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HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDQN NEW YORK TORONTO


CONTENTS
CHAPTER L‘
THE TREMENDOUS ADVENTURES or MAJOR
BROWN - - - - - - -
CHAPTER II
THE PAINFUL FALL 01.“ A GREAT REPUTATION -
CHAPTER III
THE AWFUL REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT -
CHAPTER IV
THE SINGULAR SPECULATION or THE novsn:
AGENT - - - - - - -
I l
CHAPTER V
THE NOTICEABLE CONDUCT Oil!I PROFESSOR CHADD
CHAPTER VI
THE ECCENTRIC SECLUSION OF THE OLD LADY
fipfatcful e ‘4'
PAGE
45
71
99
131
159


I
THE TREMENDOUS ADVENTURES
OF MAJOR BRO\VN


inl-_‘

1
THE TREMENDOUS ADVENTURES OF MAJOR
BROWN
RABELAIS, or his wild illustrator Gustave Doré, must
have had something to do with the designing of the
things called ﬂats in England and America. There
is something entirely Gargantuan in the idea of
economising space by piling houses on top of each
other, front doors and all. And in the chaos and
complexity of those perpendicular 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 thought at the ﬁrst
glance that the name would attract and startle the
passer-by, but nothing attracts or startles in these
dim immense hives. The passer-by is only looking
for his own melancholy destination, the Montenegro
Shipping Agency or the London ofﬁce of the Rutland
Sentinel, and passes through the twilight passages as
one passes through the twilight corridors of a dream.
If the Thugs set up a Strangers’ Assassination Com-
pany in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street,
9


10 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer in-
quiries, no inquiries would be made. And the Club
of Queer Trades reigns in a great ediﬁce hidden like
a fossil in a mighty cliﬂ of fossils.
The nature of this society, such as we afterwards
discovered it to be, is soon and simply told. It is an
eccentric and Bohemian Club, of which the absolute
condition of membership lies in this, that the can-
didate must have invented the method by which he
earns his living. It must be an entirely new trade.
The exact deﬁnition of this requirement is given in
the two principal rules. First, it must not be a mere
application or variation of an existing trade. Thus,
for instance, the Club would not admit an insurance
agent simply because instead of insuring men’s fur-
niture against being burnt in a ﬁre, he insured, let us
say, their trousers against being torn by a mad dog.
The principle (as Sir Bradcock Burnaby-Bradcock,
in the extraordinarily eloquent and soaring speech to
the club on the occasion of the question being raised
in the Stormby Smith aﬁair, said wittin and keenly)
is the same. Secondly, the trade must be a genuine
commercial source of income, the support of its in-
ventor. Thus the Club would not receive a man
simply because he chose to pass his days collecting
broken sardine tins, unless he could drive a roaring
trade in them. Professor Chick made that quite
clear. And when one remembers what Professor
Chick’s own new trade was, one doesn’t know whether
to laugh or cry.
The discovery of this strange society was a curiously
refreshing thing; to realise that there were ten new


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 11
trades in'the world was like looking at the ﬁrst ship
or the ﬁrst plough. It made a man feel what he should
feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world.
That I should have come at last upon s0 singular a
body was, I may say without vanity, not altogether
singular, for I have a 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 audacious youthfl
collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, per-
haps, I may tell tales of some of the other bodies to
which I have belonged. I will recount the doings of
the Dead Man’s Shoes Society (that superﬁcially
immoral, but darkly justiﬁable communion); I will
explain the curious origin of the Cat and Christian,
the name of which has been so shamefully misinter-
preted; and the world shall know at least why the
Institute of Typewriters coalesced with the Red Tulip
League. Of the Ten Teacups, of course I dare not
say a word. The ﬁrst of my revelations, at any rate,
shall be concerned with the Club of Queer Trades,
which, as I have said, was one of this class, one which
I was almost bound to come across sooner or later,
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 youthful appearance I have presented in
my declining years. »I only hope the spirits in the
better world have as good dinners as I have. But
the ﬁnding of the Club of Queer Trades has one very
curious thing about it. The most curious thing about
it is that it was not discovered by me; it was


12 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
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 ; not
because he was in the least unsociable, for if a man
out of the street had walked into his rooms he would
have kept him talking till morning. Few people
knew him, because, like all poets, he could do without
them; he welcomed a human face as he might wel-
come a sudden blend of colour in a sunset; but he no
more felt the need of going out to parties than he felt
the need of altering the sunset clouds. He lived in
a queer and comfortable garret in the roofs of Lambeth.
He was surrounded by a chaos of things that were in
odd contrast to 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 power-
ful, legal face. And no one but I knew who he was.
Long ago as it is, everyone remembers the terrible
and grotesque scene that occurred in-—, when one
of the most acute and forcible of the English judges
suddenly went mad on the bench. I had my own
view of that occurrence; but about the facts them-
selves there is no question at all. For some months,
indeed for some years, people had detected something
curious in the judge’s conduct. He seemed to have
lost interest in the law, in which he had been beyond
expression brilliant and terrible as a K.C., and to be
occupied in giving personal and moral advice to the
people concerned. He talked more like a priest or a
doctor, and a very outspoken one at that. The ﬁrst


14 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
into a stentorian song. His remarks (as reported)
were as follows ;
‘ O Rowty-owty tiddly-owty
Tiddly-owty tiddly-owty
Highty-ighty tiddly-ighty
Tiddly-ighty ow.”
‘ He then retired from public life and took the garret
in Lambeth.
I was sitting there one evening, about six o’clock,
over a glass of that gorgeous Burgundy which he kept
behind a. pile of black-letter folios; he was striding
about the room, ﬁngering, after a habit of his, one of
the great swords in his collection; the red glare of
the strong ﬁre struck his square features and his ﬁerce
grey hair; his blue eyes were even unusually full of
dreams, and he had opened his mouth to speak dream-
ily, when the door was ﬂung open, and a pale, ﬁery
man, with red hair and a huge furred overcoat, swung
himself panting into the room.
“ Sorry to bother you, Basil,” he gasped. “ I took
a liberty—made an appointment here with a man—
a client—in ﬁve minutes—I beg your pardon, sir,”
and he gave me a bow of apology. ﬂ
Basil smiled at me. “ You didn’t know,” he said,
“ that I had a practical brother. This is Rupert
Grant, Esquire, who can and does all 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 journa-
list, a house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a pub-
lisher, a schoolmaster, a—what are you now, Rupert 'l "
“ I am and have been for some time,” said Rupert,


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 15
“—
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 man walked swiftly into the
room, set his silk hat with a clap on the table, and
said, “Good evening, gentlemen,” with a stress on
the last syllable that somehow marked him out as a
martinet, military, literary and social. He had a
large head streaked with black and grey, and an
abrupt black moustache, which gave him a look of
ﬁerceness which was contradicted by his sad sea-blue
eyes,
Basil immediately said to me, “ Let us come into
the next room, Gully,” and was moving towards the
door, but the stranger said :
“ Not at all. Friends remain. Assistance pos-
sibly.”
The moment I heard him speak I remembered who
he was, a certain Major Brown I had met years before
in Basil’s society. I had forgotten altogether the
black dandiﬁed ﬁgure and the large solemn head,
but I remembered the peculiar speech, which con-
sisted of only saying about a quarter of each sentence,
and that sharply, like the crack of a gun. I do not
know, it may have come from giving orders to troops.
Major Brown was a V.C., and an able and distin-
guished soldier, but he was anything but a warlike
person. Like many among the iron men who re-
covered British India, he was a man with the natural
belief and tastes of an old maid. In his dress he was
dapper and yet demure ; in his habits he was precise


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 17

regretting his retirement on half-pay, it was with
delight that he took a small neat villa, very like a
doll’s house, and devoted the rest of his life to pansies
and weak tea. The thought that battles were over
when he had once hung up his sword in the little front
hall (along with two patent stew-pots and a bad
water-colour), and betaken himself instead to wielding
the rake in his little sunlit garden, was to him like
having come into a harbour in heaven. He was
Dutch-like and precise in 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 rather than
three, so that two may lean one way and two another ;
he saw life like a pattern in a 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 destined to be
caught in a whirlpool of incredible adventures, such as
he had never seen or dreamed of in the horrible jungle,
or the heart of battle.
One certain bright and windy afternoon, the Major,
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 one of 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 behind the
scenes of a theatre. But mean and sulky as the
scene might be in the eyes of most of us, it was not
altcgether so in the Major’s, for along the coarse
B-


20 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
At this moment the stout old man with white
Whiskers looked up, and the watering can fell from his
hand, shooting a swirl of water down the gravel path.
“ Who on earth are you i ” he gasped, trembling
violently.
“ I am Major Brown,” said that individual, who
was always cool in the hour of action.
The old man gaped helplessly like some monstrous
ﬁsh. At last he stammered wildly, “ Come down—
come down here I ”
“At your service,” said the Major, and alighted
at a bound on the grass beside him, without dis-
arranging his silk hat.
The old man turned his broad back and set off 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
apoplectic terror dimly showing in the twilight.
“For heaven’s sake,” he said, “ don’t mention
jackals.”
Then he threw open the door, releasing a burst
of 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 manners in the world,
and though mystiﬁed, was not in the least embarrassed
to see that the only occupant was a lady, sitting by
the window, looking out.
“ Madam,” he said, bowing simply, “ I am Major
Brown.”.


