CHAPTER XLVIII
THE SLEUTH-HOUND
For the Doctor Watsons of this world, as opposed to the SherlockHolmeses, success in the province of detective work must always be, toa very large extent, the result of luck. Sherlock Holmes can extract aclue from a wisp of straw or a flake of cigar-ash. But Doctor Watsonhas got to have it taken out for him, and dusted, and exhibitedclearly, with a label attached.
The average man is a Doctor Watson. We are wont to scoff in apatronising 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 level of a Scotland YardBungler. We should simply have hung around, saying:
"My dear Holmes, how--?" and all the rest of it, just as thedowntrodden medico did.
It is not often that the ordinary person has any need to see what hecan do in the way of detection. He gets along very comfortably in thehumdrum round of life without having to measure footprints and smilequiet, tight-lipped smiles. But if ever the emergency does arise, hethinks naturally of Sherlock Holmes, and his methods.
Mr. Downing had read all the Holmes stories with great attention, andhad thought many times what an incompetent ass Doctor Watson was; but,now that he had started to handle his own first case, he was compelledto admit that there was a good deal to be said in extenuation ofWatson's inability to unravel tangles. It certainly was uncommonlyhard, he thought, as he paced the cricket field after leaving SergeantCollard, to detect anybody, unless you knew who had really done thecrime. As he brooded over the case in hand, his sympathy for Dr.Watson increased with every minute, and he began to feel a certainresentment against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was all very well forSir Arthur to be so shrewd and infallible about tracing a mystery toits source, but he knew perfectly well who had done the thing beforehe started!
Now that he began really to look into this matter of the alarm belland the painting of Sammy, the conviction was creeping over him thatthe problem was more difficult than a casual observer might imagine.He had got as far as finding that his quarry of the previous night wasa boy in Mr. Outwood's house, but how was he to get any farther? Thatwas the thing. There were, of course, only a limited number of boys inMr. Outwood's house as tall as the one he had pursued; but even ifthere had been only one other, it would have complicated matters. Ifyou go to a boy and say, "Either you or Jones were out of your houselast night at twelve o'clock," the boy does not reply, "Sir, I cannottell a lie--I was out of my house last night at twelve o'clock." Hesimply assumes the animated expression of a stuffed fish, and leavesthe next move to you. It is practically Stalemate.
All these things passed through Mr. Downing's mind as he walked up anddown the cricket field that afternoon.
What he wanted was a clue. But it is so hard for the novice to tellwhat is a clue and what isn't. Probably, if he only knew, there wereclues lying all over the place, shouting to him to pick them up.
What with the oppressive heat of the day and the fatigue of hardthinking, Mr. Downing was working up for a brain-storm, when Fate oncemore intervened, this time in the shape of Riglett, a junior member ofhis house.
Riglett slunk up in the shamefaced way peculiar to some boys, evenwhen they have done nothing wrong, and, having capped Mr. Downing withthe air of one who has been caught in the act of doing somethingparticularly shady, requested that he might be allowed to fetch hisbicycle from the shed.
"Your bicycle?" snapped Mr. Downing. Much thinking had made himirritable. "What do you want with your bicycle?"
Riglett shuffled, stood first on his left foot, then on his right,blushed, and finally remarked, as if it were not so much a soundreason as a sort of feeble excuse for the low and blackguardly factthat he wanted his bicycle, that he had got leave for tea thatafternoon.
Then Mr. Downing remembered. Riglett had an aunt resident about threemiles from the school, whom he was accustomed to visit occasionally onSunday afternoons during the term.
He felt for his bunch of keys, and made his way to the shed, Riglettshambling behind at an interval of two yards.
Mr. Downing unlocked the door, and there on the floor was the Clue!
A clue that even Dr. Watson could not have overlooked.
Mr. Downing saw it, but did not immediately recognise it for what itwas. What he saw at first was not a Clue, but just a mess. He had atidy soul and abhorred messes. And this was a particularly messy mess.The greater part of the flooring in the neighbourhood of the door wasa sea of red paint. The tin from which it had flowed was lying on itsside in the middle of the shed. The air was full of the pungent scent.
"Pah!" said Mr. Downing.
Then suddenly, beneath the disguise of the mess, he saw the clue. Afoot-mark! No less. A crimson foot-mark on the grey concrete!
Riglett, who had been waiting patiently two yards away, now coughedplaintively. The sound recalled Mr. Downing to mundane matters.
"Get your bicycle, Riglett," he said, "and be careful where you tread.Somebody has upset a pot of paint on the floor."
Riglett, walking delicately through dry places, extracted his bicyclefrom the rack, and presently departed to gladden the heart of hisaunt, leaving Mr. Downing, his brain fizzing with the enthusiasm ofthe detective, to lock the door and resume his perambulation of thecricket field.
