Having restored the basket to its proper place, accordingly, he went up to the study again, and placed the red-toed shoe 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. 23 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 gym shoes. Edmund, summoned from the hinterland of the house to give his opinion why only one of Mike's shoes was to be found, had no views on the subject. He seemed to look on it as one of these 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 shoe." Edmund turned this over in his mind, and then said, "No, sir," as much as to say, "I may have lost a shoe, but, thank goodness, I can still understand sound reasoning." "Well, what am I to do? Where _is_ the other shoe?" "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 gym shoes he stood in.