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 21
“III—
“ Sit down,” said the lady; but she did not turn
her head.
She was a graceful, green-clad ﬁgure, with ﬁery
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 what
is 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 garden scene, the frame
for a stunning and brutal personality. The evening
air was still, and the grass was golden in the place
where the little ﬂowers he studied cried to heaven for
his blood.
“ You know I must not turn round,” said the
lady; “ every afternoon till the stroke of six I must
keep my face turned to the street.”
Some queer and unusual inspiration made the
prosaic soldier resolute to accept these outrageous
riddles without surprise.
“ It is almost six,” he said; and even as he spoke
the barbaric copper clock upon the wall clanged the
ﬁrst stroke of the hour. At the sixth the lady sprung
up and turned on the Major one of the queerest and
yet most attractive faces 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 thing would happen once
and for all.’1


22 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
And even as she spoke, a sudden rending cry broke
the stillness. From low down on the pavement cf
the dim street (it was already twilight) a voice cried
out with araucous and merciless distinctness:
“ Major Brown, Major Brown, where does the
jackal dwell ? ”
Brown was decisive and silent in action. He
strode to the front door and looked out. There was
no sign of life in the blue gloaming of the 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 eleven by
another hoarse proclamation from the dark street,
again horribly articulate.
“ Major Brown, Major Brown, how did the jackal
die ? ”
Brown dashed out of the door and down the steps,
but again he was frustrated; there was no ﬁgure
in sight, and the street was far too long and empty
for the shouter to have run away. Even the rational
Major was a little shaken as he returned at a certain
time to the drawing-room. Scarcely had he done
so than the terriﬁc voice came 2
“ 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. The cries appeared to
come from a decapitated head resting on the pave-
ments


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 23
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?” he said, and stepped
out into the passage.
She looked at him with wild grey eyes. “ You
will not go down,” she cried, “ alone, into the dark
hole, with that beast ? ”
“ Is this the way '2 ” replied Brown, and descended
the kitchen stairs three at a time. He ﬂung open
the door of a black cavity and stepped in, feeling in
his pocket for matches. As his right hand was thus
occupied, a pair of great slimy hands came out of the
darkness, hands clearly belonging to a man of gigantic
stature, and seized him by the back of the head.
They forced him down, down in the suﬁocating dark-
ness, a brutal image of destiny. But the Major’s
head, though upside down, was perfectly clear and
intellectual. He gave quietly under the pressure
until he had slid down almost to his hands and
knees. Then ﬁnding the knees of the invisible
monster within a foot of him, he simply put
out one of his long, bony, and skilful hands, and
gripping the leg by a muscle pulled it off the ground
and laid the huge living man, with a crash, along the
ﬂoor. 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 hither and thither to get past the
Major to the door, but that tenacious person had him
hard by the coat collar and hung with the other hand


24 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
to a beam. At length there came a strain in holding
back this human bull, a strain under which Brown
expected his hand to rend and part from the arm.
But something else rent and parted ; and the dim fat
ﬁgure of the giant vanished out of the cellar, leaving
the torn coat in the Major’s hand; the only fruit of
his adventure and the only clue to the mystery. For
when he went up and out at the 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 think not.”
Rupert raised his eyebrows and looked at him for a
moment, but said nothing. When next he spoke he
asked :
“ Was there anything in the pockets of the coat ‘f ”
“ There was sevenpence halfpenny in coppers and
a threepenny-bit,” said the Major carefully; “ there
was a cigarette-holder, a piece of string, 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 occurred
in the arrangements re Major Brown. Please see that
he is attacked as per arrangement to-morrow. The
coal-cellar, of course.
“ Yours faithfully.
“ P. G. Nonrnovna.”
Rupert Grant was leaning forward listening with
hawk-like eyes. He cut in;


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 25

““I‘
“ Is it dated from anywhere ? ”
“ No—oh, yes! ” replied Brown, glancing upon the
paper; “ 14 Tanner’s Court, North ”
Rupert sprang up and struck his hands together.
“ Then why are we hanging here 2 Let’s get along.
Basil, lend me your revolver.”
Basil was staring into the embers like a man in a
trance ; 'and it was some time before he answered :
“ I don’t think you’ll need it.”
“ Perhaps not,” said Rupert, getting into his fur
coat. “ One never knows. But going down a dark
court to see criminals—”
“ Do you think they are criminals 'i ” asked his
brother.
Rupert laughed stoutly. “ Giving orders to a
subordinate to strangle a harmless stranger in a coal-
cellar may strike you as a very blameless experiment,
but——”
“ Do you think they wanted to strangle the
Major? ” asked Basil, in the same distant and
monotonous voice.
“ My dear fellow, you’ve been asleep. Look at the
letter.”
“ I am looking at the letter,” said the mad judge
calmly; though, as a matter of fact, he was looking
at the ﬁre. “ I don’t think it’s the sort of letter one
criminal would write to another.” '~
“My dear boy, you are glorious," cried Rupert,
turning round, with laughter in hiu bright blue eyes.
“ Your methods amaze me. Why, there is the letter.
It is written, and it does give orders for a crime. You
might as well say that the Nelson Column was not at


26 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
all the sort of thing that was likely to be set up in
Trafalgar Square.”
Basil “Grant shook all over with a sort of silent
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’s not a criminal
letter.”
“ It is. It’s a matter of fact,” cried the other in
an agony of reasonableness.
“ Facts,” murmured Basil, like one mentioning
some strange, far-oﬁ 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 capital stories ?—Sherlock Holmes. Every
detail points to something, certainly; but generally
to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it
seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree.
It’s only the life of the tree that has unity and goes
up—only the green blood that springs, like a fountain,
at the stars.”
“ But what the deuce else can the letter be but
criminal Z ”
“ 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’ve only seen the letter.
I look at that, and say it’s not criminal.”
“ Then what’s the origin of it '2 ”
“ I haven’t the vaguest idea.”
“ Then why don’t you accept the ordinary ex-
planation ? ”
Basil continued for a little to glare at the coals,


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 27
and seemed collecting his thoughts in a humble and
even painful way. Then he said:
“ Suppose you went out into the moonlight. Sup-
pose you passed through silent, silvery streets and
squares until you came into an open and deserted
space, set with a few monuments, and you beheld one
dressed as a ballet girl dancing in the argent glimmer.
And suppose you looked, and saw it was a man dis-
guised. 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 ; you would not
think that Lord Kitchener dressed up like a ballet
girl out of ordinary personal vanity. You would
think it much more likely that he inherited a dancing
madness from a great grandmother; or had been
hypnotised at a séance; or threatened by a secret
society with death if he refused the ordeal. With
Baden-Powell, say, it might be a bet—but not with
Kitchener. I should know all that, because in my
public days I knew him quite well. So I know that
letter quite well, and criminals quite well. It’s not
a criminal’s letter. It’s all atmospheres.” And he
closed his eyes and passed his hand over his forehead.
Rupert and the Major were regarding him with a
mixture of respect and pity. The former said :
“ Well, I’m going, anyhow, and shall continue to
think—until your spiritual mystery turns up—that a
man who sends a note recommending a crime, that is,
actually a crime that is actually carried out, at least
!
l


28 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
tentatively, is, in all probability, a little casual in his
moral tastes. Can I have that revolver ’l ”
“Certainly,” said Basil, getting up. “But I am
coming with you.” And he ﬂung an old cape or
cloak round him, and took a sword-stick from the
corner.
“You!” said Rupert, with some surprise, “you
scarcely 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 unconscious
and colossal arrogance, “hear of anything on the
face of the earth that I do not understand at 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 Embank-
ment in the direction of that part of Fleet Street which
contained Tanner’s Court. The erect, black ﬁgure
of Major Brown, seen from behind, was a quaint con-
trast 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 poetry of
London. Basil, who walked behind, with his face
turned blindly to the stars, had the look of a som-
nambulist.
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.


