"Your face, my dear Baxter! Your face! It is positively covered with soot—positively! You must go and wash it. You are quite black. Really, my dear fellow, you present rather an extraordinary appearance. Run off to your room."
Against this crowning blow the Efficient Baxter could not stand up. It was the end.
"Soot!" he murmured weakly. "Soot!"
"Your face is covered, my dear fellow—quite covered."
"It certainly has a faintly sooty aspect, sir," said Ashe.
His voice roused the sufferer to one last flicker of spirit.
"You will hear more of this," he said. "You will—"
At this moment, slightly muffled by the intervening door and passageway, there came from the direction of the hall a sound like the delivery of a ton of coal. A heavy body bumped down the stairs, and a voice which all three recognized as that of the Honorable Freddie uttered an oath that lost itself in a final crash and a musical splintering sound, which Baxter for one had no difficulty in recognizing as the dissolution of occasional china.
Even if they had not so able a detective as Baxter with them, Lord Emsworth and Ashe would have been at no loss to guess what had happened. Doctor Watson himself could have deduced it from the evidence. The Honorable Freddie had fallen downstairs.
* * *