private sanctum of Mr. Beach, the butler, the door of which, standing open, showed it to be empty. It was not Baxter's plan, excited as he was, to risk being discovered sifting shoes in the middle of a passage in the servants' quarters.

Ashe's brain was working rapidly as he made for the shoe cupboard, that little den of darkness and smells, where Billy, the knife-and-shoe boy, better known in the circle in which he moved as Young Bonehead, pursued his menial tasks. What exactly was at the back of the Efficient Baxter's mind prompting these maneuvers he did not know; but that there was something he was certain.