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 29
“ Not get police? ” asked Major Brown, glancing
sharply up and down the street.
“I am not sure,” answered Rupert, knitting his
brows. “ Of course, it’s quite clear, the thing’s all
crooked. But there are three of us, and—”
“ I shouldn’t get the police,” said Basil in a queer
voice. Rupert glanced at him and stared hard.
“ Basil,” he cried, “ you’re trembling. What’s the
matter—are you afraid 2 ”
“ Cold, perhaps,” said the Major, eyeing him.
There was no doubt that he was shaking.
At last, after a few moments’ scrutiny, Rupert
broke into a curse.
“ You’re laughing,” he cried. “ I know that con-
founded, silent, shaky laugh of yours. What the
deuce is the amusement, Basil? Here we are, all
three of us, within a yard of a den of ruﬂians—”
“ But I shouldn’t call the police,” said Basil. “ We
four heroes are quite equal to a host,” and he con-
tinued to quake with his mysterious mirth.
Rupert turned with impatience and strode swiftly
' down the court, the rest of us following. When he
reached the door of No. 14 he turned abruptly, 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 door and rush in.”
The four of us cowered instantly under the archway,
rigid, except for the old judge and his convulsion of
merriment.
“ Now,” hissed Rupert Grant, turning his pale face
and burning eyes suddenly over his shoulder, “ when


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 31
“ What about it, precisely,” said the man with the
moustache.
“ I am Major Brown,” said that gentleman sternly.
Northover bowed. “ Pleased to meet you, sir.
What have you to say to me ’4 ”
“ Say ! ” cried the Major, loosing a sudden tempest ;
“ why, I want this confounded thing settled. Iwant—”
“ Certainly, sir,” said Northover, jumping up with
a slight elevation of the eyebrows. “ Will you take
a chair for a moment.” And he 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 beating
the 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.
, I‘ Mr. Hopson,” said N orthover, “ this is Major
Brown. Will you please ﬁnish that thing for him I
gave you this morning and bring it in '4 ”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Hopson, and vanished like
lightning.
“ You will excuse me, gentlemen,” said the egregious
N orthover, with his radiant smile, “if I continue to
work until Mr. Hopson is ready. I have some books
that must be cleared up before I get away on my
holiday‘tO-morrow. And we all like a whiff of the
country, don’t we '5 Ha ! ha ! ”
The criminal took up his pen with a child-like laugh,
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.


34 \ THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
4‘

and exasperating mystery. “Who are you? I’ve
never seen you or your insolent tomfool bills. I know
one of your cursed brutes tried to choke me——”
“ Mad,” said Northover, gazing blankly round;
F‘ 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 sta-
tioned at the corner of the court. Though only a
private detective myself, I will take the responsibility
of telling you that anything you say—”
“ Mad,” repeated Northover, with a weary air.
And at this moment, for the ﬁrst time, there struck
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 increased
bewilderment.
“ You ? ” he cried; “ certainly, Mr. Grant.”
“ Can you tell me,” said the mystic, with sunken
head and lowering brow, as he traced a pattern in
the dust with his sword-stick, “ can you tell me what
was the name of the man who lived in your house
before you ’2 ”-
The unhappy Major was only faintly more disturbed
by this last and futile irrelevancy. and he answered
vaguely:
“ Yes, I think so; a man named Gurney something
—a name with a hyphen—Gurney-Brown; that was
it.”
P‘ And when did the house change hands 2 it said


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 35
Basil, looking up sharply. His strange eyes were
burning brilliantly.
“ I came in last month,” said the Major.
And at the mere word the criminal Northover
suddenly 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 was laughing
voicelessly; and the rest of us only felt that our
heads were like weathercocks in a whirlwind.
“ Confound it, Basil,” said Rupert, stamping. “ If
you don’t want me to go mad and blow your meta-
physical brains out, tell me what all this means '5 "l
Northover rose.
“ Permit me, sir, to explain,” he said. “ And, ﬁrst
of all, permit me to apologise to you, Major Brown,
for a most abominable and unpardonable blunder,
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 trouble about the bill. We will stand the
loss.” And, tearing the paper across, he ﬂung the
halves into 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.
f‘ What bill ? what blunder 'Q what loss ? ”
Mr. P. G. Northover advanced in the centre of the
room, thoughtfully, and with a great deal of uncon-
scious dignity. On closer consideration, there were
apparent about him other things beside a screwed
moustache, especially a lean, sallow face, hawk-like,
I


36 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES

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, with
fervour.
“ You are standing,” replied Northover, “in the
ofﬁce of the Adventure and Romance Agency,
Limited.”
“And what’s that? ” blankly inquired Brown.
The man of business leaned over the back of the
chair, and ﬁxed his dark eyes on the other’s face.
“Major,” said he, “ did you ever, as you walked
along the empty street upon some idle afternoon, fee
the utter hunger for something to happen—some-
thing, in the splendid words of Walt Whitman:
‘Something pernicious and dread; something far
removed from a puny and pious life; something
unproved ; something in a trance ; something loosed
from its anchorage, and driving free.’ Did you ever
feel that '4 ”
“ 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 meet a great
modern desire. On every side, in conversation and in
literature, we hear of the desire for a larger theatre
of events—for something to waylay us and lead us
splendidly astray. Now the man who feels this desire
for a varied life pays a yearly or a quarterly sum to
the Adventure and Romance Agency ; in return, the
Adventure and Romance Agency undertakes to sur-
round him with startling and weird events. As a


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 37
man is leaving his front door, an excited sweep
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 vertex of incidents.
A very picturesque and moving story is ﬁrst written
by one of the staff of distinguished novelists who are at
present hard at work in the adjoining room. Yours,
Major Brown (designed by our Mr. Grigsby), I con-
sider peculiarly forcible and pointed; it is almost a
pity you did not see the end of it. I need scarcely
explain further the monstrous mistake. Your pre-
decessor in your present house, Mr. Gurney-Brown,
was a subscriber to our agency, and our foolish clerks,
ignoring alike the dignity of the hyphen and the
glory of military rank, positively imagined that
Major Brown and Mr. Gurney-Brown were the same
person. Thus you were suddenly hurled into the
middle of another man’s story.”
“ How on earth does the thing work 'Q ” asked
Rupert 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 modern life that is more
lamentable than the fact that the modern man has to
seek all artistic existence 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 into heaven, he reads a
book; if he wishes to slide down the banisters, he
reads a book. We give him these visions, but we
give him exercise at the same time, the necessity of


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 39
It ran, “ P. G. Northover, B.A., C.Q.T., Adventure
and Romance Agency, 14 Tanner’s Court, Fleet
Street.”
“What on earth is ‘C.Q.T.? ”’ asked Rupert
Grant, looking over the Major’s shoulder.
“ Don’t you know 'Q ” returned Northover.
“ Haven’t you ever heard of the Club of Queer
Trades '4 ” .
“ There seems to be a confounded lot of funny
things we haven’t heard of,” said the little Major,
reﬂectively. “ What’s this one '2 ” '
“ The Club of Queer Trades is a society consisting
exclusively of people who have invented some new
and curious way of making money. I was one of
the earliest members.”
“You deserve to be,” said Basil, taking up his
great white hat, with a smile, and speaking for the
last time that evening.
When they had passed out the Adventure and
Romance agent wore a queer smile, as he trod down
the ﬁre and locked up his desk. “ A ﬁne chap, that
Major; when one hasn’t a touch of the poet one stands
some chance of being a poem. But to think of such
a clockwork little creature of all people getting into
the nets of one of Grigsby’s tales,” and he laughed
out aloud in the silence.
Just as the laugh echoed away, there came a sharp
knock at the door. An owlish head, with dark
moustaches, was thrust in, with deprecating and some-
what absurd inquiry. TI
“What! back again, Major 2 ’3 cried Northover
in surprise. f‘ What can I do for you '5 ’5


40 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES

The Major shufﬂed feverishly into the room.
“ It’s t,horribly absurd,” he said. “ Something
must have got started in me that I never knew before.
But upon my soul I feel the most desperate desire to
know the end of it all.”
“ The end of it all i ”
“ Yes,” said the Major, “ ‘ J ackals,’ and the title-
deeds, and ‘ death to Major Brown.’ ”
The agent’s face grew grave, but his eyes were
amused.
“ I am terribly sorry, Major,” said he, “ but what
you ask is impossible. I don’t know any one I would
sooner oblige than you ; but the rules of the agency
are strict. The Adventures are conﬁdential ; you are
an outsider; I am not allowed to let you know an
inch more than I can help. I do hope you under-
stand—”
“ There is no one,” said Brown, “ who understands
discipline better than I do. Thank you very much.
Good-night.”
And the little man withdrew for the last time.
as is s s: a:
He married Miss Jameson, the lady with the red
hair and the green garments. She was an actress,
employed (with many others) by the! Romance
Agency; and her marriage with the prim old veteran
caused some stir in her languid and intellectualised
set. She always replied very quietly that she had
met scores of men who acted splendidly in the charades
provided for them by Northover,- but that she had


ADVENTURES OF MAJOR BROWN 41
“I‘—
only met 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 as birds,
in an absurd villa, and the former has taken to
smoking. Otherwise he is unchanged—except, per-
haps, there are moments when, alert and full of
feminine unselﬁshness as the Major is by nature, he
falls into a trance of abstraction. Then his wife
recognises with a concealed smile, 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 realise the rest of
those purple adventures in a better world.


