wood branding iron interchangeable letters

the club of queer trades by g. k. chesterton 1. the tremendous adventures of major brown rabelais, or his wild illustrator gustavedore, must have had something to do with the designing of the things called flats in englandand america. there is something entirely gargantuan in the idea of economising space by pilinghouses on top of each other, front doors and

wood branding iron interchangeable letters, all. and in the chaos and complexity of thoseperpendicular streets anything may dwell or happen, and it is in one of them, i believe,that the inquirer may find the offices of the club of queer trades. it may be thoughtat the first glance that the name would attract and startle the passer-by, but nothing attractsor startles in these dim immense hives. the

passer-by is only looking for his own melancholydestination, the montenegro shipping agency or the london office of the rutland sentinel,and passes through the twilight passages as one passes through the twilight corridorsof a dream. if the thugs set up a strangers' assassination company in one of the greatbuildings in norfolk street, and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries,no inquiries would be made. and the club of queer trades reigns in a great edifice hiddenlike a fossil in a mighty cliff of fossils. the nature of this society, such as we afterwardsdiscovered it to be, is soon and simply told. it is an eccentric and bohemian club, of whichthe absolute condition of membership lies in this, that the candidate must have inventedthe method by which he earns his living. it

must be an entirely new trade. the exact definitionof this requirement is given in the two principal rules. first, it must not be a mere applicationor variation of an existing trade. thus, for instance, the club would not admit an insuranceagent simply because instead of insuring men's furniture against being burnt in a fire, heinsured, let us say, their trousers against being torn by a mad dog. the principle (assir bradcock burnaby-bradcock, in the extraordinarily eloquent and soaring speech to the club onthe occasion of the question being raised in the stormby smith affair, said wittilyand keenly) is the same. secondly, the trade must be a genuine commercial source of income,the support of its inventor. thus the club would not receive a man simply because hechose to pass his days collecting broken sardine

tins, unless he could drive a roaring tradein them. professor chick made that quite clear. and when one remembers what professor chick'sown new trade was, one doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. the discovery of this strange society wasa curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world waslike looking at the first ship or the first plough. it made a man feel what he shouldfeel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. that i should have come at lastupon so singular a body was, i may say without vanity, not altogether singular, for i havea mania for belonging to as many societies as possible: i may be said to collect clubs,and i have accumulated a vast and fantastic

variety of specimens ever since, in my audaciousyouth, i collected the athenaeum. at some future day, perhaps, i may tell tales of someof the other bodies to which i have belonged. i will recount the doings of the dead man'sshoes society (that superficially immoral, but darkly justifiable communion); i willexplain the curious origin of the cat and christian, the name of which has been so shamefullymisinterpreted; and the world shall know at last why the institute of typewriters coalescedwith the red tulip league. of the ten teacups, of course i dare not say a word. the firstof my revelations, at any rate, shall be concerned with the club of queer trades, which, as ihave said, was one of this class, one which i was almost bound to come across sooner orlater, because of my singular hobby. the wild

youth of the metropolis call me facetiously'the king of clubs'. they also call me 'the cherub', in allusion to the roseate and youthfulappearance i have presented in my declining years. i only hope the spirits in the betterworld have as good dinners as i have. but the finding of the club of queer trades hasone very curious thing about it. the most curious thing about it is that it was notdiscovered by me; it was discovered by my friend basil grant, a star-gazer, a mystic,and a man who scarcely stirred out of his attic. very few people knew anything of basil; notbecause he was in the least unsociable, for if a man out of the street had walked intohis rooms he would have kept him talking till

morning. few people knew him, because, likeall poets, he could do without them; he welcomed a human face as he might welcome a suddenblend of colour in a sunset; but he no more felt the need of going out to parties thanhe felt the need of altering the sunset clouds. he lived in a queer and comfortable garretin the roofs of lambeth. he was surrounded by a chaos of things that were in odd contrastto the slums around him; old fantastic books, swords, armour—the whole dust-hole of romanticism.but his face, amid all these quixotic relics, appeared curiously keen and modern—a powerful,legal face. and no one but i knew who he was. long ago as it is, everyone remembers theterrible and grotesque scene that occurred in—, when one of the most acute and forcibleof the english judges suddenly went mad on

the bench. i had my own view of that occurrence;but about the facts themselves there is no question at all. for some months, indeed forsome years, people had detected something curious in the judge's conduct. he seemedto have lost interest in the law, in which he had been beyond expression brilliant andterrible as a k.c., and to be occupied in giving personal and moral advice to the peopleconcerned. he talked more like a priest or a doctor, and a very outspoken one at that.the first thrill was probably given when he said to a man who had attempted a crime ofpassion: "i sentence you to three years imprisonment, under the firm, and solemn, and god-givenconviction, that what you require is three months at the seaside." he accused criminalsfrom the bench, not so much of their obvious

legal crimes, but of things that had neverbeen heard of in a court of justice, monstrous egoism, lack of humour, and morbidity deliberatelyencouraged. things came to a head in that celebrated diamond case in which the primeminister himself, that brilliant patrician, had to come forward, gracefully and reluctantly,to give evidence against his valet. after the detailed life of the household had beenthoroughly exhibited, the judge requested the premier again to step forward, which hedid with quiet dignity. the judge then said, in a sudden, grating voice: "get a new soul.that thing's not fit for a dog. get a new soul." all this, of course, in the eyes ofthe sagacious, was premonitory of that melancholy and farcical day when his wits actually desertedhim in open court. it was a libel case between

two very eminent and powerful financiers,against both of whom charges of considerable defalcation were brought. the case was longand complex; the advocates were long and eloquent; but at last, after weeks of work and rhetoric,the time came for the great judge to give a summing-up; and one of his celebrated masterpiecesof lucidity and pulverizing logic was eagerly looked for. he had spoken very little duringthe prolonged affair, and he looked sad and lowering at the end of it. he was silent fora few moments, and then burst into a stentorian song. his remarks (as reported) were as follows: "o rowty-owty tiddly-owty tiddly-owty tiddly-owtyhighty-ighty tiddly-ighty tiddly-ighty ow." he then retired from public life and tookthe garret in lambeth.

i was sitting there one evening, about sixo'clock, over a glass of that gorgeous burgundy which he kept behind a pile of black-letterfolios; he was striding about the room, fingering, after a habit of his, one of the great swordsin his collection; the red glare of the strong fire struck his square features and his fiercegrey hair; his blue eyes were even unusually full of dreams, and he had opened his mouthto speak dreamily, when the door was flung open, and a pale, fiery man, with red hairand a huge furred overcoat, swung himself panting into the room. "sorry to bother you, basil," he gasped. "itook a liberty—made an appointment here with a man—a client—in five minutes—ibeg your pardon, sir," and he gave me a bow

of apology. basil smiled at me. "you didn't know," hesaid, "that i had a practical brother. this is rupert grant, esquire, who can and doesall there is to be done. just as i was a failure at one thing, he is a success at everything.i remember him as a journalist, a house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a publisher, aschoolmaster, a—what are you now, rupert?" "i am and have been for some time," said rupert,with some dignity, "a private detective, and there's my client." a loud rap at the door had cut him short,and, on permission being given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper manwalked swiftly into the room, set his silk

hat with a clap on the table, and said, "goodevening, gentlemen," with a stress on the last syllable that somehow marked him outas a martinet, military, literary and social. he had a large head streaked with black andgrey, and an abrupt black moustache, which gave him a look of fierceness which was contradictedby his sad sea-blue eyes. basil immediately said to me, "let us comeinto the next room, gully," and was moving towards the door, but the stranger said: "not at all. friends remain. assistance possibly." the moment i heard him speak i rememberedwho he was, a certain major brown i had met years before in basil's society. i had forgottenaltogether the black dandified figure and

the large solemn head, but i remembered thepeculiar speech, which consisted of only saying about a quarter of each sentence, and thatsharply, like the crack of a gun. i do not know, it may have come from giving ordersto troops. major brown was a v.c., and an able and distinguishedsoldier, but he was anything but a warlike person. like many among the iron men who recoveredbritish india, he was a man with the natural beliefs and tastes of an old maid. in hisdress he was dapper and yet demure; in his habits he was precise to the point of theexact adjustment of a tea-cup. one enthusiasm he had, which was of the nature of a religion—thecultivation of pansies. and when he talked about his collection, his blue eyes glitteredlike a child's at a new toy, the eyes that

had remained untroubled when the troops wereroaring victory round roberts at candahar. "well, major," said rupert grant, with a lordlyheartiness, flinging himself into a chair, "what is the matter with you?" "yellow pansies. coal-cellar. p. g. northover,"said the major, with righteous indignation. we glanced at each other with inquisitiveness.basil, who had his eyes shut in his abstracted way, said simply: "i beg your pardon." "fact is. street, you know, man, pansies.on wall. death to me. something. preposterous." we shook our heads gently. bit by bit, andmainly by the seemingly sleepy assistance

of basil grant, we pieced together the major'sfragmentary, but excited narration. it would be infamous to submit the reader to what weendured; therefore i will tell the story of major brown in my own words. but the readermust imagine the scene. the eyes of basil closed as in a trance, after his habit, andthe eyes of rupert and myself getting rounder and rounder as we listened to one of the mostastounding stories in the world, from the lips of the little man in black, sitting boltupright in his chair and talking like a telegram. major brown was, i have said, a successfulsoldier, but by no means an enthusiastic one. so far from regretting his retirement on half-pay,it was with delight that he took a small neat villa, very like a doll's house, and devotedthe rest of his life to pansies and weak tea.

the thought that battles were over when hehad once hung up his sword in the little front hall (along with two patent stew-pots anda bad water-colour), and betaken himself instead to wielding the rake in his little sunlitgarden, was to him like having come into a harbour in heaven. he was dutch-like and precisein his taste in gardening, and had, perhaps, some tendency to drill his flowers like soldiers.he was one of those men who are capable of putting four umbrellas in the stand ratherthan three, so that two may lean one way and two another; he saw life like a pattern ina freehand drawing-book. and assuredly he would not have believed, or even understood,any one who had told him that within a few yards of his brick paradise he was destinedto be caught in a whirlpool of incredible

adventure, such as he had never seen or dreamedof in the horrible jungle, or the heat of battle. one certain bright and windy afternoon, themajor, attired in his usual faultless manner, had set out for his usual constitutional.in crossing from one great residential thoroughfare to another, he happened to pass along oneof those aimless-looking lanes which lie along the back-garden walls of a row of mansions,and which in their empty and discoloured appearance give one an odd sensation as of being behindthe scenes of a theatre. but mean and sulky as the scene might be in the eyes of mostof us, it was not altogether so in the major's, for along the coarse gravel footway was cominga thing which was to him what the passing

of a religious procession is to a devout person.a large, heavy man, with fish-blue eyes and a ring of irradiating red beard, was pushingbefore him a barrow, which was ablaze with incomparable flowers. there were splendidspecimens of almost every order, but the major's own favourite pansies predominated. the majorstopped and fell into conversation, and then into bargaining. he treated the man afterthe manner of collectors and other mad men, that is to say, he carefully and with a sortof anguish selected the best roots from the less excellent, praised some, disparaged others,made a subtle scale ranging from a thrilling worth and rarity to a degraded insignificance,and then bought them all. the man was just pushing off his barrow when he stopped andcame close to the major.

"i'll tell you what, sir," he said. "if you'reinterested in them things, you just get on to that wall." "on the wall!" cried the scandalised major,whose conventional soul quailed within him at the thought of such fantastic trespass. "finest show of yellow pansies in englandin that there garden, sir," hissed the tempter. "i'll help you up, sir." how it happened no one will ever know butthat positive enthusiasm of the major's life triumphed over all its negative traditions,and with an easy leap and swing that showed that he was in no need of physical assistance,he stood on the wall at the end of the strange

garden. the second after, the flapping ofthe frock-coat at his knees made him feel inexpressibly a fool. but the next instantall such trifling sentiments were swallowed up by the most appalling shock of surprisethe old soldier had ever felt in all his bold and wandering existence. his eyes fell uponthe garden, and there across a large bed in the centre of the lawn was a vast patternof pansies; they were splendid flowers, but for once it was not their horticultural aspectsthat major brown beheld, for the pansies were arranged in gigantic capital letters so asto form the sentence: death to major brown a kindly looking old man, with white whiskers,was watering them. brown looked sharply back

at the road behind him; the man with the barrowhad suddenly vanished. then he looked again at the lawn with its incredible inscription.another man might have thought he had gone mad, but brown did not. when romantic ladiesgushed over his v.c. and his military exploits, he sometimes felt himself to be a painfullyprosaic person, but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. another man, again,might have thought himself a victim of a passing practical joke, but brown could not easilybelieve this. he knew from his own quaint learning that the garden arrangement was anelaborate and expensive one; he thought it extravagantly improbable that any one wouldpour out money like water for a joke against him. having no explanation whatever to offer,he admitted the fact to himself, like a clear-headed

man, and waited as he would have done in thepresence of a man with six legs. at this moment the stout old man with whitewhiskers looked up, and the watering can fell from his hand, shooting a swirl of water downthe gravel path. "who on earth are you?" he gasped, tremblingviolently. "i am major brown," said that individual,who was always cool in the hour of action. the old man gaped helplessly like some monstrousfish. at last he stammered wildly, "come down—come down here!" "at your service," said the major, and alightedat a bound on the grass beside him, without disarranging his silk hat.

the old man turned his broad back and setoff at a sort of waddling run towards the house, followed with swift steps by the major.his guide led him through the back passages of a gloomy, but gorgeously appointed house,until they reached the door of the front room. then the old man turned with a face of apoplecticterror dimly showing in the twilight. "for heaven's sake," he said, "don't mentionjackals." then he threw open the door, releasing a burstof red lamplight, and ran downstairs with a clatter. the major stepped into a rich, glowing room,full of red copper, and peacock and purple hangings, hat in hand. he had the finest mannersin the world, and, though mystified, was not

in the least embarrassed to see that the onlyoccupant was a lady, sitting by the window, looking out. "madam," he said, bowing simply, "i am majorbrown." "sit down," said the lady; but she did notturn her head. she was a graceful, green-clad figure, withfiery red hair and a flavour of bedford park. "you have come, i suppose," she said mournfully,"to tax me about the hateful title-deeds." "i have come, madam," he said, "to know whatis the matter. to know why my name is written across your garden. not amicably either." he spoke grimly, for the thing had hit him.it is impossible to describe the effect produced

on the mind by that quiet and sunny gardenscene, the frame for a stunning and brutal personality. the evening air was still, andthe grass was golden in the place where the little flowers he studied cried to heavenfor his blood. "you know i must not turn round," said thelady; "every afternoon till the stroke of six i must keep my face turned to the street." some queer and unusual inspiration made theprosaic soldier resolute to accept these outrageous riddles without surprise. "it is almost six," he said; and even as hespoke the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the first stroke of the hour. at thesixth the lady sprang up and turned on the

major one of the queerest and yet most attractivefaces he had ever seen in his life; open, and yet tantalising, the face of an elf. "that makes the third year i have waited,"she cried. "this is an anniversary. the waiting almost makes one wish the frightful thingwould happen once and for all." and even as she spoke, a sudden rending crybroke the stillness. from low down on the pavement of the dim street (it was alreadytwilight) a voice cried out with a raucous and merciless distinctness: "major brown, major brown, where does thejackal dwell?" brown was decisive and silent in action. hestrode to the front door and looked out. there

was no sign of life in the blue gloaming ofthe street, where one or two lamps were beginning to light their lemon sparks. on returning,he found the lady in green trembling. "it is the end," she cried, with shaking lips;"it may be death for both of us. whenever—" but even as she spoke her speech was clovenby another hoarse proclamation from the dark street, again horribly articulate. "major brown, major brown, how did the jackaldie?" brown dashed out of the door and down thesteps, but again he was frustrated; there was no figure in sight, and the street wasfar too long and empty for the shouter to have run away. even the rational major wasa little shaken as he returned in a certain

time to the drawing-room. scarcely had hedone so than the terrific voice came: "major brown, major brown, where did—" brown was in the street almost at a bound,and he was in time—in time to see something which at first glance froze the blood. thecries appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the pavement. the next moment the pale major understood.it was the head of a man thrust through the coal-hole in the street. the next moment,again, it had vanished, and major brown turned to the lady. "where's your coal-cellar?" hesaid, and stepped out into the passage. she looked at him with wild grey eyes. "youwill not go down," she cried, "alone, into

the dark hole, with that beast?" "is this the way?" replied brown, and descendedthe kitchen stairs three at a time. he flung open the door of a black cavity and steppedin, feeling in his pocket for matches. as his right hand was thus occupied, a pair ofgreat slimy hands came out of the darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of giganticstature, and seized him by the back of the head. they forced him down, down in the suffocatingdarkness, a brutal image of destiny. but the major's head, though upside down, was perfectlyclear and intellectual. he gave quietly under the pressure until he had slid down almostto his hands and knees. then finding the knees of the invisible monster within a foot ofhim, he simply put out one of his long, bony,

and skilful hands, and gripping the leg bya muscle pulled it off the ground and laid the huge living man, with a crash, along thefloor. he strove to rise, but brown was on top like a cat. they rolled over and over.big as the man was, he had evidently now no desire but to escape; he made sprawls hitherand thither to get past the major to the door, but that tenacious person had him hard bythe coat collar and hung with the other hand to a beam. at length there came a strain inholding back this human bull, a strain under which brown expected his hand to rend andpart from the arm. but something else rent and parted; and the dim fat figure of thegiant vanished out of the cellar, leaving the torn coat in the major's hand; the onlyfruit of his adventure and the only clue to

the mystery. for when he went up and out atthe front door, the lady, the rich hangings, and the whole equipment of the house had disappeared.it had only bare boards and whitewashed walls. "the lady was in the conspiracy, of course,"said rupert, nodding. major brown turned brick red. "i beg your pardon," he said, "i thinknot." rupert raised his eyebrows and looked at himfor a moment, but said nothing. when next he spoke he asked: "was there anything in the pockets of thecoat?" "there was sevenpence halfpenny in coppersand a threepenny-bit," said the major carefully; "there was a cigarette-holder, a piece ofstring, and this letter," and he laid it on

the table. it ran as follows: dear mr plover, i am annoyed to hear that some delay has occurredin the arrangements re major brown. please see that he is attacked as per arrangementtomorrow the coal-cellar, of course. yours faithfully, p. g. northover. rupert grant was leaning forward listeningwith hawk-like eyes. he cut in: "is it dated from anywhere?" "no—oh, yes!" replied brown, glancing uponthe paper; "14 tanner's court, north—" rupert sprang up and struck his hands together.

"then why are we hanging here? let's get along.basil, lend me your revolver." basil was staring into the embers like a manin a trance; and it was some time before he answered: "i don't think you'll need it." "perhaps not," said rupert, getting into hisfur coat. "one never knows. but going down a dark court to see criminals—" "do you think they are criminals?" asked hisbrother. rupert laughed stoutly. "giving orders toa subordinate to strangle a harmless stranger in a coal-cellar may strike you as a veryblameless experiment, but—"

"do you think they wanted to strangle themajor?" asked basil, in the same distant and monotonous voice. "my dear fellow, you've been asleep. lookat the letter." "i am looking at the letter," said the madjudge calmly; though, as a matter of fact, he was looking at the fire. "i don't thinkit's the sort of letter one criminal would write to another." "my dear boy, you are glorious," cried rupert,turning round, with laughter in his blue bright eyes. "your methods amaze me. why, there isthe letter. it is written, and it does give orders for a crime. you might as well saythat the nelson column was not at all the

sort of thing that was likely to be set upin trafalgar square." basil grant shook all over with a sort ofsilent laughter, but did not otherwise move. "that's rather good," he said; "but, of course,logic like that's not what is really wanted. it's a question of spiritual atmosphere. it'snot a criminal letter." "it is. it's a matter of fact," cried theother in an agony of reasonableness. "facts," murmured basil, like one mentioningsome strange, far-off animals, "how facts obscure the truth. i may be silly—in fact,i'm off my head—but i never could believe in that man—what's his name, in those capitalstories?—sherlock holmes. every detail points to something, certainly; but generally tothe wrong thing. facts point in all directions,

it seems to me, like the thousands of twigson a tree. it's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up—only the greenblood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars." "but what the deuce else can the letter bebut criminal?" "we have eternity to stretch our legs in,"replied the mystic. "it can be an infinity of things. i haven't seen any of them—i'veonly seen the letter. i look at that, and say it's not criminal." "then what's the origin of it?" "i haven't the vaguest idea."

"then why don't you accept the ordinary explanation?" basil continued for a little to glare at thecoals, and seemed collecting his thoughts in a humble and even painful way. then hesaid: "suppose you went out into the moonlight.suppose you passed through silent, silvery streets and squares until you came into anopen and deserted space, set with a few monuments, and you beheld one dressed as a ballet girldancing in the argent glimmer. and suppose you looked, and saw it was a man disguised.and suppose you looked again, and saw it was lord kitchener. what would you think?" he paused a moment, and went on:

"you could not adopt the ordinary explanation.the ordinary explanation of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice in them; youwould not think that lord kitchener dressed up like a ballet girl out of ordinary personalvanity. you would think it much more likely that he inherited a dancing madness from agreat grandmother; or had been hypnotised at a seance; or threatened by a secret societywith death if he refused the ordeal. with baden-powell, say, it might be a bet—butnot with kitchener. i should know all that, because in my public days i knew him quitewell. so i know that letter quite well, and criminals quite well. it's not a criminal'sletter. it's all atmospheres." and he closed his eyes and passed his hand over his forehead.

rupert and the major were regarding him witha mixture of respect and pity. the former said, "well, i'm going, anyhow, and shall continueto think—until your spiritual mystery turns up—that a man who sends a note recommendinga crime, that is, actually a crime that is actually carried out, at least tentatively,is, in all probability, a little casual in his moral tastes. can i have that revolver?" "certainly," said basil, getting up. "buti am coming with you." and he flung an old cape or cloak round him, and took a sword-stickfrom the corner. "you!" said rupert, with some surprise, "youscarcely ever leave your hole to look at anything

on the face of the earth." basil fitted on a formidable old white hat. "i scarcely ever," he said, with an unconsciousand colossal arrogance, "hear of anything on the face of the earth that i do not understandat once, without going to see it." and he led the way out into the purple night. we four swung along the flaring lambeth streets,across westminster bridge, and along the embankment in the direction of that part of fleet streetwhich contained tanner's court. the erect, black figure of major brown, seen from behind,was a quaint contrast to the hound-like stoop and flapping mantle of young rupert grant,who adopted, with childlike delight, all the

dramatic poses of the detective of fiction.the finest among his many fine qualities was his boyish appetite for the colour and poetryof london. basil, who walked behind, with his face turned blindly to the stars, hadthe look of a somnambulist. rupert paused at the corner of tanner's court,with a quiver of delight at danger, and gripped basil's revolver in his great-coat pocket. "shall we go in now?" he asked. "not get police?" asked major brown, glancingsharply up and down the street. "i am not sure," answered rupert, knittinghis brows. "of course, it's quite clear, the thing's all crooked. but there are three ofus, and—"

"i shouldn't get the police," said basil ina queer voice. rupert glanced at him and stared hard. "basil," he cried, "you're trembling. what'sthe matter—are you afraid?" "cold, perhaps," said the major, eyeing him.there was no doubt that he was shaking. at last, after a few moments' scrutiny, rupertbroke into a curse. "you're laughing," he cried. "i know thatconfounded, silent, shaky laugh of yours. what the deuce is the amusement, basil? herewe are, all three of us, within a yard of a den of ruffians—" "but i shouldn't call the police," said basil."we four heroes are quite equal to a host,"

and he continued to quake with his mysteriousmirth. rupert turned with impatience and strode swiftlydown the court, the rest of us following. when he reached the door of no. 14 he turnedabruptly, the revolver glittering in his hand. "stand close," he said in the voice of a commander."the scoundrel may be attempting an escape at this moment. we must fling open the doorand rush in." the four of us cowered instantly under thearchway, rigid, except for the old judge and his convulsion of merriment. "now," hissed rupert grant, turning his paleface and burning eyes suddenly over his shoulder, "when i say 'four', follow me with a rush.if i say 'hold him', pin the fellows down,

whoever they are. if i say 'stop', stop. ishall say that if there are more than three. if they attack us i shall empty my revolveron them. basil, have your sword-stick ready. now—one, two three, four!" with the sound of the word the door burstopen, and we fell into the room like an invasion, only to stop dead. the room, which was an ordinary and neatlyappointed office, appeared, at the first glance, to be empty. but on a second and more carefulglance, we saw seated behind a very large desk with pigeonholes and drawers of bewilderingmultiplicity, a small man with a black waxed moustache, and the air of a very average clerk,writing hard. he looked up as we came to a

standstill. "did you knock?" he asked pleasantly. "i amsorry if i did not hear. what can i do for you?" there was a doubtful pause, and then, by generalconsent, the major himself, the victim of the outrage, stepped forward. the letter was in his hand, and he lookedunusually grim. "is your name p. g. northover?" he asked. "that is my name," replied the other, smiling. "i think," said major brown, with an increasein the dark glow of his face, "that this letter

was written by you." and with a loud claphe struck open the letter on the desk with his clenched fist. the man called northoverlooked at it with unaffected interest and merely nodded. "well, sir," said the major, breathing hard,"what about that?" "what about it, precisely," said the man withthe moustache. "i am major brown," said that gentleman sternly. northover bowed. "pleased to meet you, sir.what have you to say to me?" "say!" cried the major, loosing a sudden tempest;"why, i want this confounded thing settled. i want—"

"certainly, sir," said northover, jumpingup with a slight elevation of the eyebrows. "will you take a chair for a moment." andhe pressed an electric bell just above him, which thrilled and tinkled in a room beyond.the major put his hand on the back of the chair offered him, but stood chafing and beatingthe floor with his polished boot. the next moment an inner glass door was opened,and a fair, weedy, young man, in a frock-coat, entered from within. "mr hopson," said northover, "this is majorbrown. will you please finish that thing for him i gave you this morning and bring it in?" "yes, sir," said mr hopson, and vanished likelightning.

