Something Fresh

by P. G. Wodehouse

  "It seems to me, my dear fellow," he said, "the only explanation that will square with the facts. A shoe that is really smeared with red paint does not become black of itself in the course of a few minutes."

  "You are very right, your lordship," said Ashe approvingly. "May I go now, your lordship?"

  "Certainly--certainly; by all means."

  "Shall I take the shoe with me, your lordship?"

  "If you do not want it, Baxter."

  The secretary passed the fraudulent piece of evidence to Ashe without a word; and the latter, having included both gentlemen in a kindly smile, left the garden.

  On returning to the butler's room, Ashe's first act was to remove a shoe from the top of the pile in the basket. He was about to leave the room with it, when the sound of footsteps in the passage outside halted him.

  "I do not in the least understand why you wish me to come here, my dear Baxter," said a voice, "and you are completely spoiling my morning, but--"

  For a moment Ashe was at a loss. It was a crisis that called for swift action, and it was a little hard to know exactly what to do. It had been his intention to carry the paint-splashed shoe back to his own room, there to clean it at his leisure; but it appeared that his strategic line of retreat was blocked. Plainly, the possibility--nay, the certainty--that Ashe had substituted another shoe for the one with the incriminating splash of paint on it had occurred to the Efficient Baxter almost directly the former had left the garden.

  The window was open. Ashe looked out. There were bushes below. It was a makeshift policy, and one which did not commend itself to him as the ideal method, but it seemed the only thing to be done, for already the footsteps had reached the door. He threw the shoe out of window, and it sank beneath the friendly surface of the long grass round a wisteria bush.

  Ashe turned, relieved, and the next moment the door opened and Baxter walked in, accompanied--with obvious reluctance---by his bored employer.

  Baxter was brisk and peremptory.

  "I wish to look at those shoes again," he said coldly.

  "Certainly, sir," said Ashe.

  "I can manage without your assistance," said Baxter.

  "Very good, Sir."

  Leaning against the wall, Ashe watched him with silent interest, as he burrowed among the contents of the basket, like a terrier digging for rats. The Earl of Emsworth took no notice of the proceedings. He yawned plaintively, and pottered about the room. He was one of Nature's potterers.

  The scrutiny of the man whom he had now placed definitely as a malefactor irritated Baxter. Ashe was looking at him in an insufferably tolerant manner, as if he were an indulgent father brooding over his infant son while engaged in some childish frolic. He lodged a protest.

  "Don't stand there staring at me!"

  "I was interested in what you were doing, sir."

  "Never mind! Don't stare at me in that idiotic way."

  "May I read a book, sir?"

  "Yes, read if you like."

  "Thank you, sir."

  Ashe took a volume from the butler's slenderly stocked shelf. The shoe-expert resumed his investigations in the basket. He went through it twice, but each time without success. After the second search he stood up and looked wildly about the room. He was as certain as he could be of anything that the missing piece of evidence was somewhere within those four walls. There was very little cover in the room, even for so small a fugitive as a shoe. He raised the tablecloth and peered beneath the table.

  "Are you looking for Mr. Beach, sir?" said Ashe. "I think he has gone to church."

  Baxter, pink with his exertions, fastened a baleful glance upon him.

  "You had better be careful," he said.

  At this point the Earl of Emsworth, having done all the pottering possible in the restricted area, yawned like an alligator.

  "Now, my dear Baxter--" he began querulously.

  Baxter was not listening. He was on the trail. He had caught sight of a small closet in the wall, next to the mantelpiece, and it had stimulated him.

  "What is in this closet?"

  "That closet, sir?"

  "Yes, this closet." He rapped the door irritably.

  "I could not say, sir. Mr. Beach, to whom the closet belongs, possibly keeps a few odd trifles there. A ball of string, perhaps. Maybe an old pipe or something of that kind. Probably nothing of value or interest."

  "Open it."

  "It appears to be locked, sir-"

  "Unlock it."

  "But where is the key?"

  Baxter thought for a moment.

