Page 5 of The Club of Queer Trades

  Chapter 5. The Noticeable Conduct of Professor Chadd

  Basil Grant had comparatively few friends besides myself; yet he wasthe reverse of an unsociable man. He would talk to any one anywhere, andtalk not only well but with perfectly genuine concern and enthusiasm forthat person's affairs. He went through the world, as it were, as if hewere always on the top of an omnibus or waiting for a train. Most ofthese chance acquaintances, of course, vanished into darkness out of hislife. A few here and there got hooked on to him, so to speak, and becamehis lifelong intimates, but there was an accidental look about all ofthem as if they were windfalls, samples taken at random, goods fallenfrom a goods train or presents fished out of a bran-pie. One wouldbe, let us say, a veterinary surgeon with the appearance of a jockey;another, a mild prebendary with a white beard and vague views; another,a young captain in the Lancers, seemingly exactly like other captainsin the Lancers; another, a small dentist from Fulham, in all reasonablecertainty precisely like every other dentist from Fulham. MajorBrown, small, dry, and dapper, was one of these; Basil had made hisacquaintance over a discussion in a hotel cloak-room about the righthat, a discussion which reduced the little major almost to a kind ofmasculine hysterics, the compound of the selfishness of an old bachelorand the scrupulosity of an old maid. They had gone home in a cabtogether and then dined with each other twice a week until they died. Imyself was another. I had met Grant while he was still a judge, on thebalcony of the National Liberal Club, and exchanged a few words aboutthe weather. Then we had talked for about an hour about politics andGod; for men always talk about the most important things to totalstrangers. It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself;the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubtsof the wisdom of a moustache.

  One of the most interesting of Basil's motley group of acquaintances wasProfessor Chadd. He was known to the ethnological world (which is a veryinteresting world, but a long way off this one) as the second greatest,if not the greatest, authority on the relations of savages to language.He was known to the neighbourhood of Hart Street, Bloomsbury, as abearded man with a bald head, spectacles, and a patient face, the faceof an unaccountable Nonconformist who had forgotten how to be angry. Hewent to and fro between the British Museum and a selection of blamelesstea-shops, with an armful of books and a poor but honest umbrella. Hewas never seen without the books and the umbrella, and was supposed (bythe lighter wits of the Persian MS. room) to go to bed with them in hislittle brick villa in the neighbourhood of Shepherd's Bush. Therehe lived with three sisters, ladies of solid goodness, but sinisterdemeanour. His life was happy, as are almost all the lives of methodicalstudents, but one would not have called it exhilarating. His only hoursof exhilaration occurred when his friend, Basil Grant, came into thehouse, late at night, a tornado of conversation.

  Basil, though close on sixty, had moods of boisterous babyishness, andthese seemed for some reason or other to descend upon him particularlyin the house of his studious and almost dingy friend. I can remembervividly (for I was acquainted with both parties and often dined withthem) the gaiety of Grant on that particular evening when the strangecalamity fell upon the professor. Professor Chadd was, like most ofhis particular class and type (the class that is at once academic andmiddle-class), a Radical of a solemn and old-fashioned type. Grant wasa Radical himself, but he was that more discriminating and not uncommontype of Radical who passes most of his time in abusing the Radicalparty. Chadd had just contributed to a magazine an article called "ZuluInterests and the New Makango Frontier', in which a precise scientificreport of his study of the customs of the people of T'Chaka wasreinforced by a severe protest against certain interferences with thesecustoms both by the British and the Germans. He-was sitting with themagazine in front of him, the lamplight shining on his spectacles, awrinkle in his forehead, not of anger, but of perplexity, as Basil Grantstrode up and down the room, shaking it with his voice, with his highspirits and his heavy tread.

  "It's not your opinions that I object to, my esteemed Chadd," he wassaying, "it's you. You are quite right to champion the Zulus, but forall that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you know the Zulu wayof cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; butfor all that you don't understand them as well as I do, who don't knowan assegai from an alligator. You are more learned, Chadd, but I am moreZulu. Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are alwayschampioned by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You aresagacious, you are benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, youare not savage. Live no longer under that rosy illusion. Look in theglass. Ask your sisters. Consult the librarian of the British Museum.Look at this umbrella." And he held up that sad but still respectablearticle. "Look at it. For ten mortal years to my certain knowledge youhave carried that object under your arm, and I have no sort of doubtthat you carried it at the age of eight months, and it never occurred toyou to give one wild yell and hurl it like a javelin--thus--"

  And he sent the umbrella whizzing past the professor's bald head,so that it knocked over a pile of books with a crash and left a vaserocking.

  Professor Chadd appeared totally unmoved, with his face still lifted tothe lamp and the wrinkle cut in his forehead.

  "Your mental processes," he said, "always go a little too fast. And theyare stated without method. There is no kind of inconsistency"--andno words can convey the time he took to get to the end of theword--"between valuing the right of the aborigines to adhere to theirstage in the evolutionary process, so long as they find it congenialand requisite to do so. There is, I say, no inconsistency between thisconcession which I have just described to you and the view that theevolutionary stage in question is, nevertheless, so far as we can formany estimate of values in the variety of cosmic processes, definable insome degree as an inferior evolutionary stage."

  Nothing but his lips had moved as he spoke, and his glasses still shonelike two pallid moons.

  Grant was shaking with laughter as he watched him.

  "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 very farfrom being certain that the Zulu is on an inferior evolutionary stage,whatever the blazes that may mean. I do not think there is anythingstupid or ignorant about howling at the moon or being afraid of devilsin the dark. It seems to me perfectly philosophical. Why should a manbe thought a sort of idiot because he feels the mystery and peril ofexistence itself? Suppose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are theidiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark?"

  Professor Chadd slit open a page of the magazine with a bone paper-knifeand the intent reverence of the bibliophile.

  "Beyond all question," he said, "it is a tenable hypothesis. I alludeto the hypothesis which I understand you to entertain, that ourcivilization is not or may not be an advance upon, and indeed (if Iapprehend you), is or may be a retrogression from states identical withor analogous to the state of the Zulus. Moreover, I shall be inclinedto concede that such a proposition is of the nature, in some degree atleast, of a primary proposition, and cannot adequately be argued, in thesame sense, I mean, that the primary proposition of pessimism, or theprimary proposition of the non-existence of matter, cannot adequatelybe argued. But I do not conceive you to be under the impression that youhave demonstrated anything more concerning this proposition than that itis tenable, which, after all, amounts to little more than the statementthat it is not a contradiction in terms."

  Basil threw a book at his head and took out a cigar.

  "You don't understand," he said, "but, on the other hand, as acompensation, 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 itwhen I began to be a Zulu, about the age of ten. What I maintained wasthat although you knew more about Zulus in the sense that you are ascientist, I know more about them in the sense that I am a savage. Forinstance, your theory of the origin of language, something about itshaving come from the formulated
secret language of some individualcreature, though you knocked me silly with facts and scholarship in itsfavour, still does not convince me, because I have a feeling that thatis not the way that things happen. If you ask me why I think so I canonly answer that I am a Zulu; and if you ask me (as you most certainlywill) what is my definition of a Zulu, I can answer that also. He is onewho has climbed a Sussex apple-tree at seven and been afraid of a ghostin an English lane."

  "Your process of thought--" began the immovable Chadd, but his speechwas interrupted. His sister, with that masculinity which always in suchfamilies concentrates in sisters, flung open the door with a rigid armand said:

  "James, Mr Bingham of the British Museum wants to see you again."

  The philosopher rose with a dazed look, which always indicates insuch men the fact that they regard philosophy as a familiar thing, butpractical life as a weird and unnerving vision, and walked dubiously outof the room.

  "I hope you do not mind my being aware of it, Miss Chadd," said BasilGrant, "but I hear that the British Museum has recognized one of themen who have deserved well of their commonwealth. It is true, is itnot, that Professor Chadd is likely to be made keeper of Asiaticmanuscripts?"

  The grim face of the spinster betrayed a great deal of pleasure and agreat deal of pathos also. "I believe it's true," she said. "If it is,it will not only be great glory which women, I assure you, feel a greatdeal, but great relief, which they feel more; relief from worry from alot of things. James' health has never been good, and while we are aspoor as we are he had to do journalism and coaching, in addition to hisown dreadful grinding notions and discoveries, which he loves more thanman, woman, or child. I have often been afraid that unless something ofthis kind occurred we should really have to be careful of his brain. ButI believe it is practically settled."