"you will excuse me, gentlemen," said theegregious northover, with his radiant smile, "if i continue to work until mr hopson isready. i have some books that must be cleared up before i get away on my holiday tomorrow.and we all like a whiff of the country, don't we? ha! ha!" the criminal took up his pen with a childlikelaugh, and a silence ensued; a placid and busy silence on the part of mr p. g. northover;a raging silence on the part of everybody else. at length the scratching of northover's penin the stillness was mingled with a knock at the door, almost simultaneous with theturning of the handle, and mr hopson came

in again with the same silent rapidity, placeda paper before his principal, and disappeared again. the man at the desk pulled and twisted hisspiky moustache for a few moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented tohim. he took up his pen, with a slight, instantaneous frown, and altered something, muttering—"careless."then he read it again with the same impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it to thefrantic brown, whose hand was beating the devil's tattoo on the back of the chair. "i think you will find that all right, major,"he said briefly. the major looked at it; whether he found itall right or not will appear later, but he

found it like this: major brown to p. g. northover. l s. d.january 1, to account rendered 5 6 0 may 9, to potting and embedding of zoo pansies2 0 0 to cost of trolley with flowers 0 15 0to hiring of man with trolley 0 5 0 to hire of house and garden for one day 10 0 to furnishing of room in peacock curtains,copper ornaments, etc. 3 0 0 to salary of miss jameson 1 0 0to salary of mr plover 1 0 0 —————total l14 6 0 a remittance will oblige.

"what," said brown, after a dead pause, andwith eyes that seemed slowly rising out of his head, "what in heaven's name is this?" "what is it?" repeated northover, cockinghis eyebrow with amusement. "it's your account, of course." "my account!" the major's ideas appeared tobe in a vague stampede. "my account! and what have i got to do with it?" "well," said northover, laughing outright,"naturally i prefer you to pay it." the major's hand was still resting on theback of the chair as the words came. he scarcely stirred otherwise, but he lifted the chairbodily into the air with one hand and hurled

it at northover's head. the legs crashed against the desk, so thatnorthover only got a blow on the elbow as he sprang up with clenched fists, only tobe seized by the united rush of the rest of us. the chair had fallen clattering on theempty floor. "let me go, you scamps," he shouted. "letme—" "stand still," cried rupert authoritatively."major brown's action is excusable. the abominable crime you have attempted—" "a customer has a perfect right," said northoverhotly, "to question an alleged overcharge, but, confound it all, not to throw furniture."

"what, in god's name, do you mean by yourcustomers and overcharges?" shrieked major brown, whose keen feminine nature, steadyin pain or danger, became almost hysterical in the presence of a long and exasperatingmystery. "who are you? i've never seen you or your insolent tomfool bills. i know oneof your cursed brutes tried to choke me—" "mad," said northover, gazing blankly round;"all of them mad. i didn't know they travelled in quartettes." "enough of this prevarication," said rupert;"your crimes are discovered. a policeman is stationed at the corner of the court. thoughonly a private detective myself, i will take the responsibility of telling you that anythingyou say—"

"mad," repeated northover, with a weary air. and at this moment, for the first time, therestruck in among them the strange, sleepy voice of basil grant. "major brown," he said, "may i ask you a question?" the major turned his head with an increasedbewilderment. "you?" he cried; "certainly, mr grant." "can you tell me," said the mystic, with sunkenhead and lowering brow, as he traced a pattern in the dust with his sword-stick, "can youtell me what was the name of the man who lived in your house before you?"

the unhappy major was only faintly more disturbedby this last and futile irrelevancy, and he answered vaguely: "yes, i think so; a man named gurney something—aname with a hyphen—gurney-brown; that was it." "and when did the house change hands?" saidbasil, looking up sharply. his strange eyes were burning brilliantly. "i came in last month," said the major. and at the mere word the criminal northoversuddenly fell into his great office chair and shouted with a volleying laughter.

"oh! it's too perfect—it's too exquisite,"he gasped, beating the arms with his fists. he was laughing deafeningly; basil grant waslaughing voicelessly; and the rest of us only felt that our heads were like weathercocksin a whirlwind. "confound it, basil," said rupert, stamping."if you don't want me to go mad and blow your metaphysical brains out, tell me what allthis means." northover rose. "permit me, sir, to explain," he said. "and,first of all, permit me to apologize to you, major brown, for a most abominable and unpardonableblunder, which has caused you menace and inconvenience, in which, if you will allow me to say so,you have behaved with astonishing courage

and dignity. of course you need not troubleabout the bill. we will stand the loss." and, tearing the paper across, he flung the halvesinto the waste-paper basket and bowed. poor brown's face was still a picture of distraction."but i don't even begin to understand," he cried. "what bill? what blunder? what loss?" mr p. g. northover advanced in the centreof the room, thoughtfully, and with a great deal of unconscious dignity. on closer consideration,there were apparent about him other things beside a screwed moustache, especially a lean,sallow face, hawk-like, and not without a careworn intelligence. then he looked up abruptly. "do you know where you are, major?" he said.

"god knows i don't," said the warrior, withfervour. "you are standing," replied northover, "inthe office of the adventure and romance agency, limited." "and what's that?" blankly inquired brown. the man of business leaned over the back ofthe chair, and fixed his dark eyes on the other's face. "major," said he, "did you ever, as you walkedalong the empty street upon some idle afternoon, feel the utter hunger for something to happen—something,in the splendid words of walt whitman: 'something pernicious and dread; something far removedfrom a puny and pious life; something unproved;

something in a trance; something loosed fromits anchorage, and driving free.' did you ever feel that?" "certainly not," said the major shortly. "then i must explain with more elaboration,"said mr northover, with a sigh. "the adventure and romance agency has been started to meeta great modern desire. on every side, in conversation and in literature, we hear of the desire fora larger theatre of events for something to waylay us and lead us splendidly astray. nowthe man who feels this desire for a varied life pays a yearly or a quarterly sum to theadventure and romance agency; in return, the adventure and romance agency undertakes tosurround him with startling and weird events.

as a man is leaving his front door, an excitedsweep approaches him and assures him of a plot against his life; he gets into a cab,and is driven to an opium den; he receives a mysterious telegram or a dramatic visit,and is immediately in a vortex of incidents. a very picturesque and moving story is firstwritten by one of the staff of distinguished novelists who are at present hard at workin the adjoining room. yours, major brown (designed by our mr grigsby), i consider peculiarlyforcible and pointed; it is almost a pity you did not see the end of it. i need scarcelyexplain further the monstrous mistake. your predecessor in your present house, mr gurney-brown,was a subscriber to our agency, and our foolish clerks, ignoring alike the dignity of thehyphen and the glory of military rank, positively

imagined that major brown and mr gurney-brownwere the same person. thus you were suddenly hurled into the middle of another man's story." "how on earth does the thing work?" askedrupert grant, with bright and fascinated eyes. "we believe that we are doing a noble work,"said northover warmly. "it has continually struck us that there is no element in modernlife that is more lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to seek all artisticexistence in a sedentary state. if he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book;if he wishes to dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar intoheaven, he reads a book; if he wishes to slide down the banisters, he reads a book. we givehim these visions, but we give him exercise

at the same time, the necessity of leapingfrom wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen, of running down long streets from pursuers—allhealthy and pleasant exercises. we give him a glimpse of that great morning world of robinhood or the knights errant, when one great game was played under the splendid sky. wegive him back his childhood, that godlike time when we can act stories, be our own heroes,and at the same instant dance and dream." basil gazed at him curiously. the most singularpsychological discovery had been reserved to the end, for as the little business manceased speaking he had the blazing eyes of a fanatic. major brown received the explanation withcomplete simplicity and good humour.

"of course; awfully dense, sir," he said."no doubt at all, the scheme excellent. but i don't think—" he paused a moment, andlooked dreamily out of the window. "i don't think you will find me in it. somehow, whenone's seen—seen the thing itself, you know—blood and men screaming, one feels about havinga little house and a little hobby; in the bible, you know, 'there remaineth a rest'." northover bowed. then after a pause he said: "gentlemen, may i offer you my card. if anyof the rest of you desire, at any time, to communicate with me, despite major brown'sview of the matter—" "i should be obliged for your card, sir,"said the major, in his abrupt but courteous

voice. "pay for chair." the agent of romance and adventure handedhis card, laughing. it ran, "p. g. northover, b.a., c.q.t., adventureand romance agency, 14 tanner's court, fleet street." "what on earth is 'c.qt.'?" asked rupert grant,looking over the major's shoulder. "don't you know?" returned northover. "haven'tyou ever heard of the club of queer trades?" "there seems to be a confounded lot of funnythings we haven't heard of," said the little major reflectively. "what's this one?" "the club of queer trades is a society consistingexclusively of people who have invented some

new and curious way of making money. i wasone of the earliest members." "you deserve to be," said basil, taking uphis great white hat, with a smile, and speaking for the last time that evening. when they had passed out the adventure andromance agent wore a queer smile, as he trod down the fire and locked up his desk. "a finechap, that major; when one hasn't a touch of the poet one stands some chance of beinga poem. but to think of such a clockwork little creature of all people getting into the netsof one of grigsby's tales," and he laughed out aloud in the silence. just as the laugh echoed away, there camea sharp knock at the door. an owlish head,

with dark moustaches, was thrust in, withdeprecating and somewhat absurd inquiry. "what! back again, major?" cried northoverin surprise. "what can i do for you?" the major shuffled feverishly into the room. "it's horribly absurd," he said. "somethingmust have got started in me that i never knew before. but upon my soul i feel the most desperatedesire to know the end of it all." "the end of it all?" "yes," said the major. "'jackals', and thetitle-deeds, and 'death to major brown'." the agent's face grew grave, but his eyeswere amused. "i am terribly sorry, major," said he, "butwhat you ask is impossible. i don't know any

one i would sooner oblige than you; but therules of the agency are strict. the adventures are confidential; you are an outsider; i amnot allowed to let you know an inch more than i can help. i do hope you understand—" "there is no one," said brown, "who understandsdiscipline better than i do. thank you very much. good night." and the little man withdrew for the last time. he married miss jameson, the lady with thered hair and the green garments. she was an actress, employed (with many others) by theromance agency; and her marriage with the prim old veteran caused some stir in her languidand intellectualized set. she always replied

very quietly that she had met scores of menwho acted splendidly in the charades provided for them by northover, but that she had onlymet one man who went down into a coal-cellar when he really thought it contained a murderer. the major and she are living as happily asbirds, in an absurd villa, and the former has taken to smoking. otherwise he is unchanged—except,perhaps, there are moments when, alert and full of feminine unselfishness as the majoris by nature, he falls into a trance of abstraction. then his wife recognizes with a concealedsmile, by the blind look in his blue eyes, that he is wondering what were the title-deeds,and why he was not allowed to mention jackals. but, like so many old soldiers, brown is religious,and believes that he will realize the rest

of those purple adventures in a better world. 2. the painful fall of a great reputation basil grant and i were talking one day inwhat is perhaps the most perfect place for talking on earth—the top of a tolerablydeserted tramcar. to talk on the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the top ofa flying hill is a fairy tale. the vast blank space of north london was flyingby; the very pace gave us a sense of its immensity and its meanness. it was, as it were, a baseinfinitude, a squalid eternity, and we felt the real horror of the poor parts of london,the horror that is so totally missed and misrepresented by the sensational novelists who depict itas being a matter of narrow streets, filthy

houses, criminals and maniacs, and dens ofvice. in a narrow street, in a den of vice, you do not expect civilization, you do notexpect order. but the horror of this was the fact that there was civilization, that therewas order, but that civilisation only showed its morbidity, and order only its monotony.no one would say, in going through a criminal slum, "i see no statues. i notice no cathedrals."but here there were public buildings; only they were mostly lunatic asylums. here therewere statues; only they were mostly statues of railway engineers and philanthropists—twodingy classes of men united by their common contempt for the people. here there were churches;only they were the churches of dim and erratic sects, agapemonites or irvingites. here, aboveall, there were broad roads and vast crossings

and tramway lines and hospitals and all thereal marks of civilization. but though one never knew, in one sense, what one would seenext, there was one thing we knew we should not see—anything really great, central,of the first class, anything that humanity had adored. and with revulsion indescribableour emotions returned, i think, to those really close and crooked entries, to those reallymean streets, to those genuine slums which lie round the thames and the city, in whichnevertheless a real possibility remains that at any chance corner the great cross of thegreat cathedral of wren may strike down the street like a thunderbolt. "but you must always remember also," saidgrant to me, in his heavy abstracted way,

when i had urged this view, "that the veryvileness of the life of these ordered plebeian places bears witness to the victory of thehuman soul. i agree with you. i agree that they have to live in something worse thanbarbarism. they have to live in a fourth-rate civilization. but yet i am practically certainthat the majority of people here are good people. and being good is an adventure farmore violent and daring than sailing round the world. besides—" "go on," i said. no answer came. "go on," i said, looking up.

the big blue eyes of basil grant were standingout of his head and he was paying no attention to me. he was staring over the side of thetram. "what is the matter?" i asked, peering overalso. "it is very odd," said grant at last, grimly,"that i should have been caught out like this at the very moment of my optimism. i saidall these people were good, and there is the wickedest man in england." "where?" i asked, leaning over further, "where?" "oh, i was right enough," he went on, in thatstrange continuous and sleepy tone which always angered his hearers at acute moments, "i wasright enough when i said all these people

were good. they are heroes; they are saints.now and then they may perhaps steal a spoon or two; they may beat a wife or two with thepoker. but they are saints all the same; they are angels; they are robed in white; theyare clad with wings and haloes—at any rate compared to that man." "which man?" i cried again, and then my eyecaught the figure at which basil's bull's eyes were glaring. he was a slim, smooth person, passing veryquickly among the quickly passing crowd, but though there was nothing about him sufficientto attract a startled notice, there was quite enough to demand a curious consideration whenonce that notice was attracted. he wore a

black top-hat, but there was enough in itof those strange curves whereby the decadent artist of the eighties tried to turn the top-hatinto something as rhythmic as an etruscan vase. his hair, which was largely grey, wascurled with the instinct of one who appreciated the gradual beauty of grey and silver. therest of his face was oval and, i thought, rather oriental; he had two black tufts ofmoustache. "what has he done?" i asked. "i am not sure of the details," said grant,"but his besetting sin is a desire to intrigue to the disadvantage of others. probably hehas adopted some imposture or other to effect his plan."

"what plan?" i asked. "if you know all abouthim, why don't you tell me why he is the wickedest man in england? what is his name?" basil grant stared at me for some moments. "i think you've made a mistake in my meaning,"he said. "i don't know his name. i never saw him before in my life." "never saw him before!" i cried, with a kindof anger; "then what in heaven's name do you mean by saying that he is the wickedest manin england?" "i meant what i said," said basil grant calmly."the moment i saw that man, i saw all these people stricken with a sudden and splendidinnocence. i saw that while all ordinary poor

men in the streets were being themselves,he was not being himself. i saw that all the men in these slums, cadgers, pickpockets,hooligans, are all, in the deepest sense, trying to be good. and i saw that that manwas trying to be evil." "but if you never saw him before—" i began. "in god's name, look at his face," cried outbasil in a voice that startled the driver. "look at the eyebrows. they mean that infernalpride which made satan so proud that he sneered even at heaven when he was one of the firstangels in it. look at his moustaches, they are so grown as to insult humanity. in thename of the sacred heavens look at his hair. in the name of god and the stars, look athis hat."

i stirred uncomfortably. "but, after all," i said, "this is very fanciful—perfectlyabsurd. look at the mere facts. you have never seen the man before, you—" "oh, the mere facts," he cried out in a kindof despair. "the mere facts! do you really admit—are you still so sunk in superstitions,so clinging to dim and prehistoric altars, that you believe in facts? do you not trustan immediate impression?" "well, an immediate impression may be," isaid, "a little less practical than facts." "bosh," he said. "on what else is the wholeworld run but immediate impressions? what is more practical? my friend, the philosophyof this world may be founded on facts, its

business is run on spiritual impressions andatmospheres. why do you refuse or accept a clerk? do you measure his skull? do you readup his physiological state in a handbook? do you go upon facts at all? not a scrap.you accept a clerk who may save your business—you refuse a clerk that may rob your till, entirelyupon those immediate mystical impressions under the pressure of which i pronounce, witha perfect sense of certainty and sincerity, that that man walking in that street besideus is a humbug and a villain of some kind." "you always put things well," i said, "but,of course, such things cannot immediately be put to the test." basil sprang up straight and swayed with theswaying car.

"let us get off and follow him," he said."i bet you five pounds it will turn out as i say." and with a scuttle, a jump, and a run, wewere off the car. the man with the curved silver hair and thecurved eastern face walked along for some time, his long splendid frock-coat flyingbehind him. then he swung sharply out of the great glaring road and disappeared down anill-lit alley. we swung silently after him. "this is an odd turning for a man of thatkind to take," i said. "a man of what kind?" asked my friend. "well," i said, "a man with that kind of expressionand those boots. i thought it rather odd,

to tell the truth, that he should be in thispart of the world at all." "ah, yes," said basil, and said no more. we tramped on, looking steadily in front ofus. the elegant figure, like the figure of a black swan, was silhouetted suddenly againstthe glare of intermittent gaslight and then swallowed again in night. the intervals betweenthe lights were long, and a fog was thickening the whole city. our pace, therefore, had becomeswift and mechanical between the lamp-posts; but basil came to a standstill suddenly likea reined horse; i stopped also. we had almost run into the man. a great part of the soliddarkness in front of us was the darkness of his body.

at first i thought he had turned to face us.but though we were hardly a yard off he did not realize that we were there. he tappedfour times on a very low and dirty door in the dark, crabbed street. a gleam of gas cutthe darkness as it opened slowly. we listened intently, but the interview was short andsimple and inexplicable as an interview could be. our exquisite friend handed in what lookedlike a paper or a card and said: "at once. take a cab." a heavy, deep voice from inside said: "right you are." and with a click we were in the blacknessagain, and striding after the striding stranger

through a labyrinth of london lanes, the lightsjust helping us. it was only five o'clock, but winter and the fog had made it like midnight. "this is really an extraordinary walk forthe patent-leather boots," i repeated. "i don't know," said basil humbly. "it leadsto berkeley square." as i tramped on i strained my eyes throughthe dusky atmosphere and tried to make out the direction described. for some ten minutesi wondered and doubted; at the end of that i saw that my friend was right. we were comingto the great dreary spaces of fashionable london—more dreary, one must admit, eventhan the dreary plebeian spaces. "this is very extraordinary!" said basil grant,as we turned into berkeley square.

"what is extraordinary?" i asked. "i thoughtyou said it was quite natural." "i do not wonder," answered basil, "at hiswalking through nasty streets; i do not wonder at his going to berkeley square. but i dowonder at his going to the house of a very good man." "what very good man?" i asked with exasperation. "the operation of time is a singular one,"he said with his imperturbable irrelevancy. "it is not a true statement of the case tosay that i have forgotten my career when i was a judge and a public man. i remember itall vividly, but it is like remembering some novel. but fifteen years ago i knew this squareas well as lord rosebery does, and a confounded

long sight better than that man who is goingup the steps of old beaumont's house." "who is old beaumont?" i asked irritably. "a perfectly good fellow. lord beaumont offoxwood—don't you know his name? he is a man of transparent sincerity, a nobleman whodoes more work than a navvy, a socialist, an anarchist, i don't know what; anyhow, he'sa philosopher and philanthropist. i admit he has the slight disadvantage of being, beyondall question, off his head. he has that real disadvantage which has arisen out of the modernworship of progress and novelty; and he thinks anything odd and new must be an advance. ifyou went to him and proposed to eat your grandmother, he would agree with you, so long as you putit on hygienic and public grounds, as a cheap

alternative to cremation. so long as you progressfast enough it seems a matter of indifference to him whether you are progressing to thestars or the devil. so his house is filled with an endless succession of literary andpolitical fashions; men who wear long hair because it is romantic; men who wear shorthair because it is medical; men who walk on their feet only to exercise their hands; andmen who walk on their hands for fear of tiring their feet. but though the inhabitants ofhis salons are generally fools, like himself, they are almost always, like himself, goodmen. i am really surprised to see a criminal enter there." "my good fellow," i said firmly, strikingmy foot on the pavement, "the truth of this

affair is very simple. to use your own eloquentlanguage, you have the 'slight disadvantage' of being off your head. you see a total strangerin a public street; you choose to start certain theories about his eyebrows. you then treathim as a burglar because he enters an honest man's door. the thing is too monstrous. admitthat it is, basil, and come home with me. though these people are still having tea,yet with the distance we have to go, we shall be late for dinner." basil's eyes were shining in the twilightlike lamps. "i thought," he said, "that i had outlivedvanity." "what do you want now?" i cried.

"i want," he cried out, "what a girl wantswhen she wears her new frock; i want what a boy wants when he goes in for a clangingmatch with a monitor—i want to show somebody what a fine fellow i am. i am as right aboutthat man as i am about your having a hat on your head. you say it cannot be tested. isay it can. i will take you to see my old friend beaumont. he is a delightful man toknow." "do you really mean—?" i began. "i will apologize," he said calmly, "for ournot being dressed for a call," and walking across the vast misty square, he walked upthe dark stone steps and rang at the bell. a severe servant in black and white openedthe door to us: on receiving my friend's name

his manner passed in a flash from astonishmentto respect. we were ushered into the house very quickly, but not so quickly but thatour host, a white-haired man with a fiery face, came out quickly to meet us. "my dear fellow," he cried, shaking basil'shand again and again, "i have not seen you for years. have you been—er—" he said,rather wildly, "have you been in the country?" "not for all that time," answered basil, smiling."i have long given up my official position, my dear philip, and have been living in adeliberate retirement. i hope i do not come at an inopportune moment." "an inopportune moment," cried the ardentgentleman. "you come at the most opportune

moment i could imagine. do you know who ishere?" "i do not," answered grant, with gravity.even as he spoke a roar of laughter came from the inner room. "basil," said lord beaumont solemnly, "i havewimpole here." "and who is wimpole?" "basil," cried the other, "you must have beenin the country. you must have been in the antipodes. you must have been in the moon.who is wimpole? who was shakespeare?" "as to who shakespeare was," answered my friendplacidly, "my views go no further than thinking that he was not bacon. more probably he wasmary queen of scots. but as to who wimpole

is—" and his speech also was cloven witha roar of laughter from within. "wimpole!" cried lord beaumont, in a sortof ecstasy. "haven't you heard of the great modern wit? my dear fellow, he has turnedconversation, i do not say into an art—for that, perhaps, it always was but into a greatart, like the statuary of michael angelo—an art of masterpieces. his repartees, my goodfriend, startle one like a man shot dead. they are final; they are—" again there came the hilarious roar from theroom, and almost with the very noise of it, a big, panting apoplectic old gentleman cameout of the inner house into the hall where we were standing.

