MR. DOWNING MOVES The rain continued without a break all the morning. The two teams, after hanging about dismally, and whiling the time away with stump-cricket in the changing rooms, lunched in the pavilion at one o'clock. After which the M.C.C. captain, approaching Adair, moved that this merry meeting be considered off and he and his men permitted to catch the next train back to town. To which Adair, seeing that it was out of the question that there should be any cricket that afternoon, regretfully agreed, and the first Sedleigh _v_. M.C.C. match was accordingly scratched. Mike and Psmith, wandering back to the house, were met by a damp junior from Downing's, with a message that Mr. Downing wished to see Mike as soon as he was changed. "What's he want me for?" inquired Mike. The messenger did not know. Mr. Downing, it seemed, had not confided in him. All he knew was that the housemaster was in the house, and would be glad if Mike would step across. "A nuisance," said Psmith, "this incessant demand for you. That's the worst of being popular. If he wants you to stop to tea, edge away. A meal on rather a sumptuous scale will be prepared in the study against your return." Mike changed quickly, and went off, leaving Psmith, who was fond of simple pleasures in his spare time, earnestly occupied with a puzzle which had been scattered through the land by a weekly paper. The prize for a solution was one thousand pounds, and Psmith had already informed Mike with some minuteness of his plans for the disposition of this sum. Meanwhile, he worked at it both in and out of school, generally with abusive comments on its inventor. He was still fiddling away at it when Mike returned. Mike, though Psmith was at first too absorbed to notice it, was agitated. "I don't wish to be in any way harsh," said Psmith, without looking up, "but the man who invented this thing was a blighter of the worst type. You come and have a shot. For the moment I am baffled. The whisper flies round the clubs, 'Psmith is baffled.'" "The man's an absolute driveling ass," said Mike warmly. "Me, do you mean?" "What on earth would be the point of my doing it?" "You'd gather in a thousand of the best. Give you a nice start in life." "I'm not talking about your rotten puzzle." "What _are_ you talking about?" "That ass Downing. I believe he's off his nut." "Then your chat with Comrade Downing was not of the old-College-chums-meeting-unexpectedly-after-years'-separation type? What has he been doing to you?" "He's off his nut." "I know. But what did he do? How did the brainstorm burst? Did he jump at you from behind a door and bite a piece out of your leg, or did he say he was a teapot?" Mike sat down. "You remember that painting-Sammy business?" "As if it were yesterday," said Psmith. "Which it was, pretty nearly." "He thinks I did it." "Why? Have you ever shown any talent in the painting line?"