  "Lord Emsworth," he said, "I have my reasons for thinking that this man is deliberately keeping the contents of this closet from me. I am convinced that the shoe is in there. Have I your leave to break open the door?"

  The earl looked a little dazed, as if he were unequal to the intellectual pressure of the conversation.

  "Now, my dear Baxter," said the earl impatiently, "please tell me once again why you have brought me in here. I cannot make head or tail of what you have been saying. Apparently you accuse this young man of keeping his shoes in a closet. Why should you suspect him of keeping his shoes in a closet? And if he wishes to do so, why on earth should not he keep his shoes in a closet? This is a free country."

  "Exactly, your lordship," said Ashe approvingly. "You have touched the spot."

  "It all has to do with the theft of your scarab, Lord Emsworth. Somebody got into the museum and stole the scarab."

  "Ah, yes; ah, yes--so they did. I remember now. You told me. Bad, business that, my dear Baxter. Mr. Peters gave me that scarab. He will be most deucedly annoyed if it's lost. Yes, indeed."

  "Whoever stole it upset the can of red paint and stepped in it."

  "Devilish careless of them. It must have made the dickens of a mess. Why don't people look where they are walking?"

  "I suspect this man of shielding the criminal by hiding her shoe in this closet."

  "Oh, it's not his own shoes that this young man keeps in closets?"

  "It is a woman's shoe, Lord Emsworth."

  "The deuce it is! Then it was a woman who stole the scarab? Is that the way you figure it out? Bless my soul, Baxter, one wonders what women are coming to nowadays. It's all this movement, I suppose. The Vote, and all that--eh? I recollect having a chat with the Marquis of Petersfield some time ago. He is in the Cabinet, and he tells me it is perfectly infernal the way these women carry on. He said sometimes it got to such a pitch, with them waving banners and presenting petitions, and throwing flour and things at a fellow, that if he saw his own mother coming toward him, with a hand behind her back, he would run like a rabbit. Told me so himself."

  "So," said the Efficient Baxter, cutting in on the flow of speech, "what I wish to do is to break open this closet."

  "Eh? Why?"

  "To get the shoe."

  "The shoe?... Ah, yes, I recollect now. You were telling me."

  "If your lordship has no objection."

  "Objection, my dear fellow? None in the world. Why should I have any objection? Let me see! What is it you wish to do?"

  "This," said Baxter shortly.

  He seized the poker from the fireplace and delivered two rapid blows on the closet door. The wood was splintered. A third blow smashed the flimsy lock. The closet, with any skeletons it might contain, was open for all to view.

  It contained a corkscrew, a box of matches, a paper-covered copy of a book entitled "Mary, the Beautiful Mill-Hand," a bottle of embrocation, a spool of cotton, two pencil-stubs, and other useful and entertaining objects. It contained, in fact, almost everything except a paint-splashed shoe, and Baxter gazed at the collection in dumb disappointment.

  "Are you satisfied now, my dear Baxter," said the earl, "or is there any more furniture that you would like to break? You know, this furniture breaking is becoming a positive craze with you, my dear fellow. You ought to fight against it. The night before last, I don't know how many tables broken in the hall; and now this closet. You will
ruin me. No purse can stand the constant drain."

  Baxter did not reply. He was still trying to rally from the blow. A chance remark of Lord Emsworth's set him off on the trail once more. Lord Emsworth, having said his say, had dismissed the affair from his mind and begun to potter again. The course of his pottering had brought him to the fireplace, where a little pile of soot on the fender caught his eye. He bent down to inspect it.

  "Dear me!" he said. "I must remember to tell Beach to have his chimney swept. It seems to need it badly."

  No trumpet-call ever acted more instantaneously on old war-horse than this simple remark on the Efficient Baxter. He was still convinced that Ashe had hidden the shoe somewhere in the room, and, now that the closet had proved an alibi, the chimney was the only spot that remained unsearched. He dived forward with a rush, nearly knocking Lord Emsworth off his feet, and thrust an arm up into the unknown. The startled peer, having recovered his balance, met Ashe's respectfully pitying gaze.