  "I am delighted," began Basil, but with a worried face, "but thesered-tape negotiations are so terribly chancy that I really can't adviseyou to build on hope, only to be hurled down into bitterness. I'veknown men, and good men like your brother, come nearer than this and bedisappointed. Of course, if it is true--"

  "If it is true," said the woman fiercely, "it means that people who havenever lived may make an attempt at living."

  Even as she spoke the professor came into the room still with the dazedlook in his eyes.

  "Is it true?" asked Basil, with burning eyes.

  "Not a bit true," answered Chadd after a moment's bewilderment. "Yourargument was in three points fallacious."

  "What do you mean?" demanded Grant.

  "Well," said the professor slowly, "in saying that you could possess aknowledge of the essence of Zulu life distinct from--"

  "Oh! confound Zulu life," cried Grant, with a burst of laughter. "Imean, have you got the post?"

  "You mean the post of keeper of the Asiatic manuscripts," he said,opening his eye with childlike wonder. "Oh, yes, I got that. But thereal objection to your argument, which has only, I admit, occurred to mesince I have been out of the room, is that it does not merely presupposea Zulu truth apart from the facts, but infers that the discovery of itis absolutely impeded by the facts."

  "I am crushed," said Basil, and sat down to laugh, while the professor'ssister retired to her room, possibly, possibly not.

  It was extremely late when we left the Chadds, and it is an extremelylong and tiresome journey from Shepherd's Bush to Lambeth. This maybe our excuse for the fact that we (for I was stopping the night withGrant) got down to breakfast next day at a time inexpressibly criminal,a time, in point of fact, close upon noon. Even to that belated mealwe came in a very lounging and leisurely fashion. Grant, in particular,seemed so dreamy at table that he scarcely saw the pile of letters byhis plate, and I doubt if he would have opened any of them if therehad not lain on the top that one thing which has succeeded amid moderncarelessness in being really urgent and coercive--a telegram. This heopened with the same heavy distraction with which he broke his egg anddrank his tea. When he read it he did not stir a hair or say a word, butsomething, I know not what, made me feel that the motionless figurehad been pulled together suddenly as strings are tightened on a slackguitar. Though he said nothing and did not move, I knew that he had beenfor an instant cleared and sharpened with a shock of cold water. It wasscarcely any surprise to me when a man who had drifted sullenly to hisseat and fallen into it, kicked it away like a cur from under him andcame round to me in two strides.

  "What do you make of that?" he said, and flattened out the wire in frontof me.

  It ran: "Please come at once. James' mental state dangerous. Chadd."

  "What does the woman mean?" I said after a pause, irritably. "Thosewomen have been saying that the poor old professor was mad ever since hewas born."

  "You are mistaken," said Grant composedly. "It is true that all sensiblewomen think all studious men mad. It is true, for the matter 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 orGod all-merciful. These things are truisms, and often private ones atthat. If Miss Chadd has written down under the eye of a strange womanin a post-office that her brother is off his head you may be perfectlycertain that she did it because it was a matter of life and death, andshe can 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-rank near."

  Basil scarcely said a word as we drove across Westminster 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, my friend," he said; "this isone of the most queer and complicated and astounding incidents that everhappened in London or, for that matter, in any high civilization."

  "I confess with the greatest sympathy and reverence that I don't quitesee it," I said. "Is it so very extraordinary or complicated that adreamy somnambulant old invalid who has always walked on the borders ofthe inconceivable should go mad under the shock of great joy? Is it sovery extraordinary that a man with a head like a turnip and a soullike a spider's web should not find his strength equal to a confoundingchange of fortunes? Is it, in short, so very extraordinary that JamesChadd should lose his wits from excitement?"

  "It would not be extraordinary in the least," answered Basil, withplacidity. "It would not be extraordinary in the least," he repeated,"if the professor had gone mad. That was not the extraordinarycircumstance to which I referred."

  "What," I asked, stamping my foot, "was the extraordinary thing?"

  "The extraordinary thing," said Basil, ringing the bell, "is that he hasnot gone mad from excitement."

  The tall and angular figure of the eldest Miss Chadd blocked the doorwayas the door opened. Two other Miss Chadds seemed in the same way to beblocking the narrow passage and the little parlour. There was a generalsense of their keeping something from view. They seemed like threeblack-clad ladies in some strange play of Maeterlinck, veiling thecatastrophe from the audience in the manner of the Greek chorus.

  "Sit down, won't you?" said one of them, in a voice that was somewhatrigid with pain. "I think you had better be told first what hashappened."

  Then, with her bleak face looking unmeaningly out of the window, shecontinued, in an even and mechanical voice:

  "I had better state everything that occurred just as it occurred. Thismorning I was clearing away the breakfast things, my sisters were bothsomewhat unwell, and had not come down. My brother had just gone outof the room, I believe, to fetch a book. He came back again, however,without it, and stood for some time staring at the empty grate. I said,'Were you looking for anything I could get?' He did not answer, butthis constantly happens, as he is often very abstracted. I repeated myquestion, and still he did not answer. Sometimes he is so wrapped upin his studies that nothing but a touch on the shoulder would make himaware of one's presence, so I came round the table towards him. I reallydo not know how to describe the se
nsation which I then had. It seemssimply 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 with a kind of care.

  "Standing on one leg?" I repeated.

  "Yes," replied the dead voice of the woman without an inflection tosuggest that she felt the fantasticality of her statement. "He wasstanding on the left leg and the right drawn up at a sharp angle, thetoe pointing downwards. I asked him if his leg hurt him. His onlyanswer was to shoot the leg straight at right angles to the other, asif pointing to the other with his toe to the wall. He was still lookingquite gravely at the fireplace.

  "'James, what is the matter?' I cried, for I was thoroughly frightened.James gave three kicks in the air with the right leg, flung up theother, gave three kicks in the air with it also and spun round like ateetotum the other way. 'Are you mad?' I cried. 'Why don't you answerme?' He had come to a standstill facing me, and was looking at me as healways does, with his lifted eyebrows and great spectacled eyes. WhenI had spoken he remained a second or two motionless, and then his onlyreply was to lift his left foot slowly from the floor and describecircles with it in the air. I rushed to the door and shouted forChristina. I will not dwell on the dreadful hours that followed. Allthree of us talked to him, implored him to speak to us with appeals thatmight have brought back the dead, but he has done nothing but hopand dance and kick with a solemn silent face. It looks as if his legsbelonged to some one else or were possessed by devils. He has neverspoken to us from that time to this."

  "Where is he now?" I said, getting up in some agitation. "We ought notto leave him alone."

  "Doctor Colman is with him," said Miss Chadd calmly. "They are in thegarden. Doctor Colman thought the air would do him good. And he canscarcely go into the street."

  Basil and I walked rapidly to the window which looked out on the garden.It was a small and somewhat smug suburban garden; the flower beds alittle too neat and like the pattern of a coloured carpet; but on thisshining and opulent summer day even they had the exuberance of somethingnatural, I had almost said tropical. In the middle of a bright andverdant but painfully circular lawn stood two figures. One of them was asmall, sharp-looking man with black whiskers and a very polished hat (Ipresume Dr Colman), who was talking very quietly and clearly, yet witha nervous twitch, as it were, in his face. The other was our old friend,listening with his old forbearing expression and owlish eyes, the strongsunlight gleaming on his glasses as the lamplight had gleamed thenight before, when the boisterous Basil had rallied him on his studiousdecorum. But for one thing the figure of this morning might have beenthe identical figure of last night. That one thing was that while theface listened reposefully the legs were industriously dancing like thelegs of a marionette. The neat flowers and the sunny glitter ofthe garden lent an indescribable sharpness and incredibility tothe prodigy--the prodigy of the head of a hermit and the legs of aharlequin. For miracles should always happen in broad daylight. Thenight makes them credible and therefore commonplace.

  The second sister had by this time entered the room and came somewhatdrearily to the window.

  "You know, Adelaide," she said, "that Mr Bingham from the Museum iscoming again at three."

  "I know," said Adelaide Chadd bitterly. "I suppose we shall have to tellhim about this. I thought that no good fortune would ever come easily tous."

  Grant suddenly turned round. "What do you mean?" he said. "What will youhave 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 wretched name.Do you think that the keeper of Asiatic manuscripts will be allowed togo on like that?" And she pointed for an instant at the figure in thegarden, the shining, listening face and the unresting feet.

  Basil Grant took out his watch with an abrupt movement. "When did yousay 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 wordthrew up the window and jumped out into the garden. He did not walkstraight up to the doctor and lunatic, but strolling round the gardenpath drew near them cautiously and yet apparently carelessly. He stooda couple of feet off them, seemingly counting halfpence out of histrousers pocket, but, as I could see, looking up steadily under thebroad brim of his hat.

