12 Mike

He felt for his bunch of keys, and made his way to the shed, Riglett shambling 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 it was. What he saw at first was not a Clue, but just a mess. He had a tidy soul and abhorred messes. And this was a particularly messy mess. The greater part of the flooring in the neighbourhood of the door was a sea of red paint. The tin from which it had flowed was lying on its side 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. A foot-mark! No less. A crimson foot-mark on the grey concrete!

Riglett, who had been waiting patiently two yards away, now coughed plaintively. 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 bicycle from the rack, and presently departed to gladden the heart of his aunt, leaving Mr. Downing, his brain fizzing with the enthusiasm of the detective, to lock the door and resume his perambulation of the cricket 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 a professional sleuth might have envied.

Paint. Red paint. Obviously the same paint with which Sammy had been decorated. A foot-mark. Whose foot- mark? Plainly that of the criminal who had done the deed of decoration.

Yoicks!

There were two things, however, to be considered. Your careful detective must consider everything. In the first place, the paint might have been upset by the ground-man. It was the ground-man’s paint. He had been giving a fresh coating to the wood-work in front of the pavilion scoring-box at the conclusion of yesterday’s match. (A labour of love which was the direct outcome of the enthusiasm for work which Adair had instilled into him.) In that case the foot-mark might be his.

Note one: Interview the ground-man on this point.

In the second place Adair might have upset the tin and trodden in its contents when he went to get his bicycle in order to fetch the doctor for the suffering MacPhee. This was the more probable of the two contingencies, for it would have been dark in the shed when Adair went into it.

Note two Interview Adair as to whether he found, on returning to the house, that there was paint on his boots.

Things were moving.

He resolved to take Adair first. He could get the ground-man’s address from him.

Passing by the trees under whose shade Mike and Psmith and Dunster had watched the match on the previous day, he came upon the Head of his house in a deck-chair reading a book. A summer Sunday afternoon is the time for reading in deck-chairs.

“Oh, Adair,” he said. “No, don’t get up. I merely wished to ask you if you found any paint on your boots when you returned to the house last night?”

“Paint, sir?” Adair was plainly puzzled. His book had been interesting, 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 happened to tread in it. But you say you found no paint on your boots this morning?”

“No, sir, my bicycle is always quite near the door of the shed. I didn’t go into the shed at all.”

“I see. Quite so. Thank you, Adair. Oh, by the way, Adair, where does Markby live?”

“I forget the name of his cottage, sir, but I could show you in a second. It’s one of those cottages just past the school gates, on the right as you turn out into the road. There are three in a row. His is the 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 to Markby for a moment on a small matter.”

A sharp walk took him to the cottages Adair had mentioned. He rapped at the door of the first, and the ground-man came out in his shirt-sleeves, blinking as if he had just woke up, as was indeed the case.

“Oh, Markby!”

“Sir?”

“You remember that you were painting the scoring-box in the pavilion last night after the match?”

“Yes, sir. It wanted a lick of paint bad. The young gentlemen will scramble 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-shape when the Marylebone come down.”

“Just so. An excellent idea. Tell me, Markby, what did you do with the pot of paint when you had finished?”