“No, but it really was awfully decent of you. You might have got into a frightful row. Were you nearly caught?”
“Jolly nearly.”
“It
“Yes, it was. But for goodness sake don’t go gassing about it, or somebody will get to hear who oughtn’t to, and I shall be sacked.”
“All right. But, I say, you
“What’s the matter now?”
“I mean about Sammy, you know. It’s a jolly good score off old Downing. He’ll be frightfully sick.”
“Sammy!” cried Mike. “My good man, you don’t think I did that, do you? What absolute rot! I never touched the poor brute.”
“Oh, all right,” said Jellicoe. “But I wasn’t going to tell any one, of course.”
“What do you mean?”
“You
Mike walked to chapel rather thoughtfully.
CHAPTER XLVII
MR. DOWNING ON THE SCENT
There was just one moment, the moment in which, on going down to the junior day-room of his house to quell an unseemly disturbance, he was boisterously greeted by a vermilion bull terrier, when Mr. Downing was seized with a hideous fear lest he had lost his senses. Glaring down at the crimson animal that was pawing at his knees, he clutched at his reason for one second as a drowning man clutches at a lifebelt.
Then the happy laughter of the young onlookers reassured him.
“Who—” he shouted, “WHO has done this?”
[Illustration: “WHO—” HE SHOUTED, “WHO HAS DONE THIS?”]
“Please, sir, we don’t know,” shrilled the chorus.
“Please, sir, he came in like that.”
“Please, sir, we were sitting here when he suddenly ran in, all red.”
A voice from the crowd: “Look at old Sammy!”
The situation was impossible. There was nothing to be done. He could not find out by verbal inquiry who had painted the dog. The possibility of Sammy being painted red during the night had never occurred to Mr. Downing, and now that the thing had happened he had no scheme of action. As Psmith would have said, he had confused the unusual with the impossible, and the result was that he was taken by surprise.
While he was pondering on this the situation was rendered still more difficult by Sammy, who, taking advantage of the door being open, escaped and rushed into the road, thus publishing his condition to all and sundry. You can hush up a painted dog while it confines itself to your own premises, but once it has mixed with the great public this becomes out of the question. Sammy’s state advanced from a private trouble into a row. Mr. Downing’s next move was in the same direction that Sammy had taken, only, instead of running about the road, he went straight to the headmaster.
The Head, who had had to leave his house in the small hours in his pyjamas and a dressing-gown, was not in the best of tempers. He had a cold in the head, and also a rooted conviction that Mr. Downing, in spite of his strict orders, had rung the bell himself on the previous night in order to test the efficiency of the school in saving themselves in the event of fire. He received the housemaster frostily, but thawed as the latter related the events which had led up to the ringing of the bell.
“Dear me!” he said, deeply interested. “One of the boys at the school, you think?”
“I am certain of it,” said Mr. Downing.
“Was he wearing a school cap?”
“He was bare-headed. A boy who breaks out of his house at night would hardly run the risk of wearing a distinguishing cap.”
“No, no, I suppose not. A big boy, you say?”
“Very big.”
“You did not see his face?”
“It was dark and he never looked back—he was in front of me all the time.”
“Dear me!”
“There is another matter–-“
“Yes?”
“This boy, whoever he was, had done something before he rang the bell—he had painted my dog Sampson red.”
The headmaster’s eyes protruded from their sockets. “He—he—_what_, Mr. Downing?”
“He painted my dog red—bright red.” Mr. Downing was too angry to see anything humorous in the incident. Since the previous night he had been wounded in his tenderest feelings. His Fire Brigade system had been most