  Suddenly he stepped up to Professor Chadd's elbow, and said, in aloud familiar voice, "Well, my boy, do you still think the Zulus ourinferiors?"

  The doctor knitted his brows and looked anxious, seeming to be about tospeak. The professor turned his bald and placid head towards Grant in afriendly manner, but made no answer, idly flinging his left leg about.

  "Have you converted Dr Colman to your views?" Basil continued, still inthe same loud and lucid tone.

  Chadd only shuffled his feet and kicked a little with the other leg,his expression still benevolent and inquiring. The doctor cut in rathersharply. "Shall we go inside, professor?" he said. "Now you have shownme the garden. A beautiful garden. A most beautiful garden. Let us goin," and he tried to draw the kicking ethnologist by the elbow, at thesame time whispering to Grant: "I must ask you not to trouble him withquestions. Most risky. He must be soothed."

  Basil answered in the same tone, with great coolness:

  "Of course your directions must be followed out, doctor. I willendeavour to do so, but I hope it will not be inconsistent with them ifyou will leave me alone with my poor friend in this garden for an hour.I want to watch him. I assure you, Dr Colman, that I shall say verylittle to him, and that little shall be 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 sunwithout his hat. With his bald head, too."

  "That is soon settled," said Basil composedly, and took off his own bighat and clapped it on the egglike skull of the professor. The latter didnot turn round but danced away with his eyes on the horizon.

  The doctor put on his glasses again, looked severely at the two forsome seconds, with his head on one side like a bird's, and then saying,shortly, "All right," strutted away into the house, where the threeMisses Chadd were all looking out from the parlour window on to thegarden. They looked out on it with hungry eyes for a full hour withoutmoving, and they saw a sight which was more extraordinary than madnessitself.

  Basil Grant addressed a few questions to the madman, without succeedingin making him do anything but continue to caper, and when he had donethis slowly took a red note-book out of one pocket and a large pencilout of another.

  He began hurriedly to scribble notes. When the lunatic skipped away fromhim he would walk a few yards in pursuit, stop, and make notes again.Thus they followed each other round and round the foolish circle ofturf, the one writing in pencil with the face of a man working out aproblem, the other leaping and playing like a child.

  After about three-quarters of an hour of this imbecile scene, Grant putthe pencil in his pocket, but kept the note-book open in his hand, andwalking round the mad professor, planted himself directly in front ofhim.

  Then occurred something that even those already used to that wildmorning had not anticipated or dreamed. The professor, on finding Basilin front of him, stared with a blank benignity for a few seconds, andthen drew up his left leg and hung it bent in the attitude that hissister had described as being the first of all his antics. And themoment he had done it Basil Grant lifted his own leg and held it outrigid before him, confronting Chadd with the flat sole of his boot. Theprofessor dropped his bent leg, and swinging his weight on to it kickedout the other behind, like a man swimming. Basil crossed his feet likea saltire cross, and then flung them apart again, giving a leap intothe air. Then before any of the spectators could say a word or evenentertain a thought about the matter, both of them were dancing a sortof jig or hornpipe opposite each other; and the sun shone down on twomadmen instead of on
e.

  They were so stricken with the deafness and blindness of monomania thatthey did not see the eldest Miss Chadd come out feverishly into thegarden with gestures of entreaty, a gentleman following her. ProfessorChadd was in the wildest posture of a pas-de-quatre, Basil Grant seemedabout to turn a cart-wheel, when they were frozen in their follies bythe steely voice of Adelaide Chadd saying, "Mr Bingham of the BritishMuseum."

  Mr Bingham was a slim, well-clad gentleman with a pointed and slightlyeffeminate grey beard, unimpeachable gloves, and formal but agreeablemanners. He was the type of the over-civilized, as Professor Chadd wasof the uncivilized pedant. His formality and agreeableness did him somecredit under the circumstances. He had a vast experience of books and aconsiderable experience of the more dilettante fashionable salons. Butneither branch of knowledge had accustomed him to the spectacle of twogrey-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 perfect placidity, but Grantstopped abruptly. The doctor had reappeared on the scene, and his shinyblack eyes, under his shiny black hat, moved restlessly from one of themto the other.

  "Dr Colman," said Basil, turning to him, "will you entertain ProfessorChadd 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? Myname is Grant."

  Mr Bingham, of the British Museum, bowed in a manner that was respectfulbut a trifle bewildered.

  "Miss Chadd will excuse me," continued Basil easily, "if I know my wayabout the house." And he led the dazed librarian rapidly through theback door into the parlour.

  "Mr Bingham," said Basil, setting a chair for him, "I imagine that MissChadd has told you of this distressing occurrence."

  "She has, Mr Grant," said Bingham, looking at the table with a sortof compassionate nervousness. "I am more pained than I can say by thisdreadful calamity. It seems quite heart-rending that the thing shouldhave happened just as we have decided to give your eminent frienda position which falls far short of his merits. As it is, ofcourse--really, I don't know what to say. Professor Chadd may, ofcourse, retain--I sincerely trust he will--his extraordinarily valuableintellect. But I am afraid--I am really afraid--that it would not do tohave the curator of the Asiatic manuscripts--er--dancing about."

  "I have a suggestion to make," said Basil, and sat down abruptly in hischair, drawing it up to the table.

  "I am delighted, of course," said the gentleman from the British Museum,coughing and drawing up his chair also.

  The clock on the mantelpiece ticked for just the moments required forBasil to clear his throat and collect his words, and then he said:

  "My proposal is this. I do not know that in the strict use of words youcould altogether call it a compromise, still it has something of thatcharacter. My proposal is that the Government (acting, as I presume,through your Museum) should pay Professor Chadd L800 a year until hestops dancing."

  "Eight hundred a year!" said Mr Bingham, and for the first time liftedhis mild blue eyes to those of his interlocutor--and he raised themwith a mild blue stare. "I think I have not quite understood you. Did Iunderstand you to say that Professor Chadd ought to be employed, in hispresent state, in the Asiatic manuscript department at eight hundred ayear?"

  Grant shook his head resolutely.

  "No," he said firmly. "No. Chadd is a friend of mine, and I would sayanything for him I could. But I do not say, I cannot say, that he oughtto take on the Asiatic manuscripts. I do not go so far as that. I merelysay that until he stops dancing you ought to pay him L800 Surely youhave some general fund for the endowment of research."

  Mr Bingham looked bewildered.

  "I really don't know," he said, blinking his eyes, "what you are talkingabout. Do you ask us to give this obvious lunatic nearly a thousand ayear for life?"

  "Not at all," cried Basil, keenly and triumphantly. "I never said forlife. Not at all."

  "What for, then?" asked the meek Bingham, suppressing an instinct meeklyto tear his hair. "How long is this endowment to run? Not till hisdeath? Till the Judgement day?"

  "No," said Basil, beaming, "but just what I said. Till he has stoppeddancing." And he lay back with satisfaction and his hands in hispockets.

  Bingham had by this time fastened his eyes keenly on Basil Grant andkept them there.

  "Come, Mr Grant," he said. "Do I seriously understand you to suggestthat the Government pay Professor Chadd an extraordinarily high salarysimply on the ground that he has (pardon the phrase) gone mad? That heshould be paid more than four good clerks solely on the ground that heis flinging his boots about in the back yard?"

  "Precisely," said Grant composedly.

  "That this absurd payment is not only to run on with the absurd dancing,but actually to stop with the absurd dancing?"

  "One must stop somewhere," said Grant. "Of course."

  Bingham rose and took up his perfect stick and 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 yourpardon for the former suggestion. But, in any case, it appears quiteirrelevant to my duties. The mental morbidity, the mental downfall, ofProfessor Chadd, is a thing so painful to me that I cannot easily endureto speak of it. But it is clear there is a limit to everything. And ifthe Archangel Gabriel went mad it would sever his connection, I am sorryto say, with the British Museum Library."

  He was stepping towards the door, but Grant's hand, flung out indramatic warning, arrested him.

  "Stop!" said Basil sternly. "Stop while there is yet time. Do you wantto take part in a great work, Mr Bingham? Do you want to help in theglory of Europe--in the glory of science? Do you want to carry your headin the air when it is bald or white because of the part that you bore ina great discovery? Do you want--"

  Bingham cut in sharply:

  "And if I do want this, Mr Grant--"

  "Then," said Basil lightly, "your task is easy. Get Chadd L800 a yeartill he stops dancing."

