“My dear Downing,” he said, “your face.  It is positively covered with soot, positively.  You must come and wash it.  You are quite black.  Really, you present a most curious appearance, most.  Let me show you the way to my room.”

In all times of storm and tribulation there comes a breaking-point, a point where the spirit definitely refuses to battle any longer against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.  Mr. Downing could not bear up against this crowning blow.  He went down beneath it.  In the language of the Ring, he took the count.  It was the knock-out.

“Soot!” he murmured weakly.  “Soot!”

“Your face is covered, my dear fellow, quite covered.”

“It certainly has a faintly sooty aspect, sir,” said Psmith.

His voice roused the sufferer to one last flicker of spirit.

“You will hear more of this, Smith,” he said.  “I say you will hear more of it.”

Then he allowed Mr. Outwood to lead him out to a place where there were towels, soap, and sponges.

When they had gone, Psmith went to the window, and hauled in the string.  He felt the calm after-glow which comes to the general after a successfully conducted battle.  It had been trying, of course, for a man of refinement, and it had cut into his afternoon, but on the whole it had been worth it.

The problem now was what to do with the painted boot.  It would take a lot of cleaning, he saw, even if he could get hold of the necessary implements for cleaning it.  And he rather doubted if he would be able to do so.  Edmund, the boot-boy, worked in some mysterious cell, far from the madding crowd, at the back of the house.  In the boot-cupboard downstairs there would probably be nothing likely to be of any use.

His fears were realised.  The boot-cupboard was empty.  It seemed to him that, for the time being, the best thing he could do would be to place the boot in safe hiding, until he should have thought out a scheme.

Having restored the basket to its proper place, accordingly, he went up to the study again, and placed the red-toed boot in the chimney, at about the same height where Mr. Downing had found the other.  Nobody would think of looking there a second time, and it was improbable that Mr. Outwood really would have the chimneys swept, as he had said.  The odds were that he had forgotten about it already.

Psmith went to the bathroom to wash his hands again, with the feeling that he had done a good day’s work.

CHAPTER LII

ON THE TRAIL AGAIN

The most massive minds are apt to forget things at times.  The most adroit plotters make their little mistakes.  Psmith was no exception to the rule.  He made the mistake of not telling Mike of the afternoon’s happenings.

It was not altogether forgetfulness.  Psmith was one of those people who like to carry through their operations entirely by themselves.  Where there is only one in a secret the secret is more liable to remain unrevealed.  There was nothing, he thought, to be gained from telling Mike.  He forgot what the consequences might be if he did not.

So Psmith kept his own counsel, with the result that Mike went over to school on the Monday morning in pumps.

Edmund, summoned from the hinterland of the house to give his opinion why only one of Mike’s boots was to be found, had no views on the subject.  He seemed to look on it as one of those things which no fellow can understand.

“’Ere’s one of ’em, Mr. Jackson,” he said, as if he hoped that Mike might be satisfied with a compromise.

“One?  What’s the good of that, Edmund, you chump?  I can’t go over to school in one boot.”

Edmund turned this over in his mind, and then said, “No, sir,” as much as to say, “I may have lost a boot, but, thank goodness, I can still understand sound reasoning.”

“Well, what am I to do?  Where is the other boot?”

“Don’t know, Mr. Jackson,” replied Edmund to both questions.

“Well, I mean—­Oh, dash it, there’s the bell.”

And Mike sprinted off in the pumps he stood in.