  "We must humor him," said the gaze, more plainly than speech.

  Baxter continued to grope. The chimney was a roomy chimney, and needed careful examination. He wriggled his hand about clutchingly. From time to time soot fell in gentle showers.

  "My dear Baxter!"

  Baxter was baffled. He withdrew his hand from the chimney, and straightened himself. He brushed a bead of perspiration from his face with the back of his hand. Unfortunately, he used the sooty hand, and the result was too much for Lord Emsworth's politeness. He burst into a series of pleased chuckles.

  "Your face, my dear Baxter! Your face! It is positively covered with soot--positively! You must go and wash it. You are quite black. Really, my dear fellow, you present rather an extraordinary appearance. Run off to your room."

  Against this crowning blow the Efficient Baxter could not stand up. It was the end.

  "Soot!" he murmured weakly. "Soot!"

  "Your face is covered, my dear fellow--quite covered."

  "It certainly has a faintly sooty aspect, sir," said Ashe.

  His voice roused the sufferer to one last flicker of spirit.

  "You will hear more of this," he said. "You will--"

  At this moment, slightly muffled by the intervening door and passageway, there came from the direction of the hall a sound like the delivery of a ton of coal. A heavy body bumped down the stairs, and a voice which all three recognized as that of the Honorable Freddie uttered an oath that lost itself in a final crash and a musical splintering sound, which Baxter for one had no difficulty in recognizing as the dissolution of occasional china.

  Even if they had not so able a detective as Baxter with them, Lord Emsworth and Ashe would have been at no loss to guess what had happened. Doctor Watson himself could have deduced it from the evidence. The Honorable Freddie had fallen downstairs.

  ...

  With a little ingenuity this portion of the story of Mr. Peters' scarab could be converted into an excellent tract, driving home the perils, even in this world, of absenting one's self from church on Sunday morning. If the Honorable Freddie had gone to church he would not have been running down the great staircase at the castle at this hour; and if he had not been running down the great staircase at the castle at that hour he would not have encountered Muriel.

  Muriel was a Persian cat belonging to Lady Ann Warblington. Lady Ann had breakfasted in bed and lain there late, as she rather fancied she had one of her sick headaches coming on. Muriel had left her room in the wake of the breakfast tray, being anxious to be present at the obsequies of a fried sole that had formed Lady Ann's simple morning meal, and had followed the maid who bore it until she had reached the hall.

  At this point the maid, who disliked Muriel, stopped and made a noise like an exploding pop bottle, at the same time taking a little run in Muriel's direction and kicking at her with a menacing foot. Muriel, wounded and startled, had turned in her tracks and sprinted back up the staircase at the exact moment when the Honorable Freddie, who for some reason was in a great hurry, ran lightly down.

  There was an instant when Freddie could have saved himself by planting a number-ten shoe on Muriel's spine, but even in that crisis he bethought him that he hardly stood solid enough with the authorities to risk adding to his misdeeds the slaughter of his aunt's favorite cat, and he executed a rapid swerve. The spared cat proceeded on her journey upstairs, while Freddie, touching the staircase at intervals, went on down.

  Having reached the bottom, he sat amid the occasional china, like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, and endeavored to ascertain the extent of his injuries. He had a dazed suspicion that he was irretrievably fractured in a dozen places. It was in this attitude that the rescue party found him. He gazed up at them with silent pathos.

  "In the name of goodness, Frederick," said Lord Emsworth peevishly, "what do you imagine you are doing?"

  Freddie endeavored to rise, but sank back again with a stifled howl.

  "It was that bally cat of Aunt Ann's," he said. "It came legging it up the stairs. I think I've broken my leg."

  "You have certainly broken everything else," said his father unsympathetically. "Between you and Baxter, I wonder there's a stick of furniture standing in the house."

  "Thanks, old chap," said Freddie gratefully as Ashe stepped forward and lent him an arm. "I think my bally ankle must have got twisted. I wish you would give me a hand up to my room."