"now, my dear chap," began lord beaumont hastily. "i tell you, beaumont, i won't stand it,"exploded the large old gentleman. "i won't be made game of by a twopenny literary adventurerlike that. i won't be made a guy. i won't—" "come, come," said beaumont feverishly. "letme introduce you. this is mr justice grant—that is, mr grant. basil, i am sure you have heardof sir walter cholmondeliegh." "who has not?" asked grant, and bowed to theworthy old baronet, eyeing him with some curiosity. he was hot and heavy in his momentary anger,but even that could not conceal the noble though opulent outline of his face and body,the florid white hair, the roman nose, the body stalwart though corpulent, the chin aristocraticthough double. he was a magnificent courtly

gentleman; so much of a gentleman that hecould show an unquestionable weakness of anger without altogether losing dignity; so muchof a gentleman that even his faux pas were well-bred. "i am distressed beyond expression, beaumont,"he said gruffly, "to fail in respect to these gentlemen, and even more especially to failin it in your house. but it is not you or they that are in any way concerned, but thatflashy half-caste jackanapes—" at this moment a young man with a twist ofred moustache and a sombre air came out of the inner room. he also did not seem to begreatly enjoying the intellectual banquet within.

"i think you remember my friend and secretary,mr drummond," said lord beaumont, turning to grant, "even if you only remember him asa schoolboy." "perfectly," said the other. mr drummond shookhands pleasantly and respectfully, but the cloud was still on his brow. turning to sirwalter cholmondeliegh, he said: "i was sent by lady beaumont to express herhope that you were not going yet, sir walter. she says she has scarcely seen anything ofyou." the old gentleman, still red in the face,had a temporary internal struggle; then his good manners triumphed, and with a gestureof obeisance and a vague utterance of, "if lady beaumont... a lady, of course," he followedthe young man back into the salon. he had

scarcely been deposited there half a minutebefore another peal of laughter told that he had (in all probability) been scored offagain. "of course, i can excuse dear old cholmondeliegh,"said beaumont, as he helped us off with our coats. "he has not the modern mind." "what is the modern mind?" asked grant. "oh, it's enlightened, you know, and progressive—andfaces the facts of life seriously." at this moment another roar of laughter came fromwithin. "i only ask," said basil, "because of thelast two friends of yours who had the modern mind; one thought it wrong to eat fishes andthe other thought it right to eat men. i beg

your pardon—this way, if i remember right." "do you know," said lord beaumont, with asort of feverish entertainment, as he trotted after us towards the interior, "i can neverquite make out which side you are on. sometimes you seem so liberal and sometimes so reactionary.are you a modern, basil?" "no," said basil, loudly and cheerfully, ashe entered the crowded drawing-room. this caused a slight diversion, and some eyeswere turned away from our slim friend with the oriental face for the first time thatafternoon. two people, however, still looked at him. one was the daughter of the house,muriel beaumont, who gazed at him with great violet eyes and with the intense and awfulthirst of the female upper class for verbal

amusement and stimulus. the other was sirwalter cholmondeliegh, who looked at him with a still and sullen but unmistakable desireto throw him out of the window. he sat there, coiled rather than seated onthe easy chair; everything from the curves of his smooth limbs to the coils of his silveredhair suggesting the circles of a serpent more than the straight limbs of a man—the unmistakable,splendid serpentine gentleman we had seen walking in north london, his eyes shiningwith repeated victory. "what i can't understand, mr wimpole," saidmuriel beaumont eagerly, "is how you contrive to treat all this so easily. you say thingsquite philosophical and yet so wildly funny. if i thought of such things, i'm sure i shouldlaugh outright when the thought first came."

"i agree with miss beaumont," said sir walter,suddenly exploding with indignation. "if i had thought of anything so futile, i shouldfind it difficult to keep my countenance." "difficult to keep your countenance," criedmr wimpole, with an air of alarm; "oh, do keep your countenance! keep it in the britishmuseum." every one laughed uproariously, as they alwaysdo at an already admitted readiness, and sir walter, turning suddenly purple, shouted out: "do you know who you are talking to, withyour confounded tomfooleries?" "i never talk tomfooleries," said the other,"without first knowing my audience." grant walked across the room and tapped thered-moustached secretary on the shoulder.

that gentleman was leaning against the wallregarding the whole scene with a great deal of gloom; but, i fancied, with very particulargloom when his eyes fell on the young lady of the house rapturously listening to wimpole. "may i have a word with you outside, drummond?"asked grant. "it is about business. lady beaumont will excuse us." i followed my friend, at his own request,greatly wondering, to this strange external interview. we passed abruptly into a kindof side room out of the hall. "drummond," said basil sharply, "there area great many good people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon. unfortunately,by a kind of coincidence, all the good people

are mad, and all the sane people are wicked.you are the only person i know of here who is honest and has also some common sense.what do you make of wimpole?" mr secretary drummond had a pale face andred hair; but at this his face became suddenly as red as his moustache. "i am not a fair judge of him," he said. "why not?" asked grant. "because i hate him like hell," said the other,after a long pause and violently. neither grant nor i needed to ask the reason;his glances towards miss beaumont and the stranger were sufficiently illuminating. grantsaid quietly:

"but before—before you came to hate him,what did you really think of him?" "i am in a terrible difficulty," said theyoung man, and his voice told us, like a clear bell, that he was an honest man. "if i spokeabout him as i feel about him now, i could not trust myself. and i should like to beable to say that when i first saw him i thought he was charming. but again, the fact is ididn't. i hate him, that is my private affair. but i also disapprove of him—really i dobelieve i disapprove of him quite apart from my private feelings. when first he came, iadmit he was much quieter, but i did not like, so to speak, the moral swell of him. thenthat jolly old sir walter cholmondeliegh got introduced to us, and this fellow, with hischeap-jack wit, began to score off the old

man in the way he does now. then i felt thathe must be a bad lot; it must be bad to fight the old and the kindly. and he fights thepoor old chap savagely, unceasingly, as if he hated old age and kindliness. take, ifyou want it, the evidence of a prejudiced witness. i admit that i hate the man becausea certain person admires him. but i believe that apart from that i should hate the manbecause old sir walter hates him." this speech affected me with a genuine senseof esteem and pity for the young man; that is, of pity for him because of his obviouslyhopeless worship of miss beaumont, and of esteem for him because of the direct realisticaccount of the history of wimpole which he had given. still, i was sorry that he seemedso steadily set against the man, and could

not help referring it to an instinct of hispersonal relations, however nobly disguised from himself. in the middle of these meditations, grantwhispered in my ear what was perhaps the most startling of all interruptions. "in the name of god, let's get away." i have never known exactly in how odd a waythis odd old man affected me. i only know that for some reason or other he so affectedme that i was, within a few minutes, in the street outside. "this," he said, "is a beastly but amusingaffair."

"what is?" i asked, baldly enough. "this affair. listen to me, my old friend.lord and lady beaumont have just invited you and me to a grand dinner-party this very night,at which mr wimpole will be in all his glory. well, there is nothing very extraordinaryabout that. the extraordinary thing is that we are not going." "well, really," i said, "it is already sixo'clock and i doubt if we could get home and dress. i see nothing extraordinary in thefact that we are not going." "don't you?" said grant. "i'll bet you'llsee something extraordinary in what we're doing instead."

i looked at him blankly. "doing instead?" i asked. "what are we doinginstead?" "why," said he, "we are waiting for one ortwo hours outside this house on a winter evening. you must forgive me; it is all my vanity.it is only to show you that i am right. can you, with the assistance of this cigar, waituntil both sir walter cholmondeliegh and the mystic wimpole have left this house?" "certainly," i said. "but i do not know whichis likely to leave first. have you any notion?" "no," he said. "sir walter may leave firstin a glow of rage. or again, mr wimpole may leave first, feeling that his last epigramis a thing to be flung behind him like a firework.

and sir walter may remain some time to analysemr wimpole's character. but they will both have to leave within reasonable time, forthey will both have to get dressed and come back to dinner here tonight." as he spoke the shrill double whistle fromthe porch of the great house drew a dark cab to the dark portal. and then a thing happenedthat we really had not expected. mr wimpole and sir walter cholmondeliegh came out atthe same moment. they paused for a second or two opposite eachother in a natural doubt; then a certain geniality, fundamental perhaps in both of them, madesir walter smile and say: "the night is foggy. pray take my cab."

before i could count twenty the cab had gonerattling up the street with both of them. and before i could count twenty-three granthad hissed in my ear: "run after the cab; run as if you were runningfrom a mad dog—run." we pelted on steadily, keeping the cab insight, through dark mazy streets. god only, i thought, knows why we are running at all,but we are running hard. fortunately we did not run far. the cab pulled up at the forkof two streets and sir walter paid the cabman, who drove away rejoicing, having just comein contact with the more generous among the rich. then the two men talked together asmen do talk together after giving and receiving great insults, the talk which leads eitherto forgiveness or a duel—at least so it

seemed as we watched it from ten yards off.then the two men shook hands heartily, and one went down one fork of the road and onedown another. basil, with one of his rare gestures, flunghis arms forward. "run after that scoundrel," he cried; "letus catch him now." we dashed across the open space and reachedthe juncture of two paths. "stop!" i shouted wildly to grant. "that'sthe wrong turning." he ran on. "idiot!" i howled. "sir walter's gone downthere. wimpole has slipped us. he's half a mile down the other road. you're wrong...are you deaf? you're wrong!"

"i don't think i am," he panted, and ran on. "but i saw him!" i cried. "look in front ofyou. is that wimpole? it's the old man... what are you doing? what are we to do?" "keep running," said grant. running soon brought us up to the broad backof the pompous old baronet, whose white whiskers shone silver in the fitful lamplight. my brainwas utterly bewildered. i grasped nothing. "charlie," said basil hoarsely, "can you believein my common sense for four minutes?" "of course," i said, panting. "then help me to catch that man in front andhold him down. do it at once when i say 'now'.

now!" we sprang on sir walter cholmondeliegh, androlled that portly old gentleman on his back. he fought with a commendable valour, but wegot him tight. i had not the remotest notion why. he had a splendid and full-blooded vigour;when he could not box he kicked, and we bound him; when he could not kick he shouted, andwe gagged him. then, by basil's arrangement, we dragged him into a small court by the streetside and waited. as i say, i had no notion why. "i am sorry to incommode you," said basilcalmly out of the darkness; "but i have made an appointment here."

"an appointment!" i said blankly. "yes," he said, glancing calmly at the apoplecticold aristocrat gagged on the ground, whose eyes were starting impotently from his head."i have made an appointment here with a thoroughly nice young fellow. an old friend. jasper drummondhis name is—you may have met him this afternoon at the beaumonts. he can scarcely come thoughtill the beaumonts' dinner is over." for i do not know how many hours we stoodthere calmly in the darkness. by the time those hours were over i had thoroughly madeup my mind that the same thing had happened which had happened long ago on the bench ofa british court of justice. basil grant had gone mad. i could imagine no other explanationof the facts, with the portly, purple-faced

old country gentleman flung there strangledon the floor like a bundle of wood. after about four hours a lean figure in eveningdress rushed into the court. a glimpse of gaslight showed the red moustache and whiteface of jasper drummond. "mr grant," he said blankly, "the thing isincredible. you were right; but what did you mean? all through this dinner-party, wheredukes and duchesses and editors of quarterlies had come especially to hear him, that extraordinarywimpole kept perfectly silent. he didn't say a funny thing. he didn't say anything at all.what does it mean?" grant pointed to the portly old gentlemanon the ground. "that is what it means," he said.

drummond, on observing a fat gentleman lyingso calmly about the place, jumped back, as from a mouse. "what?" he said weakly, "... what?" basil bent suddenly down and tore a paperout of sir walter's breastpocket, a paper which the baronet, even in his hampered state,seemed to make some effort to retain. it was a large loose piece of white wrappingpaper, which mr jasper drummond read with a vacant eye and undisguised astonishment.as far as he could make out, it consisted of a series of questions and answers, or atleast of remarks and replies, arranged in the manner of a catechism. the greater partof the document had been torn and obliterated

in the struggle, but the termination remained.it ran as follows: c. says... keep countenance. w. keep... british museum. c. know whom talk... absurdities. w. never talk absurdities without "what is it?" cried drummond, flinging thepaper down in a sort of final fury. "what is it?" replied grant, his voice risinginto a kind of splendid chant. "what is it? it is a great new profession. a great newtrade. a trifle immoral, i admit, but still great, like piracy."

"a new profession!" said the young man withthe red moustache vaguely; "a new trade!" "a new trade," repeated grant, with a strangeexultation, "a new profession! what a pity it is immoral." "but what the deuce is it?" cried drummondand i in a breath of blasphemy. "it is," said grant calmly, "the great newtrade of the organizer of repartee. this fat old gentleman lying on the ground strikesyou, as i have no doubt, as very stupid and very rich. let me clear his character. heis, like ourselves, very clever and very poor. he is also not really at all fat; all thatis stuffing. he is not particularly old, and his name is not cholmondeliegh. he is a swindler,and a swindler of a perfectly delightful and

novel kind. he hires himself out at dinner-partiesto lead up to other people's repartees. according to a preconcerted scheme (which you may findon that piece of paper), he says the stupid things he has arranged for himself, and hisclient says the clever things arranged for him. in short, he allows himself to be scoredoff for a guinea a night." "and this fellow wimpole—" began drummondwith indignation. "this fellow wimpole," said basil grant, smiling,"will not be an intellectual rival in the future. he had some fine things, eleganceand silvered hair, and so on. but the intellect is with our friend on the floor." "that fellow," cried drummond furiously, "thatfellow ought to be in gaol."

"not at all," said basil indulgently; "heought to be in the club of queer trades." 3. the awful reason of the vicar's visit the revolt of matter against man (which ibelieve to exist) has now been reduced to a singular condition. it is the small thingsrather than the large things which make war against us and, i may add, beat us. the bonesof the last mammoth have long ago decayed, a mighty wreck; the tempests no longer devourour navies, nor the mountains with hearts of fire heap hell over our cities. but weare engaged in a bitter and eternal war with small things; chiefly with microbes and withcollar studs. the stud with which i was engaged (on fierce and equal terms) as i made theabove reflections, was one which i was trying

to introduce into my shirt collar when a loudknock came at the door. my first thought was as to whether basil granthad called to fetch me. he and i were to turn up at the same dinner-party (for which i wasin the act of dressing), and it might be that he had taken it into his head to come my way,though we had arranged to go separately. it was a small and confidential affair at thetable of a good but unconventional political lady, an old friend of his. she had askedus both to meet a third guest, a captain fraser, who had made something of a name and was anauthority on chimpanzees. as basil was an old friend of the hostess and i had neverseen her, i felt that it was quite possible that he (with his usual social sagacity) mighthave decided to take me along in order to

break the ice. the theory, like all my theories,was complete; but as a fact it was not basil. i was handed a visiting card inscribed: "rev.ellis shorter", and underneath was written in pencil, but in a hand in which even hurrycould not conceal a depressing and gentlemanly excellence, "asking the favour of a few moments'conversation on a most urgent matter."! i had already subdued the stud, thereby proclaimingthat the image of god has supremacy over all matters (a valuable truth), and throwing onmy dress-coat and waistcoat, hurried into the drawing-room. he rose at my entrance,flapping like a seal; i can use no other description. he flapped a plaid shawl over his right arm;he flapped a pair of pathetic black gloves; he flapped his clothes; i may say, withoutexaggeration, that he flapped his eyelids,

as he rose. he was a bald-browed, white-haired,white-whiskered old clergyman, of a flappy and floppy type. he said: "i am so sorry. i am so very sorry. i am soextremely sorry. i come—i can only say—i can only say in my defence, that i come—uponan important matter. pray forgive me." i told him i forgave perfectly and waited. "what i have to say," he said brokenly, "isso dreadful—it is so dreadful—i have lived a quiet life." i was burning to get away, for it was alreadydoubtful if i should be in time for dinner. but there was something about the old man'shonest air of bitterness that seemed to open

to me the possibilities of life larger andmore tragic than my own. i said gently: "pray go on." nevertheless the old gentleman, being a gentlemanas well as old, noticed my secret impatience and seemed still more unmanned. "i'm so sorry," he said meekly; "i wouldn'thave come—but for—your friend major brown recommended me to come here." "major brown!" i said, with some interest. "yes," said the reverend mr shorter, feverishlyflapping his plaid shawl about. "he told me you helped him in a great difficulty—andmy difficulty! oh, my dear sir, it's a matter

of life and death." i rose abruptly, in an acute perplexity. "willit take long, mr shorter?" i asked. "i have to go out to dinner almost at once." he rose also, trembling from head to foot,and yet somehow, with all his moral palsy, he rose to the dignity of his age and hisoffice. "i have no right, mr swinburne—i have noright at all," he said. "if you have to go out to dinner, you have of course—a perfectright—of course a perfect right. but when you come back—a man will be dead." and he sat down, quaking like a jelly.

the triviality of the dinner had been in thosetwo minutes dwarfed and drowned in my mind. i did not want to go and see a political widow,and a captain who collected apes; i wanted to hear what had brought this dear, dodderingold vicar into relation with immediate perils. "will you have a cigar?" i said. "no, thank you," he said, with indescribableembarrassment, as if not smoking cigars was a social disgrace. "a glass of wine?" i said. "no, thank you, no, thank you; not just now,"he repeated with that hysterical eagerness with which people who do not drink at alloften try to convey that on any other night

of the week they would sit up all night drinkingrum-punch. "not just now, thank you." "nothing else i can get for you?" i said,feeling genuinely sorry for the well-mannered old donkey. "a cup of tea?" i saw a struggle in his eye and i conquered.when the cup of tea came he drank it like a dipsomaniac gulping brandy. then he fellback and said: "i have had such a time, mr swinburne. i amnot used to these excitements. as vicar of chuntsey, in essex'—he threw this in withan indescribable airiness of vanity—'i have never known such things happen." "what things happen?" i asked.

he straightened himself with sudden dignity. "as vicar of chuntsey, in essex," he said,"i have never been forcibly dressed up as an old woman and made to take part in a crimein the character of an old woman. never once. my experience may be small. it may be insufficient.but it has never occurred to me before." "i have never heard of it," i said, "as amongthe duties of a clergyman. but i am not well up in church matters. excuse me if perhapsi failed to follow you correctly. dressed up—as what?" "as an old woman," said the vicar solemnly,"as an old woman." i thought in my heart that it required nogreat transformation to make an old woman

of him, but the thing was evidently more tragicthan comic, and i said respectfully: "may i ask how it occurred?" "i will begin at the beginning," said mr shorter,"and i will tell my story with the utmost possible precision. at seventeen minutes pasteleven this morning i left the vicarage to keep certain appointments and pay certainvisits in the village. my first visit was to mr jervis, the treasurer of our leagueof christian amusements, with whom i concluded some business touching the claim made by parkesthe gardener in the matter of the rolling of our tennis lawn. i then visited mrs arnett,a very earnest churchwoman, but permanently bedridden. she is the author of several smallworks of devotion, and of a book of verse,

entitled (unless my memory misleads me) eglantine." he uttered all this not only with deliberation,but with something that can only be called, by a contradictory phrase, eager deliberation.he had, i think, a vague memory in his head of the detectives in the detective stories,who always sternly require that nothing should be kept back. "i then proceeded," he went on, with the samemaddening conscientiousness of manner, "to mr carr (not mr james carr, of course; mrrobert carr) who is temporarily assisting our organist, and having consulted with him(on the subject of a choir boy who is accused, i cannot as yet say whether justly or not,of cutting holes in the organ pipes), i finally

dropped in upon a dorcas meeting at the houseof miss brett. the dorcas meetings are usually held at the vicarage, but my wife being unwell,miss brett, a newcomer in our village, but very active in church work, had very kindlyconsented to hold them. the dorcas society is entirely under my wife's management asa rule, and except for miss brett, who, as i say, is very active, i scarcely know anymembers of it. i had, however, promised to drop in on them, and i did so. "when i arrived there were only four othermaiden ladies with miss brett, but they were sewing very busily. it is very difficult,of course, for any person, however strongly impressed with the necessity in these mattersof full and exact exposition of the facts,

to remember and repeat the actual detailsof a conversation, particularly a conversation which (though inspired with a most worthyand admirable zeal for good work) was one which did not greatly impress the hearer'smind at the time and was in fact—er—mostly about socks. i can, however, remember distinctlythat one of the spinster ladies (she was a thin person with a woollen shawl, who appearedto feel the cold, and i am almost sure she was introduced to me as miss james) remarkedthat the weather was very changeable. miss brett then offered me a cup of tea, whichi accepted, i cannot recall in what words. miss brett is a short and stout lady withwhite hair. the only other figure in the group that caught my attention was a miss mowbray,a small and neat lady of aristocratic manners,

silver hair, and a high voice and colour.she was the most emphatic member of the party; and her views on the subject of pinafores,though expressed with a natural deference to myself, were in themselves strong and advanced.beside her (although all five ladies were dressed simply in black) it could not be deniedthat the others looked in some way what you men of the world would call dowdy. "after about ten minutes' conversation i roseto go, and as i did so i heard something which—i cannot describe it—something which seemedto—but i really cannot describe it." "what did you hear?" i asked, with some impatience. "i heard," said the vicar solemnly, "i heardmiss mowbray (the lady with the silver hair)

say to miss james (the lady with the woollenshawl), the following extraordinary words. i committed them to memory on the spot, andas soon as circumstances set me free to do so, i noted them down on a piece of paper.i believe i have it here." he fumbled in his breast-pocket, bringing out mild things, note-books,circulars and programmes of village concerts. "i heard miss mowbray say to miss james, thefollowing words: 'now's your time, bill.'" he gazed at me for a few moments after makingthis announcement, gravely and unflinchingly, as if conscious that here he was unshakenabout his facts. then he resumed, turning his bald head more towards the fire. "this appeared to me remarkable. i could notby any means understand it. it seemed to me

first of all peculiar that one maiden ladyshould address another maiden lady as 'bill'. my experience, as i have said, may be incomplete;maiden ladies may have among themselves and in exclusively spinster circles wilder customsthan i am aware of. but it seemed to me odd, and i could almost have sworn (if you willnot misunderstand the phrase), i should have been strongly impelled to maintain at thetime that the words, 'now's your time, bill', were by no means pronounced with that upper-classintonation which, as i have already said, had up to now characterized miss mowbray'sconversation. in fact, the words, 'now's your time, bill', would have been, i fancy, unsuitableif pronounced with that upper-class intonation. "i was surprised, i repeat, then, at the remark.but i was still more surprised when, looking

round me in bewilderment, my hat and umbrellain hand, i saw the lean lady with the woollen shawl leaning upright against the door outof which i was just about to make my exit. she was still knitting, and i supposed thatthis erect posture against the door was only an eccentricity of spinsterhood and an oblivionof my intended departure. "i said genially, 'i am so sorry to disturbyou, miss james, but i must really be going. i have—er—' i stopped here, for the wordsshe had uttered in reply, though singularly brief and in tone extremely business-like,were such as to render that arrest of my remarks, i think, natural and excusable. i have thesewords also noted down. i have not the least idea of their meaning; so i have only beenable to render them phonetically. but she

said," and mr shorter peered short-sightedlyat his papers, "she said: 'chuck it, fat 'ead,' and she added something that sounded like'it's a kop', or (possibly) 'a kopt'. and then the last cord, either of my sanity orthe sanity of the universe, snapped suddenly. my esteemed friend and helper, miss brett,standing by the mantelpiece, said: 'put 'is old 'ead in a bag, sam, and tie 'im up beforeyou start jawin'. you'll be kopt yourselves some o' these days with this way of coin'things, har lar theater.' "my head went round and round. was it reallytrue, as i had suddenly fancied a moment before, that unmarried ladies had some dreadful riotoussociety of their own from which all others were excluded? i remembered dimly in my classicaldays (i was a scholar in a small way once,

but now, alas! rusty), i remembered the mysteriesof the bona dea and their strange female freemasonry. i remembered the witches' sabbaths. i wasjust, in my absurd lightheadedness, trying to remember a line of verse about diana'snymphs, when miss mowbray threw her arm round me from behind. the moment it held me i knewit was not a woman's arm. "miss brett—or what i had called miss brett—wasstanding in front of me with a big revolver in her hand and a broad grin on her face.miss james was still leaning against the door, but had fallen into an attitude so totallynew, and so totally unfeminine, that it gave one a shock. she was kicking her heels, withher hands in her pockets and her cap on one side. she was a man. i mean he was a wo—no,that is i saw that instead of being a woman

she—he, i mean—that is, it was a man." mr shorter became indescribably flurried andflapping in endeavouring to arrange these genders and his plaid shawl at the same time.he resumed with a higher fever of nervousness: "as for miss mowbray, she—he, held me ina ring of iron. he had her arm—that is she had his arm—round her neck—my neck i mean—andi could not cry out. miss brett—that is, mr brett, at least mr something who was notmiss brett—had the revolver pointed at me. the other two ladies—or er—gentlemen,were rummaging in some bag in the background. it was all clear at last: they were criminalsdressed up as women, to kidnap me! to kidnap the vicar of chuntsey, in essex. but why?was it to be nonconformists?

