Mystery of the Vanished Prince Read Free Page A

you’d know you couldn’t be her. Awful creature!”
    Fatty put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pair of long, dangling gilt earrings. He clipped one on each ear. He pulled out a wig of greasy black curls from another pocket and put it on his head. He produced a bedraggled spray of heather and thrust it into Daisy’s face.
    “Buy a bit of white ’eather!” he said, in a husky voice, and his face suddenly looked exactly like that of the brown gipsy. The others looked at him silently, really startled. Even without the big feathered hat, the shawl, the basket, the long black skirt, Fatty was the gipsy woman!
    “You’re uncanny!” said Daisy, pushing the heather away. “I feel quite scared of you. One minute you’re Fatty, the next you’re a gipsy woman to the life. Take that awful wig off!”
    Fatty took it off, grinning. “Believe me now?” he asked. “Gosh, I nearly twisted my ankle, though, when I sprinted down the drive. I honestly thought young Bets here was going to get her father. I wore frightfully high-heeled shoes, and I could hardly run.”
    “So that’s why you looked so tall,” said Pip. “Of course - your long skirt hid your feet. Well, you took us in properly. Good old Fatty. Let’s drink to his health, Find-Outers!”
    They were all solemnly drinking his health in the last of the lemonade when Mrs. Hilton appeared. She had heard Fatty’s arrival and wanted to welcome him back. Fatty got up politely. He always had excellent manners.
    Mrs. Hilton put out her hand, and then stared in astonishment at Fatty. “Well, really, Frederick,” she said, “I cannot approve of your jewellery!”
    Bets gave a shriek of delight. “Fatty! You haven’t taken off the earrings!”
    Poor Fatty. He dragged them off at once, trying to say something polite and shake hands all at the same time. Bets gazed at him in delight. Good old Fatty - it really was lovely to have him back. Things always happened when Fatty was around!
     

Disguises
     
    Bets quite expected some adventure or mystery to turn up immediately, now that Fatty was back. She awoke the next morning with a nice, excited feeling, as if something was going to happen.
    They were all to meet at Fatty’s playroom that morning, which was in a shed at the bottom of his garden. Here he kept many of his disguises and his make-up and here he tried out some of his new ideas.
    Many a time the others had arrived at his shed to have the door opened by some frightful old tramp, or grinning errand boy, all teeth and cheeks, or even an old woman in layers and layers of skirts, her cheeks wrinkled, and with one or two teeth missing.
    Yes - Fatty could even appear to have a few of his front teeth missing, by carefully blacking one here and there, so that when he smiled, black gaps appeared, which seemed to be holes where teeth had once been. Bets had been horrified when she had first seen him, with, apparently, three front teeth gone!
    But this morning it was Fatty himself who opened the door. The floor was spread with open books. The four children stepped over the madly barking Buster and looked at them.
    “Finger-prints! Questioning of witnesses! Disguises!” said Bets, reading the titles of some of the books. “Oh, Fatty - is there another mystery on already?”
    “No,” said Fatty, shutting up the books and putting them neatly into his bookcase at the end of the shed. “But I seem to have got a bit out of practice since I’ve been away - I was just rubbing up my brains, you know. Any one seen old Goon lately?”
    Every one had. They had all bumped into him that morning as they rode round to Fatty’s on their bicycles. As usual the policeman had been ringing his bell so violently that he hadn’t heard theirs, and he had ridden right into the middle of them.
    “He fell off,” said Daisy. “I can’t imagine why, because none of us did. He went an awful bump too, and he was so angry that nobody liked to stop and help him up. He just sat there shouting.”
    “Well, he enjoys that,” said Fatty.