Part 24 (1/2)

18

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 life belt.

Then the happy laughter of the young onlookers rea.s.sured him.

”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 publis.h.i.+ng 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 pajamas 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 bareheaded. A boy who breaks out of his house at night would hardly run the risk of wearing a distinguis.h.i.+ng 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.