  With a fierce flap of his swinging gloves Bingham turned impatientlyto the door, but in passing out of it found it blocked. Dr Colman wascoming in.

  "Forgive me, gentlemen," he said, in a nervous, confidential voice, "thefact is, Mr Grant, I--er--have made a most disturbing discovery about MrChadd."

  Bingham looked at him with grave eyes.

  "I was afraid so," he said. "Drink, I imagine."

  "Drink!" echoed Colman, as if that were a much milder affair. "Oh, no,it's not drink."

  Mr Bingham became somewhat agitated, and his voice grew hurried andvague. "Homicidal mania--" he began.

  "No, no," said the medical man impatiently.

  "Thinks he's made of glass," said Bingham feverishly, "or says he'sGod--or--"

  "No," said Dr Colman sharply; "the fact is, Mr Grant, my discovery is ofa 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 tests of lunacy," said the doctorshortly; "he hasn't got any of them."

  "But why does he dance?" cried the despairing Bingham. "Why doesn't heanswer us? Why hasn't he spoken to his family?"

  "The devil knows," said Dr Colman coolly. "I'm paid to judge oflunatics, but not of fools. The man's not mad."

  "What on earth can it mean? Can't we make him 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 give him any message you like tosend."

  Both men stared at him.

  "Give him a message?" they cried simultaneously. "How will you give hima message?"

  Basil smiled in his slow way.
>
  "If you really want to know how I shall give him your message," hebegan, but Bingham cried:

  "Of course, of course," with a sort of frenzy.

  "Well," said Basil, "like this." And he suddenly sprang a foot into theair, coming down with crashing boots, and then stood on one leg.

  His face was stern, though this effect was slightly spoiled by the factthat one of his feet was making wild circles in the air.

  "You drive me to it," he said. "You drive me to betray my friend. And Iwill, for his own sake, betray him."

  The sensitive face of Bingham took on an extra expression of distress asof one anticipating some disgraceful disclosure. "Anything painful, ofcourse--" he began.

  Basil let his loose foot fall on the carpet with a crash that struckthem all rigid in their feeble attitudes.

  "Idiots!" he cried. "Have you seen the man? Have you looked at JamesChadd going dismally to and fro from his dingy house to your miserablelibrary, with his futile books and his confounded umbrella, and neverseen that he has the eyes of a fanatic? Have you never noticed, stuckcasually behind his spectacles and above his seedy old collar, the faceof 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 deadlyfaith. I argued against him on the score of his famous theory aboutlanguage--the theory that language was complete in certain individualsand was picked up by others simply by watching them. I also chaffed himabout not understanding things in rough and ready practice. What hasthis glorious bigot done? He has answered me. He has worked out a systemof language of his own (it would take too long to explain); he has madeup, I say, a language of his own. And he has sworn that till peopleunderstand it, till he can speak to us in this language, he will notspeak in any other. And he shall not. I have understood, by takingcareful notice; and, by heaven, so shall the others. This shall not beblown upon. He shall finish his experiment. He shall have L800 a yearfrom somewhere till he has stopped dancing. To stop him now is aninfamous war on a great idea. It is religious persecution."

  Mr Bingham held out his hand cordially.

  "I thank you, Mr Grant," he said. "I hope I shall be able to answer forthe source of the L800 and I fancy that I shall. Will you come in mycab?"

  "No, thank you very much, Mr Bingham," said Grant heartily. "I think Iwill go and have a chat with the professor in the garden."

  The conversation between Chadd and Grant appeared to be personal andfriendly. They were still dancing when I left.

  Chapter 6. The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady

  The conversation of Rupert Grant had two great elements ofinterest--first, the long fantasias of detective deduction in which hewas engaged, and, second, his genuine romantic interest in the life ofLondon. His brother Basil said of him: "His reasoning is particularlycold and clear, and invariably leads him wrong. But his poetry comesin abruptly and leads him right." Whether this was true of Rupert as awhole, or no, it was certainly curiously supported by one story abouthim which I think worth telling.

  We were walking along a lonely terrace in Brompton together. The streetwas full of that bright blue twilight which comes about half past eightin summer, and which seems for the moment to be not so much a coming ofdarkness as the turning on of a new azure illuminator, as if the earthwere lit suddenly by a sapphire sun. In the cool blue the lemon tint ofthe lamps had already begun to flame, and as Rupert and I passed them,Rupert talking excitedly, one after another the pale sparks sprang outof the dusk. Rupert was talking excitedly because he was trying toprove to me the nine hundred and ninety-ninth of his amateur detectivetheories. He would go about London, with this mad logic in his brain,seeing a conspiracy in a cab accident, and a special providence in afalling fusee. His suspicions at the moment were fixed upon an unhappymilkman who walked in front of us. So arresting were the incidents whichafterwards overtook us that I am really afraid that I have forgottenwhat were the main outlines of the milkman's crime. I think it hadsomething to do with the fact that he had only one small can of milk tocarry, 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 notthinking of his small burden, and this again showed that he anticipatedsome other than lacteal business at the end of his walk, and this (takenin conjunction with something about muddy boots) showed something elsethat I have entirely forgotten. I am afraid that I derided this detailedrevelation unmercifully; and I am afraid that Rupert Grant, who,though the best of fellows, had a good deal of the sensitiveness of theartistic temperament, slightly resented my derision. He endeavoured totake 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 bet you half a crown thatwherever 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 hour in silence in the trail ofthe mysterious milkman. He walked quicker and quicker, and we had someado to keep up with him; and every now and then he left a splash ofmilk, silver in the lamplight. Suddenly, almost before we could note it,he disappeared down the area steps of a house. I believe Rupert reallybelieved that the milkman was a fairy; for a second he seemed to accepthim as having vanished. Then calling something to me which somehow tookno hold on my mind, he darted after the mystic milkman, and disappearedhimself into the area.

  I waited for at least five minutes, leaning against a lamp-post in thelonely street. Then the milkman came swinging up the steps without hiscan and hurried off clattering down the road. Two or three minutes moreelapsed, and then Rupert came bounding up also, his face pale but yetlaughing; a not uncommon contradiction in him, denoting excitement.

  "My friend," he said, rubbing his hands, "so much for all yourscepticism. So much for your philistine ignorance of the possibilitiesof a romantic city. Two and sixpence, my boy, is the form in which yourprosaic good nature will have to express itself."

  "What?" I said incredulously, "do you mean to say that you really didfind anything the matter with the poor milkman?"

  His face fell.

  "Oh, the milkman," he said, with a miserable affectation at havingmisunderstood me. "No, I--I--didn't exactly bring anything home to themilkman himself, I--"

  "What did the milkman say and do?" I said, with inexorable sternness.

  "Well, to tell the truth," said Rupert, shifting restlessly fromone foot to another, "the milkman himself, as far as merely physicalappearances went, just said, 'Milk, Miss,' and handed in the can. Thatis not to say, of course, that he did not make some secret sign orsome--"

  I broke into a violent laugh. "You idiot," I said, "why don't you ownyourself wrong and have done with it? Why should he have made a secretsign any more than any one else? You own he said nothing and did nothingworth mentioning. You own that, don't you?"

  His face grew grave.

  "Well, since you ask me, I must admit that I do. It is possible thatthe milkman did not betray himself. It is even possible that I was wrongabout him."

  "Then come along with you," I said, with a certain amicable anger, "andremember that you owe me half a crown."

  "As to that, I differ from you," said Rupert coolly. "The milkman'sremarks may have been quite innocent. Even the milkman may have been.But I do not owe you half a crown. For the terms of the bet were, Ithink, as follows, as I propounded them, that wherever that milkman cameto a real stop I should find out something curious."

  "Well?" I said.

  "Well," he answered, "I jolly well have. You just come with me," andbefore I could speak he had turned tail once more and whisked throughthe blue dark into the moat or basement of the house. I followed almostbefore I made any decision.

  When we got down into the area I felt indescribably foolish 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 ridiculouswell in wh
ich I found myself, and the ridiculous man who had brought methere, and who stood there with dancing eyes. I was just about to turnback when Rupert caught me by the elbow.

  "Just listen to that," he said, and keeping my coat gripped in his righthand, he rapped with the knuckles of his left on the shutters of thebasement window. His air was so definite that I paused and even inclinedmy head for a moment towards it. From inside was coming the murmur of anunmistakable human voice.

  "Have you been talking to somebody inside?" I asked suddenly, turning toRupert.

  "No, I haven't," he replied, with a grim smile, "but I should very muchlike to. Do you know what somebody is saying in there?"