II
THE PAINFUL FALL OF A GREAT
REPUTATION


II
THE PAINFUL FALL OF A GREAT
REPUTATION
Basrr. GRANT and I were talking one day in what is
perhaps the most perfect place for talking on earth——
the top of a tolerably deserted tramcar. To talk on
the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the top of a
ﬂying hill is a fairy tale.
The vast blank space of North London was ﬂying
by; the very pace gave us a sense of its immensity
and its meanness. It was, as it were, a base inﬁnitude,
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 it as being a matter of narrow streets,
ﬁlthy houses, criminals and maniacs, and dens of vice.
In a narrow street, in a den of vice, you do not expect
civilisation, you do not expect order. But the horror
of this was the fact that there was civilisation, that
there was 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
45


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 47
“ Go on,” I said.
N 0 answer came.
“ Go on,” I said, looking up.
The big blue eyes of Basil Grant were standing out
of his head and he was paying no attention to me.
He was staring over the side of the tram.
“ What is the matter ? ” I asked, peering over also.
“ 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 said all these people
were good, and there is the wickedest man in London.”
“ Where '4 ” I asked, leaning over further,
“ where '6 ”
“ Oh, I was right enough,” he went on, in that
strange continuous and sleepy tone which always
angered his hearers at acute moments, “ I was right
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 the poker. But they are saints all
the same ; they are angels ; they are robed in white ;
they are clad with wings and haloes—at any rate
compared to that man.”
“Which man 2 ” I cried again, and then my eye
caught the ﬁgure at which Basil’s bull’s eyes were
glaring. '
He was a slim, smooth person, passing very quickly
among the quickly passing crowd, but though there
was nothing about him suﬂicient to attract a startled
notice, there was quite enough to demand a curious
consideration when once that notice was attracted.
He wore a blacktop-hat, but there was enough in it


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 49
“ In God’s name, look at his face,” cried out Basil
in a voice that startled the driver. “ Look at the
eyebrows. They mean that infernal pride which
made Satan so proud that he sneered even at heaven
when he was one of the ﬁrst angels in it. Look at
his moustaches, they are so grown as to insult human-
ity. In the name of the sacred heavens look at his
hair. In the name of God and the stars, look at his
hat.”
I stirred uncomfortably.
“ But, after all,” I said, “ this is very fanciful—
perfectly absurd. Look at the mere facts. You
have never seen the man before, you—”
“Oh, the mere facts,” he cried out in a kind of
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 trust an immediate impression ? ”
“ Well, an immediate impression may be,” I said,
-“ a little less practical than facts.”
“Bosh,” he said. “On what else is the whole
world run but immediate impressions? What is
more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this
world may be founded on facts, its business is run on
spiritual impressions and atmospheres. Why do
you refuse or accept a clerk? Do you measure his
skull? Do you read up his physiological state in a
handbook? Do you go upon facts at all? Not a
scrap. You accept a clerk who may save your busi-
ness—you refuse a clerk that may rob your till, entirely
upon those immediate mystical impressions under the
pressure of which I pronounce, with a perfect sense
‘1)


50 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
of certainty and sincerity, that that man walking in
that street beside us 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 the sway-
ing 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, we were oﬁ
the car.
The man with the curved silver hair and the curved
Eastern face walked along for some time, his long
splendid frock coat ﬂying behind him. Then he swung
sharply out of the great glaring road and disappeared
down an ill-lit alley. We swung silently after him.
“ This is an odd turning for a man of that kind to
take,” I said.
“ A man of what kind ? ” asked my friend.
“ Well,” I said, “ a man with that kind of expression
and those boots. I thought it rather odd, to tell the
truth, that he should be in this part of the world at all.”
“ Ah, yes,” said Basil, and said no more.
We tramped on, looking steadily in front of us.
The elegant ﬁgure, like the ﬁgure of a black swan,
was silhouetted suddenly against the glare of inter-
mittent“ gaslight and then swallowed again in night.
The intervals between the lightswere long, and a fog was
thickening the whole city. Our pace, therefore, had
become swift and mechanical between the lamp-posts ;
but Basil came to a standstill suddenly like a reined


52 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“ This is very extraordinary! ” said Basil Grant,
as we turned into Berkeley Square.
“ What is extraordinary? ” I asked. “ I thought
you said it was quite natural.”
“ I do not wonder,” answered Basil, “ at his
walking through nasty streets; I do not wonder at
his going to Berkeley Square. But I do wonder at his
going to the house of a very good man.”
“ What very good man ? ” I asked with exaspera-
tion.
“ The operation of time is a singular one,” he said
with his imperturbable irrelevancy. “ It is not a
true statement of the case to say that I have forgotten
my career when I was a judge and a public man. I
remember it all vividly, but it is like remembering
some novel. But ﬁfteen years ago I knew this square
as well as Lord Rosebery does, and a confounded long
sight better than that man who is going up the steps
of old Beaumont’s house.”
“ Who is old Beaumont ? ” I asked, irritably.
“ A perfectly good fellow. Lord Beaumont of
Foxwood—don’t you know his name ? He is a man
of transparent sincerity, a nobleman who does more
work than a navvy, a socialist, an anarchist, I don’t
know what; anyhow, he’s a philosopher and philan-
thropist. I admit he has the slight disadvantage of
being, beyond all question, off his head. He has that
real disadvantage which has arisen out of the modern
worship of progress and novelty; and he thinks any-
thing odd and new must be an advance. If you went
to him and proposed to eat your grandmother, he
would agree with you, so long as you put it on hygienic


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 53


and public grounds, as a cheap alternative to crema-
tion. So long as you progress fast enough it seems
a matter of indifference to him whether you are pro-
gressing to the stars or the devil. So his house is
ﬁlled with an endless succession of literary and political
fashions; men who wear long hair because it is
romantic; men who wear short hair because it is
medical ; men who walk on their feet only to exercise
their hands; and men who walk on their hands for
fear of tiring their feet. But though the inhabitants
of his salons are generally fools, like himself, they are
almost always, like himself, good men. I am really
surprised to see a criminal enter there.”
“ My good fellow,” I said ﬁrmly, striking my foot
on the pavement, “ the truth of this affair is very
simple. To use your own eloquent language, you
have the ‘ slight disadvantage ’ of being off your head.
You see a total stranger in a public street ; you choose
to start certain theories about his eyebrows. You
then treat him as a burglar because he enters an
honest man’s door. The thing is too monstrous.
Admit that 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 twilight like lamps.
“ I thought,” he said, “ that I had outlived vanity.”
“ What do you want now '5 ” I cried.
“ I want,” he cried out, “ what a girl wants when
she wears her new frock; I want what a boy wants
when he goes in for a slanging match with a monitor—
I want to show somebody what a ﬁne fellow I am.
I am as right about that man as I am about your


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 55


“ Basil,” cried the other, “ you must have been in
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 friend
placidly, “ my views go no further than thinking that
he was not Bacon. More probably he was Mary
Queen of Scots. But as to who Wimpole is—” and
his speech also was cloven with a roar of laughter from
within.
“ Wimpole ! ” cried Lord Beaumont, in a sort of
ecstasy. “ Haven’t you heard of the great modern
wit ? My dear fellow, he has turned conversation, I
do not say into an art—for that, perhaps, it always
was—but into a great art, like the statuary of Michael
Angelo—an art of masterpieces. His repartees, my
good friend, startle one like a man shot dead. They
are ﬁnal ; they are—”
Again there came the hilarious roar from the room,
and almost with the very noise of it, a big, panting
apoplectic old gentleman came out 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 adventurer like that. I
won’t be made a guy. I won’t—” g
“ Come, come,” said Beaumont, feverishly. “ Let
me introduce you. This is Mr. Justice Grant—that
is, Mr. Grant. Basil, I am sure you have heard of
Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh.”;


56 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“ Who has not ? ” asked Grant, and bowed to the
worthy 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 aristocratic though double. He was a magni-
ﬁcent courtly gentleman; so much of a gentleman
that he could show an unquestionable weakness of
anger without altogether losing dignity; so much of
a gentleman that even his jaw: pas were well-bred.
“ I am distressed beyond expression, Beaumont,”
he said gruﬂfly, “ to fail in respect to these gentlemen,
and even more especially to fail in it in your house.
But it is not you or they that are in any way con-
cerned, but that ﬂashy half-caste jackanapes—”
At this moment a young man with a twist of red
moustache and a sombre air came out of the inner
room. He also did not seem to be greatly 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 as a school-
boy.”
“ Perfectly,” said the other. Mr. Drummond shook
hands pleasantly and respectfully, but the cloud was
still on his brow. Turning to Sir Walter Cholmonde-
liegh, he said i
“ I was sent by Lady Beaumont to express her
hope that you were not going yet, Sir Walter. She
says she has scarcely seen anything of you.”
The old gentleman, still red in the face, had a