"the brute leaning against the door calledout carelessly, ''urry up, 'arry. show the old bloke what the game is, and let's getoff.' "'curse 'is eyes,' said miss brett—i meanthe man with the revolver—'why should we show 'im the game?' "'if you take my advice you bloomin' wellwill,' said the man at the door, whom they called bill. 'a man wot knows wet 'e's doin'is worth ten wot don't, even if 'e's a potty old parson.' "'bill's right enough,' said the coarse voiceof the man who held me (it had been miss mowbray's). 'bring out the picture, 'arry.'

"the man with the revolver walked across theroom to where the other two women—i mean men—were turning over baggage, and askedthem for something which they gave him. he came back with it across the room and heldit out in front of me. and compared to the surprise of that display, all the previoussurprises of this awful day shrank suddenly. "it was a portrait of myself. that such apicture should be in the hands of these scoundrels might in any case have caused a mild surprise;but no more. it was no mild surprise that i felt. the likeness was an extremely goodone, worked up with all the accessories of the conventional photographic studio. i wasleaning my head on my hand and was relieved against a painted landscape of woodland. itwas obvious that it was no snapshot; it was

clear that i had sat for this photograph.and the truth was that i had never sat for such a photograph. it was a photograph thati had never had taken. "i stared at it again and again. it seemedto me to be touched up a good deal; it was glazed as well as framed, and the glass blurredsome of the details. but there unmistakably was my face, my eyes, my nose and mouth, myhead and hand, posed for a professional photographer. and i had never posed so for any photographer. "'be'old the bloomin' miracle,' said the manwith the revolver, with ill-timed facetiousness. 'parson, prepare to meet your god.' and withthis he slid the glass out of the frame. as the glass moved, i saw that part of the picturewas painted on it in chinese white, notably

a pair of white whiskers and a clerical collar.and underneath was a portrait of an old lady in a quiet black dress, leaning her head onher hand against the woodland landscape. the old lady was as like me as one pin is likeanother. it had required only the whiskers and the collar to make it me in every hair. "'entertainin', ain't it?' said the man describedas 'arry, as he shot the glass back again. 'remarkable resemblance, parson. gratifyin'to the lady. gratifyin' to you. and hi may hadd, particlery gratifyin' to us, as bein'the probable source of a very tolerable haul. you know colonel hawker, the man who's cometo live in these parts, don't you?' "i nodded.

"'well,' said the man 'arry, pointing to thepicture, 'that's 'is mother. 'oo ran to catch 'im when 'e fell? she did,' and he flung hisfingers in a general gesture towards the photograph of the old lady who was exactly like me. "'tell the old gent wot 'e's got to do andbe done with it,' broke out bill from the door. 'look 'ere, reverend shorter, we ain'tgoin' to do you no 'arm. we'll give you a sov. for your trouble if you like. and asfor the old woman's clothes—why, you'll look lovely in 'em.' "'you ain't much of a 'and at a description,bill,' said the man behind me. 'mr shorter, it's like this. we've got to see this manhawker tonight. maybe 'e'll kiss us all and

'ave up the champagne when 'e sees us. maybeon the other 'and—'e won't. maybe 'e'll be dead when we goes away. maybe not. butwe've got to see 'im. now as you know, 'e shuts 'isself up and never opens the doorto a soul; only you don't know why and we does. the only one as can ever get at 'imis 'is mother. well, it's a confounded funny coincidence,' he said, accenting the penultimate,'it's a very unusual piece of good luck, but you're 'is mother.' "'when first i saw 'er picture,' said theman bill, shaking his head in a ruminant manner, 'when i first saw it i said—old shorter.those were my exact words—old shorter.' "'what do you mean, you wild creatures?' igasped. 'what am i to do?'

"'that's easy said, your 'oldness,' said theman with the revolver, good-humouredly; 'you've got to put on those clothes,' and he pointedto a poke-bonnet and a heap of female clothes in the corner of the room. "i will not dwell, mr swinburne, upon thedetails of what followed. i had no choice. i could not fight five men, to say nothingof a loaded pistol. in five minutes, sir, the vicar of chuntsey was dressed as an oldwoman—as somebody else's mother, if you please—and was dragged out of the houseto take part in a crime. "it was already late in the afternoon, andthe nights of winter were closing in fast. on a dark road, in a blowing wind, we setout towards the lonely house of colonel hawker,

perhaps the queerest cortege that ever straggledup that or any other road. to every human eye, in every external, we were six very respectableold ladies of small means, in black dresses and refined but antiquated bonnets; and wewere really five criminals and a clergyman. "i will cut a long story short. my brain waswhirling like a windmill as i walked, trying to think of some manner of escape. to cryout, so long as we were far from houses, would be suicidal, for it would be easy for theruffians to knife me or to gag me and fling me into a ditch. on the other hand, to attemptto stop strangers and explain the situation was impossible, because of the frantic follyof the situation itself. long before i had persuaded the chance postman or carrier ofso absurd a story, my companions would certainly

have got off themselves, and in all probabilitywould have carried me off, as a friend of theirs who had the misfortune to be mad ordrunk. the last thought, however, was an inspiration; though a very terrible one. had it come tothis, that the vicar of chuntsey must pretend to be mad or drunk? it had come to this. "i walked along with the rest up the desertedroad, imitating and keeping pace, as far as i could, with their rapid and yet lady-likestep, until at length i saw a lamp-post and a policeman standing under it. i had madeup my mind. until we reached them we were all equally demure and silent and swift. whenwe reached them i suddenly flung myself against the railings and roared out: 'hooray! hooray!hooray! rule britannia! get your 'air cut.

hoop-la! boo!' it was a condition of no littlenovelty for a man in my position. "the constable instantly flashed his lanternon me, or the draggled, drunken old woman that was my travesty. 'now then, mum,' hebegan gruffly. "'come along quiet, or i'll eat your heart,'cried sam in my ear hoarsely. 'stop, or i'll flay you.' it was frightful to hear the wordsand see the neatly shawled old spinster who whispered them. "i yelled, and yelled—i was in for it now.i screamed comic refrains that vulgar young men had sung, to my regret, at our villageconcerts; i rolled to and fro like a ninepin about to fall.

"'if you can't get your friend on quiet, ladies,'said the policeman, 'i shall have to take 'er up. drunk and disorderly she is rightenough.' "i redoubled my efforts. i had not been broughtup to this sort of thing; but i believe i eclipsed myself. words that i did not knowi had ever heard of seemed to come pouring out of my open mouth. "'when we get you past,' whispered bill, 'you'llhowl louder; you'll howl louder when we're burning your feet off.' "i screamed in my terror those awful songsof joy. in all the nightmares that men have ever dreamed, there has never been anythingso blighting and horrible as the faces of

those five men, looking out of their poke-bonnets;the figures of district visitors with the faces of devils. i cannot think there is anythingso heart-breaking in hell. "for a sickening instant i thought that thebustle of my companions and the perfect respectability of all our dresses would overcome the policemanand induce him to let us pass. he wavered, so far as one can describe anything so solidas a policeman as wavering. i lurched suddenly forward and ran my head into his chest, callingout (if i remember correctly), 'oh, crikey, blimey, bill.' it was at that moment thati remembered most dearly that i was the vicar of chuntsey, in essex. "my desperate coup saved me. the policemanhad me hard by the back of the neck.

"'you come along with me,' he began, but billcut in with his perfect imitation of a lady's finnicking voice. "'oh, pray, constable, don't make a disturbancewith our poor friend. we will get her quietly home. she does drink too much, but she isquite a lady—only eccentric.' "'she butted me in the stomach,' said thepoliceman briefly. "'eccentricities of genius,' said sam earnestly. "'pray let me take her home,' reiterated bill,in the resumed character of miss james, 'she wants looking after.' 'she does,' said thepoliceman, 'but i'll look after her.' "'that's no good,' cried bill feverishly.'she wants her friends. she wants a particular

medicine we've got.' "'yes,' assented miss mowbray, with excitement,'no other medicine any good, constable. complaint quite unique.' "'i'm all righ'. cutchy, cutchy, coo!' remarked,to his eternal shame, the vicar of chuntsey. "'look here, ladies,' said the constable sternly,'i don't like the eccentricity of your friend, and i don't like 'er songs, or 'er 'ead inmy stomach. and now i come to think of it, i don't like the looks of you i've seen manyas quiet dressed as you as was wrong 'uns. who are you?' "'we've not our cards with us,' said missmowbray, with indescribable dignity. 'nor

do we see why we should be insulted by anyjack-in-office who chooses to be rude to ladies, when he is paid to protect them. if you chooseto take advantage of the weakness of our unfortunate friend, no doubt you are legally entitledto take her. but if you fancy you have any legal right to bully us, you will find yourselfin the wrong box.' "the truth and dignity of this staggered thepoliceman for a moment. under cover of their advantage my five persecutors turned for aninstant on me faces like faces of the damned and then swished off into the darkness. whenthe constable first turned his lantern and his suspicions on to them, i had seen thetelegraphic look flash from face to face saying that only retreat was possible now.

"by this time i was sinking slowly to thepavement, in a state of acute reflection. so long as the ruffians were with me, i darednot quit the role of drunkard. for if i had begun to talk reasonably and explain the realcase, the officer would merely have thought that i was slightly recovered and would haveput me in charge of my friends. now, however, if i liked i might safely undeceive him. "but i confess i did not like. the chancesof life are many, and it may doubtless sometimes lie in the narrow path of duty for a clergymanof the church of england to pretend to be a drunken old woman; but such necessitiesare, i imagine, sufficiently rare to appear to many improbable. suppose the story gotabout that i had pretended to be drunk. suppose

people did not all think it was pretence! "i lurched up, the policeman half-liftingme. i went along weakly and quietly for about a hundred yards. the officer evidently thoughtthat i was too sleepy and feeble to effect an escape, and so held me lightly and easilyenough. past one turning, two turnings, three turnings, four turnings, he trailed me withhim, a limp and slow and reluctant figure. at the fourth turning, i suddenly broke fromhis hand and tore down the street like a maddened stag. he was unprepared, he was heavy, andit was dark. i ran and ran and ran, and in five minutes' running, found i was gaining.in half an hour i was out in the fields under the holy and blessed stars, where i tore offmy accursed shawl and bonnet and buried them

in clean earth." the old gentleman had finished his story andleant back in his chair. both the matter and the manner of his narration had, as time wenton, impressed me favourably. he was an old duffer and pedant, but behind these thingshe was a country-bred man and gentleman, and had showed courage and a sporting instinctin the hour of desperation. he had told his story with many quaint formalities of diction,but also with a very convincing realism. "and now—" i began. "and now," said shorter, leaning forward againwith something like servile energy, "and now, mr swinburne, what about that unhappy manhawker. i cannot tell what those men meant,

or how far what they said was real. but surelythere is danger. i cannot go to the police, for reasons that you perceive. among otherthings, they wouldn't believe me. what is to be done?" i took out my watch. it was already half pasttwelve. "my friend basil grant," i said, "is the bestman we can go to. he and i were to have gone to the same dinner tonight; but he will justhave come back by now. have you any objection to taking a cab?" "not at all," he replied, rising politely,and gathering up his absurd plaid shawl. a rattle in a hansom brought us underneaththe sombre pile of workmen's flats in lambeth

which grant inhabited; a climb up a wearisomewooden staircase brought us to his garret. when i entered that wooden and scrappy interior,the white gleam of basil's shirt-front and the lustre of his fur coat flung on the woodensettle, struck me as a contrast. he was drinking a glass of wine before retiring. i was right;he had come back from the dinner-party. he listened to the repetition of the storyof the rev. ellis shorter with the genuine simplicity and respect which he never failedto exhibit in dealing with any human being. when it was over he said simply: "do you know a man named captain fraser?" i was so startled at this totally irrelevantreference to the worthy collector of chimpanzees

with whom i ought to have dined that evening,that i glanced sharply at grant. the result was that i did not look at mr shorter. i onlyheard him answer, in his most nervous tone, "no." basil, however, seemed to find something verycurious about his answer or his demeanour generally, for he kept his big blue eyes fixedon the old clergyman, and though the eyes were quite quiet they stood out more and morefrom his head. "you are quite sure, mr shorter," he repeated,"that you don't know captain fraser?" "quite," answered the vicar, and i was certainlypuzzled to find him returning so much to the timidity, not to say the demoralization, ofhis tone when he first entered my presence.

basil sprang smartly to his feet. "then our course is clear," he said. "youhave not even begun your investigation, my dear mr shorter; the first thing for us todo is to go together to see captain fraser." "when?" asked the clergyman, stammering. "now," said basil, putting one arm in hisfur coat. the old clergyman rose to his feet, quakingall over. "i really do not think that it is necessary,"he said. basil took his arm out of the fur coat, threwit over the chair again, and put his hands in his pockets.

"oh," he said, with emphasis. "oh—you don'tthink it necessary; then," and he added the words with great clearness and deliberation,"then, mr ellis shorter, i can only say that i would like to see you without your whiskers." and at these words i also rose to my feet,for the great tragedy of my life had come. splendid and exciting as life was in continualcontact with an intellect like basil's, i had always the feeling that that splendourand excitement were on the borderland of sanity. he lived perpetually near the vision of thereason of things which makes men lose their reason. and i felt of his insanity as menfeel of the death of friends with heart disease. it might come anywhere, in a field, in a hansomcab, looking at a sunset, smoking a cigarette.

it had come now. at the very moment of deliveringa judgement for the salvation of a fellow creature, basil grant had gone mad. "your whiskers," he cried, advancing withblazing eyes. "give me your whiskers. and your bald head." the old vicar naturally retreated a step ortwo. i stepped between. "sit down, basil," i implored, "you're a littleexcited. finish your wine." "whiskers," he answered sternly, "whiskers." and with that he made a dash at the old gentleman,who made a dash for the door, but was intercepted. and then, before i knew where i was the quietroom was turned into something between a pantomime

and a pandemonium by those two. chairs wereflung over with a crash, tables were vaulted with a noise like thunder, screens were smashed,crockery scattered in smithereens, and still basil grant bounded and bellowed after therev. ellis shorter. and now i began to perceive something else,which added the last half-witted touch to my mystification. the rev. ellis shorter,of chuntsey, in essex, was by no means behaving as i had previously noticed him to behave,or as, considering his age and station, i should have expected him to behave. his powerof dodging, leaping, and fighting would have been amazing in a lad of seventeen, and inthis doddering old vicar looked like a sort of farcical fairy-tale. moreover, he did notseem to be so much astonished as i had thought.

there was even a look of something like enjoymentin his eyes; so there was in the eye of basil. in fact, the unintelligible truth must betold. they were both laughing. at length shorter was cornered. "come, come, mr grant," he panted, "you can'tdo anything to me. it's quite legal. and it doesn't do any one the least harm. it's onlya social fiction. a result of our complex society, mr grant." "i don't blame you, my man," said basil coolly."but i want your whiskers. and your bald head. do they belong to captain fraser?" "no, no," said mr shorter, laughing, "we providethem ourselves. they don't belong to captain

fraser." "what the deuce does all this mean?" i almostscreamed. "are you all in an infernal nightmare? why should mr shorter's bald head belong tocaptain fraser? how could it? what the deuce has captain fraser to do with the affair?what is the matter with him? you dined with him, basil." "no," said grant, "i didn't." "didn't you go to mrs thornton's dinner-party?"i asked, staring. "why not?" "well," said basil, with a slow and singularsmile, "the fact is i was detained by a visitor. i have him, as a point of fact, in my bedroom."

"in your bedroom?" i repeated; but my imaginationhad reached that point when he might have said in his coal scuttle or his waistcoatpocket. grant stepped to the door of an inner room,flung it open and walked in. then he came out again with the last of the bodily wondersof that wild night. he introduced into the sitting-room, in an apologetic manner, andby the nape of the neck, a limp clergyman with a bald head, white whiskers and a plaidshawl. "sit down, gentlemen," cried grant, strikinghis hands heartily. "sit down all of you and have a glass of wine. as you say, there isno harm in it, and if captain fraser had simply dropped me a hint i could have saved him fromdropping a good sum of money. not that you

would have liked that, eh?" the two duplicate clergymen, who were sippingtheir burgundy with two duplicate grins, laughed heartily at this, and one of them carelesslypulled off his whiskers and laid them on the table. "basil," i said, "if you are my friend, saveme. what is all this?" he laughed again. "only another addition, cherub, to your collectionof queer trades. these two gentlemen (whose health i have now the pleasure of drinking)are professional detainers." "and what on earth's that?" i asked.

"it's really very simple, mr swinburne," beganhe who had once been the rev. ellis shorter, of chuntsey, in essex; and it gave me a shockindescribable to hear out of that pompous and familiar form come no longer its own pompousand familiar voice, but the brisk sharp tones of a young city man. "it is really nothingvery important. we are paid by our clients to detain in conversation, on some harmlesspretext, people whom they want out of the way for a few hours. and captain fraser—"and with that he hesitated and smiled. basil smiled also. he intervened. "the fact is that captain fraser, who is oneof my best friends, wanted us both out of the way very much. he is sailing tonight foreast africa, and the lady with whom we were

all to have dined is—er—what is i believedescribed as 'the romance of his life'. he wanted that two hours with her, and employedthese two reverend gentlemen to detain us at our houses so as to let him have the fieldto himself." "and of course," said the late mr shorterapologetically to me, "as i had to keep a gentleman at home from keeping an appointmentwith a lady, i had to come with something rather hot and strong—rather urgent. itwouldn't have done to be tame." "oh," i said, "i acquit you of tameness." "thank you, sir," said the man respectfully,"always very grateful for any recommendation, sir."

the other man idly pushed back his artificialbald head, revealing close red hair, and spoke dreamily, perhaps under the influence of basil'sadmirable burgundy. "it's wonderful how common it's getting, gentlemen.our office is busy from morning till night. i've no doubt you've often knocked up againstus before. you just take notice. when an old bachelor goes on boring you with hunting stories,when you're burning to be introduced to somebody, he's from our bureau. when a lady calls onparish work and stops hours, just when you wanted to go to the robinsons', she's fromour bureau. the robinson hand, sir, may be darkly seen." "there is one thing i don't understand," isaid. "why you are both vicars."

a shade crossed the brow of the temporaryincumbent of chuntsey, in essex. "that may have been a mistake, sir," he said."but it was not our fault. it was all the munificence of captain fraser. he requestedthat the highest price and talent on our tariff should be employed to detain you gentlemen.now the highest payment in our office goes to those who impersonate vicars, as beingthe most respectable and more of a strain. we are paid five guineas a visit. we havehad the good fortune to satisfy the firm with our work; and we are now permanently vicars.before that we had two years as colonels, the next in our scale. colonels are four guineas." 4. the singular speculation of the house-agent

lieutenant drummond keith was a man aboutwhom conversation always burst like a thunderstorm the moment he left the room. this arose frommany separate touches about him. he was a light, loose person, who wore light, looseclothes, generally white, as if he were in the tropics; he was lean and graceful, likea panther, and he had restless black eyes. he was very impecunious. he had one of thehabits of the poor, in a degree so exaggerated as immeasurably to eclipse the most miserableof the unemployed; i mean the habit of continual change of lodgings. there are inland tractsof london where, in the very heart of artificial civilization, humanity has almost become nomadiconce more. but in that restless interior there was no ragged tramp so restless as the elegantofficer in the loose white clothes. he had

shot a great many things in his time, to judgefrom his conversation, from partridges to elephants, but his slangier acquaintanceswere of opinion that "the moon" had been not unfrequently amid the victims of his victoriousrifle. the phrase is a fine one, and suggests a mystic, elvish, nocturnal hunting. he carried from house to house and from parishto parish a kit which consisted practically of five articles. two odd-looking, large-bladedspears, tied together, the weapons, i suppose, of some savage tribe, a green umbrella, ahuge and tattered copy of the pickwick papers, a big game rifle, and a large sealed jar ofsome unholy oriental wine. these always went into every new lodging, even for one night;and they went in quite undisguised, tied up

in wisps of string or straw, to the delightof the poetic gutter boys in the little grey streets. i had forgotten to mention that he alwayscarried also his old regimental sword. but this raised another odd question about him.slim and active as he was, he was no longer very young. his hair, indeed, was quite grey,though his rather wild almost italian moustache retained its blackness, and his face was carewornunder its almost italian gaiety. to find a middle-aged man who has left the army at theprimitive rank of lieutenant is unusual and not necessarily encouraging. with the morecautious and solid this fact, like his endless flitting, did the mysterious gentleman nogood.

lastly, he was a man who told the kind ofadventures which win a man admiration, but not respect. they came out of queer places,where a good man would scarcely find himself, out of opium dens and gambling hells; theyhad the heat of the thieves' kitchens or smelled of a strange smoke from cannibal incantations.these are the kind of stories which discredit a person almost equally whether they are believedor no. if keith's tales were false he was a liar; if they were true he had had, at anyrate, every opportunity of being a scamp. he had just left the room in which i sat withbasil grant and his brother rupert, the voluble amateur detective. and as i say was invariablythe case, we were all talking about him. rupert grant was a clever young fellow, but he hadthat tendency which youth and cleverness,

when sharply combined, so often produce, asomewhat extravagant scepticism. he saw doubt and guilt everywhere, and it was meat anddrink to him. i had often got irritated with this boyish incredulity of his, but on thisparticular occasion i am bound to say that i thought him so obviously right that i wasastounded at basil's opposing him, however banteringly. i could swallow a good deal, being naturallyof a simple turn, but i could not swallow lieutenant keith's autobiography. "you don't seriously mean, basil," i said,"that you think that that fellow really did go as a stowaway with nansen and pretend tobe the mad mullah and—"

"he has one fault," said basil thoughtfully,"or virtue, as you may happen to regard it. he tells the truth in too exact and bald astyle; he is too veracious." "oh! if you are going to be paradoxical,"said rupert contemptuously, "be a bit funnier than that. say, for instance, that he haslived all his life in one ancestral manor." "no, he's extremely fond of change of scene,"replied basil dispassionately, "and of living in odd places. that doesn't prevent his chieftrait being verbal exactitude. what you people don't understand is that telling a thing crudelyand coarsely as it happened makes it sound frightfully strange. the sort of things keithrecounts are not the sort of things that a man would make up to cover himself with honour;they are too absurd. but they are the sort

of things that a man would do if he were sufficientlyfilled with the soul of skylarking." "so far from paradox," said his brother, withsomething rather like a sneer, "you seem to be going in for journalese proverbs. do youbelieve that truth is stranger than fiction?" "truth must of necessity be stranger thanfiction," said basil placidly. "for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and thereforeis congenial to it." "well, your lieutenant's truth is stranger,if it is truth, than anything i ever heard of," said rupert, relapsing into flippancy."do you, on your soul, believe in all that about the shark and the camera?" "i believe keith's words," answered the other."he is an honest man."