  "No, of course not," I replied.

  "Then I recommend you to listen," said Rupert sharply.

  In the dead silence of the aristocratic street at evening, I stood amoment and listened. From behind the wooden partition, in which therewas a long lean crack, was coming a continuous and moaning sound whichtook the form of the words: "When shall I get out? When shall I get out?Will they ever let me out?" or words to that effect.

  "Do you know anything about this?" I said, turning upon Rupert veryabruptly.

  "Perhaps you think I am the criminal," he said sardonically, "insteadof being in some small sense the detective. I came into this area two orthree minutes ago, having told you that I knew there was something funnygoing on, and this woman behind the shutters (for it evidently is awoman) was moaning like mad. No, my dear friend, beyond that I donot know anything about her. She is not, startling as it may seem, mydisinherited daughter, or a member of my secret seraglio. But whenI hear a human being wailing that she can't get out, and talking toherself like a mad woman and beating on the shutters with her fists,as she was doing two or three minutes ago, I think it worth mentioning,that is all."

  "My dear fellow," I said, "I apologize; this is no time for arguing.What is to be done?"

  Rupert Grant had a long clasp-knife naked and brilliant in his hand.

  "First of all," he said, "house-breaking." And he forced the blade intothe crevice of the wood and broke away a huge splinter, leaving a gapand glimpse of the dark window-pane inside. The room within was entirelyunlighted, so that for the first few seconds the window seemed a deadand opaque surface, as dark as a strip of slate. Then came a realizationwhich, though in a sense gradual, made us step back and catch ourbreath. Two large dim human eyes were so close to us that the windowitself seemed suddenly to be a mask. A pale human face was pressedagainst the glass within, and with increased distinctness, with theincrease of the opening came the words:

  "When shall I get out?"

  "What can all this be?" I said.

  Rupert made no answer, but lifting his walking-stick and pointing theferrule like a fencing sword at the glass, punched a hole in it, smallerand more accurate than I should have supposed possible. The moment hehad done so the voice spouted out of the hole, so to speak, piercing andquerulous and clear, making the same demand for liberty.

  "Can't you get out, madam?" I said, drawing near the hole in someperturbation.

  "Get out? Of course I can't," moaned the unknown female bitterly. "Theywon't let me. I told them I would be let out. I told them I'd call thepolice. But it's no good. Nobody knows, nobody comes. They could keep meas long as they liked only--"

  I was in the very act of breaking the window finally with my stick,incensed with this very sinister mystery, when Rupert held my arm hard,held it with a curious, still, and secret rigidity as if he desired tostop me, but did not desire to be observed to do so. I paused a moment,and in the act swung slightly round, so that I was facing the supportingwall of the front door steps. The act froze me into a sudden stillnesslike that of Rupert, for a figure almost as motionless as the pillars ofthe portico, but unmistakably human, had put his head out from betweenthe doorposts and was gazing down into the area. One of the lightedlamps of the street was just behind his head, throwing it into abruptdarkness. Consequently, nothing whatever could be seen of his facebeyond one fact, that he was unquestionably staring at us. I must say Ithought Rupert's calmness magnificent. He rang the area bell quite idly,and went on talking to me with the easy end of a conversation which hadnever had any beginning. The black glaring figure in the portico didnot stir. I almost thought it was really a statue. In another momentthe grey area was golden with gaslight as the basement door was openedsuddenly and a small and decorous housemaid stood in it.

  "Pray excuse me," said Rupert, in a voice which he contrived to makesomehow or other at once affable and underbred, "but we thought perhapsthat you might do something for the Waifs and Strays. We don't expect--"

  "Not here," said the small servant, with the incomparable severity ofthe menial of the non-philanthropic, and slammed the door in our faces.

  "Very sad, very sad--the indifference of these people," said thephilanthropist with gravity, as we went together up the steps. As we didso the motionless figure in the portico suddenly disappeared.

  "Well, what do you make of that?" asked Rupert, slapping his glovestogether when we got into the street.

  I do not mind admitting that I was seriously upset. Under suchconditions I had but one thought.

  "Don't you think," I said a trifle timidly, "that we had better tellyour brother?"

  "Oh, if you like," said Rupert, in a lordly way. "He is quite near, asI promised to meet him at Gloucester Road Station. Shall we take a cab?Perhaps, as you say, it might amuse him."

  Gloucester Road Station had, as if by accident, a somewhat desertedlook. After a little looking about we discovered Basil Grant with hisgreat head and his great white hat blocking the ticket-office window. Ithought at first that he was taking a ticket for somewhere and being anastonishingly long time about it. As a matter of fact, he was discussingreligion with the booking-office clerk, and had almost got his headthrough the hole in his excitement. When we dragged him away it wassome time before he would talk of anything but the growth of an Orientalfatalism in modern thought, which had been well typified by some of theofficial's ingenious but perverse fallacies. At last we managed to gethim to understand that we had made an astounding discovery. When hedid listen, he listened attentively, walking between us up and downthe lamp-lit street, while we told him in a rather feverish duet of thegreat house in South Kensington, of the equivocal milkman, of the ladyimprisoned in the basement, and the man staring from the porch. Atlength he said:

  "If you're thinking of going back to look the thing up, you must becareful what you do. It's no good you two going there. To go twice onthe same pretext would look dubious. To go on a different pretext wouldlook worse. You may be quite certain that the inquisitive gentlemanwho looked at you looked thoroughly, and will wear, so to speak,your portraits next to his heart. If you want to find out if thereis anything in this without a police raid I fancy you had better waitoutside. I'll go in and see them."

  His slow and reflective walk brought us at length within sight of thehouse. It stood up ponderous and purple against the last pallor oftwilight. It looked like an ogre's castle. And so apparently it was.

  "Do you think it's safe, Basil," said his brother, pausing, a littlepale, under the lamp, "to go into that place alone? Of course weshall be near enough to hear if you yell, but these devils might dosomething--something sudden--or odd. I can't feel it's safe."

  "I know of nothing that is safe," said Basil composedly, "except,possibly--death," and he went up the steps and rang at the bell. Whenthe massive respectable door opened for an instant, cutting a square ofgaslight in the gathering dark, and then closed with a bang, buryingour friend inside, we could not repress a shudder. It had been likethe heavy gaping and closing of the dim lips of some evil leviathan. Afreshening night breeze began to blow up the street, and we turned upthe collars of our coats. At the end of twenty minutes, in which wehad scarcely moved or spoken, we were as cold as icebergs, but more, Ithink, from apprehension than the atmosphere. Suddenly Rupert made anabrupt movement towards the house.

  "I c
an't stand this," he began, but almost as he spoke sprang back intothe shadow, for the panel of gold was again cut out of the black housefront, and the burly figure of Basil was silhouetted against it comingout. He was roaring with laughter and talking so loudly that youcould have heard every syllable across the street. Another voice, or,possibly, two voices, were laughing and talking back at him from within.

  "No, no, no," Basil was calling out, with a sort of hilarious hostility."That's quite wrong. That's the most ghastly heresy of all. It's thesoul, my dear chap, the soul that's the arbiter of cosmic forces. Whenyou see a cosmic force you don't like, trick it, my boy. But I mustreally be off."

  "Come and pitch into us again," came the laughing voice from out of thehouse. "We still have some bones unbroken."

  "Thanks very much, I will--good night," shouted Grant, who had by thistime 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 from one of us to the other.

  "What is to be done, Basil?" I repeated in uncontrollable excitement.

  "I'm not sure," said Basil doubtfully. "What do you say to getting somedinner somewhere and going to the Court Theatre tonight? I tried to getthose fellows to come, but they couldn't."

  We stared blankly.

  "Go to the Court Theatre?" repeated Rupert. "What would be the good ofthat?"

  "Good? What do you mean?" answered Basil, staring also. "Have you turnedPuritan or Passive Resister, or something? For fun, of course."

  "But, great God in Heaven! What are we going to do, I mean!" criedRupert. "What about the poor woman locked up in that house? Shall I gofor the police?"

  Basil's face cleared with immediate comprehension, and he laughed.

  "Oh, that," he said. "I'd forgotten that. That's all right. Somemistake, possibly. Or some quite trifling private affair. But I'm sorrythose fellows couldn't come with us. Shall we take one of these greenomnibuses? There is a restaurant in Sloane Square."

  "I sometimes think you play the fool to frighten us," 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, beprivate affairs? If you found a corpse in a man's drawing-room, wouldyou think it bad taste to talk about it just as if it was a confoundeddado or an infernal etching?"