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 57


temporary internal struggle ; then his good manners
triumphed, and with a gesture of obeisance and a
vague utterance of, “ If Lady Beaumont . . . a lady,
of course,” he followed the young man back into the
salon. He had scarcely been deposited there half
a minute before another peal of laughter told that
he had (in all probability) been scored off again. a
“ 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 'G ” asked Grant.
“Oh, it’s enlightened you know and progressive—-
and faces the facts of life seriously.” At this moment
another roar of laughter came from within.
“ I only ask,” said Basil, “ because of the last two
friends of yours who had the modern mind, one
thought it wrong to eat ﬁshes and the other thought
it right to eat men. I beg your pardon—this way,
if I remember right.”
“ Do you know,” said Lord Beaumont, with a sort
of feverish entertainment, as he trotted after us
towards the interior, “ I can never quite make out
which side you are on. Sometimes you seem so
liberal and sometimes so reactionary. Are you a
modern, Basil ’i ”
“No,” said Basil, loudly and cheerfully, as he
entered the crowded drawing-room.
This caused a slight diversion, and some eyes were
turned away from our slim friend with the oriental
face for the ﬁrst time that afternoon. Two people,
however, still looked at him. One was the daughter
of the house, Muriel Beaumont, who gazed at him


58 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
with great violet eyes and with the intense and awful
thirst of the female upper class for verbal amusement
and stimulus. The other was Sir Walter Cholmonde-
liegh, who looked at him with a still and sullen but
unmistakable desire to throw him out of the window.
He sat there, coiled rather than seated on the easy
chair ; everything from the curves of his smooth
limbs to the coils of his silvered hair suggesting the
circles of a serpent more than the straight limbs of
a man—the unmistakable, splendid serpentine gentle-
man we had seen walking in North London, his eyes
shining with repeated victory.
“What I can’t understand, Mr. Wimpole,” said
Muriel Beaumont eagerly, “is how you contrive to
treat all this so easily. You say things quite philo-
sophical and yet so wildly funny. If I thought of
such things, I’m sure I should laugh 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 should ﬁnd it diﬁcult
to keep my countenance.”
“Difﬁcult to keep your countenance,” cried Mr.
Wimpole, with an air of alarm; “ oh, do keep your
countenance! Keep it in the British Museum.”
Every one laughed uproariously, as they always do
at an already admitted readiness, and Sir Walter,
turning suddenly purple, shouted out :,
“ Do you know who you are talking to, with your
confounded tomfooleries ’Q ”
“ I never talk tomfooleries,” said the other, “ With-
out ﬁrst knowing my audience)?
--,


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 59


Grant walked across the room and tapped the red-
moustached secretary on the shoulder. That gentle-
man was leaning against the wall regarding the whole
scene with a great deal of gloom; but, I fancied,
with very particular gloom when his eyes fell on the
young lady of the house rapturously listening to
Wimpole.
“ May I have a word with you outside, Drum-
mond ? ” 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
paused abruptly, into a kind of side room out of the
hall.
“Drummond,” said Basil, sharply, “there are a
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 ‘Q ”
. Mr. Secretary Drummond had a pale face and red
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 ’Q ” 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. Grant said quietly 2


60 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“ But before—before you came to hate him, what
did you really think of him ? ”
“ I am in a terrible diﬁiculty,” said the young man,
and his voice told us, like a clear bell, that he was an
honest man. “ If I spoke about him as I feel about
him now, I could not trust myself. And I should like
to be able to say that when I ﬁrst saw him I thought
he was charming. But again, the fact is I didn’t.
I hate him, that is my private affair. But I also
disapprove of him—really I do believe I disapprove
of him quite apart from my private feelings. When
ﬁrst he came, I admit he was much quieter, but I did
not like, so to speak, the moral swell of him. Then
that jolly old Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh got intro-
duced to us, and this fellow, with his cheap-jack wit,
began to score oﬁ the old man in the way he does now.
Then I felt that he must be a bad lot; it must be bad
to ﬁght the old and the kindly. And he ﬁghts the
poor old chap savagely, unceasingly, as if he hated
old age and kindliness. Take, if you want it, the
evidence of a prejudiced witness. I admit that I hate
the man because a certain person admires him. But
I believe that apart from that I should hate the man
because old Sir Walter hates him.”
This speech affected me with a genuine sense of
esteem and pity for the young man ; that is, of pity
for him because of his obviously hopeless worship of
Miss Beaumont, and of esteem for him because of the
direct realistic account of the history of Wimpole
which he had given. Still, I was sorry that
he seemed so steadily set against the man, and
could not help referring it to an instinct of


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 61
his personal relations, however nobly disguised from
himself.
In the middle of these meditations, Grant whispered
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 way this
odd old man aﬁected me. I only know that for some
reason or other he so affected me that I was, within
a few minutes, in the street outside.
“ This,” he said, “is a beastly but amusing
aﬁair.”
“ What is Z ” 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 extraordinary about that. The extra—
ordinary thing is that we are not going.”
“Well, really,” I said, “it is already six o’clock
and I doubt if we could get home and dress. I see
nothing extraordinary in the fact that we are not
going.”
“Don’t you 'Q ” said Grant. “ I’ll bet you’ll see
something extraordinary in what we’re doing instead.”
I looked at him blankly.
“ Doing instead ’i ” I asked. “ What are we doing
instead '9’ ”
“ Why,” said he, “ we are waiting for one or two
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


62 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
assistance of this cigar, wait until both Sir Walter
Cholmondeliegh and the mystic Wimpole haVe left
this house ? ”
“ Certainly,” I said. “ But I do not know which
is likely to leave ﬁrst. Have you any notion ’4 ”
“ No,” he said. “ Sir Walter may leave ﬁrst in a
glow of rage. Or again, Mr. Wimpole may leave ﬁrst,
feeling that his last epigram is a thing to be ﬂung
behind him like a ﬁrework. And Sir Walter may
remain some time to analyse Mr. Wimpole’s character.
But they will both have to leave within reasonable
time, for they will both have to get dressed and come
back to dinner here to-night. ”
As he spoke the shrill double whistle from the porch
of the great house drew a dark cab to the dark portal.
And then a thing happened that we really had not
expected. Mr. Wimpole and Sir Walter Cholmonde-
liegh came out at the same moment.
They paused for a second or two opposite each
other in a natural doubt; then a certain geniality,
fundamental perhaps in both of them, made Sir Walter
smile and say : “ The night is foggy. Pray take my
cab.”
Before I could count twenty the cab had gone
rattling up the street with both of them. And before
I could count twenty-three Grant had hissed in my
ear:
“ Run after the cab; run as if you were running
from a mad dog—run.” \
We pelted on steadily, keeping the cab in sight,
through dark mazy streets. God only, I thought,
knows why we are running at all, but we are running


FALL OF A GREAT REPUTATION 63
hard. Fortunately we did not run far. The cab
pulled up at the fork of two streets and Sir Walter
paid the cabman, who drove away rejoicing, having
just come in contact with the more generous among
the rich. Then the two men talked together as men
do talk together after giving and receiving great
insults, the talk which leads either to forgiveness
or a duel—at least so it seemed as we watched it
from ten yards oﬁ. Then the two men shook hands
heartily, and one went down one fork of the road
and one down another.
Basil, with one of his rare gestures, ﬂung his arms
forward.
“ Run after that scoundrel,” he cried; “let us
catch him now.”
We dashed across the open space and reached the
juncture of two paths.
“Stop!” I shouted wildly to Grant. “That’s
the wrong turning]?
He ran on.
“ Idiot!” I howled. “Sir Walter’s gone down
there. Wimpole has slipped us. He’s half a mile
down the other road. You’re wrong. . a . Are you
deaf 2 You’re wrong! ”
“ I don’t think I am,” he panted, and ran
on.
“But I saw him! ”- I cried. “Look in front of
you. Is that Wimpole? It’s the old man. . . .
What are you doing ? What are we to do 2 ’3.
“ Keep running,” said Grant.
Running soon brought us up to the broad back of
the pompous old baronet, whose white whiskers shone


64 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES

’ i \=_
silver in the ﬁtful lamplight. My brain was utterly
bewildered. I grasped nothing.
“ Charlie,” said Basil, hoarsely, “ can you believe
in my common sense for four minutes Z ”
“ Of course,” I said, panting.
“ Then help me to catch that man in front and hold
him down. Do it at once when I say ‘ Now.’ Now ! ”
We sprang on Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh, and rolled
that portly old gentleman on his back. He fought
with a commendable valour, but we got 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, and we gagged him. Then, by Basil’s
arrangement, we dragged him into a small court by
the street side and waited. As I say, I had no notion
why.
“ I am sorry to incommode you,” said Basil calmly
out of the darkness; “ but I have made an appoint-
ment here.”
“ An appointment ! ” I said blankly.
“ Yes,” he said, glancing calmly at the apoplectic
old 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 Drummond his name
is—you may have met him this afternoon at the
Beaumonts. He can scarcely come though till the
Beaumont’s dinner is over.”
For I do not know how many hours we stood there
calmly in the darkness. By the time those hours
were over I had thoroughly made up my mind that the