"i should like to question a regiment of hislandladies," said rupert cynically. "i must say, i think you can hardly regardhim as unimpeachable merely in himself," i said mildly; "his mode of life—" before i could complete the sentence the doorwas flung open and drummond keith appeared again on the threshold, his white panama onhis head. "i say, grant," he said, knocking off hiscigarette ash against the door, "i've got no money in the world till next april. couldyou lend me a hundred pounds? there's a good chap." rupert and i looked at each other in an ironicalsilence. basil, who was sitting by his desk,

swung the chair round idly on its screw andpicked up a quill-pen. "shall i cross it?" he asked, opening a cheque-book. "really," began rupert, with a rather nervousloudness, "since lieutenant keith has seen fit to make this suggestion to basil beforehis family, i—" "here you are, ugly," said basil, flutteringa cheque in the direction of the quite nonchalant officer. "are you in a hurry?" "yes," replied keith, in a rather abrupt way."as a matter of fact i want it now. i want to see my—er—business man." rupert was eyeing him sarcastically, and icould see that it was on the tip of his tongue

to say, inquiringly, "receiver of stolen goods,perhaps." what he did say was: "a business man? that's rather a general description,lieutenant keith." keith looked at him sharply, and then said,with something rather like ill-temper: "he's a thingum-my-bob, a house-agent, say.i'm going to see him." "oh, you're going to see a house-agent, areyou?" said rupert grant grimly. "do you know, mr keith, i think i should very much liketo go with you?" basil shook with his soundless laughter. lieutenantkeith started a little; his brow blackened sharply. "i beg your pardon," he said. "what did yousay?"

rupert's face had been growing from stageto stage of ferocious irony, and he answered: "i was saying that i wondered whether youwould mind our strolling along with you to this house-agent's." the visitor swung his stick with a suddenwhirling violence. "oh, in god's name, come to my house-agent's!come to my bedroom. look under my bed. examine my dust-bin. come along!" and with a furiousenergy which took away our breath he banged his way out of the room. rupert grant, his restless blue eyes dancingwith his detective excitement, soon shouldered alongside him, talking to him with that transparentcamaraderie which he imagined to be appropriate

from the disguised policeman to the disguisedcriminal. his interpretation was certainly corroborated by one particular detail, theunmistakable unrest, annoyance, and nervousness of the man with whom he walked. basil andi tramped behind, and it was not necessary for us to tell each other that we had bothnoticed this. lieutenant drummond keith led us through veryextraordinary and unpromising neighbourhoods in the search for his remarkable house-agent.neither of the brothers grant failed to notice this fact. as the streets grew closer andmore crooked and the roofs lower and the gutters grosser with mud, a darker curiosity deepenedon the brows of basil, and the figure of rupert seen from behind seemed to fill the streetwith a gigantic swagger of success. at length,

at the end of the fourth or fifth lean greystreet in that sterile district, we came suddenly to a halt, the mysterious lieutenant lookingonce more about him with a sort of sulky desperation. above a row of shutters and a door, all indescribablydingy in appearance and in size scarce sufficient even for a penny toyshop, ran the inscription:"p. montmorency, house-agent." "this is the office of which i spoke," saidkeith, in a cutting voice. "will you wait here a moment, or does your astonishing tendernessabout my welfare lead you to wish to overhear everything i have to say to my business adviser?" rupert's face was white and shaking with excitement;nothing on earth would have induced him now to have abandoned his prey.

"if you will excuse me," he said, clenchinghis hands behind his back, "i think i should feel myself justified in—" "oh! come along in," exploded the lieutenant.he made the same gesture of savage surrender. and he slammed into the office, the rest ofus at his heels. p. montmorency, house-agent, was a solitaryold gentleman sitting behind a bare brown counter. he had an egglike head, froglikejaws, and a grey hairy fringe of aureole round the lower part of his face; the whole combinedwith a reddish, aquiline nose. he wore a shabby black frock-coat, a sort of semi-clericaltie worn at a very unclerical angle, and looked, generally speaking, about as unlike a house-agentas anything could look, short of something

like a sandwich man or a scotch highlander. we stood inside the room for fully forty seconds,and the odd old gentleman did not look at us. neither, to tell the truth, odd as hewas, did we look at him. our eyes were fixed, where his were fixed, upon something thatwas crawling about on the counter in front of him. it was a ferret. the silence was broken by rupert grant. hespoke in that sweet and steely voice which he reserved for great occasions and practisedfor hours together in his bedroom. he said: "mr montmorency, i think?" the old gentleman started, lifted his eyeswith a bland bewilderment, picked up the ferret

by the neck, stuffed it alive into his trouserspocket, smiled apologetically, and said: "sir." "you are a house-agent, are you not?" askedrupert. to the delight of that criminal investigator,mr montmorency's eyes wandered unquietly towards lieutenant keith, the only man present thathe knew. "a house-agent," cried rupert again, bringingout the word as if it were "burglar'. "yes... oh, yes," said the man, with a quaveringand almost coquettish smile. "i am a house-agent... oh, yes." "well, i think," said rupert, with a sardonicsleekness, "that lieutenant keith wants to

speak to you. we have come in by his request." lieutenant keith was lowering gloomily, andnow he spoke. "i have come, mr montmorency, about that houseof mine." "yes, sir," said montmorency, spreading hisfingers on the flat counter. "it's all ready, sir. i've attended to all your suggestionser—about the br—" "right," cried keith, cutting the word shortwith the startling neatness of a gunshot. "we needn't bother about all that. if you'vedone what i told you, all right." and he turned sharply towards the door. mr montmorency, house-agent, presented a pictureof pathos. after stammering a moment he said:

"excuse me... mr keith... there was anothermatter... about which i wasn't quite sure. i tried to get all the heating apparatus possibleunder the circumstances ... but in winter... at that elevation..." "can't expect much, eh?" said the lieutenant,cutting in with the same sudden skill. "no, of course not. that's all right, montmorency.there can't be any more difficulties," and he put his hand on the handle of the door. "i think," said rupert grant, with a satanicsuavity, "that mr montmorency has something further to say to you, lieutenant." "only," said the house-agent, in desperation,"what about the birds?"

"i beg your pardon," said rupert, in a generalblank. "what about the birds?" said the house-agentdoggedly. basil, who had remained throughout the proceedingsin a state of napoleonic calm, which might be more accurately described as a state ofnapoleonic stupidity, suddenly lifted his leonine head. "before you go, lieutenant keith," he said."come now. really, what about the birds?" "i'll take care of them," said lieutenantkeith, still with his long back turned to us; "they shan't suffer." "thank you, sir, thank you," cried the incomprehensiblehouse-agent, with an air of ecstasy. "you'll

excuse my concern, sir. you know i'm wildon wild animals. i'm as wild as any of them on that. thank you, sir. but there's anotherthing..." the lieutenant, with his back turned to us,exploded with an indescribable laugh and swung round to face us. it was a laugh, the purportof which was direct and essential, and yet which one cannot exactly express. as nearas it said anything, verbally speaking, it said: "well, if you must spoil it, you must.but you don't know what you're spoiling." "there is another thing," continued mr montmorencyweakly. "of course, if you don't want to be visited you'll paint the house green, but—" "green!" shouted keith. "green! let it begreen or nothing. i won't have a house of

another colour. green!" and before we couldrealize anything the door had banged between us and the street. rupert grant seemed to take a little timeto collect himself; but he spoke before the echoes of the door died away. "your client, lieutenant keith, appears somewhatexcited," he said. "what is the matter with him? is he unwell?" "oh, i should think not," said mr montmorency,in some confusion. "the negotiations have been somewhat difficult—the house is rather—" "green," said rupert calmly. "that appearsto be a very important point. it must be rather

green. may i ask you, mr montmorency, beforei rejoin my companion outside, whether, in your business, it is usual to ask for housesby their colour? do clients write to a house-agent asking for a pink house or a blue house? or,to take another instance, for a green house?" "only," said montmorency, trembling, "onlyto be inconspicuous." rupert had his ruthless smile. "can you tellme any place on earth in which a green house would be inconspicuous?" the house-agent was fidgeting nervously inhis pocket. slowly drawing out a couple of lizards and leaving them to run on the counter,he said: "no; i can't."

"you can't suggest an explanation?" "no," said mr montmorency, rising slowly andyet in such a way as to suggest a sudden situation, "i can't. and may i, as a busy man, be excusedif i ask you, gentlemen, if you have any demand to make of me in connection with my business.what kind of house would you desire me to get for you, sir?" he opened his blank blue eyes on rupert, whoseemed for the second staggered. then he recovered himself with perfect common sense and answered: "i am sorry, mr montmorency. the fascinationof your remarks has unduly delayed us from joining our friend outside. pray excuse myapparent impertinence."

"not at all, sir," said the house-agent, takinga south american spider idly from his waistcoat pocket and letting it climb up the slope ofhis desk. "not at all, sir. i hope you will favour me again." rupert grant dashed out of the office in agust of anger, anxious to face lieutenant keith. he was gone. the dull, starlit streetwas deserted. "what do you say now?" cried rupert to hisbrother. his brother said nothing now. we all three strode down the street in silence,rupert feverish, myself dazed, basil, to all appearance, merely dull. we walked throughgrey street after grey street, turning corners, traversing squares, scarcely meeting anyone,except occasional drunken knots of two or

three. in one small street, however, the knots oftwo or three began abruptly to thicken into knots of five or six and then into great groupsand then into a crowd. the crowd was stirring very slightly. but anyone with a knowledgeof the eternal populace knows that if the outside rim of a crowd stirs ever so slightlyit means that there is madness in the heart and core of the mob. it soon became evidentthat something really important had happened in the centre of this excitement. we wormedour way to the front, with the cunning which is known only to cockneys, and once therewe soon learned the nature of the difficulty. there had been a brawl concerned with somesix men, and one of them lay almost dead on

the stones of the street. of the other four,all interesting matters were, as far as we were concerned, swallowed up in one stupendousfact. one of the four survivors of the brutal and perhaps fatal scuffle was the immaculatelieutenant keith, his clothes torn to ribbons, his eyes blazing, blood on his knuckles. oneother thing, however, pointed at him in a worse manner. a short sword, or very longknife, had been drawn out of his elegant walking-stick, and lay in front of him upon the stones. itdid not, however, appear to be bloody. the police had already pushed into the centrewith their ponderous omnipotence, and even as they did so, rupert grant sprang forwardwith his incontrollable and intolerable secret. "that is the man, constable," he shouted,pointing at the battered lieutenant. "he is

a suspicious character. he did the murder." "there's been no murder done, sir," said thepoliceman, with his automatic civility. "the poor man's only hurt. i shall only be ableto take the names and addresses of the men in the scuffle and have a good eye kept onthem." "have a good eye kept on that one," said rupert,pale to the lips, and pointing to the ragged keith. "all right, sir," said the policeman unemotionally,and went the round of the people present, collecting the addresses. when he had completedhis task the dusk had fallen and most of the people not immediately connected with theexamination had gone away. he still found,

however, one eager-faced stranger lingeringon the outskirts of the affair. it was rupert grant. "constable," he said, "i have a very particularreason for asking you a question. would you mind telling me whether that military fellowwho dropped his sword-stick in the row gave you an address or not?" "yes, sir," said the policeman, after a reflectivepause; "yes, he gave me his address." "my name is rupert grant," said that individual,with some pomp. "i have assisted the police on more than one occasion. i wonder whetheryou would tell me, as a special favour, what address?"

the constable looked at him. "yes," he said slowly, "if you like. his addressis: the elms, buxton common, near purley, surrey." "thank you," said rupert, and ran home throughthe gathering night as fast as his legs could carry him, repeating the address to himself. rupert grant generally came down late in arather lordly way to breakfast; he contrived, i don't know how, to achieve always the attitudeof the indulged younger brother. next morning, however, when basil and i came down we foundhim ready and restless. "well," he said sharply to his brother almostbefore we sat down to the meal. "what do you

think of your drummond keith now?" "what do i think of him?" inquired basil slowly."i don't think anything of him." "i'm glad to hear it," said rupert, butteringhis toast with an energy that was somewhat exultant. "i thought you'd come round to myview, but i own i was startled at your not seeing it from the beginning. the man is atranslucent liar and knave." "i think," said basil, in the same heavy monotoneas before, "that i did not make myself clear. when i said that i thought nothing of himi meant grammatically what i said. i meant that i did not think about him; that he didnot occupy my mind. you, however, seem to me to think a lot of him, since you thinkhim a knave. i should say he was glaringly

good myself." "i sometimes think you talk paradox for itsown sake," said rupert, breaking an egg with unnecessary sharpness. "what the deuce isthe sense of it? here's a man whose original position was, by our common agreement, dubious.he's a wanderer, a teller of tall tales, a man who doesn't conceal his acquaintance withall the blackest and bloodiest scenes on earth. we take the trouble to follow him to one ofhis appointments, and if ever two human beings were plotting together and lying to everyone else, he and that impossible house-agent were doing it. we followed him home, and thevery same night he is in the thick of a fatal, or nearly fatal, brawl, in which he is theonly man armed. really, if this is being glaringly

good, i must confess that the glare does notdazzle me." basil was quite unmoved. "i admit his moralgoodness is of a certain kind, a quaint, perhaps a casual kind. he is very fond of change andexperiment. but all the points you so ingeniously make against him are mere coincidence or specialpleading. it's true he didn't want to talk about his house business in front of us. noman would. it's true that he carries a sword-stick. any man might. it's true he drew it in theshock of a street fight. any man would. but there's nothing really dubious in all this.there's nothing to confirm—" as he spoke a knock came at the door. "if you please, sir," said the landlady, withan alarmed air, "there's a policeman wants

to see you." "show him in," said basil, amid the blanksilence. the heavy, handsome constable who appearedat the door spoke almost as soon as he appeared there. "i think one of you gentlemen," he said, curtlybut respectfully, "was present at the affair in copper street last night, and drew my attentionvery strongly to a particular man." rupert half rose from his chair, with eyeslike diamonds, but the constable went on calmly, referring to a paper. "a young man with grey hair. had light greyclothes, very good, but torn in the struggle.

gave his name as drummond keith." "this is amusing," said basil, laughing. "iwas in the very act of clearing that poor officer's character of rather fanciful aspersions.what about him?" "well, sir," said the constable, "i took allthe men's addresses and had them all watched. it wasn't serious enough to do more than that.all the other addresses are all right. but this man keith gave a false address. the placedoesn't exist." the breakfast table was nearly flung overas rupert sprang up, slapping both his thighs. "well, by all that's good," he cried. "thisis a sign from heaven." "it's certainly very extraordinary," saidbasil quietly, with knitted brows. "it's odd

the fellow should have given a false address,considering he was perfectly innocent in the—" "oh, you jolly old early christian duffer,"cried rupert, in a sort of rapture, "i don't wonder you couldn't be a judge. you thinkevery one as good as yourself. isn't the thing plain enough now? a doubtful acquaintance;rowdy stories, a most suspicious conversation, mean streets, a concealed knife, a man nearlykilled, and, finally, a false address. that's what we call glaring goodness." "it's certainly very extraordinary," repeatedbasil. and he strolled moodily about the room. then he said: "you are quite sure, constable,that there's no mistake? you got the address right, and the police have really gone toit and found it was a fraud?"

"it was very simple, sir," said the policeman,chuckling. "the place he named was a well-known common quite near london, and our people weredown there this morning before any of you were awake. and there's no such house. infact, there are hardly any houses at all. though it is so near london, it's a blankmoor with hardly five trees on it, to say nothing of christians. oh, no, sir, the addresswas a fraud right enough. he was a clever rascal, and chose one of those scraps of lostengland that people know nothing about. nobody could say off-hand that there was not a particularhouse dropped somewhere about the heath. but as a fact, there isn't." basil's face during this sensible speech hadbeen growing darker and darker with a sort

of desperate sagacity. he was cornered almostfor the first time since i had known him; and to tell the truth i rather wondered atthe almost childish obstinacy which kept him so close to his original prejudice in favourof the wildly questionable lieutenant. at length he said: "you really searched the common? and the addresswas really not known in the district—by the way, what was the address?" the constable selected one of his slips ofpaper and consulted it, but before he could speak rupert grant, who was leaning in thewindow in a perfect posture of the quiet and triumphant detective, struck in with the sharpand suave voice he loved so much to use.

"why, i can tell you that, basil," he saidgraciously as he idly plucked leaves from a plant in the window. "i took the precautionto get this man's address from the constable last night." "and what was it?" asked his brother gruffly. "the constable will correct me if i am wrong,"said rupert, looking sweetly at the ceiling. "it was: the elms, buxton common, near purley,surrey." "right, sir," said the policeman, laughingand folding up his papers. there was a silence, and the blue eyes ofbasil looked blindly for a few seconds into the void. then his head fell back in his chairso suddenly that i started up, thinking him

ill. but before i could move further his lipshad flown apart (i can use no other phrase) and a peal of gigantic laughter struck andshook the ceiling—laughter that shook the laughter, laughter redoubled, laughter incurable,laughter that could not stop. two whole minutes afterwards it was stillunended; basil was ill with laughter; but still he laughed. the rest of us were by thistime ill almost with terror. "excuse me," said the insane creature, gettingat last to his feet. "i am awfully sorry. it is horribly rude. and stupid, too. andalso unpractical, because we have not much time to lose if we're to get down to thatplace. the train service is confoundedly bad, as i happen to know. it's quite out of proportionto the comparatively small distance."

"get down to that place?" i repeated blankly."get down to what place?" "i have forgotten its name," said basil vaguely,putting his hands in his pockets as he rose. "something common near purley. has any onegot a timetable?" "you don't seriously mean," cried rupert,who had been staring in a sort of confusion of emotions. "you don't mean that you wantto go to buxton common, do you? you can't mean that!" "why shouldn't i go to buxton common?" askedbasil, smiling. "why should you?" said his brother, catchinghold again restlessly of the plant in the window and staring at the speaker.

"to find our friend, the lieutenant, of course,"said basil grant. "i thought you wanted to find him?" rupert broke a branch brutally from the plantand flung it impatiently on the floor. "and in order to find him," he said, "you suggestthe admirable expedient of going to the only place on the habitable earth where we knowhe can't be." the constable and i could not avoid breakinginto a kind of assenting laugh, and rupert, who had family eloquence, was encouraged togo on with a reiterated gesture: "he may be in buckingham palace; he may besitting astride the cross of st paul's; he may be in jail (which i think most likely);he may be in the great wheel; he may be in

my pantry; he may be in your store cupboard;but out of all the innumerable points of space, there is only one where he has just been systematicallylooked for and where we know that he is not to be found—and that, if i understand yourightly, is where you want us to go." "exactly," said basil calmly, getting intohis great-coat; "i thought you might care to accompany me. if not, of course, make yourselvesjolly here till i come back." it is our nature always to follow vanishingthings and value them if they really show a resolution to depart. we all followed basil,and i cannot say why, except that he was a vanishing thing, that he vanished decisivelywith his great-coat and his stick. rupert ran after him with a considerable flurry ofrationality.

"my dear chap," he cried, "do you really meanthat you see any good in going down to this ridiculous scrub, where there is nothing butbeaten tracks and a few twisted trees, simply because it was the first place that came intoa rowdy lieutenant's head when he wanted to give a lying reference in a scrape?" "yes," said basil, taking out his watch, "and,what's worse, we've lost the train." he paused a moment and then added: "as a matterof fact, i think we may just as well go down later in the day. i have some writing to do,and i think you told me, rupert, that you thought of going to the dulwich gallery. iwas rather too impetuous. very likely he wouldn't be in. but if we get down by the 5.15, whichgets to purley about 6, i expect we shall

just catch him." "catch him!" cried his brother, in a kindof final anger. "i wish we could. where the deuce shall we catch him now?" "i keep forgetting the name of the common,"said basil, as he buttoned up his coat. "the elms—what is it? buxton common, near purley.that's where we shall find him." "but there is no such place," groaned rupert;but he followed his brother downstairs. we all followed him. we snatched our hatsfrom the hat-stand and our sticks from the umbrella-stand; and why we followed him wedid not and do not know. but we always followed him, whatever was the meaning of the fact,whatever was the nature of his mastery. and

the strange thing was that we followed himthe more completely the more nonsensical appeared the thing which he said. at bottom, i believe,if he had risen from our breakfast table and said: "i am going to find the holy pig withten tails," we should have followed him to the end of the world. i don't know whether this mystical feelingof mine about basil on this occasion has got any of the dark and cloudy colour, so to speak,of the strange journey that we made the same evening. it was already very dense twilightwhen we struck southward from purley. suburbs and things on the london border may be, inmost cases, commonplace and comfortable. but if ever by any chance they really are emptysolitudes they are to the human spirit more

desolate and dehumanized than any yorkshiremoors or highland hills, because the suddenness with which the traveller drops into that silencehas something about it as of evil elf-land. it seems to be one of the ragged suburbs ofthe cosmos half-forgotten by god—such a place was buxton common, near purley. there was certainly a sort of grey futilityin the landscape itself. but it was enormously increased by the sense of grey futility inour expedition. the tracts of grey turf looked useless, the occasional wind-stricken treeslooked useless, but we, the human beings, more useless than the hopeless turf or theidle trees. we were maniacs akin to the foolish landscape, for we were come to chase the wildgoose which has led men and left men in bogs

from the beginning. we were three dazed menunder the captaincy of a madman going to look for a man whom we knew was not there in ahouse that had no existence. a livid sunset seemed to look at us with a sort of sicklysmile before it died. basil went on in front with his coat collarturned up, looking in the gloom rather like a grotesque napoleon. we crossed swell afterswell of the windy common in increasing darkness and entire silence. suddenly basil stoppedand turned to us, his hands in his pockets. through the dusk i could just detect thathe wore a broad grin as of comfortable success. "well," he cried, taking his heavily glovedhands out of his pockets and slapping them together, "here we are at last."

the wind swirled sadly over the homeless heath;two desolate elms rocked above us in the sky like shapeless clouds of grey. there was nota sign of man or beast to the sullen circle of the horizon, and in the midst of that wildernessbasil grant stood rubbing his hands with the air of an innkeeper standing at an open door. "how jolly it is," he cried, "to get backto civilization. that notion that civilization isn't poetical is a civilised delusion. waittill you've really lost yourself in nature, among the devilish woodlands and the cruelflowers. then you'll know that there's no star like the red star of man that he lightson his hearthstone; no river like the red river of man, the good red wine, which you,mr rupert grant, if i have any knowledge of

you, will be drinking in two or three minutesin enormous quantities." rupert and i exchanged glances of fear. basilwent on heartily, as the wind died in the dreary trees. "you'll find our host a much more simple kindof fellow in his own house. i did when i visited him when he lived in the cabin at yarmouth,and again in the loft at the city warehouse. he's really a very good fellow. but his greatestvirtue remains what i said originally." "what do you mean?" i asked, finding his speechstraying towards a sort of sanity. "what is his greatest virtue?" "his greatest virtue," replied basil, "isthat he always tells the literal truth."

"well, really," cried rupert, stamping aboutbetween cold and anger, and slapping himself like a cabman, "he doesn't seem to have beenvery literal or truthful in this case, nor you either. why the deuce, may i ask, haveyou brought us out to this infernal place?" "he was too truthful, i confess," said basil,leaning against the tree; "too hardly veracious, too severely accurate. he should have indulgedin a little more suggestiveness and legitimate romance. but come, it's time we went in. weshall be late for dinner." rupert whispered to me with a white face: "is it a hallucination, do you think? doeshe really fancy he sees a house?" "i suppose so," i said. then i added aloud,in what was meant to be a cheery and sensible

voice, but which sounded in my ears almostas strange as the wind: "come, come, basil, my dear fellow. wheredo you want us to go?" "why, up here," cried basil, and with a boundand a swing he was above our heads, swarming up the grey column of the colossal tree. "come up, all of you," he shouted out of thedarkness, with the voice of a schoolboy. "come up. you'll be late for dinner." the two great elms stood so close togetherthat there was scarcely a yard anywhere, and in some places not more than a foot, betweenthem. thus occasional branches and even bosses and boles formed a series of footholds thatalmost amounted to a rude natural ladder.

they must, i supposed, have been some sportof growth, siamese twins of vegetation. why we did it i cannot think; perhaps, asi have said, the mystery of the waste and dark had brought out and made primary somethingwholly mystical in basil's supremacy. but we only felt that there was a giant's staircasegoing somewhere, perhaps to the stars; and the victorious voice above called to us outof heaven. we hoisted ourselves up after him. half-way up some cold tongue of the nightair struck and sobered me suddenly. the hypnotism of the madman above fell from me, and i sawthe whole map of our silly actions as clearly as if it were printed. i saw three modernmen in black coats who had begun with a perfectly sensible suspicion of a doubtful adventurerand who had ended, god knows how, half-way

up a naked tree on a naked moorland, far fromthat adventurer and all his works, that adventurer who was at that moment, in all probability,laughing at us in some dirty soho restaurant. he had plenty to laugh at us about, and nodoubt he was laughing his loudest; but when i thought what his laughter would be if heknew where we were at that moment, i nearly let go of the tree and fell. "swinburne," said rupert suddenly, from above,"what are we doing? let's get down again," and by the mere sound of his voice i knewthat he too felt the shock of wakening to reality. "we can't leave poor basil," i said. "can'tyou call to him or get hold of him by the

leg?" "he's too far ahead," answered rupert; "he'snearly at the top of the beastly thing. looking for lieutenant keith in the rooks' nests,i suppose." we were ourselves by this time far on ourfrantic vertical journey. the mighty trunks were beginning to sway and shake slightlyin the wind. then i looked down and saw something which made me feel that we were far from theworld in a sense and to a degree that i cannot easily describe. i saw that the almost straightlines of the tall elm trees diminished a little in perspective as they fell. i was used toseeing parallel lines taper towards the sky. but to see them taper towards the earth mademe feel lost in space, like a falling star.

