“If you want someone to speak for you, Cecil, refer them to me when you apply for anything. And, by the way, if you happen to run short, you know my address. A letter will always find me.”
Cecil thanked him rather awkwardly.
“I hope it won’t come to that,” he wound up. “Something may turn up sooner than one hopes.”
Sir Clinton thought it well to change the subject again.
“By the way, Cecil,” he asked, “do you know anything about this man Foss? What sort of person is he?”
It seemed an unfortunate topic. Cecil’s manner was anything but gracious as he replied:
“Foss? Oh, you know what sort of a fellow he is already. A damned eavesdropper on his hosts and a beggar with a tongue hinged in the middle so that he can talk with both ends at once. I’d like to wring his neck for him! What do they call the breed that runs off and splits to the police? Copper’s narks, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t exactly that side of him that I wanted to hear about, Cecil. I’m quite fully acquainted with his informative temperament already. What I want to know is the sort of man he is socially and so forth.”
Cecil curbed his vexation with an effort.
“Oh, he seems to have decent enough manners—a bit Yankee, perhaps, in some things. He must do well enough out of this agent business of his, acting for Kessock and the like, you know. He arrived here with a big car, a chauffeur, and a man. Except for his infernal tale-bearing, I can’t say he’s anything out of the ordinary.”
Sir Clinton, apparently feeling that he had struck the wrong vein in the conversational strata, contented himself with a nod of comprehension and let Cecil choose his own subject for the next stage in their talk. He was somewhat surprised when it came.
“Have you heard the latest from the village?” Cecil demanded.
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“I’ve had very little time to collect local gossip this morning, Cecil. I’ve been busy getting things started for this bit of work in the lake, you see.”
“If you’d been down in Hincheldene village you could hardly have missed it. I went down this morning to get some tobacco and I found the whole place buzzing with it. That was before I’d seen Maurice, luckily.”
“Suppose you tell me what it is,” Sir Clinton suggested, drily.
“Do you remember my telling you about the family spectre, the White Man?” Cecil asked. “Well, it seems that the village drunkard, old Groby, was taking a short cut through our woods last night—or rather this morning, for he’s a bit of a late going-to-rooster—and he got the shock of his life in one of the glades. He swears he saw the White Man stealing about from tree to tree. By his way of it, he was near enough to see the thing clearly—all white, even the face. What a lark!”
“You seem to take your family spectre a bit lightly, Cecil. What’s the cream of the jest?”
Cecil’s face took on a vindictive expression.
“Oh, it gave me a chance of getting home on Maurice, after he’d given me the key of the street. I told him all about it and I rubbed in the old story. You know what I mean? The White Man never appears except when the head of the family’s on his last legs. Maurice didn’t like it a bit. He looked a bit squeamish over it; and I came away leaving that sticking in his gills.”
Sir Clinton hardly concealed his distaste for this kind of thing.
“You flatter yourself, I expect. Maurice is hardly likely to waste any thought over superstitions of that sort.”
Cecil’s expression still showed a tinge of malice.
“You’d wonder,” he said. “It’s all very well for you to sneer at these affairs; but it looks a bit different when you yourself happen to be the object of them, I guess. It’s easy to say ‘Superstition’ in a high-minded way; but if there’s a one per cent, chance that the superstition’s going to hit you personally, then, you know, it rankles a bit. Anything to give pain is my motto where Maurice is concerned.”
Quite oblivious of Sir Clinton’s rather disgusted expression, he laughed softly to himself for a moment or two.
“And the funniest thing in the whole affair,” he went on, “is that I know all about this White Man. Can’t you guess what it was?”
Sir Clinton shook his head.
“Why, don’t you. see?” Cecil demanded, still laughing. “What old Groby came across must obviously have been Maurice himself in his white Pierrot dress, coming back from the burglar-hunt! That’s what makes it so damned funny. Fancy Maurice getting the creeps on account of himself! It’s as good a joke as I’ve heard for a while.”
He laughed harshly.
“You don’t seem to see it. Well, well. Perhaps you’re right. And now I must be getting back to the house. I’ve a lot of stuff to collect before I go off.”
He shook hands with Sir Clinton and moved off towards Ravensthorpe. The Chief Constable gazed after him for a moment or two.