III
THE AWFUL REASON OF THE VICAR’S
VISIT


III
THE AWFUL REASON OF THE VICAR’S
VISIT
THE revolt of Matter against Man (which I believe to
exist) has now been reduced to a singular condition.
It is the small things rather than the large things
which make war against us and, I may add, beat us.
The bones of the last mammoth have long ago decayed,
a. mighty wreck; the tempests no longer devour our
navies, nor the mountains with hearts of ﬁre heap
hell over our cities. But we are engaged in a bitter
and eternal war with small things; chieﬂy with
microbes and with collar studs. The stud with which
I was engaged (on ﬁerce and equal terms) as I made
the above reﬂections, was one which I was trying to
introduce into my shirt collar when a loud knock
came at the door.
My ﬁrst thought was as to whether Basil Grant
had called to fetch me. He and I were to turn up
at the same dinner-party (for which I was in 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
71
___-:


72 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
go separately. ' It was a small and conﬁdential affair
at the table of a good but unconventional political
lady, an old friend of his. She had asked us both to
meet a third guest, a Captain Fraser, who had made
something of a name and was an authority on chim-
panzees. As Basil was an old friend of the hostess
and I had never seen her, I felt that it was quite
possible that he (with his usual social sagacity) might
have decided to take me along in order to break
the ice. The theory, like all my theories, was com-
plete; 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 hurry could 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 proclaim-
ing that the image of God has supremacy over all
matters (a valuable truth), and throwing on my 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 ﬁapped a plaid shawl
over his right arm ; he ﬂapped a pair of pathetic black
gloves; he ﬂapped his clothes ; I may say, without
exaggeration, 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 so
extremely sorry. I come—I can only say—I can only
say in my defence, that I come—upon an important
matter. Pray forgive me."
I_\_


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 73
I told him I forgave perfectly and waited.
“ What I have to say,” he said brokenly, “is so
dreadful—it is so dreadful—I have lived a quiet life.”
I was burning to get away, for it was already doubt-
ful if I should be in time for dinner. But there was
something about the old man’s honest air of bitter-
ness that seemed to open to me the possibilities of
life larger and more tragic than my own.
I said gently : “ Pray go on.”
Nevertheless the old gentleman, being a gentleman
as well as old, noticed my secret impatience and
seemed still more unmanned.
“ I’m so sorry,” he said meekly; “ I wouldn’t
have come—but for—your friend Major Brown recom—
mended me to come here.”
“ Major Brown! ” I said, with some interest.
“ Yes,” said the Reverend Mr. Shorter, feverishly
ﬂapping his plaid shawl about. “ He told me you
helped him in a great difﬁculty—and my difficulty!
Oh, my dear sir, it’s a matter of life and death.”
I rose abruptly, in an acute perplexity. “ Will it
take long, Mr. Shorter?” I asked. “ I have to 20
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 his ofﬁce.
“ I have no right, Mr. Swinburne—I have no right
at all,” he said. “ If you have to go out to dinner,
you have of course—a perfect right—of course a
perfect right. But when you come back—a man
will be dead.” '
And he sat down, quaking like a jelly.


74 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
The triviality of the dinner had been in those two
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, doddering old vicar into relation
with immediate perils. '
“ Will you have a cigar ? ” I said.
“ No, thank you,” he said, with indescribable em-
barrassment, 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 all often try to convey
that on any other night of the week they would sit
up all night drinking rum-punch. “Not just now,
thank you.”
“ Nothing else I can get for you '4 ” I said, feeling
genuinely sorry for the well-mannered old donkey.
“ A cup of tea '2 ”
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 fell back and said:
“ I have had such a time, Mr. Swinburne. I am
not used to these excitements. As Vicar of Chuntsey,
in Essex ”—-he threw this in with an indescribable
airiness of vanity—“ I have never known such things
happen.”
“ What things happen ? ” I asked.
He straightened himself with sudden dignity.
F‘ As vicar of Chuntsey, in Essex,” he said, “ I have
never been forcibly dressed up as an old woman and


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 77
person with a woollen shawl, who appeared to feel the
cold, and I am almost sure she was introduced to me
as Miss James) remarked that the weather was very
changeable. Miss Brett then offered me a cup of
tea, which I accepted, I cannot recall in what words.
Miss Brett is a short and stout lady with white 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. Besides
her (although all ﬁve ladies were dressed simply in
black) it could not be denied that the others looked
in some way what you men of the world would call
dowdy.
“ After about ten minutes’ conversation I rose to go
and as I did so I heard something which—I cannot
describe it—something which seemed to—but I really
cannot describe it.”
“ What did you hear '2 ” I asked, with some im-
patience.
“ I heard,” said the vicar solemnly, “ I heard Miss
Mowbray (the lady with the silver hair) say to Miss
James (the lady with the woollen shawl), the following
extraordinary words. I committed them to memory
on the spot, and as 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


78 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
Mowbray say to Miss James, the following wordsi
‘ N ow’s your time, Bill.’ ”
He gazed at me for a few moments after making
this announcement, gravely and unﬂinchingly, as if
conscious that here he was unshaken about his facts.
Then he resumed, turning his bald head more towards
the ﬁre.
“ This appeared to me remarkable. I could not
by any means understand it. It seemed to me ﬁrst
of all peculiar that one maiden lady should 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 customs than I am aware of. But it
seemed to me odd, and I could almost have sworn (if
you will not misunderstand the phrase) I should have
been strongly impelled to maintain at the time that
the words, ‘ Now’s your time, Bill,’ were by no means
pronounced with that upper-class intonation which, as
I have already said, had up to now characterised Miss
Mowbray’s conversation. In fact, the words, ‘ Now’s
your time, Bill,’ would have been, I fancy, unsuitable
if pronounced with that upper-class intonation.
“ 1 was surprised, I repeat, then, at the remark.
But I was still more surprised, when looking round
me in bewilderment, my hat and umbrella in hand, I
saw the lean lady with the woollen shawl leaning
upright against the door out of which I was just about
to make my exit. She was still knitting, and I sup-
posed that this’erect posture against the door was
only an eccentricity of spinsterhood and an oblivion
of my intended departure


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 79


“I said genially, ‘ I am so sorry to disturb you,
Miss James, but I must really be going. I have—er
——’ I stopped here, for the words she had uttered
in reply, though singularly brief and in tone extremely
businesslike, were such as to render that arrest of my
remarks, I think, natural and excusable. I have
these words also noted down. I have not the least
idea of their meaning; so I have only been able to
render them phonetically. But she said,” and Mr.
Shorter peered short-sightedly at 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 or the
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 before you start jawin’. You’ll be
kopt yourselves some 0’ these days with this way of
doin’ things, har lar theater.’
“ My head went round and round. Was it really
true, as I had suddenly fancied a moment before, that
unmarried ladies had some dreadful riotous society of
their own from which all others were excluded? I
remembered dimly in my classical days (I was a
scholar in a small way once, but now, alas! rusty), I
remembered the mysteries of the Bona Dea and their
strange female freemasonry. I remembered the
witches’ Sabbaths. I was just in my absurd light-
headedness, trying to remember a line of verse about
Diana’s nymphs, when Miss Mowbray threw her arm
round me from behind. The moment it held me I
knew it was not a woman’s arm.


80 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“ Miss Brett—or what I had called Miss Brett—was
standing 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 totally new, and so totally unfeminine, that it gave
one a shock. She was kicking her heels, with her
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 and
ﬂapping 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 in a ring
of iron. He had her arm—that is she had his arm—-
round her neck—my neck I mean—and I could not
cry out. Miss Brett—that is, Mr. Brett, at least Mr.
something who was not Miss Brett—had the revolver
pointed at me. The other two ladies—0r er-gentle-
men, were rummaging in some bag in the background.
It was all clear at last: they were criminals dressed
up as women, to kidnap me! To kidnap the Vicar
of Chuntsey, in Essex. But why 'Q Was it to be
N onconformists ?
“The brute leaning against the door called out
carelessly, ‘ ’Urry up, ’Arry. Show the old bloke
what the game is, and let’s get oﬁ.’
“ ‘ Curse ’is eyes,’ said Miss Brett—I mean the man
with the revolver—‘ why should we show ’im the
game ? ”
“ ‘ If you take my advice you bloomin’ well will,’


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 83

said the man behind me. ‘ Mr. Shorter, it’s like this.
We’ve got to see this man Hawker to-night. Maybe
’e’ll kiss us all and ’ave up the champagne when ’0
sees us. Maybe on the other ’and—’e won’t. Maybe
’e’ll be dead when we goes away. Maybe not. But
we’ve got to see ’im. Now as you know, ’e shuts
’isself up and never opens the door to a soul; only
you don’t know why and we does. The only one as
can ever get at ’im is ’is mother. Well, it’s a con-
founded 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 the man 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?’ I
gasped. ‘ What am I to do ? ’
“ ‘ That’s easy said, your ’oliness,’ said the man
with the revolver, good-humouredly; ‘you’ve got
to put on those clothes,’ and he pointed to a poke-
bonnet and a heap of female clothes in the corner of
the room.
“ I will not dwell, Mr. Swinburne, upon the details
of what followed. I had no choice. I could not
ﬁght ﬁve men, to say nothing of a loaded pistol. In
ﬁve minutes, sir, the Vicar of Chuntsey was dressed
as an old woman—as somebody else’s mother, if you
please, and was dragged out of the house to take part
in a crime. = . J
“ It was already late in the afternoon,” and the
nights of winter were closing in fast. On a dark road,


