“Come with me,” said Baxter.
He left the room. Ashe followed him.
In the garden Lord Emsworth, garden fork in hand, was dealing summarily with a green young weed that had incautiously shown its head in the middle of a flower bed. He listened to Baxter’s statement with more interest than he usually showed in anybody’s statements. He resented the loss of the scarab, not so much on account of its intrinsic worth as because it had been the gift of his friend Mr. Peters.
“Indeed!” he said, when Baxter had finished. “Really? Dear me! It certainly seems—It is extremely suggestive. You are certain there was red paint on this shoe?”
“I have it with me. I brought it on purpose to show you.” He looked at Ashe, who stood in close attendance. “The shoe!”
Lord Emsworth polished his glasses and bent over the exhibit.
“Ah!” he said. “Now let me look at—This, you say, is the—Just so; just so! Just—My dear Baxter, it may be that I have not examined this shoe with sufficient care, but—Can you point out to me exactly where this paint is that you speak of?”
The Efficient Baxter stood staring at the shoe with wild, fixed stare. Of any suspicion of paint, red or otherwise, it was absolutely and entirely innocent!
The shoe became the center of attraction, the center of all eyes. The Efficient Baxter fixed it with the piercing glare of one who feels that his brain is tottering. Lord Emsworth looked at it with a mildly puzzled expression. Ashe Marson examined it with a sort of affectionate interest, as though he were waiting for it to do a trick of some kind. Baxter was the first to break the silence.
“There was paint on this shoe,” he said vehemently. “I tell you there was a splash of red paint across the toe. This man here will bear me out in this. You saw paint on this shoe?”
“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 tended 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