  Basil laughed heartily.

  "That's very forcible," he said. "As a matter of fact, though, I knowit'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 brotherangrily.

  "My dear chap, the thing's obvious," answered Basil, holding a returnticket between his teeth while he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket."Those two fellows never committed a crime in their lives. They're notthe kind. Have either of you chaps got a halfpenny? I want to get apaper before the omnibus comes."

  "Oh, curse the paper!" cried Rupert, in a fury. "Do you mean to tellme, Basil Grant, that you are going to leave a fellow creature in pitchdarkness in a private dungeon, because you've had ten minutes' talk withthe keepers of it and thought them rather good men?"

  "Good men do commit crimes sometimes," said Basil, taking the ticketout of his mouth. "But this kind of good man doesn't commit that kind ofcrime. Well, shall we get on this omnibus?"

  The great green vehicle was indeed plunging and lumbering along thedim wide street towards us. Basil had stepped from the curb, and for aninstant it was touch and go whether we should all have leaped on to itand been borne away to the restaurant and the theatre.

  "Basil," I said, taking him firmly by the shoulder, "I simply won'tleave this street and this house."

  "Nor will I," said Rupert, glaring at it and biting 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 young Oxfordfellows. Extremely nice, too, though rather infected with thispseudo-Darwinian business. Ethics of evolution and all that."

  "I think," said Rupert darkly, ringing the bell, "that we shallenlighten you further about their ethics."

  "And may I ask," said Basil gloomily, "what it is that you propose todo?"

  "I propose, first of all," said Rupert, "to get 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 aninstant with one of his sudden laughs.

  "Poor little boys," he said. "But it almost serves them right forholding 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 yourdoing the poor chaps any harm."

  He was standing in the rear of our little procession, lookingindifferent 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 outsidewho very much want to know you. May I bring them in?"

  "Delighted, of course," said a young voice, the unmistakable voiceof the Isis, and I realized that the door had been opened, not by thedecorous little servant girl, but by one of our hosts in person. He wasa short, but shapely young gentleman, with curly dark hair and asquare, snub-nosed face. He wore slippers and a sort of blazer of someincredible college purple.

  "This way," he said; "mind the steps by the staircase. This house ismore crooked and old-fashioned than you would think from its snobbishexterior. 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 back parlour, used by the younginhabitants as a sitting-room, an apartment littered with magazinesand books ranging from Dante to detective stories. The other youth, whostood with his back to the fire smoking a corncob, was big and burly,with dead brown hair brushed forward and a Norfolk jacket. He was thatparticular type of man whose every feature and action is heavy andclumsy, and yet who is, you would say, rather exceptionally a gentleman.

  "Any more arguments?" he said, when introductions had been effected. "Imust say, Mr Grant, you were rather severe upon eminent men of sciencesuch as we. I've half a mind to chuck my D.Sc. and turn minor poet."

  "Bosh," answered Grant. "I never said a word against eminent men ofscience. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposesitself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of newreligion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fallof man they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn'tunderstand. Now that they talk about the survival of the fittest theythink they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion,they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean. TheDarwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that,instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talkunscientifically about science."

  "That is all very well," said the big young man, whose name appearedto be Burrows. "Of course, in a sense, science, like mathematics orthe violin, can only be perfectly understood by specialists. Still, therudiments may be of public use. Greenwood here," indicating the littleman in the blazer, "doesn't know one note of music from another. Still,he knows something. He knows enough to take off his hat when they play'God save the King'. He doesn't take it off by mistake when they play'Oh, dem Golden Slippers'. Just in the same way science--"

  Here Mr Burrows stopped abruptly. He was interrupted by an argumentuncommon in philosophical controversy and perhaps not wholly legitimate.Rupert Grant had bounded on him from behind, flung
an arm round histhroat, and bent the giant backwards.

  "Knock the other fellow down, Swinburne," he called out, and before Iknew where I was I was locked in a grapple with the man in the purpleblazer. 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 ofhis feet from under him; he swung for a moment on the single foot, andthen we fell with a crash amid the litter of newspapers, myself on top.

  My attention for a moment released by victory, I could hear Basil'svoice finishing some long sentence of which I had not heard thebeginning.

  "... wholly, I must confess, unintelligible to me, my dear sir, andI need not say unpleasant. Still one must side with one's old friendsagainst the most fascinating new ones. Permit me, therefore, in tyingyou up in this antimacassar, to make it as commodious as handcuffs canreasonably be while..."

  I had staggered to my feet. The gigantic Burrows was toiling in thegarotte 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 knew a second afterwards. His head was held back byRupert's arm, but a convulsive heave went over his whole frame. Aninstant after his head plunged forward like a bull's, and Rupert Grantwas slung head over heels, a catherine wheel of legs, on the floor infront of him. Simultaneously the bull's head butted Basil in the chest,bringing him also to the ground with a crash, and the monster, with aBerserker roar, leaped at me and knocked me into the corner of theroom, smashing the waste-paper basket. The bewildered Greenwood sprangfuriously to his feet. Basil did the same. But they had the best of itnow.

  Greenwood dashed to the bell and pulled it violently, sending pealsthrough the great house. Before I could get panting to my feet, andbefore Rupert, who had been literally stunned for a few moments,could even lift his head from the floor, two footmen were in the room.Defeated even when we were in a majority, we were now outnumbered.Greenwood and one of the footmen flung themselves upon me, crushing meback into the corner upon the wreck of the paper basket. The other twoflew at Basil, and pinned him against the wall. Rupert lifted himself onhis elbow, but he was still dazed.

  In the strained silence of our helplessness I heard the voice of Basilcome with a loud incongruous cheerfulness.

  "Now this," he said, "is what I call enjoying oneself."

  I caught a glimpse of his face, flushed and forced against the bookcase,from between the swaying limbs of my captors and his. To my astonishmenthis eyes were really brilliant with pleasure, like those of a childheated by a favourite game.

  I made several apoplectic efforts to rise, but the servant was on top ofme so heavily that Greenwood could afford to leave me to him. He turnedquickly to come to reinforce the two who were mastering Basil. Thelatter's head was already sinking lower and lower, like a leaking ship,as his enemies pressed him down. He flung up one hand just as I thoughthim falling and hung on to a huge tome in the bookcase, a volume, Iafterwards discovered, of St Chrysostom's theology. Just as Greenwoodbounded across the room towards the group, Basil plucked the ponderoustome bodily out of the shelf, swung it, and sent it spinning through theair, so that it struck Greenwood flat in the face and knocked him overlike a rolling ninepin. At the same instant Basil's stiffness broke, andhe sank, his enemies closing over him.

  Rupert's head was clear, but his body shaken; he was hanging as best hecould on to the half-prostrate Greenwood. They were rolling over eachother on the floor, both somewhat enfeebled by their falls, but Rupertcertainly the more so. I was still successfully held down. The floorwas a sea of torn and trampled papers and magazines, like an immensewaste-paper basket. Burrows and his companion were almost up to theknees in them, as in a drift of dead leaves. And Greenwood had his legstuck right through a sheet of the Pall Mall Gazette, which clung to itludicrously, like some fantastic trouser frill.

  Basil, shut from me in a human prison, a prison of powerful bodies,might be dead for all I knew. I fancied, however, that the broad back ofMr Burrows, which was turned towards me, had a certain bend of effort init as if my friend still needed some holding down. Suddenly that broadback swayed hither and thither. It was swaying on one leg; Basil,somehow, had hold of the other. Burrows' huge fists and those of thefootman were battering Basil's sunken head like an anvil, but nothingcould get the giant's ankle out of his sudden and savage grip. While hisown head was forced slowly down in darkness and great pain, the rightleg of his captor was being forced in the air. Burrows swung to andfro with a purple face. Then suddenly the floor and the walls and theceiling shook together, as the colossus fell, all his length seeming tofill the floor. Basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three blowslike battering-rams knocked the footman into a cocked hat. Then hesprang on top of Burrows, with one antimacassar in his hand and anotherin his teeth, and bound him hand and foot almost before he knew clearlythat his head had struck the floor. Then Basil sprang at Greenwood, whomRupert was struggling to hold down, and between them they secured himeasily. The man who had hold of me let go and turned to his rescue, butI leaped up like a spring released, and, to my infinite satisfaction,knocked the fellow down. The other footman, bleeding at the mouthand quite demoralized, was stumbling out of the room. My late captor,without a word, slunk after him, seeing that the battle was won.Rupert was sitting astride the pinioned Mr Greenwood, Basil astride thepinioned Mr Burrows.