"can nothing be done to stop basil?" i calledout. "no," answered my fellow climber. "he's toofar up. he must get to the top, and when he finds nothing but wind and leaves he may gosane again. hark at him above there; you can just hear him talking to himself." "perhaps he's talking to us," i said. "no," said rupert, "he'd shout if he was.i've never known him to talk to himself before; i'm afraid he really is bad tonight; it'sa known sign of the brain going." "yes," i said sadly, and listened. basil'svoice certainly was sounding above us, and not by any means in the rich and riotous tonesin which he had hailed us before. he was speaking

quietly, and laughing every now and then,up there among the leaves and stars. after a silence mingled with this murmur,rupert grant suddenly said, "my god!" with a violent voice. "what's the matter—are you hurt?" i cried,alarmed. "no. listen to basil," said the other in avery strange voice. "he's not talking to himself." "then he is talking to us," i cried. "no," said rupert simply, "he's talking tosomebody else." great branches of the elm loaded with leavesswung about us in a sudden burst of wind, but when it died down i could still hear theconversational voice above. i could hear two

voices. suddenly from aloft came basil's boisteroushailing voice as before: "come up, you fellows. here's lieutenant keith." and a second afterwards came the half-americanvoice we had heard in our chambers more than once. it called out: "happy to see you, gentlemen; pray come in." out of a hole in an enormous dark egg-shapedthing, pendent in the branches like a wasps' nest, was protruding the pale face and fiercemoustache of the lieutenant, his teeth shining with that slightly southern air that belongedto him.

somehow or other, stunned and speechless,we lifted ourselves heavily into the opening. we fell into the full glow of a lamp-lit,cushioned, tiny room, with a circular wall lined with books, a circular table, and acircular seat around it. at this table sat three people. one was basil, who, in the instantafter alighting there, had fallen into an attitude of marmoreal ease as if he had beenthere from boyhood; he was smoking a cigar with a slow pleasure. the second was lieutenantdrummond keith, who looked happy also, but feverish and doubtful compared with his graniteguest. the third was the little bald-headed house-agent with the wild whiskers, who calledhimself montmorency. the spears, the green umbrella, and the cavalry sword hung in parallelson the wall. the sealed jar of strange wine

was on the mantelpiece, the enormous riflein the corner. in the middle of the table was a magnum of champagne. glasses were alreadyset for us. the wind of the night roared far below us,like an ocean at the foot of a light-house. the room stirred slightly, as a cabin mightin a mild sea. our glasses were filled, and we still satthere dazed and dumb. then basil spoke. "you seem still a little doubtful, rupert.surely there is no further question about the cold veracity of our injured host." "i don't quite grasp it all," said rupert,blinking still in the sudden glare. "lieutenant keith said his address was—"

"it's really quite right, sir," said keith,with an open smile. "the bobby asked me where i lived. and i said, quite truthfully, thati lived in the elms on buxton common, near purley. so i do. this gentleman, mr montmorency,whom i think you have met before, is an agent for houses of this kind. he has a specialline in arboreal villas. it's being kept rather quiet at present, because the people who wantthese houses don't want them to get too common. but it's just the sort of thing a fellow likemyself, racketing about in all sorts of queer corners of london, naturally knocks up against." "are you really an agent for arboreal villas?"asked rupert eagerly, recovering his ease with the romance of reality.

mr montmorency, in his embarrassment, fingeredone of his pockets and nervously pulled out a snake, which crawled about the table. "w-well, yes, sir," he said. "the fact was—er—mypeople wanted me very much to go into the house-agency business. but i never cared myselffor anything but natural history and botany and things like that. my poor parents havebeen dead some years now, but—naturally i like to respect their wishes. and i thoughtsomehow that an arboreal villa agency was a sort of—of compromise between being abotanist and being a house-agent." rupert could not help laughing. "do you havemuch custom?" he asked. "n-not much," replied mr montmorency, andthen he glanced at keith, who was (i am convinced)

his only client. "but what there is—veryselect." "my dear friends," said basil, puffing hiscigar, "always remember two facts. the first is that though when you are guessing aboutany one who is sane, the sanest thing is the most likely; when you are guessing about anyone who is, like our host, insane, the maddest thing is the most likely. the second is toremember that very plain literal fact always seems fantastic. if keith had taken a littlebrick box of a house in clapham with nothing but railings in front of it and had written'the elms' over it, you wouldn't have thought there was anything fantastic about that. simplybecause it was a great blaring, swaggering lie you would have believed it."

"drink your wine, gentlemen," said keith,laughing, "for this confounded wind will upset we drank, and as we did so, although the hanginghouse, by a cunning mechanism, swung only slightly, we knew that the great head of theelm tree swayed in the sky like a stricken thistle. 5. the noticeable conduct of professor chadd basil grant had comparatively few friendsbesides myself; yet he was the reverse of an unsociable man. he would talk to any oneanywhere, and talk not only well but with perfectly genuine concern and enthusiasm forthat person's affairs. he went through the world, as it were, as if he were always onthe top of an omnibus or waiting for a train.

most of these chance acquaintances, of course,vanished into darkness out of his life. a few here and there got hooked on to him, soto speak, and became his lifelong intimates, but there was an accidental look about allof them as if they were windfalls, samples taken at random, goods fallen from a goodstrain or presents fished out of a bran-pie. one would be, let us say, a veterinary surgeonwith the appearance of a jockey; another, a mild prebendary with a white beard and vagueviews; another, a young captain in the lancers, seemingly exactly like other captains in thelancers; another, a small dentist from fulham, in all reasonable certainty precisely likeevery other dentist from fulham. major brown, small, dry, and dapper, was one of these;basil had made his acquaintance over a discussion

in a hotel cloak-room about the right hat,a discussion which reduced the little major almost to a kind of masculine hysterics, thecompound of the selfishness of an old bachelor and the scrupulosity of an old maid. theyhad gone home in a cab together and then dined with each other twice a week until they died.i myself was another. i had met grant while he was still a judge, on the balcony of thenational liberal club, and exchanged a few words about the weather. then we had talkedfor about an hour about politics and god; for men always talk about the most importantthings to total strangers. it is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself;the image of god is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache.

one of the most interesting of basil's motleygroup of acquaintances was professor chadd. he was known to the ethnological world (whichis a very interesting world, but a long way off this one) as the second greatest, if notthe greatest, authority on the relations of savages to language. he was known to the neighbourhoodof hart street, bloomsbury, as a bearded man with a bald head, spectacles, and a patientface, the face of an unaccountable nonconformist who had forgotten how to be angry. he wentto and fro between the british museum and a selection of blameless tea-shops, with anarmful of books and a poor but honest umbrella. he was never seen without the books and theumbrella, and was supposed (by the lighter wits of the persian ms. room) to go to bedwith them in his little brick villa in the

neighbourhood of shepherd's bush. there helived with three sisters, ladies of solid goodness, but sinister demeanour. his lifewas happy, as are almost all the lives of methodical students, but one would not havecalled it exhilarating. his only hours of exhilaration occurred when his friend, basilgrant, came into the house, late at night, a tornado of conversation. basil, though close on sixty, had moods ofboisterous babyishness, and these seemed for some reason or other to descend upon him particularlyin the house of his studious and almost dingy friend. i can remember vividly (for i wasacquainted with both parties and often dined with them) the gaiety of grant on that particularevening when the strange calamity fell upon

the professor. professor chadd was, like mostof his particular class and type (the class that is at once academic and middle-class),a radical of a solemn and old-fashioned type. grant was a radical himself, but he was thatmore discriminating and not uncommon type of radical who passes most of his time inabusing the radical party. chadd had just contributed to a magazine an article called"zulu interests and the new makango frontier', in which a precise scientific report of hisstudy of the customs of the people of t'chaka was reinforced by a severe protest againstcertain interferences with these customs both by the british and the germans. he-was sittingwith the magazine in front of him, the lamplight shining on his spectacles, a wrinkle in hisforehead, not of anger, but of perplexity,

as basil grant strode up and down the room,shaking it with his voice, with his high spirits and his heavy tread. "it's not your opinions that i object to,my esteemed chadd," he was saying, "it's you. you are quite right to champion the zulus,but for all that you do not sympathize with them. no doubt you know the zulu way of cookingtomatoes and the zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; but for all that you don't understandthem as well as i do, who don't know an assegai from an alligator. you are more learned, chadd,but i am more zulu. why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championedby people who are their antithesis? why is it? you are sagacious, you are benevolent,you are well informed, but, chadd, you are

not savage. live no longer under that rosyillusion. look in the glass. ask your sisters. consult the librarian of the british museum.look at this umbrella." and he held up that sad but still respectable article. "look atit. for ten mortal years to my certain knowledge you have carried that object under your arm,and i have no sort of doubt that you carried it at the age of eight months, and it neveroccurred to you to give one wild yell and hurl it like a javelin—thus—" and he sent the umbrella whizzing past theprofessor's bald head, so that it knocked over a pile of books with a crash and lefta vase rocking. professor chadd appeared totally unmoved,with his face still lifted to the lamp and

the wrinkle cut in his forehead. "your mental processes," he said, "alwaysgo a little too fast. and they are stated without method. there is no kind of inconsistency"—andno words can convey the time he took to get to the end of the word—"between valuingthe right of the aborigines to adhere to their stage in the evolutionary process, so longas they find it congenial and requisite to do so. there is, i say, no inconsistency betweenthis concession which i have just described to you and the view that the evolutionarystage in question is, nevertheless, so far as we can form any estimate of values in thevariety of cosmic processes, definable in some degree as an inferior evolutionary stage."

nothing but his lips had moved as he spoke,and his glasses still shone like two pallid moons. grant was shaking with laughter as he watchedhim. "true," he said, "there is no inconsistency,my son of the red spear. but there is a great deal of incompatibility of temper. i am veryfar from being certain that the zulu is on an inferior evolutionary stage, whatever theblazes that may mean. i do not think there is anything stupid or ignorant about howlingat the moon or being afraid of devils in the dark. it seems to me perfectly philosophical.why should a man be thought a sort of idiot because he feels the mystery and peril ofexistence itself? suppose, my dear chadd,

suppose it is we who are the idiots becausewe are not afraid of devils in the dark?" professor chadd slit open a page of the magazinewith a bone paper-knife and the intent reverence of the bibliophile. "beyond all question," he said, "it is a tenablehypothesis. i allude to the hypothesis which i understand you to entertain, that our civilizationis not or may not be an advance upon, and indeed (if i apprehend you), is or may bea retrogression from states identical with or analogous to the state of the zulus. moreover,i shall be inclined to concede that such a proposition is of the nature, in some degreeat least, of a primary proposition, and cannot adequately be argued, in the same sense, imean, that the primary proposition of pessimism,

or the primary proposition of the non-existenceof matter, cannot adequately be argued. but i do not conceive you to be under the impressionthat you have demonstrated anything more concerning this proposition than that it is tenable,which, after all, amounts to little more than the statement that it is not a contradictionin terms." basil threw a book at his head and took outa cigar. "you don't understand," he said, "but, onthe other hand, as a compensation, you don't mind smoking. why you don't object to thatdisgustingly barbaric rite i can't think. i can only say that i began it when i beganto be a zulu, about the age of ten. what i maintained was that although you knew moreabout zulus in the sense that you are a scientist,

i know more about them in the sense that iam a savage. for instance, your theory of the origin of language, something about itshaving come from the formulated secret language of some individual creature, though you knockedme silly with facts and scholarship in its favour, still does not convince me, becausei have a feeling that that is not the way that things happen. if you ask me why i thinkso i can only answer that i am a zulu; and if you ask me (as you most certainly will)what is my definition of a zulu, i can answer that also. he is one who has climbed a sussexapple-tree at seven and been afraid of a ghost in an english lane." "your process of thought—" began the immovablechadd, but his speech was interrupted. his

sister, with that masculinity which alwaysin such families concentrates in sisters, flung open the door with a rigid arm and said: "james, mr bingham of the british museum wantsto see you again." the philosopher rose with a dazed look, whichalways indicates in such men the fact that they regard philosophy as a familiar thing,but practical life as a weird and unnerving vision, and walked dubiously out of the room. "i hope you do not mind my being aware ofit, miss chadd," said basil grant, "but i hear that the british museum has recognizedone of the men who have deserved well of their commonwealth. it is true, is it not, thatprofessor chadd is likely to be made keeper

of asiatic manuscripts?" the grim face of the spinster betrayed a greatdeal of pleasure and a great deal of pathos also. "i believe it's true," she said. "ifit is, it will not only be great glory which women, i assure you, feel a great deal, butgreat relief, which they feel more; relief from worry from a lot of things. james' healthhas never been good, and while we are as poor as we are he had to do journalism and coaching,in addition to his own dreadful grinding notions and discoveries, which he loves more thanman, woman, or child. i have often been afraid that unless something of this kind occurredwe should really have to be careful of his brain. but i believe it is practically settled."

"i am delighted," began basil, but with aworried face, "but these red-tape negotiations are so terribly chancy that i really can'tadvise you to build on hope, only to be hurled down into bitterness. i've known men, andgood men like your brother, come nearer than this and be disappointed. of course, if itis true—" "if it is true," said the woman fiercely,"it means that people who have never lived may make an attempt at living." even as she spoke the professor came intothe room still with the dazed look in his eyes. "is it true?" asked basil, with burning eyes.

"not a bit true," answered chadd after a moment'sbewilderment. "your argument was in three points fallacious." "what do you mean?" demanded grant. "well," said the professor slowly, "in sayingthat you could possess a knowledge of the essence of zulu life distinct from—" "oh! confound zulu life," cried grant, witha burst of laughter. "i mean, have you got the post?" "you mean the post of keeper of the asiaticmanuscripts," he said, opening his eye with childlike wonder. "oh, yes, i got that. butthe real objection to your argument, which

has only, i admit, occurred to me since ihave been out of the room, is that it does not merely presuppose a zulu truth apart fromthe facts, but infers that the discovery of it is absolutely impeded by the facts." "i am crushed," said basil, and sat down tolaugh, while the professor's sister retired to her room, possibly, possibly not. it was extremely late when we left the chadds,and it is an extremely long and tiresome journey from shepherd's bush to lambeth. this maybe our excuse for the fact that we (for i was stopping the night with grant) got downto breakfast next day at a time inexpressibly criminal, a time, in point of fact, closeupon noon. even to that belated meal we came

in a very lounging and leisurely fashion.grant, in particular, seemed so dreamy at table that he scarcely saw the pile of lettersby his plate, and i doubt if he would have opened any of them if there had not lain onthe top that one thing which has succeeded amid modern carelessness in being really urgentand coercive—a telegram. this he opened with the same heavy distraction with whichhe broke his egg and drank his tea. when he read it he did not stir a hair or say a word,but something, i know not what, made me feel that the motionless figure had been pulledtogether suddenly as strings are tightened on a slack guitar. though he said nothingand did not move, i knew that he had been for an instant cleared and sharpened witha shock of cold water. it was scarcely any

surprise to me when a man who had driftedsullenly to his seat and fallen into it, kicked it away like a cur from under him and cameround to me in two strides. "what do you make of that?" he said, and flattenedout the wire in front of me. it ran: "please come at once. james' mentalstate dangerous. chadd." "what does the woman mean?" i said after apause, irritably. "those women have been saying that the poor old professor was mad ever sincehe was born." "you are mistaken," said grant composedly."it is true that all sensible women think all studious men mad. it is true, for thematter of that, all women of any kind think all men of any kind mad. but they don't putit in telegrams, any more than they wire to

you that grass is green or god all-merciful.these things are truisms, and often private ones at that. if miss chadd has written downunder the eye of a strange woman in a post-office that her brother is off his head you may beperfectly certain that she did it because it was a matter of life and death, and shecan think of no other way of forcing us to come promptly." "it will force us of course," i said, smiling. "oh, yes," he replied; "there is a cab-ranknear." basil scarcely said a word as we drove acrosswestminster bridge, through trafalgar square, along piccadilly, and up the uxbridge road.only as he was opening the gate he spoke.

"i think you will take my word for it, myfriend," he said; "this is one of the most queer and complicated and astounding incidentsthat ever happened in london or, for that matter, in any high civilization." "i confess with the greatest sympathy andreverence that i don't quite see it," i said. "is it so very extraordinary or complicatedthat a dreamy somnambulant old invalid who has always walked on the borders of the inconceivableshould go mad under the shock of great joy? is it so very extraordinary that a man witha head like a turnip and a soul like a spider's web should not find his strength equal toa confounding change of fortunes? is it, in short, so very extraordinary that james chaddshould lose his wits from excitement?"

"it would not be extraordinary in the least,"answered basil, with placidity. "it would not be extraordinary in the least," he repeated,"if the professor had gone mad. that was not the extraordinary circumstance to which ireferred." "what," i asked, stamping my foot, "was theextraordinary thing?" "the extraordinary thing," said basil, ringingthe bell, "is that he has not gone mad from excitement." the tall and angular figure of the eldestmiss chadd blocked the doorway as the door opened. two other miss chadds seemed in thesame way to be blocking the narrow passage and the little parlour. there was a generalsense of their keeping something from view.

they seemed like three black-clad ladies insome strange play of maeterlinck, veiling the catastrophe from the audience in the mannerof the greek chorus. "sit down, won't you?" said one of them, ina voice that was somewhat rigid with pain. "i think you had better be told first whathas happened." then, with her bleak face looking unmeaninglyout of the window, she continued, in an even and mechanical voice: "i had better state everything that occurredjust as it occurred. this morning i was clearing away the breakfast things, my sisters wereboth somewhat unwell, and had not come down. my brother had just gone out of the room,i believe, to fetch a book. he came back again,

however, without it, and stood for some timestaring at the empty grate. i said, 'were you looking for anything i could get?' hedid not answer, but this constantly happens, as he is often very abstracted. i repeatedmy question, and still he did not answer. sometimes he is so wrapped up in his studiesthat nothing but a touch on the shoulder would make him aware of one's presence, so i cameround the table towards him. i really do not know how to describe the sensation which ithen had. it seems simply silly, but at the moment it seemed something enormous, upsettingone's brain. the fact is, james was standing on one leg." grant smiled slowly and rubbed his hands witha kind of care.

"standing on one leg?" i repeated. "yes," replied the dead voice of the womanwithout an inflection to suggest that she felt the fantasticality of her statement."he was standing on the left leg and the right drawn up at a sharp angle, the toe pointingdownwards. i asked him if his leg hurt him. his only answer was to shoot the leg straightat right angles to the other, as if pointing to the other with his toe to the wall. hewas still looking quite gravely at the fireplace. "'james, what is the matter?' i cried, fori was thoroughly frightened. james gave three kicks in the air with the right leg, flungup the other, gave three kicks in the air with it also and spun round like a teetotumthe other way. 'are you mad?' i cried. 'why

don't you answer me?' he had come to a standstillfacing me, and was looking at me as he always does, with his lifted eyebrows and great spectacledeyes. when i had spoken he remained a second or two motionless, and then his only replywas to lift his left foot slowly from the floor and describe circles with it in theair. i rushed to the door and shouted for christina. i will not dwell on the dreadfulhours that followed. all three of us talked to him, implored him to speak to us with appealsthat might have brought back the dead, but he has done nothing but hop and dance andkick with a solemn silent face. it looks as if his legs belonged to some one else or werepossessed by devils. he has never spoken to us from that time to this."

"where is he now?" i said, getting up in someagitation. "we ought not to leave him alone." "doctor colman is with him," said miss chaddcalmly. "they are in the garden. doctor colman thought the air would do him good. and hecan scarcely go into the street." basil and i walked rapidly to the window whichlooked out on the garden. it was a small and somewhat smug suburban garden; the flowerbeds a little too neat and like the pattern of a coloured carpet; but on this shiningand opulent summer day even they had the exuberance of something natural, i had almost said tropical.in the middle of a bright and verdant but painfully circular lawn stood two figures.one of them was a small, sharp-looking man with black whiskers and a very polished hat(i presume dr colman), who was talking very

quietly and clearly, yet with a nervous twitch,as it were, in his face. the other was our old friend, listening with his old forbearingexpression and owlish eyes, the strong sunlight gleaming on his glasses as the lamplight hadgleamed the night before, when the boisterous basil had rallied him on his studious decorum.but for one thing the figure of this morning might have been the identical figure of lastnight. that one thing was that while the face listened reposefully the legs were industriouslydancing like the legs of a marionette. the neat flowers and the sunny glitter of thegarden lent an indescribable sharpness and incredibility to the prodigy—the prodigyof the head of a hermit and the legs of a harlequin. for miracles should always happenin broad daylight. the night makes them credible

and therefore commonplace. the second sister had by this time enteredthe room and came somewhat drearily to the window. "you know, adelaide," she said, "that mr binghamfrom the museum is coming again at three." "i know," said adelaide chadd bitterly. "isuppose we shall have to tell him about this. i thought that no good fortune would evercome easily to us." grant suddenly turned round. "what do youmean?" he said. "what will you have to tell mr bingham?" "you know what i shall have to tell him,"said the professor's sister, almost fiercely.