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 85
Hooray! Rule Britannia! Get your ’air cut. Hoop-la
Boo ! ’ It was a condition of no little novelty for a
man of my position.
“ The constable instantly ﬂashed his lantern on
me, or the draggled, drunken old woman that was my
travesty. ‘Now then, mum,’ he began gruﬂiy.
“ ‘ 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 words and 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 village concerts; 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 right enough.’
“ I redoubled my efforts. I had not been brought
up to this sort of thing; but I believe I eclipsed
myself. Words that I did not know I had ever heard
of seemed to come pouring out of my open mouth.
“ ‘ When we get you past,’ whispered Bill, ‘ you’ll
howl louder; you’ll howl louder when we’re burning
your feet off.’
“ I screamed in my terror those awful songs of joy.
In all the nightmares that men have ever dreamed,
there has never been anything so 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 anything so heart-
breaking in hell. '
-“ For a sickening instant I thought that the bustle
In


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 87
In“
“CI!
m all righ’. Gutchy, 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 in my stomach. And
now I come to think of it, I don’t like the looks of you.
I’ve seen many as quiet dressed as you as was wrong
’uns'. " Who are you Q ’
“ ‘ We’ve not our cards with us,’ said Miss Mowbray,
with indescribable dignity. ‘ Nor do we see why we
should be insulted by any J ack-in-oﬂice who chooses
to be rude to ladies, when he is paid to protect them.
If you choose to take advantage of the weakness of our
unfortunate friend, no doubt you are legally entitled to
take her. But if you fancy you have any legal right
to bully us, you will ﬁnd yourself in the wrong box.’
“ The truth and dignity of this staggered the
policeman for a moment. Under cover of their
advantage my ﬁve persecutors turned for an instant
on me faces like faces of the damned and then swished
off into the darkness. When the constable ﬁrst
turned his lantern and his suspicions on to them, I
had seen the telegraphic look ﬂash from face to face
saying that only retreat was possible now.
“ By this time I was sinking slowly to the pavement,
in a state of acute reﬂection. So long as the rufﬁans
were with me, I dared not quit the role of drunkard.
For if I had begun to talk reasonably and explain the
real case, the ofﬁcer would merely have thought that
I was slightly recovered and would have put me in
charge of my friends. Now, however, if I liked I
might safely undeceive him.


88 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“ But I confess I did not like. The chances of life
are many, and it may doubtless sometimes lie in the
narrow path of duty for a clergyman of the Church
of England to pretend to be a drunken old woman ;
but such necessities are, I imagine, suﬂiciently rare to
appear to many improbable. Suppose the story got
about that I had pretended to be drunk. Suppose
people did not all think it was pretence !
“I lurched up, the policeman half-lifting me. I
went along weakly and quietly for about a hundred
yards. The ofﬁcer evidently thought that I was too
sleepy and feeble to effect an escape, and so held me
lightly and easily enough. Past one turning, two
turnings, three turnings, four turnings, he trailed me
with him, a limp and slow and reluctant ﬁgure. At
the fourth turning, I suddenly broke from his hand
and tore down the street like a maddened stag. He
was unprepared, he was heavy, and it 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
off my accursed shawl and bonnet and buried them
in clean earth.”
The old gentleman had ﬁnished his story and leant
back in his chair. Both the matter and the manner
of his narration had, as time went on, impressed me
favourably. He was an old duﬁer and pedant, but
behind these things he was a country-bred man and
gentleman, and had showed courage and a sporting
instinct in the hour of desperation. He had told his
story with many quaint formalities of diction, but also
with a very convincing realism.


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 89
m

“ And now—-—” I began.
“ And now,” said Shorter, leaning forward again
with something like servile energy, “ and now, Mr.
Swinburne, what about that unhappy man Hawker.
I cannot tell what those men meant, or how far what
they said was real. But surely there is danger. I
cannot go to the police, for reasons that you perceive.
Among other things, they wouldn’t believe me. What
is to be done 'Q ”
I took out my watch. It was already half-past
twelve.
“ My friend Basil Grant,” I said, “ is the best man
we can go to. He and I were to have gone to the
same dinner to-night ; but he will just have come back
by now. Have you any objection to taking a cab ? ”
“ Not at all,” he replied, rising politely, and gather-
ing up his absurd plaid shawl.
A rattle in a hansom brought us underneath the
sombre pile of workmen’s ﬂats in Lambeth which
Grant inhabited; a climb up a wearisome wooden
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 wooden settle, 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 story of the Rev.
Ellis Shorter with the genuine simplicity and respect
which he never failed to exhibit in dealing with any
human being. a When it was over he said simply:
“ Do you know a man named Captain Fraser 2 ”
I was so startled at this totally irrelevant reference


90 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
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 only heard him answer, in his most
nervous tone, “ No.” a!
Basil, however, seemed to ﬁnd something very
curious about his answer or his demeanour generally,
for he kept his big blue eyes ﬁxed on the old clergy-
man, and though the eyes were quite quiet they stood
out more and more from his head.
“ You are quite sure, Mr. Shorter,” he repeated,
“ that you don’t know Captain Fraser 'é ”
“ Quite,” answered the vicar, and I was certainly
puzzled to ﬁnd him returning so much to the timidity,
not to say the demoralisation, of his tone when he
ﬁrst entered my presence.
Basil sprang smartly to his feet.
“ Then our course is clear,” he said. “ You have
not even begun your investigation, my dear Mr.
Shorter; the ﬁrst thing for us to do is to go together
to see Captain Fraser.”
“ When ’5 ” asked the clergyman, stammering.
“ Now,” said Basil, putting one arm in his fur coat.
The old clergyman rose to his feet, quaking all over.
“ I really do not think that it is necessary,” he said.
Basil took his arm out of the fur coat, threw it
over the chair again, and put his hands in his pockets.
“ Oh,” he said, with emphasis. “ Oh—you don’t
think 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.”


THE REASON OF THE VIC‘AR’S VISIT 91


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 continual contact with an
intellect like Basil’s, I had always the feeling that
that splendour and excitement were on the borderland
of sanity. . He lived perpetually near the vision of
the reason of things which makes men lose their
reason. And I felt of his insanity as men feel of the
death of friends with heart disease. It might come
anywhere, in a ﬁeld, in a hansom cab, looln'ng at a
sunset, smoking a cigarette. It had come now. At
the very moment of delivering a judgment for the
salvation of a fellow creature, Basil Grant had gone
mad.
“ Your whiskers,” he cried, advancing with blazing
eyes. “ Give me your whiskers. And your bald
head.”
The old vicar naturally retreated a step or two.
I stepped between.
“Sit down, Basil,” I implored, “you’re a little
excited. Finish your wine.”
“ Whiskers,” he answered sternly, “ whiskers.”
And with that he made a dash at the old gentle-
man, who made a dash for the door, but was inter-
cepted And then, before I knew where I was, the
quiet room was turned into something between a
pantomime and a pandemonium by those two. 4 Chairs
were ﬂung 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 the Rev. Ellis
Shorter.


92 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
And now I began to perceive something else, which
added the last half-witted touch to my mystiﬁcatiom
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 power:
of dodging, leaping, and ﬁghting would have been
amazing in a lad of seventeen, and in this doddering
old vicar looked like a sort of farcical fairy-tale.
Moreover, he did not seem to be so much astonished
as I had thought. There was even a look of some-
thing like enjoyment in his eyes ; so there was in the
eye of Basil. In fact, the unintelligible truth must
be told. They were both laughing.
At length Shorter was cornered.
“ Come, come, Mr. Grant,” he panted, “ you can’t
do anything to me. It’s quite legal. And it doesn’t
do any one the least harm. It’s only a 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 provide
them ourselves. They don’t belong to Captain
Fraser.”
“ What the deuce does all this mean “i ” I almost
screamed. “ Are you all in an infernal nightmare?
Why should Mr. Shorter’s bald head belong to Captain
Fraser? How could it? What the deuce has Cap-
tain Fraser to do with the affair 2 What is the
matter with him ? You dined with him, Basil.”i __
“ No,” said Grant, “ I didn’t”, »


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 93
“ Didn’t you go to Mrs. Thornton’s dinner party 2 ”
I asked, staring. “ Why not ? ”
“ Well," said Basil, with a slow and singular smile,
“ 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 imag-
ination had reached that point when he might have
said in his coal scuttle or his waistcoat pocket.
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 wonders of that wild night.
He introduced into the sitting-room, in an apologetic
manner, and by the nape of the neck, a limp clergy-
man with a bald head, white whiskers and a plaid
shawl.
“ Sit down, gentlemen,’ cried Grant, striking his
hands heartily. “Sit down all of you and have a
glass of wine. As you say, there is no harm in it,
and if Captain Fraser had simply dropped me a hint
I could have saved him from dropping a good sum
of money. Not that you would have liked that, eh 2 ”
The two duplicate clergymen, who were sipping
their Burgundy with two duplicate grins, laughed
heartin at this, and one of them carelessly pulled
off his whiskers and laid them on the table.
“ Basil,” I said, “if you are my friend, save me.
What is all this ? ”
He laughed again.
“ Only another addition, Cherub, to your collection
of Queer Trades. These two gentlemen (whose health
I have now the pleasure of drinking) are Professional
Detainers.’i
,


