Sir Clinton shook his head as he resumed his natural guise.
“The mask wouldn’t cover my moustache; and I draw the line at shaving that off, even in a good cause. Besides, a Chief Constable can’t go running about disguised as Sherlock Holmes. Rather bad taste, dragging one’s trade into one’s amusements. No, I’ll come as something quite unostentatious: a pillar-box or an Invisible Man, or a spook, probably.”
“I forgot,” Cecil hastened to say, apologetically, “I shouldn’t have asked you about your costume. Joan’s very strong on some fancy regulation she’s made that no one is to know beforehand what anyone else is wearing. She wants the prize awarding to be absolutely unbiased. So you’d better not tell me what you’re going to do.”
Sir Clinton glanced at him with a faint twinkle in his eye.
“That’s precisely what I’ve been doing for the last minute or two,” he said, dryly.
“What do you mean?” Cecil asked, looking puzzled. “You haven’t told me anything.”
“Exactly.”
Cecil was forced to smile.
“No harm done,” he admitted. “You gave nothing away.”
“It’s a very useful habit in my line of business.”
But Sir Clinton’s interest in the approaching masked ball was apparently not yet exhausted.
“Large crowd coming?” he asked.
“Fairish, I believe. Most of the neighbours, I suppose. We’re putting up a few people for the night, of course; and there are three or four visitors on the premises already. It should be quite a decent show. I can’t give you even rough numbers, for Joan’s taken the invitation side of the thing entirely into her own hands—most mysterious about it, too. Hush! Hush! Very Secret! and all that kind of thing. She won’t even let us see her lists for fear of making it too easy to recognize people; so she’s had to arrange the catering side of the thing on her own as well.”
“She always was an independent kind of person,” Sir Clinton volunteered.
Cecil took no notice of the interjection.
“If you ask me,” he went on, “I think she’s a bit besotted with this incognito notion. She doesn’t realize that half the gang can be spotted at once by their walk, and the other half will give themselves away as soon as they get animated and begin to jabber freely. But it’s her show, you know, so it’s no use anyone else butting in with criticisms and spoiling her fun before it begins.”
Sir Clinton nodded his assent; but for a moment or two he seemed to be preoccupied with some line of thought which Cecil’s words had started in his mind. Suddenly, however, something caught his eye and diverted his attention to external things.
“What’s that weird thing over there?” he asked. As he spoke, he pointed to an object a little way off the path on which they were standing. It was a tiny building about a yard in height and a couple of yards or more in length. At the first glance it seemed like a bungalow reduced to the scale of a large doll’s house; but closer inspection showed that it was windowless, though ventilation of a sort appeared to have been provided. A miniature door closed the entrance, through which a full-grown man could gain admittance only by lying flat on the ground and wriggling with some difficulty through the narrow opening provided.
“That?” Cecil answered carelessly. “Oh, that’s one of the Fairy Houses, you know. They’re a sort of local curiosity. No matter where you are, you’ll find one of them within a couple of hundred yards of you, anywhere in the grounds.”
“Only in the grounds? Aren’t there any outside the estate?” inquired Sir Clinton. “At the first glance I took it for some sort of archaeological affair.”
“They’re old enough, I dare say,” Cecil admitted, indifferently. “A century, or a century and a half, or perhaps even more. They’re purely a Ravensthorpe product. I’ve never seen one of them outside the boundary.”
Sir Clinton left the path and made a closer examination of the tiny hut; but it presented very few points of interest in itself. Out of curiosity, he turned the handle of the door and found it moved easily.
“You seem to keep the locks and hinges oiled,” he said, with some surprise.
Pushing the door open, he stooped down and glanced inside.
“Very spic and span. You keep them in good repair, evidently.”
“Oh, one of the gardeners has the job of looking after them,” Cecil explained, without showing much interest.
“I’ve never seen anything of the sort before. They might be Picts’ dwellings, or something of that kind; but why keep them in repair? And, of course, they’re not prehistoric at all. They’re comparatively modern, from the way they’re put together. What are they?”
“Ask me another,” said Cecil, who seemed bored by the subject. “They’re an ancestral legacy, or an heirloom, or a tenant’s improvement, or whatever you like to call it. Clause in the will each time, to provide for them being kept in good repair, and so forth.”
Sir Clinton seemed to prick up his ears when he heard of this provision, though his tone showed only languid interest when he put his next inquiry.
“Anything at the back of it all? It seems a rum sort of business.”
“The country-people round about here will supply you with all the information you can believe about it—and a lot you’re not likely to swallow, too. By their way of it, Lavington Knoll up there”—he pointed vaguely to indicate its position—“was the last of the fairy strongholds hereabouts; and when most of the fairies went away, a few stayed behind. But these didn’t care much for the old Knoll after that. Reminded them of past glories and cheery company too much, I suppose; and so they made a sort of treaty with an ancestor of ours. He was to provide houses for them, and they were to look after the general prosperity side of Ravensthorpe.”
Sir Clinton seemed amused by Cecil’s somewhat scornful summary.
“A