"i don't know that we need give it its wretchedname. do you think that the keeper of asiatic manuscripts will be allowed to go on likethat?" and she pointed for an instant at the figure in the garden, the shining, listeningface and the unresting feet. basil grant took out his watch with an abruptmovement. "when did you say the british museum man was coming?" he said. "three o'clock," said miss chadd briefly. "then i have an hour before me," said grant,and without another word threw up the window and jumped out into the garden. he did notwalk straight up to the doctor and lunatic, but strolling round the garden path drew nearthem cautiously and yet apparently carelessly.

he stood a couple of feet off them, seeminglycounting halfpence out of his trousers pocket, but, as i could see, looking up steadily underthe broad brim of his hat. suddenly he stepped up to professor chadd'selbow, and said, in a loud familiar voice, "well, my boy, do you still think the zulusour inferiors?" the doctor knitted his brows and looked anxious,seeming to be about to speak. the professor turned his bald and placid head towards grantin a friendly manner, but made no answer, idly flinging his left leg about. "have you converted dr colman to your views?"basil continued, still in the same loud and lucid tone.

chadd only shuffled his feet and kicked alittle with the other leg, his expression still benevolent and inquiring. the doctorcut in rather sharply. "shall we go inside, professor?" he said. "now you have shown methe garden. a beautiful garden. a most beautiful garden. let us go in," and he tried to drawthe kicking ethnologist by the elbow, at the same time whispering to grant: "i must askyou not to trouble him with questions. most risky. he must be soothed." basil answered in the same tone, with greatcoolness: "of course your directions must be followedout, doctor. i will endeavour to do so, but i hope it will not be inconsistent with themif you will leave me alone with my poor friend

in this garden for an hour. i want to watchhim. i assure you, dr colman, that i shall say very little to him, and that little shallbe as soothing as—as syrup." the doctor wiped his eyeglass thoughtfully. "it is rather dangerous for him," he said,"to be long in the strong sun without his hat. with his bald head, too." "that is soon settled," said basil composedly,and took off his own big hat and clapped it on the egglike skull of the professor. thelatter did not turn round but danced away with his eyes on the horizon. the doctor put on his glasses again, lookedseverely at the two for some seconds, with

his head on one side like a bird's, and thensaying, shortly, "all right," strutted away into the house, where the three misses chaddwere all looking out from the parlour window on to the garden. they looked out on it withhungry eyes for a full hour without moving, and they saw a sight which was more extraordinarythan madness itself. basil grant addressed a few questions to themadman, without succeeding in making him do anything but continue to caper, and when hehad done this slowly took a red note-book out of one pocket and a large pencil out ofanother. he began hurriedly to scribble notes. whenthe lunatic skipped away from him he would walk a few yards in pursuit, stop, and makenotes again. thus they followed each other

round and round the foolish circle of turf,the one writing in pencil with the face of a man working out a problem, the other leapingand playing like a child. after about three-quarters of an hour of thisimbecile scene, grant put the pencil in his pocket, but kept the note-book open in hishand, and walking round the mad professor, planted himself directly in front of him. then occurred something that even those alreadyused to that wild morning had not anticipated or dreamed. the professor, on finding basilin front of him, stared with a blank benignity for a few seconds, and then drew up his leftleg and hung it bent in the attitude that his sister had described as being the firstof all his antics. and the moment he had done

it basil grant lifted his own leg and heldit out rigid before him, confronting chadd with the flat sole of his boot. the professordropped his bent leg, and swinging his weight on to it kicked out the other behind, likea man swimming. basil crossed his feet like a saltire cross, and then flung them apartagain, giving a leap into the air. then before any of the spectators could say a word oreven entertain a thought about the matter, both of them were dancing a sort of jig orhornpipe opposite each other; and the sun shone down on two madmen instead of one. they were so stricken with the deafness andblindness of monomania that they did not see the eldest miss chadd come out feverishlyinto the garden with gestures of entreaty,

a gentleman following her. professor chaddwas in the wildest posture of a pas-de-quatre, basil grant seemed about to turn a cart-wheel,when they were frozen in their follies by the steely voice of adelaide chadd saying,"mr bingham of the british museum." mr bingham was a slim, well-clad gentlemanwith a pointed and slightly effeminate grey beard, unimpeachable gloves, and formal butagreeable manners. he was the type of the over-civilized, as professor chadd was ofthe uncivilized pedant. his formality and agreeableness did him some credit under thecircumstances. he had a vast experience of books and a considerable experience of themore dilettante fashionable salons. but neither branch of knowledge had accustomed him tothe spectacle of two grey-haired middle-class

gentlemen in modern costume throwing themselvesabout like acrobats as a substitute for an after-dinner nap. the professor continued his antics with perfectplacidity, but grant stopped abruptly. the doctor had reappeared on the scene, and hisshiny black eyes, under his shiny black hat, moved restlessly from one of them to the other. "dr colman," said basil, turning to him, "willyou entertain professor chadd again for a little while? i am sure that he needs you.mr bingham, might i have the pleasure of a few moments' private conversation? my nameis grant." mr bingham, of the british museum, bowed ina manner that was respectful but a trifle

bewildered. "miss chadd will excuse me," continued basileasily, "if i know my way about the house." and he led the dazed librarian rapidly throughthe back door into the parlour. "mr bingham," said basil, setting a chairfor him, "i imagine that miss chadd has told you of this distressing occurrence." "she has, mr grant," said bingham, lookingat the table with a sort of compassionate nervousness. "i am more pained than i cansay by this dreadful calamity. it seems quite heart-rending that the thing should have happenedjust as we have decided to give your eminent friend a position which falls far short ofhis merits. as it is, of course—really,

i don't know what to say. professor chaddmay, of course, retain—i sincerely trust he will—his extraordinarily valuable intellect.but i am afraid—i am really afraid—that it would not do to have the curator of theasiatic manuscripts—er—dancing about." "i have a suggestion to make," said basil,and sat down abruptly in his chair, drawing it up to the table. "i am delighted, of course," said the gentlemanfrom the british museum, coughing and drawing up his chair also. the clock on the mantelpiece ticked for justthe moments required for basil to clear his throat and collect his words, and then hesaid:

"my proposal is this. i do not know that inthe strict use of words you could altogether call it a compromise, still it has somethingof that character. my proposal is that the government (acting, as i presume, throughyour museum) should pay professor chadd l800 a year until he stops dancing." "eight hundred a year!" said mr bingham, andfor the first time lifted his mild blue eyes to those of his interlocutor—and he raisedthem with a mild blue stare. "i think i have not quite understood you. did i understandyou to say that professor chadd ought to be employed, in his present state, in the asiaticmanuscript department at eight hundred a year?" grant shook his head resolutely.

"no," he said firmly. "no. chadd is a friendof mine, and i would say anything for him i could. but i do not say, i cannot say, thathe ought to take on the asiatic manuscripts. i do not go so far as that. i merely say thatuntil he stops dancing you ought to pay him l800 surely you have some general fund forthe endowment of research." mr bingham looked bewildered. "i really don't know," he said, blinking hiseyes, "what you are talking about. do you ask us to give this obvious lunatic nearlya thousand a year for life?" "not at all," cried basil, keenly and triumphantly."i never said for life. not at all." "what for, then?" asked the meek bingham,suppressing an instinct meekly to tear his

hair. "how long is this endowment to run?not till his death? till the judgement day?" "no," said basil, beaming, "but just whati said. till he has stopped dancing." and he lay back with satisfaction and his handsin his pockets. bingham had by this time fastened his eyeskeenly on basil grant and kept them there. "come, mr grant," he said. "do i seriouslyunderstand you to suggest that the government pay professor chadd an extraordinarily highsalary simply on the ground that he has (pardon the phrase) gone mad? that he should be paidmore than four good clerks solely on the ground that he is flinging his boots about in theback yard?" "precisely," said grant composedly.

"that this absurd payment is not only to runon with the absurd dancing, but actually to stop with the absurd dancing?" "one must stop somewhere," said grant. "ofcourse." bingham rose and took up his perfect stickand gloves. "there is really nothing more to be said,mr grant," he said coldly. "what you are trying to explain to me may be a joke—a slightlyunfeeling joke. it may be your sincere view, in which case i ask your pardon for the formersuggestion. but, in any case, it appears quite irrelevant to my duties. the mental morbidity,the mental downfall, of professor chadd, is a thing so painful to me that i cannot easilyendure to speak of it. but it is clear there

is a limit to everything. and if the archangelgabriel went mad it would sever his connection, i am sorry to say, with the british museumlibrary." he was stepping towards the door, but grant'shand, flung out in dramatic warning, arrested him. "stop!" said basil sternly. "stop while thereis yet time. do you want to take part in a great work, mr bingham? do you want to helpin the glory of europe—in the glory of science? do you want to carry your head in the airwhen it is bald or white because of the part that you bore in a great discovery? do youwant—" bingham cut in sharply:

"and if i do want this, mr grant—" "then," said basil lightly, "your task iseasy. get chadd l800 a year till he stops dancing." with a fierce flap of his swinging glovesbingham turned impatiently to the door, but in passing out of it found it blocked. drcolman was coming in. "forgive me, gentlemen," he said, in a nervous,confidential voice, "the fact is, mr grant, i—er—have made a most disturbing discoveryabout mr chadd." bingham looked at him with grave eyes. "i was afraid so," he said. "drink, i imagine."

"drink!" echoed colman, as if that were amuch milder affair. "oh, no, it's not drink." mr bingham became somewhat agitated, and hisvoice grew hurried and vague. "homicidal mania—" he began. "no, no," said the medical man impatiently. "thinks he's made of glass," said binghamfeverishly, "or says he's god—or—" "no," said dr colman sharply; "the fact is,mr grant, my discovery is of a different character. the awful thing about him is—" "oh, go on, sir," cried bingham, in agony. "the awful thing about him is," repeated colman,with deliberation, "that he isn't mad."

"not mad!" "there are quite well-known physical testsof lunacy," said the doctor shortly; "he hasn't got any of them." "but why does he dance?" cried the despairingbingham. "why doesn't he answer us? why hasn't he spoken to his family?" "the devil knows," said dr colman coolly."i'm paid to judge of lunatics, but not of fools. the man's not mad." "what on earth can it mean? can't we makehim listen?" said mr bingham. "can none get into any kind of communication with him?"

grant's voice struck in sudden and clear,like a steel bell: "i shall be very happy," he said, "to givehim any message you like to send." both men stared at him. "give him a message?" they cried simultaneously."how will you give him a message?" basil smiled in his slow way. "if you really want to know how i shall givehim your message," he began, but bingham cried: "of course, of course," with a sort of frenzy. "well," said basil, "like this." and he suddenlysprang a foot into the air, coming down with crashing boots, and then stood on one leg.

his face was stern, though this effect wasslightly spoiled by the fact that one of his feet was making wild circles in the air. "you drive me to it," he said. "you driveme to betray my friend. and i will, for his own sake, betray him." the sensitive face of bingham took on an extraexpression of distress as of one anticipating some disgraceful disclosure. "anything painful,of course—" he began. basil let his loose foot fall on the carpetwith a crash that struck them all rigid in their feeble attitudes. "idiots!" he cried. "have you seen the man?have you looked at james chadd going dismally

to and fro from his dingy house to your miserablelibrary, with his futile books and his confounded umbrella, and never seen that he has the eyesof a fanatic? have you never noticed, stuck casually behind his spectacles and above hisseedy old collar, the face of a man who might have burned heretics, or died for the philosopher'sstone? it is all my fault, in a way: i lit the dynamite of his deadly faith. i arguedagainst him on the score of his famous theory about language—the theory that languagewas complete in certain individuals and was picked up by others simply by watching them.i also chaffed him about not understanding things in rough and ready practice. what hasthis glorious bigot done? he has answered me. he has worked out a system of languageof his own (it would take too long to explain);

he has made up, i say, a language of his own.and he has sworn that till people understand it, till he can speak to us in this language,he will not speak in any other. and he shall not. i have understood, by taking carefulnotice; and, by heaven, so shall the others. this shall not be blown upon. he shall finishhis experiment. he shall have l800 a year from somewhere till he has stopped dancing.to stop him now is an infamous war on a great idea. it is religious persecution." mr bingham held out his hand cordially. "i thank you, mr grant," he said. "i hopei shall be able to answer for the source of the l800 and i fancy that i shall. will youcome in my cab?"

"no, thank you very much, mr bingham," saidgrant heartily. "i think i will go and have a chat with the professor in the garden." the conversation between chadd and grant appearedto be personal and friendly. they were still dancing when i left. 6. the eccentric seclusion of the old lady the conversation of rupert grant had two greatelements of interest—first, the long fantasias of detective deduction in which he was engaged,and, second, his genuine romantic interest in the life of london. his brother basil saidof him: "his reasoning is particularly cold and clear, and invariably leads him wrong.but his poetry comes in abruptly and leads

him right." whether this was true of rupertas a whole, or no, it was certainly curiously supported by one story about him which i thinkworth telling. we were walking along a lonely terrace inbrompton together. the street was full of that bright blue twilight which comes abouthalf past eight in summer, and which seems for the moment to be not so much a comingof darkness as the turning on of a new azure illuminator, as if the earth were lit suddenlyby a sapphire sun. in the cool blue the lemon tint of the lamps had already begun to flame,and as rupert and i passed them, rupert talking excitedly, one after another the pale sparkssprang out of the dusk. rupert was talking excitedly because he was trying to prove tome the nine hundred and ninety-ninth of his

amateur detective theories. he would go aboutlondon, with this mad logic in his brain, seeing a conspiracy in a cab accident, anda special providence in a falling fusee. his suspicions at the moment were fixed upon anunhappy milkman who walked in front of us. so arresting were the incidents which afterwardsovertook us that i am really afraid that i have forgotten what were the main outlinesof the milkman's crime. i think it had something to do with the fact that he had only one smallcan of milk to carry, and that of that he had left the lid loose and walked so quicklythat he spilled milk on the pavement. this showed that he was not thinking of his smallburden, and this again showed that he anticipated some other than lacteal business at the endof his walk, and this (taken in conjunction

with something about muddy boots) showed somethingelse that i have entirely forgotten. i am afraid that i derided this detailed revelationunmercifully; and i am afraid that rupert grant, who, though the best of fellows, hada good deal of the sensitiveness of the artistic temperament, slightly resented my derision.he endeavoured to take a whiff of his cigar, with the placidity which he associated withhis profession, but the cigar, i think, was nearly bitten through. "my dear fellow," he said acidly, "i'll betyou half a crown that wherever that milkman comes to a real stop i'll find out somethingcurious." "my resources are equal to that risk," i said,laughing. "done."

we walked on for about a quarter of an hourin silence in the trail of the mysterious milkman. he walked quicker and quicker, andwe had some ado to keep up with him; and every now and then he left a splash of milk, silverin the lamplight. suddenly, almost before we could note it, he disappeared down thearea steps of a house. i believe rupert really believed that the milkman was a fairy; fora second he seemed to accept him as having vanished. then calling something to me whichsomehow took no hold on my mind, he darted after the mystic milkman, and disappearedhimself into the area. i waited for at least five minutes, leaningagainst a lamp-post in the lonely street. then the milkman came swinging up the stepswithout his can and hurried off clattering

down the road. two or three minutes more elapsed,and then rupert came bounding up also, his face pale but yet laughing; a not uncommoncontradiction in him, denoting excitement. "my friend," he said, rubbing his hands, "somuch for all your scepticism. so much for your philistine ignorance of the possibilitiesof a romantic city. two and sixpence, my boy, is the form in which your prosaic good naturewill have to express itself." "what?" i said incredulously, "do you meanto say that you really did find anything the matter with the poor milkman?" his face fell. "oh, the milkman," he said, with a miserableaffectation at having misunderstood me. "no,

i—i—didn't exactly bring anything hometo the milkman himself, i—" "what did the milkman say and do?" i said,with inexorable sternness. "well, to tell the truth," said rupert, shiftingrestlessly from one foot to another, "the milkman himself, as far as merely physicalappearances went, just said, 'milk, miss,' and handed in the can. that is not to say,of course, that he did not make some secret sign or some—" i broke into a violent laugh. "you idiot,"i said, "why don't you own yourself wrong and have done with it? why should he havemade a secret sign any more than any one else? you own he said nothing and did nothing worthmentioning. you own that, don't you?"

his face grew grave. "well, since you ask me, i must admit thati do. it is possible that the milkman did not betray himself. it is even possible thati was wrong about him." "then come along with you," i said, with acertain amicable anger, "and remember that you owe me half a crown." "as to that, i differ from you," said rupertcoolly. "the milkman's remarks may have been quite innocent. even the milkman may havebeen. but i do not owe you half a crown. for the terms of the bet were, i think, as follows,as i propounded them, that wherever that milkman came to a real stop i should find out somethingcurious."

"well?" i said. "well," he answered, "i jolly well have. youjust come with me," and before i could speak he had turned tail once more and whisked throughthe blue dark into the moat or basement of the house. i followed almost before i madeany decision. when we got down into the area i felt indescribablyfoolish literally, as the saying is, in a hole. there was nothing but a closed door,shuttered windows, the steps down which we had come, the ridiculous well in which i foundmyself, and the ridiculous man who had brought me there, and who stood there with dancingeyes. i was just about to turn back when rupert caught me by the elbow.

"just listen to that," he said, and keepingmy coat gripped in his right hand, he rapped with the knuckles of his left on the shuttersof the basement window. his air was so definite that i paused and even inclined my head fora moment towards it. from inside was coming the murmur of an unmistakable human voice. "have you been talking to somebody inside?"i asked suddenly, turning to rupert. "no, i haven't," he replied, with a grim smile,"but i should very much like to. do you know what somebody is saying in there?" "no, of course not," i replied. "then i recommend you to listen," said rupertsharply.

in the dead silence of the aristocratic streetat evening, i stood a moment and listened. from behind the wooden partition, in whichthere was a long lean crack, was coming a continuous and moaning sound which took theform of the words: "when shall i get out? when shall i get out? will they ever let meout?" or words to that effect. "do you know anything about this?" i said,turning upon rupert very abruptly. "perhaps you think i am the criminal," hesaid sardonically, "instead of being in some small sense the detective. i came into thisarea two or three minutes ago, having told you that i knew there was something funnygoing on, and this woman behind the shutters (for it evidently is a woman) was moaninglike mad. no, my dear friend, beyond that

i do not know anything about her. she is not,startling as it may seem, my disinherited daughter, or a member of my secret seraglio.but when i hear a human being wailing that she can't get out, and talking to herselflike a mad woman and beating on the shutters with her fists, as she was doing two or threeminutes ago, i think it worth mentioning, that is all." "my dear fellow," i said, "i apologize; thisis no time for arguing. what is to be done?" rupert grant had a long clasp-knife nakedand brilliant in his hand. "first of all," he said, "house-breaking."and he forced the blade into the crevice of the wood and broke away a huge splinter, leavinga gap and glimpse of the dark window-pane

inside. the room within was entirely unlighted,so that for the first few seconds the window seemed a dead and opaque surface, as darkas a strip of slate. then came a realization which, though in a sense gradual, made usstep back and catch our breath. two large dim human eyes were so close to us that thewindow itself seemed suddenly to be a mask. a pale human face was pressed against theglass within, and with increased distinctness, with the increase of the opening came thewords: "when shall i get out?" "what can all this be?" i said. rupert made no answer, but lifting his walking-stickand pointing the ferrule like a fencing sword

at the glass, punched a hole in it, smallerand more accurate than i should have supposed possible. the moment he had done so the voicespouted out of the hole, so to speak, piercing and querulous and clear, making the same demandfor liberty. "can't you get out, madam?" i said, drawingnear the hole in some perturbation. "get out? of course i can't," moaned the unknownfemale bitterly. "they won't let me. i told them i would be let out. i told them i'd callthe police. but it's no good. nobody knows, nobody comes. they could keep me as long asthey liked only—" i was in the very act of breaking the windowfinally with my stick, incensed with this very sinister mystery, when rupert held myarm hard, held it with a curious, still, and

secret rigidity as if he desired to stop me,but did not desire to be observed to do so. i paused a moment, and in the act swung slightlyround, so that i was facing the supporting wall of the front door steps. the act frozeme into a sudden stillness like that of rupert, for a figure almost as motionless as the pillarsof the portico, but unmistakably human, had put his head out from between the doorpostsand was gazing down into the area. one of the lighted lamps of the street was just behindhis head, throwing it into abrupt darkness. consequently, nothing whatever could be seenof his face beyond one fact, that he was unquestionably staring at us. i must say i thought rupert'scalmness magnificent. he rang the area bell quite idly, and went on talking to me withthe easy end of a conversation which had never

had any beginning. the black glaring figurein the portico did not stir. i almost thought it was really a statue. in another momentthe grey area was golden with gaslight as the basement door was opened suddenly anda small and decorous housemaid stood in it. "pray excuse me," said rupert, in a voicewhich he contrived to make somehow or other at once affable and underbred, "but we thoughtperhaps that you might do something for the waifs and strays. we don't expect—" "not here," said the small servant, with theincomparable severity of the menial of the non-philanthropic, and slammed the door inour faces. "very sad, very sad—the indifference ofthese people," said the philanthropist with

gravity, as we went together up the steps.as we did so the motionless figure in the portico suddenly disappeared. "well, what do you make of that?" asked rupert,slapping his gloves together when we got into the street. i do not mind admitting that i was seriouslyupset. under such conditions i had but one thought. "don't you think," i said a trifle timidly,"that we had better tell your brother?" "oh, if you like," said rupert, in a lordlyway. "he is quite near, as i promised to meet him at gloucester road station. shall we takea cab? perhaps, as you say, it might amuse

him." gloucester road station had, as if by accident,a somewhat deserted look. after a little looking about we discovered basil grant with his greathead and his great white hat blocking the ticket-office window. i thought at first thathe was taking a ticket for somewhere and being an astonishingly long time about it. as amatter of fact, he was discussing religion with the booking-office clerk, and had almostgot his head through the hole in his excitement. when we dragged him away it was some timebefore he would talk of anything but the growth of an oriental fatalism in modern thought,which had been well typified by some of the official's ingenious but perverse fallacies.at last we managed to get him to understand

that we had made an astounding discovery.when he did listen, he listened attentively, walking between us up and down the lamp-litstreet, while we told him in a rather feverish duet of the great house in south kensington,of the equivocal milkman, of the lady imprisoned in the basement, and the man staring fromthe porch. at length he said: "if you're thinking of going back to lookthe thing up, you must be careful what you do. it's no good you two going there. to gotwice on the same pretext would look dubious. to go on a different pretext would look worse.you may be quite certain that the inquisitive gentleman who looked at you looked thoroughly,and will wear, so to speak, your portraits next to his heart. if you want to find outif there is anything in this without a police

raid i fancy you had better wait outside.i'll go in and see them." his slow and reflective walk brought us atlength within sight of the house. it stood up ponderous and purple against the last pallorof twilight. it looked like an ogre's castle. and so apparently it was. "do you think it's safe, basil," said hisbrother, pausing, a little pale, under the lamp, "to go into that place alone? of coursewe shall be near enough to hear if you yell, but these devils might do something—somethingsudden—or odd. i can't feel it's safe." "i know of nothing that is safe," said basilcomposedly, "except, possibly—death," and he went up the steps and rang at the bell.when the massive respectable door opened for

an instant, cutting a square of gaslight inthe gathering dark, and then closed with a bang, burying our friend inside, we couldnot repress a shudder. it had been like the heavy gaping and closing of the dim lips ofsome evil leviathan. a freshening night breeze began to blow up the street, and we turnedup the collars of our coats. at the end of twenty minutes, in which we had scarcely movedor spoken, we were as cold as icebergs, but more, i think, from apprehension than theatmosphere. suddenly rupert made an abrupt movement towards the house. "i can't stand this," he began, but almostas he spoke sprang back into the shadow, for the panel of gold was again cut out of theblack house front, and the burly figure of

basil was silhouetted against it coming out.he was roaring with laughter and talking so loudly that you could have heard every syllableacross the street. another voice, or, possibly, two voices, were laughing and talking backat him from within. "no, no, no," basil was calling out, witha sort of hilarious hostility. "that's quite wrong. that's the most ghastly heresy of all.it's the soul, my dear chap, the soul that's the arbiter of cosmic forces. when you seea cosmic force you don't like, trick it, my boy. but i must really be off." "come and pitch into us again," came the laughingvoice from out of the house. "we still have some bones unbroken."

"thanks very much, i will—good night," shoutedgrant, who had by this time reached the street. "good night," came the friendly call in reply,before the door closed. "basil," said rupert grant, in a hoarse whisper,"what are we to do?" the elder brother looked thoughtfully fromone of us to the other. "what is to be done, basil?" i repeated inuncontrollable excitement. "i'm not sure," said basil doubtfully. "whatdo you say to getting some dinner somewhere and going to the court theatre tonight? itried to get those fellows to come, but they couldn't." we stared blankly.

"go to the court theatre?" repeated rupert."what would be the good of that?" "good? what do you mean?" answered basil,staring also. "have you turned puritan or passive resister, or something? for fun, ofcourse." "but, great god in heaven! what are we goingto do, i mean!" cried rupert. "what about the poor woman locked up in that house? shalli go for the police?" basil's face cleared with immediate comprehension,and he laughed. "oh, that," he said. "i'd forgotten that.that's all right. some mistake, possibly. or some quite trifling private affair. buti'm sorry those fellows couldn't come with us. shall we take one of these green omnibuses?there is a restaurant in sloane square."

"i sometimes think you play the fool to frightenus," i said irritably. "how can we leave that woman locked up? how can it be a mere privateaffair? how can crime and kidnapping and murder, for all i know, be private affairs? if youfound a corpse in a man's drawing-room, would you think it bad taste to talk about it justas if it was a confounded dado or an infernal etching?" basil laughed heartily. "that's very forcible," he said. "as a matterof fact, though, i know it's all right in this case. and there comes the green omnibus." "how do you know it's all right in this ease?"persisted his brother angrily.

"my dear chap, the thing's obvious," answeredbasil, holding a return ticket between his teeth while he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket."those two fellows never committed a crime in their lives. they're not the kind. haveeither of you chaps got a halfpenny? i want to get a paper before the omnibus comes." "oh, curse the paper!" cried rupert, in afury. "do you mean to tell me, basil grant, that you are going to leave a fellow creaturein pitch darkness in a private dungeon, because you've had ten minutes' talk with the keepersof it and thought them rather good men?" "good men do commit crimes sometimes," saidbasil, taking the ticket out of his mouth. "but this kind of good man doesn't committhat kind of crime. well, shall we get on

this omnibus?" the great green vehicle was indeed plungingand lumbering along the dim wide street towards us. basil had stepped from the curb, and foran instant it was touch and go whether we should all have leaped on to it and been borneaway to the restaurant and the theatre. "basil," i said, taking him firmly by theshoulder, "i simply won't leave this street and this house." "nor will i," said rupert, glaring at it andbiting his fingers. "there's some black work going on there. if i left it i should neversleep again." basil grant looked at us both seriously.