  "And, Baxter, my dear fellow," said Lord Emsworth, "you might telephone to Doctor Bird, in Market Blandings, and ask him to be good enough to drive out. I am sorry, Freddie," he added, "that you should have met with this accident; but--but everything is so--so disturbing nowadays that I feel--I feel most disturbed."

  Ashe and the Honorable Freddie began to move across the hall--Freddie hopping, Ashe advancing with a sort of polka step. As they reached the stairs there was a sound of wheels outside and the vanguard of the house party, returned from church, entered the house.

  "It's all very well to give it out officially that Freddie has fallen downstairs and sprained his ankle," said Colonel Horace Mant, discussing the affair with the Bishop of Godalming later in the afternoon; "but it's my firm belief that that fellow Baxter did precisely as I said he would--ran amuck and inflicted dashed frightful injuries on young Freddie. When I got into the house there was Freddie being helped up the stairs, while Baxter, with his face covered with soot, was looking after him with a sort of evil grin. What had he smeared his face with soot for, I should like to know, if he were perfectly sane?

  "The whole thing is dashed fishy and mysterious and the sooner I can get Mildred safely out of the place, the better I shall be pleased. The fellow's as mad as a hatter!"

  CHAPTER X

  WHEN Lord Emsworth, sighting Mr. Peters in the group of returned churchgoers, drew him aside and broke the news that the valuable scarab, so kindly presented by him to the castle museum, had been stolen in the night by some person unknown, he thought the millionaire took it exceedingly well. Though the stolen object no longer belonged to him, Mr. Peters no doubt still continued to take an affectionate interest in it and might have been excused had he shown annoyance that his gift had been so carelessly guarded.

  Mr. Peters was, however, thoroughly magnanimous about the matter. He deprecated the notion that the earl could possibly have prevented this unfortunate occurrence. He quite understood. He was not in the least hurt. Nobody could have foreseen such a calamity. These things happened and one had to accept them. He himself had once suffered in much the same way, the gem of his collection having been removed almost beneath his eyes in the smoothest possible fashion.

  Altogether, he relieved Lord Emsworth's mind very much; and when he had finished doing so he departed swiftly and rang for Ashe. When Ashe arrived he bubbled over with enthusiasm. He was lyrical in his praise. He went so far as to slap Ashe on the back. It was only when the latter disclaimed all credit for what had occurred that he checked the flow of approbation.

  "It wasn't you who got it? Who was it,
then?"

  "It was Miss Peters' maid. It's a long story; but we were working in partnership. I tried for the thing and failed, and she succeeded."

  It was with mixed feelings that Ashe listened while Mr. Peters transferred his adjectives of commendation to Joan. He admired Joan's courage, he was relieved that her venture had ended without disaster, and he knew that she deserved whatever anyone could find to say in praise of her enterprise: but, at first, though he tried to crush it down, he could not help feeling a certain amount of chagrin that a girl should have succeeded where he, though having the advantage of first chance, had failed. The terms of his partnership with Joan had jarred on him from the beginning.

  A man may be in sympathy with the modern movement for the emancipation of woman and yet feel aggrieved when a mere girl proves herself a more efficient thief than himself. Woman is invading man's sphere more successfully every day; but there are still certain fields in which man may consider that he is rightfully entitled to a monopoly--and the purloining of scarabs in the watches of the night is surely one of them. Joan, in Ashe's opinion, should have played a meeker and less active part.

  These unworthy emotions did not last long. Whatever his other shortcomings, Ashe possessed a just mind. By the time he had found Joan, after Mr. Peters had said his say, and dispatched him below stairs for that purpose, he had purged himself of petty regrets and was prepared to congratulate her whole-heartedly. He was, however, resolved that nothing should induce him to share in the reward. On that point, he resolved, he would refuse to be shaken.

  "I have just left Mr. Peters," be began. "All is well. His check book lies before him on the table and he is trying to make his fountain pen work long enough to write a check. But there is just one thing I want to say--"

  She interrupted him. To his surprise, she was eyeing him coldly and with disapproval.

  "And there is just one thing I want to say," she said; "and that is, if you imagine I shall consent to accept a penny of the reward--"