'Paint, sir?'
'What! Do you mean to tell me you did not see it?'
'No, sir; there was no paint on this shoe.'
'This is ridiculous. I saw it with my own eyes. It was a broad splash right across the toe.'
Lord Emsworth interposed.
'You must have made a mistake, my dear Baxter. There is certainly no trace of paint on this shoe. These momentary optical delusions are, I fancy, not uncommon. Any doctor will tell you--'
'I had an aunt, your lordship,' said Ashe chattily, 'who was remarkably subject--'
'It is absurd! I cannot have been mistaken,' said Baxter. 'I am positively certain the toe of this shoe was red when I found it.'
'It is quite black now, my dear Baxter.'
'A sort of chameleon shoe,' murmured Ashe.
The goaded secretary turned on him.
'What did you say?'
'Nothing, sir.'
Baxter's old suspicion of this smooth young man came surging back to him.
'I strongly suspect you of having had something to do with this.'
'Really, Baxter,' said the earl, 'that is surely the least probable of solutions. This young man could hardly have cleaned the shoe on his way from the house. A few days ago, when painting in the museum, I inadvertently splashed some paint on my own shoe. I can assure you it does not brush off. It needs a very systematic cleaning before all traces are removed.'
'Exactly, your lordship,' said Ashe. 'My theory, if I may--'
'Yes?'
'My theory, your lordship, is that Mr. Baxter was deceived by the light-and-shade effects on the toe of the shoe. The morning sun, streaming in through the window, must have shone on the shoe in such a manner as to give it a momentary and fictitious aspect of redness. If Mr. Baxter recollects, he did not look long at the shoe. The picture on the retina of the eye consequently had not time to fade. I myself remember thinking at the moment that the shoe appeared to have a certain reddish tint. The mistake--'
'Bah!' said Baxter shortly.
Lord Emsworth, now thoroughly bored with the whole affair and desiring nothing more than to be left alone with his weeds and his garden fork, put in his word. Baxter, he felt, was curiously irritating these days. He always seemed to be bobbing up. The Earl of Emsworth was conscious of a strong desire to be free from his secretary's company. He was efficient, yes--invaluable indeed--he did not know what he should do without Baxter; but there was no denying that his company ended after a while to become a trifle tedious. He took a fresh grip on his garden fork and shifted it about in the air as a hint that the interview had lasted long enough.
'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.'