  To my surprise the latter gentleman, lying bound on his back, spoke in aperfectly calm voice to the man who sat on top of him.

  "And now, gentlemen," he said, "since you have got your own way, perhapsyou wouldn't mind telling us what the deuce all this is?"

  "This," said Basil, with a radiant face, looking down at his captive,"this is what we call the survival of the fittest."

  Rupert, who had been steadily collecting himself throughout the latterphases of the fight, was intellectually altogether himself again at theend of it. Springing up from the prostrate Greenwood, and knotting ahandkerchief round his left hand, which was bleeding from a blow, hesang out quite coolly:

  "Basil, will you mount guard over the captive of your bow and spear andantimacassar? Swinburne and I will clear out the prison downstairs."

  "All right," said Basil, rising also and seating himself in a leisuredway in an armchair. "Don't hurry for us," he said, glancing round at thelitter of the room, "we have all the illustrated papers."

  Rupert lurched thoughtfully out of the room, and I followed him evenmore slowly; in fact, I lingered long enough to hear, as I passedthrough the room, the passages and the kitchen stairs, Basil's voicecontinuing conversationally:

  "And now, Mr Burrows," he said, settling himself sociably 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 thefloor, and, as I told you before, I've no more notion why you are therethan the man in the moon. A conversationalist like yourself, however,can scarcely be seriously handicapped by any bodily posture. You weresaying, if I remember right, when this incidental fracas occurred, thatthe rudiments of science might with advantage be made public."

  "Precisely," said the large man on the floor in an easy tone. "I holdthat nothing more than a rough sketch of the universe as seen by sciencecan be..."

  And here the voices died away as we descended into the basement. Inoticed that Mr Greenwood did not join in the amicable controversy.Strange as it may appear, I think he looked back upon our proceedingswith a slight degree of resentment. Mr Burrows, however, was allphilosophy and chattiness. We left them, as I say, together, and sankdeeper and deeper into the under-world of that mysterious house, which,perhaps, appeared to us somewhat more Tartarean than it really was,owing to our knowledge of its semi-criminal mystery and of the humansecret locked below.

  The basement floor had several doors, as is usual in such a house; doorsthat would naturally lead to the kitchen, the scullery, the pantry,the servants' hall, and so on. Rupert flung open all the doors withindescribable rapidity. Four out o
f the five opened on entirely emptyapartments. The fifth was locked. Rupert broke the door in like abandbox, and we fell into the sudden blackness of the sealed, unlightedroom.

  Rupert stood on the threshold, and called out like a man calling into anabyss:

  "Whoever you are, come out. You are free. The people who held youcaptive are captives themselves. We heard you crying and we came todeliver you. We have bound your enemies upstairs hand and foot. You arefree."

  For some seconds after he had spoken into the darkness there was a deadsilence in it. Then there came a kind of muttering and moaning. We mighteasily have taken it for the wind or rats if we had not happened to haveheard it 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 comepretty near the end of this business."

  I struck a match and held it up. It revealed a large, bare,yellow-papered apartment with a dark-clad figure at the other end ofit near the window. An instant after it burned my fingers and dropped,leaving darkness. It had, however, revealed something more practical--aniron gas bracket just above my head. I struck another match and lit thegas. And we found ourselves suddenly and seriously in the presence ofthe captive.

  At a sort of workbox in the window of this subterranean breakfast-roomsat an elderly lady with a singularly high colour and almost startlingsilver hair. She had, as if designedly to relieve these effects, a pairof Mephistophelian black eyebrows and a very neat black dress. The glareof the gas lit up her piquant hair and face perfectly against the brownbackground of the shutters. The background was blue and not brown in oneplace; at the place where Rupert's knife had torn a great opening in thewood about an hour before.

  "Madam," said he, advancing with a gesture of the hat, "permit meto have the pleasure of announcing to you that you are free. Yourcomplaints happened to strike our ears as we passed down the street, andwe have therefore ventured to come to your rescue."

  The old lady with the red face and the black eyebrows looked at us fora moment with something of the apoplectic stare of a parrot. Then shesaid, with a sudden gust or breathing of relief:

  "Rescue? Where is Mr Greenwood? Where is Mr Burrows? Did you say you hadrescued me?"

  "Yes, madam," said Rupert, with a beaming condescension. "We have verysatisfactorily dealt with Mr Greenwood and Mr Burrows. We have settledaffairs with them very satisfactorily."

  The old lady rose from her chair and came very quickly towards us.

  "What did you say to them? How did you persuade them?" she cried.

  "We persuaded them, my dear madam," said Rupert, laughing, "by knockingthem down and tying them up. But what is the matter?"

  To the surprise of every one the old lady walked slowly back to her seatby the window.

  "Do I understand," she said, with the air of a person about to beginknitting, "that you have knocked down Mr Burrows and tied him up?"

  "We have," said Rupert proudly; "we have resisted their oppression andconquered it."

  "Oh, thanks," answered the old lady, and sat down 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 eyebrows and her silver crest at usfor an instant.

  "But what about Greenwood and Burrows?" she said. "What did I understandyou to say had become of them?"

  "They are lying on the floor upstairs," said Rupert, chuckling. "Tiedhand and foot."

  "Well, that settles it," said the old lady, coming with a kind of banginto her seat again, "I must stop where I am."

  Rupert looked bewildered.

  "Stop where you are?" he said. "Why should you stop any longer where youare? What power can force you now to stop in this miserable cell?"

  "The question rather is," said the old lady, with composure, "what powercan force me to go anywhere else?"

  We both stared wildly at her and she stared tranquilly at us both.

  At last I said, "Do you really mean to say that we are to leave youhere?"

  "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, in a radiant exasperation, "weheard you with our own ears crying because you could not get out."

  "Eavesdroppers often hear rather misleading things," replied the captivegrimly. "I suppose I did break down a bit and lose my temper and talk tomyself. But I have some sense of honour for all that."

  "Some sense of honour?" repeated Rupert, and the last light ofintelligence died out of his face, leaving it the face of an idiot withrolling eyes.

  He moved vaguely towards the door and I followed. But I turned yet oncemore in the toils of my conscience and curiosity. "Can we do nothing foryou, madam?" I said forlornly.

  "Why," said the lady, "if you are particularly anxious to do me a littlefavour you might untie the gentlemen upstairs."

  Rupert plunged heavily up the kitchen staircase, shaking it with hisvague violence. With mouth open to speak he stumbled to the door of thesitting-room and scene of battle.

  "Theoretically speaking, that is no doubt true," Mr Burrows was saying,lying on his back and arguing easily with Basil; "but we must considerthe matter as it appears to our sense. The origin of morality..."

  "Basil," cried Rupert, gasping, "she won't come out."

  "Who won't come out?" asked Basil, a little cross at being interruptedin an argument.

  "The lady downstairs," replied Rupert. "The lady who was locked up. Shewon't come out. And she says that all she wants is for us to let thesefellows loose."

  "And a jolly sensible suggestion," cried Basil, and with a bound he wason top of the prostrate Burrows once more and was unknotting his bondswith hands and teeth.

  "A brilliant idea. Swinburne, just undo Mr Greenwood."

  In a dazed and automatic way I released the little gentleman in thepurple jacket, who did not seem to regard any of the proceedings asparticularly sensible or brilliant. The gigantic Burrows, on the otherhand, was heaving with herculean laughter.

  "Well," said Basil, in his cheeriest way, "I think we must be gettingaway. We've so much enjoyed our evening. Far too much regard for you tostand on ceremony. If I may so express myself, we've made ourselves athome. Good night. Thanks so much. Come along, Rupert."

  "Basil," said Rupert desperately, "for God's sake come and see what youcan make of the woman downstairs. I can't get the discomfort out of mymind. I admit that things look as if we had made a mistake. But thesegentlemen won't mind perhaps..."

  "No, no," cried Burrows, with a sort of Rabelaisian uproariousness. "No,no, look in the pantry, gentlemen. Examine the coal-hole. Make a tour ofthe chimneys. There are corpses all over the house, I assure you."

  This adventure of ours was destined to differ in one respect from otherswhich 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 tohave gone mad. But it had almost invariably happened that towards theend of the day and its adventure things had cleared themselves like thesky after rain, and a luminous and quiet meaning had gradually dawnedupon me. But this day's work was destined to end in confusion worseconfounded. Before we left that house, ten minutes afterwards, onehalf-witted touch was added which rolled all our minds in cloud. IfRupert's head had suddenly fallen off on the floor, if wings had begunto sprout out of Greenwood's shoulders, we could scarcely have been moresuddenly 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 andlet it stand in our memories for weeks and months. As will be seen, itwas not until months afterwards that by another accident and in anotherway it was explained. For the present I only state what happened.