"of course if you feel like that," he said,"we'll investigate further. you'll find it's all right, though. they're only two youngoxford fellows. extremely nice, too, though rather infected with this pseudo-darwinianbusiness. ethics of evolution and all that." "i think," said rupert darkly, ringing thebell, "that we shall enlighten you further about their ethics." "and may i ask," said basil gloomily, "whatit is that you propose to do?" "i propose, first of all," said rupert, "toget into this house; secondly, to have a look at these nice young oxford men; thirdly, toknock them down, bind them, gag them, and search the house."

basil stared indignantly for a few minutes.then he was shaken for an instant with one of his sudden laughs. "poor little boys," he said. "but it almostserves them right for holding such silly views, after all," and he quaked again with amusement"there's something confoundedly darwinian about it." "i suppose you mean to help us?" said rupert. "oh, yes, i'll be in it," answered basil,"if it's only to prevent your doing the poor chaps any harm." he was standing in the rear of our littleprocession, looking indifferent and sometimes

even sulky, but somehow the instant the dooropened he stepped first into the hall, glowing with urbanity. "so sorry to haunt you like this," he said."i met two friends outside who very much want to know you. may i bring them in?" "delighted, of course," said a young voice,the unmistakable voice of the isis, and i realized that the door had been opened, notby the decorous little servant girl, but by one of our hosts in person. he was a short,but shapely young gentleman, with curly dark hair and a square, snub-nosed face. he woreslippers and a sort of blazer of some incredible college purple.

"this way," he said; "mind the steps by thestaircase. this house is more crooked and old-fashioned than you would think from itssnobbish exterior. there are quite a lot of odd corners in the place really." "that," said rupert, with a savage smile,"i can quite believe." we were by this time in the study or backparlour, used by the young inhabitants as a sitting-room, an apartment littered withmagazines and books ranging from dante to detective stories. the other youth, who stoodwith his back to the fire smoking a corncob, was big and burly, with dead brown hair brushedforward and a norfolk jacket. he was that particular type of man whose every featureand action is heavy and clumsy, and yet who

is, you would say, rather exceptionally agentleman. "any more arguments?" he said, when introductionshad been effected. "i must say, mr grant, you were rather severe upon eminent men ofscience such as we. i've half a mind to chuck my d.sc. and turn minor poet." "bosh," answered grant. "i never said a wordagainst eminent men of science. what i complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposesitself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new religion and anuncommonly nasty one. when people talked about the fall of man they knew they were talkingabout a mystery, a thing they didn't understand. now that they talk about the survival of thefittest they think they do understand it,

whereas they have not merely no notion, theyhave an elaborately false notion of what the words mean. the darwinian movement has madeno difference to mankind, except that, instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy,they now talk unscientifically about science." "that is all very well," said the big youngman, whose name appeared to be burrows. "of course, in a sense, science, like mathematicsor the violin, can only be perfectly understood by specialists. still, the rudiments may beof public use. greenwood here," indicating the little man in the blazer, "doesn't knowone note of music from another. still, he knows something. he knows enough to take offhis hat when they play 'god save the king'. he doesn't take it off by mistake when theyplay 'oh, dem golden slippers'. just in the

same way science—" here mr burrows stopped abruptly. he was interruptedby an argument uncommon in philosophical controversy and perhaps not wholly legitimate. rupertgrant had bounded on him from behind, flung an arm round his throat, and bent the giantbackwards. "knock the other fellow down, swinburne,"he called out, and before i knew where i was i was locked in a grapple with the man inthe purple blazer. he was a wiry fighter, who bent and sprang like a whalebone, buti was heavier and had taken him utterly by surprise. i twitched one of his feet fromunder him; he swung for a moment on the single foot, and then we fell with a crash amid thelitter of newspapers, myself on top.

my attention for a moment released by victory,i could hear basil's voice finishing some long sentence of which i had not heard thebeginning. "... wholly, i must confess, unintelligibleto me, my dear sir, and i need not say unpleasant. still one must side with one's old friendsagainst the most fascinating new ones. permit me, therefore, in tying you up in this antimacassar,to make it as commodious as handcuffs can reasonably be while..." i had staggered to my feet. the gigantic burrowswas toiling in the garotte of rupert, while basil was striving to master his mighty hands.rupert and basil were both particularly strong, but so was mr burrows; how strong, we knewa second afterwards. his head was held back

by rupert's arm, but a convulsive heave wentover his whole frame. an instant after his head plunged forward like a bull's, and rupertgrant was slung head over heels, a catherine wheel of legs, on the floor in front of him.simultaneously the bull's head butted basil in the chest, bringing him also to the groundwith a crash, and the monster, with a berserker roar, leaped at me and knocked me into thecorner of the room, smashing the waste-paper basket. the bewildered greenwood sprang furiouslyto his feet. basil did the same. but they had the best of it now. greenwood dashed to the bell and pulled itviolently, sending peals through the great house. before i could get panting to my feet,and before rupert, who had been literally

stunned for a few moments, could even lifthis head from the floor, two footmen were in the room. defeated even when we were ina majority, we were now outnumbered. greenwood and one of the footmen flung themselves uponme, crushing me back into the corner upon the wreck of the paper basket. the other twoflew at basil, and pinned him against the wall. rupert lifted himself on his elbow,but he was still dazed. in the strained silence of our helplessnessi heard the voice of basil come with a loud incongruous cheerfulness. "now this," he said, "is what i call enjoyingoneself." i caught a glimpse of his face, flushed andforced against the bookcase, from between

the swaying limbs of my captors and his. tomy astonishment his eyes were really brilliant with pleasure, like those of a child heatedby a favourite game. i made several apoplectic efforts to rise,but the servant was on top of me so heavily that greenwood could afford to leave me tohim. he turned quickly to come to reinforce the two who were mastering basil. the latter'shead was already sinking lower and lower, like a leaking ship, as his enemies pressedhim down. he flung up one hand just as i thought him falling and hung on to a huge tome inthe bookcase, a volume, i afterwards discovered, of st chrysostom's theology. just as greenwoodbounded across the room towards the group, basil plucked the ponderous tome bodily outof the shelf, swung it, and sent it spinning

through the air, so that it struck greenwoodflat in the face and knocked him over like a rolling ninepin. at the same instant basil'sstiffness broke, and he sank, his enemies closing over him. rupert's head was clear, but his body shaken;he was hanging as best he could on to the half-prostrate greenwood. they were rollingover each other on the floor, both somewhat enfeebled by their falls, but rupert certainlythe more so. i was still successfully held down. the floor was a sea of torn and trampledpapers and magazines, like an immense waste-paper basket. burrows and his companion were almostup to the knees in them, as in a drift of dead leaves. and greenwood had his leg stuckright through a sheet of the pall mall gazette,

which clung to it ludicrously, like some fantastictrouser frill. basil, shut from me in a human prison, a prisonof powerful bodies, might be dead for all i knew. i fancied, however, that the broadback of mr burrows, which was turned towards me, had a certain bend of effort in it asif my friend still needed some holding down. suddenly that broad back swayed hither andthither. it was swaying on one leg; basil, somehow, had hold of the other. burrows' hugefists and those of the footman were battering basil's sunken head like an anvil, but nothingcould get the giant's ankle out of his sudden and savage grip. while his own head was forcedslowly down in darkness and great pain, the right leg of his captor was being forced inthe air. burrows swung to and fro with a purple

face. then suddenly the floor and the wallsand the ceiling shook together, as the colossus fell, all his length seeming to fill the floor.basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three blows like battering-rams knocked thefootman into a cocked hat. then he sprang on top of burrows, with one antimacassar inhis hand and another in his teeth, and bound him hand and foot almost before he knew clearlythat his head had struck the floor. then basil sprang at greenwood, whom rupert was strugglingto hold down, and between them they secured him easily. the man who had hold of me letgo and turned to his rescue, but i leaped up like a spring released, and, to my infinitesatisfaction, knocked the fellow down. the other footman, bleeding at the mouth and quitedemoralized, was stumbling out of the room.

my late captor, without a word, slunk afterhim, seeing that the battle was won. rupert was sitting astride the pinioned mr greenwood,basil astride the pinioned mr burrows. to my surprise the latter gentleman, lyingbound on his back, spoke in a perfectly calm voice to the man who sat on top of him. "and now, gentlemen," he said, "since youhave got your own way, perhaps you wouldn't mind telling us what the deuce all this is?" "this," said basil, with a radiant face, lookingdown at his captive, "this is what we call the survival of the fittest." rupert, who had been steadily collecting himselfthroughout the latter phases of the fight,

was intellectually altogether himself againat the end of it. springing up from the prostrate greenwood, and knotting a handkerchief roundhis left hand, which was bleeding from a blow, he sang out quite coolly: "basil, will you mount guard over the captiveof your bow and spear and antimacassar? swinburne and i will clear out the prison downstairs." "all right," said basil, rising also and seatinghimself in a leisured way in an armchair. "don't hurry for us," he said, glancing roundat the litter of the room, "we have all the illustrated papers." rupert lurched thoughtfully out of the room,and i followed him even more slowly; in fact,

i lingered long enough to hear, as i passedthrough the room, the passages and the kitchen stairs, basil's voice continuing conversationally: "and now, mr burrows," he said, settling himselfsociably in the chair, "there's no reason why we shouldn't go on with that amusing argument.i'm sorry that you have to express yourself lying on your back on the floor, and, as itold you before, i've no more notion why you are there than the man in the moon. a conversationalistlike yourself, however, can scarcely be seriously handicapped by any bodily posture. you weresaying, if i remember right, when this incidental fracas occurred, that the rudiments of sciencemight with advantage be made public." "precisely," said the large man on the floorin an easy tone. "i hold that nothing more

than a rough sketch of the universe as seenby science can be..." and here the voices died away as we descendedinto the basement. i noticed that mr greenwood did not join in the amicable controversy.strange as it may appear, i think he looked back upon our proceedings with a slight degreeof resentment. mr burrows, however, was all philosophy and chattiness. we left them, asi say, together, and sank deeper and deeper into the under-world of that mysterious house,which, perhaps, appeared to us somewhat more tartarean than it really was, owing to ourknowledge of its semi-criminal mystery and of the human secret locked below. the basement floor had several doors, as isusual in such a house; doors that would naturally

lead to the kitchen, the scullery, the pantry,the servants' hall, and so on. rupert flung open all the doors with indescribable rapidity.four out of the five opened on entirely empty apartments. the fifth was locked. rupert brokethe door in like a bandbox, and we fell into the sudden blackness of the sealed, unlightedroom. rupert stood on the threshold, and calledout like a man calling into an abyss: "whoever you are, come out. you are free.the people who held you captive are captives themselves. we heard you crying and we cameto deliver you. we have bound your enemies upstairs hand and foot. you are free." for some seconds after he had spoken intothe darkness there was a dead silence in it.

then there came a kind of muttering and moaning.we might easily have taken it for the wind or rats if we had not happened to have heardit before. it was unmistakably the voice of the imprisoned woman, drearily demanding liberty,just as we had heard her demand it. "has anybody got a match?" said rupert grimly."i fancy we have come pretty near the end of this business." i struck a match and held it up. it revealeda large, bare, yellow-papered apartment with a dark-clad figure at the other end of itnear the window. an instant after it burned my fingers and dropped, leaving darkness.it had, however, revealed something more practical—an iron gas bracket just above my head. i struckanother match and lit the gas. and we found

ourselves suddenly and seriously in the presenceof the captive. at a sort of workbox in the window of thissubterranean breakfast-room sat an elderly lady with a singularly high colour and almoststartling silver hair. she had, as if designedly to relieve these effects, a pair of mephistophelianblack eyebrows and a very neat black dress. the glare of the gas lit up her piquant hairand face perfectly against the brown background of the shutters. the background was blue andnot brown in one place; at the place where rupert's knife had torn a great opening inthe wood about an hour before. "madam," said he, advancing with a gestureof the hat, "permit me to have the pleasure of announcing to you that you are free. yourcomplaints happened to strike our ears as

we passed down the street, and we have thereforeventured to come to your rescue." the old lady with the red face and the blackeyebrows looked at us for a moment with something of the apoplectic stare of a parrot. thenshe said, with a sudden gust or breathing of relief: "rescue? where is mr greenwood? where is mrburrows? did you say you had rescued me?" "yes, madam," said rupert, with a beamingcondescension. "we have very satisfactorily dealt with mr greenwood and mr burrows. wehave settled affairs with them very satisfactorily." the old lady rose from her chair and camevery quickly towards us. "what did you say to them? how did you persuadethem?" she cried.

"we persuaded them, my dear madam," said rupert,laughing, "by knocking them down and tying them up. but what is the matter?" to the surprise of every one the old ladywalked slowly back to her seat by the window. "do i understand," she said, with the airof a person about to begin knitting, "that you have knocked down mr burrows and tiedhim up?" "we have," said rupert proudly; "we have resistedtheir oppression and conquered it." "oh, thanks," answered the old lady, and satdown by the window. a considerable pause followed. "the road is quite clear for you, madam,"said rupert pleasantly.

the old lady rose, cocking her black eyebrowsand her silver crest at us for an instant. "but what about greenwood and burrows?" shesaid. "what did i understand you to say had become of them?" "they are lying on the floor upstairs," saidrupert, chuckling. "tied hand and foot." "well, that settles it," said the old lady,coming with a kind of bang into her seat again, "i must stop where i am." rupert looked bewildered. "stop where you are?" he said. "why shouldyou stop any longer where you are? what power can force you now to stop in this miserablecell?"

"the question rather is," said the old lady,with composure, "what power can force me to go anywhere else?" we both stared wildly at her and she staredtranquilly at us both. at last i said, "do you really mean to saythat we are to leave you here?" "i suppose you don't intend to tie me up,"she said, "and carry me off? i certainly shall not go otherwise." "but, my dear madam," cried out rupert, ina radiant exasperation, "we heard you with our own ears crying because you could notget out." "eavesdroppers often hear rather misleadingthings," replied the captive grimly. "i suppose

i did break down a bit and lose my temperand talk to myself. but i have some sense of honour for all that." "some sense of honour?" repeated rupert, andthe last light of intelligence died out of his face, leaving it the face of an idiotwith rolling eyes. he moved vaguely towards the door and i followed.but i turned yet once more in the toils of my conscience and curiosity. "can we do nothingfor you, madam?" i said forlornly. "why," said the lady, "if you are particularlyanxious to do me a little favour you might untie the gentlemen upstairs." rupert plunged heavily up the kitchen staircase,shaking it with his vague violence. with mouth

open to speak he stumbled to the door of thesitting-room and scene of battle. "theoretically speaking, that is no doubttrue," mr burrows was saying, lying on his back and arguing easily with basil; "but wemust consider the matter as it appears to our sense. the origin of morality..." "basil," cried rupert, gasping, "she won'tcome out." "who won't come out?" asked basil, a littlecross at being interrupted in an argument. "the lady downstairs," replied rupert. "thelady who was locked up. she won't come out. and she says that all she wants is for usto let these fellows loose." "and a jolly sensible suggestion," cried basil,and with a bound he was on top of the prostrate

burrows once more and was unknotting his bondswith hands and teeth. "a brilliant idea. swinburne, just undo mrgreenwood." in a dazed and automatic way i released thelittle gentleman in the purple jacket, who did not seem to regard any of the proceedingsas particularly sensible or brilliant. the gigantic burrows, on the other hand, was heavingwith herculean laughter. "well," said basil, in his cheeriest way,"i think we must be getting away. we've so much enjoyed our evening. far too much regardfor you to stand on ceremony. if i may so express myself, we've made ourselves at home.good night. thanks so much. come along, rupert." "basil," said rupert desperately, "for god'ssake come and see what you can make of the

woman downstairs. i can't get the discomfortout of my mind. i admit that things look as if we had made a mistake. but these gentlemenwon't mind perhaps..." "no, no," cried burrows, with a sort of rabelaisianuproariousness. "no, no, look in the pantry, gentlemen. examine the coal-hole. make a tourof the chimneys. there are corpses all over the house, i assure you." this adventure of ours was destined to differin one respect from others which i have narrated. i had been through many wild days with basilgrant, days for the first half of which the sun and the moon seemed to have gone mad.but it had almost invariably happened that towards the end of the day and its adventurethings had cleared themselves like the sky

after rain, and a luminous and quiet meaninghad gradually dawned upon me. but this day's work was destined to end in confusion worseconfounded. before we left that house, ten minutes afterwards, one half-witted touchwas added which rolled all our minds in cloud. if rupert's head had suddenly fallen off onthe floor, if wings had begun to sprout out of greenwood's shoulders, we could scarcelyhave been more suddenly stricken. and yet of this we had no explanation. we had to goto bed that night with the prodigy and get up next morning with it and let it stand inour memories for weeks and months. as will be seen, it was not until months afterwardsthat by another accident and in another way it was explained. for the present i only statewhat happened.

when all five of us went down the kitchenstairs again, rupert leading, the two hosts bringing up the rear, we found the door ofthe prison again closed. throwing it open we found the place again as black as pitch.the old lady, if she was still there, had turned out the gas: she seemed to have a weirdpreference for sitting in the dark. without another word rupert lit the gas again.the little old lady turned her bird-like head as we all stumbled forward in the strong gaslight.then, with a quickness that almost made me jump, she sprang up and swept a sort of old-fashionedcurtsey or reverence. i looked quickly at greenwood and burrows, to whom it was naturalto suppose this subservience had been offered. i felt irritated at what was implied in thissubservience, and desired to see the faces

of the tyrants as they received it. to mysurprise they did not seem to have seen it at all: burrows was paring his nails witha small penknife. greenwood was at the back of the group and had hardly entered the room.and then an amazing fact became apparent. it was basil grant who stood foremost of thegroup, the golden gaslight lighting up his strong face and figure. his face wore an expressionindescribably conscious, with the suspicion of a very grave smile. his head was slightlybent with a restrained bow. it was he who had acknowledged the lady's obeisance. andit was he, beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt, to whom it had really been directed. "so i hear," he said, in a kindly yet somehowformal voice, "i hear, madam, that my friends

have been trying to rescue you. but withoutsuccess." "no one, naturally, knows my faults betterthan you," answered the lady with a high colour. "but you have not found me guilty of treachery." "i willingly attest it, madam," replied basil,in the same level tones, "and the fact is that i am so much gratified with your exhibitionof loyalty that i permit myself the pleasure of exercising some very large discretionarypowers. you would not leave this room at the request of these gentlemen. but you know thatyou can safely leave it at mine." the captive made another reverence. "i havenever complained of your injustice," she said. "i need scarcely say what i think of yourgenerosity."

and before our staring eyes could blink shehad passed out of the room, basil holding the door open for her. he turned to greenwood with a relapse intojoviality. "this will be a relief to you," he said. "yes, it will," replied that immovable younggentleman with a face like a sphinx. we found ourselves outside in the dark bluenight, shaken and dazed as if we had fallen into it from some high tower. "basil," said rupert at last, in a weak voice,"i always thought you were my brother. but are you a man? i mean—are you only a man?"

"at present," replied basil, "my mere humanityis proved by one of the most unmistakable symbols—hunger. we are too late for thetheatre in sloane square. but we are not too late for the restaurant. here comes the greenomnibus!" and he had leaped on it before we could speak. ———————————————————————————————————— as i said, it was months after that rupertgrant suddenly entered my room, swinging a satchel in his hand and with a general airof having jumped over the garden wall, and implored me to go with him upon the latestand wildest of his expeditions. he proposed to himself no less a thing than the discoveryof the actual origin, whereabouts, and headquarters of the source of all our joys and sorrows—theclub of queer trades. i should expand this

story for ever if i explained how ultimatelywe ran this strange entity to its lair. the process meant a hundred interesting things.the tracking of a member, the bribing of a cabman, the fighting of roughs, the liftingof a paving stone, the finding of a cellar, the finding of a cellar below the cellar,the finding of the subterranean passage, the finding of the club of queer trades. i have had many strange experiences in mylife, but never a stranger one than that i felt when i came out of those rambling, sightless,and seemingly hopeless passages into the sudden splendour of a sumptuous and hospitable dining-room,surrounded upon almost every side by faces that i knew. there was mr montmorency, thearboreal house-agent, seated between the two

brisk young men who were occasionally vicars,and always professional detainers. there was mr p. g. northover, founder of the adventureand romance agency. there was professor chadd, who invented the dancing language. as we entered, all the members seemed to sinksuddenly into their chairs, and with the very action the vacancy of the presidential seatgaped at us like a missing tooth. "the president's not here," said mr p. g.northover, turning suddenly to professor chadd. "n—no," said the philosopher, with morethan his ordinary vagueness. "i can't imagine where he is." "good heavens," said mr montmorency, jumpingup, "i really feel a little nervous. i'll

go and see." and he ran out of the room. an instant after he ran back again, twitteringwith a timid ecstasy. "he's there, gentlemen—he's there all right—he'scoming in now," he cried, and sat down. rupert and i could hardly help feeling the beginningsof a sort of wonder as to who this person might be who was the first member of thisinsane brotherhood. who, we thought indistinctly, could be maddest in this world of madmen:what fantastic was it whose shadow filled all these fantastics with so loyal an expectation? suddenly we were answered. the door flew openand the room was filled and shaken with a shout, in the midst of which basil grant,smiling and in evening dress, took his seat

at the head of the table. how we ate that dinner i have no idea. inthe common way i am a person particularly prone to enjoy the long luxuriance of theclub dinner. but on this occasion it seemed a hopeless and endless string of courses.hors-d'oeuvre sardines seemed as big as herrings, soup seemed a sort of ocean, larks were ducks,ducks were ostriches until that dinner was over. the cheese course was maddening. i hadoften heard of the moon being made of green cheese. that night i thought the green cheesewas made of the moon. and all the time basil grant went on laughing and eating and drinking,and never threw one glance at us to tell us why he was there, the king of these caperingidiots.

at last came the moment which i knew mustin some way enlighten us, the time of the club speeches and the club toasts. basil grantrose to his feet amid a surge of songs and cheers. "gentlemen," he said, "it is a custom in thissociety that the president for the year opens the proceedings not by any general toast ofsentiment, but by calling upon each member to give a brief account of his trade. we thendrink to that calling and to all who follow it. it is my business, as the senior member,to open by stating my claim to membership of this club. years ago, gentlemen, i wasa judge; i did my best in that capacity to do justice and to administer the law. butit gradually dawned on me that in my work,

as it was, i was not touching even the fringeof justice. i was seated in the seat of the mighty, i was robed in scarlet and ermine;nevertheless, i held a small and lowly and futile post. i had to go by a mean rule asmuch as a postman, and my red and gold was worth no more than his. daily there passedbefore me taut and passionate problems, the stringency of which i had to pretend to relieveby silly imprisonments or silly damages, while i knew all the time, by the light of my livingcommon sense, that they would have been far better relieved by a kiss or a thrashing,or a few words of explanation, or a duel, or a tour in the west highlands. then, asthis grew on me, there grew on me continuously the sense of a mountainous frivolity. everyword said in the court, a whisper or an oath,

seemed more connected with life than the wordsi had to say. then came the time when i publicly blasphemed the whole bosh, was classed asa madman and melted from public life." something in the atmosphere told me that itwas not only rupert and i who were listening with intensity to this statement. "well, i discovered that i could be of noreal use. i offered myself privately as a purely moral judge to settle purely moraldifferences. before very long these unofficial courts of honour (kept strictly secret) hadspread over the whole of society. people were tried before me not for the practical triflesfor which nobody cares, such as committing a murder, or keeping a dog without a licence.my criminals were tried for the faults which

really make social life impossible. they weretried before me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, or for scandalmongering,or for stinginess to guests or dependents. of course these courts had no sort of realcoercive powers. the fulfilment of their punishments rested entirely on the honour of the ladiesand gentlemen involved, including the honour of the culprits. but you would be amazed toknow how completely our orders were always obeyed. only lately i had a most pleasingexample. a maiden lady in south kensington whom i had condemned to solitary confinementfor being the means of breaking off an engagement through backbiting, absolutely refused toleave her prison, although some well-meaning persons had been inopportune enough to rescueher."

rupert grant was staring at his brother, hismouth fallen agape. so, for the matter of that, i expect, was i. this, then, was theexplanation of the old lady's strange discontent and her still stranger content with her lot.she was one of the culprits of his voluntary criminal court. she was one of the clientsof his queer trade. we were still dazed when we drank, amid acrash of glasses, the health of basil's new judiciary. we had only a confused sense ofeverything having been put right, the sense men will have when they come into the presenceof god. we dimly heard basil say: "mr p. g. northover will now explain the adventureand romance agency." and we heard equally dimly northover beginningthe statement he had made long ago to major

brown. thus our epic ended where it had begun,like a true cycle.