Give Dr. Watson a fair start, and he is a demon at the game. Mr.Downing's brain was now working with a rapidity and clearness which aprofessional sleuth might have envied.
Paint. Red paint. Obviously the same paint with which Sammy had beendecorated. A foot-mark. Whose foot-mark? Plainly that of the criminalwho had done the deed of decoration.
Yoicks!
There were two things, however, to be considered. Your carefuldetective must consider everything. In the first place, the paintmight have been upset by the ground-man. It was the ground-man'spaint. He had been giving a fresh coating to the wood-work in front ofthe pavilion scoring-box at the conclusion of yesterday's match. (Alabour of love which was the direct outcome of the enthusiasm for workwhich Adair had instilled into him.) In that case the foot-mark mightbe his.
_Note one_: Interview the ground-man on this point.
In the second place Adair might have upset the tin and trodden in itscontents when he went to get his bicycle in order to fetch the doctorfor the suffering MacPhee. This was the more probable of the twocontingencies, for it would have been dark in the shed when Adair wentinto it.
_Note two_ Interview Adair as to whether he found, on returning tothe house, that there was paint on his boots.
Things were moving.
* * * * *
He resolved to take Adair first. He could get the ground-man's addressfrom him.
Passing by the trees under whose shade Mike and Psmith and Dunster hadwatched the match on the previous day, he came upon the Head of hishouse in a deck-chair reading a book. A summer Sunday afternoon is thetime for reading in deck-chairs.
"Oh, Adair," he said. "No, don't get up. I merely wished to ask you ifyou found any paint on your boots when you returned to the house lastnight?"
"Paint, sir?" Adair was plainly puzzled. His book had beeninteresting, and had driven the Sammy incident out of his head.
"I see somebody has spilt some paint on the floor of the bicycle shed.You did not do that, I suppose, when you went to fetch your bicycle?"
"No, sir."
"It is spilt all over the floor. I wondered whether you had happenedto tread in it. But you say you found no paint on your boots thismorning?"
"No, sir, my bicycle is always quite near the door of the shed. Ididn't go into the shed at all."
"I see. Quite so. Thank you, Adair. Oh, by the way, Adair, where doesMarkby live?"
"I forget the name of his cottage, sir, but I could show you in asecond. It's one of those cottages just past the school gates, on theright as you turn out into the road. There are three in a row. His isthe first you come to. There's a barn just before you
get to them."
"Thank you. I shall be able to find them. I should like to speak toMarkby for a moment on a small matter."
A sharp walk took him to the cottages Adair had mentioned. Herapped at the door of the first, and the ground-man came out inhis shirt-sleeves, blinking as if he had just woke up, as wasindeed the case.
"Oh, Markby!"
"Sir?"
"You remember that you were painting the scoring-box in the pavilionlast night after the match?"
"Yes, sir. It wanted a lick of paint bad. The young gentlemen willscramble about and get through the window. Makes it look shabby, sir.So I thought I'd better give it a coating so as to look ship-shapewhen the Marylebone come down."
"Just so. An excellent idea. Tell me, Markby, what did you do with thepot of paint when you had finished?"
"Put it in the bicycle shed, sir."
"On the floor?"
"On the floor, sir? No. On the shelf at the far end, with the can ofwhitening what I use for marking out the wickets, sir."
"Of course, yes. Quite so. Just as I thought."
"Do you want it, sir?"
"No, thank you, Markby, no, thank you. The fact is, somebody who hadno business to do so has moved the pot of paint from the shelf to thefloor, with the result that it has been kicked over, and spilt. Youhad better get some more to-morrow. Thank you, Markby. That is all Iwished to know."
Mr. Downing walked back to the school thoroughly excited. He was hoton the scent now. The only other possible theories had been tested andsuccessfully exploded. The thing had become simple to a degree. All hehad to do was to go to Mr. Outwood's house--the idea of searching afellow-master's house did not appear to him at all a delicate task;somehow one grew unconsciously to feel that Mr. Outwood did not reallyexist as a man capable of resenting liberties--find the paint-splashedboot, ascertain its owner, and denounce him to the headmaster.Picture, Blue Fire and "God Save the King" by the full strength of thecompany. There could be no doubt that a paint-splashed boot must be inMr. Outwood's house somewhere. A boy cannot tread in a pool of paintwithout showing some signs of having done so. It was Sunday, too, sothat the boot would not yet have been cleaned. Yoicks! Also Tally-ho!This really was beginning to be something like business.
Regardless of the heat, the sleuth-hound hurried across to Outwood'sas fast as he could walk.