  When all five of us went down the kitchen stairs again, Rupert leading,the two hosts bringing up the rear, we found the door of the prisonagain
closed. Throwing it open we found the place again as black aspitch. The old lady, if she was still there, had turned out the gas: sheseemed to have a weird preference for sitting in the dark.

  Without another word Rupert lit the gas again. The little old ladyturned her bird-like head as we all stumbled forward in the stronggaslight. Then, with a quickness that almost made me jump, she sprang upand swept a sort of old-fashioned curtsey or reverence. I lookedquickly at Greenwood and Burrows, to whom it was natural to suppose thissubservience had been offered. I felt irritated at what was implied inthis subservience, and desired to see the faces of the tyrants as theyreceived it. To my surprise they did not seem to have seen it at all:Burrows was paring his nails with a small penknife. Greenwood was at theback of the group and had hardly entered the room. And then an amazingfact became apparent. It was Basil Grant who stood foremost of thegroup, the golden gaslight lighting up his strong face and figure. Hisface wore an expression indescribably conscious, with the suspicion ofa very grave smile. His head was slightly bent with a restrained bow. Itwas he who had acknowledged the lady's obeisance. And it was he, beyondany shadow of reasonable doubt, to whom it had really been directed.

  "So I hear," he said, in a kindly yet somehow formal voice, "I hear,madam, that my friends have been trying to rescue you. But withoutsuccess."

  "No one, naturally, knows my faults better than you," answered the ladywith 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 exhibition ofloyalty that I permit myself the pleasure of exercising some very largediscretionary powers. You would not leave this room at the request ofthese gentlemen. But you know that you can safely leave it at mine."

  The captive made another reverence. "I have never complained ofyour injustice," she said. "I need scarcely say what I think of yourgenerosity."

  And before our staring eyes could blink she had passed out of the room,Basil holding the door open for her.

  He turned to Greenwood with a relapse into joviality. "This will be arelief to you," he said.

  "Yes, it will," replied that immovable young gentleman with a face likea sphinx.

  We found ourselves outside in the dark blue night, shaken and dazed asif we had fallen into it from some high tower.

  "Basil," said Rupert at last, in a weak voice, "I always thought youwere my brother. But are you a man? I mean--are you only a man?"

  "At present," replied Basil, "my mere humanity is proved by one of themost unmistakable symbols--hunger. We are too late for the theatre inSloane Square. But we are not too late for the restaurant. Here comesthe green omnibus!" and he had leaped on it before we could speak.------------------------------------------------------------------------

  As I said, it was months after that Rupert Grant suddenly entered myroom, swinging a satchel in his hand and with a general air of havingjumped over the garden wall, and implored me to go with him upon thelatest and wildest of his expeditions. He proposed to himself no lessa thing than the discovery of the actual origin, whereabouts, andheadquarters of the source of all our joys and sorrows--the Club ofQueer Trades. I should expand this story for ever if I explained howultimately we ran this strange entity to its lair. The process meant ahundred interesting things. The tracking of a member, the bribing ofa cabman, the fighting of roughs, the lifting of a paving stone, thefinding of a cellar, the finding of a cellar below the cellar, thefinding of the subterranean passage, the finding of the Club of QueerTrades.

  I have had many strange experiences in my life, but never a strangerone than that I felt when I came out of those rambling, sightless, andseemingly hopeless passages into the sudden splendour of a sumptuous andhospitable dining-room, surrounded upon almost every side by facesthat I knew. There was Mr Montmorency, the Arboreal House-Agent, seatedbetween the two brisk young men who were occasionally vicars, and alwaysProfessional Detainers. There was Mr P. G. Northover, founder of theAdventure and Romance Agency. There was Professor Chadd, who inventedthe dancing Language.

  As we entered, all the members seemed to sink suddenly into theirchairs, 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 toProfessor Chadd.

  "N--no," said the philosopher, with more than his ordinary vagueness. "Ican't imagine where he is."

  "Good heavens," said Mr Montmorency, jumping up, "I really feel a littlenervous. I'll go and see." And he ran out of the room.

  An instant after he ran back again, twittering with a timid ecstasy.

  "He's there, gentlemen--he's there all right--he's coming in now,"he cried, and sat down. Rupert and I could hardly help feeling thebeginnings of a sort of wonder as to who this person might be whowas the first member of this insane brotherhood. Who, we thoughtindistinctly, could be maddest in this world of madmen: what fantasticwas it whose shadow filled all these fantastics with so loyal anexpectation?

  Suddenly we were answered. The door flew open and the room was filledand shaken with a shout, in the midst of which Basil Grant, smiling andin evening dress, took his seat at the head of the table.

  How we ate that dinner I have no idea. In the common way I am a personparticularly prone to enjoy the long luxuriance of the club dinner. Buton this occasion it seemed a hopeless and endless string of courses.Hors-d'oeuvre sardines seemed as big as herrings, soup seemed a sortof ocean, larks were ducks, ducks were ostriches until that dinner wasover. The cheese course was maddening. I had often heard of the moonbeing made of green cheese. That night I thought the green cheese wasmade of the moon. And all the time Basil Grant went on laughing andeating and drinking, and never threw one glance at us to tell us why hewas there, the king of these capering idiots.

  At last came the moment which I knew must in some way enlighten us, thetime of the club speeches and the club toasts. Basil Grant rose to hisfeet amid a surge of songs and cheers.

  "Gentlemen," he said, "it is a custom in this society that thepresident for the year opens the proceedings not by any general toastof sentiment, but by calling upon each member to give a brief account ofhis trade. We then drink to that calling and to all who follow it. Itis my business, as the senior member, to open by stating my claim tomembership of this club. Years ago, gentlemen, I was a judge; I did mybest in that capacity to do justice and to administer the law. But itgradually dawned on me that in my work, as it was, I was not touchingeven the fringe of justice. I was seated in the seat of the mighty, Iwas robed in scarlet and ermine; nevertheless, I held a small and lowlyand futile post. I had to go by a mean rule as much as a postman, andmy red and gold was worth no more than his. Daily there passed before metaut and passionate problems, the stringency of which I had to pretendto relieve by silly imprisonments or silly damages, while I knew all thetime, by the light of my living common sense, that they would havebeen far better relieved by a kiss or a thrashing, or a few words ofexplanation, or a duel, or a tour in the West Highlands. Then, as thisgrew on me, there grew on me continuously the sense of a mountainousfrivolity. Every word said in the court, a whisper or an oath, seemedmore connected with life than the words I had to say. Then came the timewhen I publicly blasphemed the whole bosh, was classed as a madman andmelted from public life."

  Something in the atmosphere told me that it was not only Rupert and Iwho were listening with intensity to this statement.

  "Well, I discovered that I could be of no real use. I offered myselfprivately as a purely moral judge to settle purely moral differences.Before very long these unofficial courts of honour (kept strictlysecret) had spread over the whole of society. People were tried beforeme not for the practical trifles for which nobody cares, such ascommitting a murder, or keeping a dog without a licence. My criminalswere tried for the faults which really make social life impossible. Theywere tried before me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, orfor scandal
mongering, or for stinginess to guests or dependents. Ofcourse these courts had no sort of real coercive powers. The fulfilmentof their punishments rested entirely on the honour of the ladies andgentlemen involved, including the honour of the culprits. But you wouldbe amazed to know how completely our orders were always obeyed. Onlylately I had a most pleasing example. A maiden lady in South Kensingtonwhom I had condemned to solitary confinement for being the means ofbreaking off an engagement through backbiting, absolutely refusedto leave her prison, although some well-meaning persons had beeninopportune enough to rescue her."

  Rupert Grant was staring at his brother, his mouth fallen agape. So, forthe matter of that, I expect, was I. This, then, was the explanation ofthe old lady's strange discontent and her still stranger content withher lot. She was one of the culprits of his Voluntary Criminal Court.She was one of the clients of his Queer Trade.

  We were still dazed when we drank, amid a crash of glasses, the healthof Basil's new judiciary. We had only a confused sense of everythinghaving been put right, the sense men will have when they come into thepresence of God. We dimly heard Basil say:

  "Mr P. G. Northover will now explain the Adventure and Romance Agency."

  And we heard equally dimly Northover beginning the statement he had madelong ago to Major Brown. Thus our epic ended where it had begun, like atrue cycle.

 
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