Mike took advantage of a pause to get up. "May I go, sir?" he said. "Certainly, Jackson, certainly," said the Head. "Oh, and er--if you are going back to your house, tell Smith that I should like to see him." "Yes, sir." He had reached the door, when again there was a knock. "Come in," said the headmaster. It was Adair. "Yes, Adair?" Adair was breathing rather heavily, as if he had been running. "It was about Sammy--Sampson, sir," he said, looking at Mr. Downing. "Ah, we know ... Well, Adair, what did you wish to say?" "It wasn't Jackson who did it, sir." "No, no, Adair. So Mr. Downing--" "It was Dunster, sir." Terrific sensation! The headmaster gave a sort of strangled yelp of astonishment. Mr. Downing leaped in his chair. Mike's eyes opened to their fullest extent. "Adair!" There was almost a wail in the headmaster's voice. The situation had suddenly become too much for him. His brain was swimming. That Mike, despite the evidence against him, should be innocent, was curious, perhaps, but not particularly startling. But that Adair should inform him, two minutes after Mr. Downing's announcement of Psmith's confession, that Psmith, too, was guiltless, and that the real criminal was Dunster--it was this that made him feel that somebody, in the words of an American author, had played a mean trick on him, and substituted for his brain a side order of cauliflower. Why Dunster, of all people? Dunster, who, he remembered dizzily, had left the school at Christmas. And why, if Dunster had really painted the dog, had Psmith asserted that he himself was the culprit? Why--why anything? He concentrated his mind on Adair as the only person who could save him from impending brain fever. "Adair!" "Yes, sir?" "What--_what_ do you mean?" "It _was_ Dunster, sir. I got a letter from him only five minutes ago, in which he said that he had painted Sammy--Sampson, the dog, sir, for a rag--for a joke, and that, as he didn't want anyone here to get into a row--be punished for it, I'd better tell Mr. Downing at once. I tried to find Mr. Downing, but he wasn't in the house. Then I met Smith outside the house, and he told me that Mr. Downing had gone over to see you, sir." "Smith told you?" said Mr. Downing. "Yes, sir." "Did you say anything to him about your having received this letter from Dunster?" "I gave him the letter to read, sir." "And what was his attitude when he had read it?" "He laughed, sir." "_Laughed_!" Mr. Downing's voice was thunderous. "Yes, sir. He rolled about." Mr. Downing snorted. "But Adair," said the headmaster, "I do not understand how this thing could have been done by Dunster. He has left the school." "He was down here for the Old Sedleighans' match, sir. He stopped the night in the village." "And that was the night the--it happened?" "Yes, sir."