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There were drawers under his book-cases; but they were full of old discarded things, and even if he emptied the drawers, the photographs, in their heavy frames, were almost all too large to fit into them. He turned next to the top shelf of his cupboard; but here the nurse had stored Paul's old toys, his sand-pails, shovels and croquet-box.
There in the centre is the iron ring through which the lords and dames drove the heavy wooden troco-balls; and if you go into the garden-hall through that arched corridor you will see the actual balls that they used, and the long poles, with a kind of iron cup at their ends, with which the players pushed them forerunners of the modern croquet-box that lies beside them.
Then Mark discovered it, and immediately he felt that everybody else must discover it. So he made the shed end more difficult by putting the croquet-box there, and this end more difficult by " he stopped and looked at the other "by what, Bill?" But Bill was being Watsonish. "What?" "Obviously by re-arranging his books.
Everything seemed to be as they left it. The bowls-box, the lawn-mower, the roller, the open croquet-box, the "By Jove!" said Antony to himself, "that's neat." The lid of the other croquet-box was open, too. Bill was turning round now; his voice became more difficult to hear. "You see what I mean," he was saying. "If Cayley " And out of the second croquet-box came Cayley's black head.
Bill looked at him anxiously. "It's all right," laughed Antony. "You can talk if you want to. Just let's put 'em away first, though." They made their way down to the shed, and while Bill was putting the bowls away, Antony tried the lid of the closed croquet-box. As he expected, it was locked. "Now then," said Bill, as they were walking back to the house again, "I'm simply bursting to know.
The room was a friendly heterogeneous place, the one repository, in the well-ordered and amply-servanted house, of all its unclassified odds and ends: Effie's croquet-box and fishing rods, Owen's guns and golf-sticks and racquets, his step-mother's flower-baskets and gardening implements, even Madame de Chantelle's embroidery frame, and the back numbers of the Catholic Weekly.
When you said that the books had been re-arranged a year ago just about the time the croquet-box came into existence; of course, I guessed why. So I looked about for the dullest books I could find, the books nobody ever read. Obviously the collection of sermon-books of a mid-Victorian clergyman was the shelf we wanted." "Yes, I see. But why were you so certain of the particular place?"
The passage came out into the floor of the shed, and probably it was Cayley's idea to put a croquet-box over the trap-door, so as to hide it more completely. You know, when once you've discovered a secret yourself, it always seems as if it must be so obvious to everybody else.
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