94 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“ And what on earth’s that '4 ” I asked.
“ It’s really very simple, Mr. Swinburne,” began he
who had once been the Rev. Ellis Shorter, of Chuntsey,
in Essex; and it gave me a shock indescribable to
hear out of that pompous and familiar form come no
longer its own pompous and familiar voice, but the
brisk sharp tones of a young city man. “ It is really
nothing very important. We are paid by our clients
to detain in conversation, on some harmless pretext,
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 one of my
best friends, wanted us both out of the way very
much. He is sailing to-night for East Africa, and the
lady with whom we were all to have dined is—er—
what is I believed described as ‘ the romance of his
life.’ He wanted that two hours with her, and em-
ployed these two reverend gentlemen to detain us at
our houses so as to let him have the ﬁeld to himself.”
“ And of course,” said the late Mr. Shorter, apolo-
getically to me, “ as I had to keep a gentleman at
home from keeping an appointment with a lady, I
had to come with something rather hot and strong-—
rather urgent. It wouldn’t have done to have been
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 artiﬁcial bald
head, revealing close red hair, and spoke dreamily,


THE REASON OF THE VICAR’S VISIT 95 '


perhaps under the inﬂuence of Basil’s admirable
Burgundy.
“ It’s wonderful how common it’s getting, gentle-
men. Our ofﬁce is busy from morning till night.
I’ve no doubt you’ve often knocked up against us
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 on parish work and stops
hours, just when you wanted to go to the Robinsons’,
she’s from our bureau. The Robinson hand, sir, .
may be darkly seen.”
“ There is one thing I don’t understand,” I said.
“ Why you are both vicars.”
A shade crossed the brow of the temporary incum-
bent of Chuntsey, in Essex. I
“ That may have been a mistake, sir,” he said.
“ But it was not our fault. It was all the muniﬁcence
of Captain Fraser. He requested that 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
being the most respectable and more of a strain. We
are paid ﬁve guineas a visit. We have had 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 guineasﬁ *" ' »


IV
THE SINGULAR SPECULATION OF THE
HOUSE-AGENT


SPECULATION OF THE HOUSE AGENT 101

JIM , ——
discredit a person almost equally whether they are
believed or no. If Keith’s tales were false he was a
liar; if they were true he had had, at any rate, every
opportunity of being a scamp. ‘
He had just left the room in which I sat with Basil
Grant and his brother Rupert, the voluble amateur
detective. And as I say was invariably the case, we
were all talking about him. Rupert Grant was a
clever young fellow, but he had that tendency which
youth and cleverness, when sharply combined, so
often produce, a somewhat extravagant scepticism.
He saw doubt and guilt everywhere, and it was meat
and drink to him. I had often got irritated with this
boyish incredulity of his, but on this particular occasion
I am bound to say that I thought him so obviously
right that I was astounded at Basil’s opposing him,
however banteringly.
I could swallow a good deal, being naturally of 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 to be 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 a style ; he is too vera-
cious.”
“ Oh! if you are going to be paradoxical,” said
Rupert contemptuously, “ be a bit funnier than that.
Say, for instance, that he has lived all his life in one
ancestral manor.”


102 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES

w aw,-
“N0, he’s extremely fond of change of scene,”
replied Basil dispassionately, “ and of living in odd
places. That doesn’t prevent his chief trait being
verbal exactitude. What you people don’t under-
stand is that telling a thing crudely and coarsely as
it happened makes it sound frightfully strange. a The
sort of things Keith recounts 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
sufﬁciently ﬁlled with the soul of skylarking.”
“ So far from paradox,” said his brother, with some-
thing rather like a. sneer, “ you seem to be going in
for journalese proverbs. Do you believe that truth is
stranger than ﬁction '4 ”
“ Truth must of necessity be stranger than ﬁction,”
said Basil placidly. “ For ﬁction is the creation of
the human mind, and therefore is 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 2 ”
“ I believe Keith’s words,” answered the other.
“ He is an honest man.”
“ I should like to question a regiment of his land-
ladies,” said Rupert cynically.
“ I must say, I think you can hardly regard him as
unimpeachable merely in himself,” I said mildly ;
“ his mode of life—”
Before I could complete the sentence the door was
ﬂung open and Drummond Keith appeared again on
the threshold, his white Panama on his head.


SPEOULATION OF THE HOUSE AGENT 103

i!ll_.4_,, . . “mi”
“ I say, Grant,” he said, knocking oﬂ his cigarette
ash against the door, “ I’ve got no money in the world .
till next April. Could you lend me a hundred pounds 'l
There’s agood chap.”
Rupert and I looked at each other in an ironical
silence. Basil, who was sitting by his desk, swung
the chair round idly on its screw and picked up a
quill-pen.
“ Shall I cross it 2 ” he asked, opening a cheque-
book.
“Really,” began Rupert, with a rather nervous
loudness, “since Lieutenant Keith has seen ﬁt to
make this suggestion to Basil before his family,
1—”
“ Here you are, Ugly,” said Basil, ﬂuttering a
cheque in the direction of the quite nonchalant ofﬁcer.
“ Are you in a hurry 'i ”
“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 I could
see that it was on the tip of his tongue to say, in-
quiringly, “ 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, are you '2 ”
said Rupert Grant grimly. “ Do you know, Mr.


SPECUTJATION OF THE HOUSE AGENT 105
m,
of the brot'iers Grant failed to notice this fact. As
the streets grew closer and more crooked and the roofs
lower and the gutters grosser with mud, a darker
curiosity deepened on the brows of Basil, and the
ﬁgure of Rupert seen from behind seemed to ﬁll the
street with a gigantic swagger of success. At length,
at the end of the fourth or ﬁfth lean grey street in
that sterile district we came suddenly to a halt, the
mysterious lieutenant looking once more about him
with a sort of sulky desperation. Above a row of
shutters and a door, all indescribably dingy in ap-
pearance 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,” said Keith,
in a cutting voice. “ Will you wait here a moment,
or does your astonishing tenderness about my welfare
lead you to wish to overhear everything I have to say
to my business adviser '2 ”
Rupert’s face was white and shaking with excite-
ment; nothing on earth would have induced him
now to have abandoned his prey.
“If you will excuse me,” he said, clenching his
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 of us at his heels.
P. Montmorency, house-agent, was a solitary old
gentleman sitting behind a bare brown'counter. He
had an egglike head, froglike jaws, and a grey hairy
fringe of aureole round the lower part of his face;


110 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
n-l_—-
kind of house would you desire me to get for you,
sir ? ”
He opened his blank blue eyes on Rupert, who
seemed for the second staggered. Then he recovered
himself with perfect common sense and answered:
“ I am sorry, Mr. Montmorency. The fascination
of your remarks has unduly delayed us from joining
our friend outside. Pray excuse my apparent im-
pertinence.”
“Not at all, sir,” said the house-agent, taking a
South American spider idly from his waistcoat pocket
and letting it climb up the slope of his desk. “ Not
at all, sir. I hope you will favour me again.”
Rupert Grant dashed out of the ofﬁce in a gust of
anger, anxious to face Lieutenant Keith. He was
gone. The dull, starlit street was deserted.
“What do you say now ? ” cried Rupert to his
brother. His brother said nothing now.
We all three strode down the street in silence,
Rupert feVerish, myself dazed, Basil, to all appear-
ance, merely dull. We walked through grey 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 of two or
three began abruptly to thicken into knots of ﬁve
or six and then into great groups and then into a
crowd. The crowd was stirring very slightly. But
anyone with a knowledge of the eternal populace
knows that if the outside rim of a crowd stirs ever
so slightly it means that there is madness in the
heart and core of the mob. It soon became evident


114 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
he is in the thick of a fatal, or nearly fatal, brawl, in
which he is the only man armed. Really, if this is
being glaringly good, I must confess that the glare
does not dazzle me.”
Basil was quite unmoved. “ I admit his moral
goodness is of a certain kind, a. quaint, perhaps a
casual kind. He is very fond of change and experi-
ment. But all the points you so ingeniously make
against him are mere coincidence or special pleading.
It’s true he didn’t want to talk about his house busi-
ness in front of us. No man would. It’s true that
he carries a swordstiek. Any man might. It’s true
he drew it in the shock 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, with an
alarmed air, “ there’s a policeman wants to see you.”
“ Show him in,” said Basil, amid the blank silence.
The heavy, handsome constable who appeared at
the door spoke almost as soon as he appeared there.
“ I think one of you gentlemen,” he said, curtly
but respectfully, “ was present at the aﬁair in Copper
Street last night, and drew my attention very strongly
to a particular man.”
Rupert half rose from his chair, with eyes like
diamonds, but the constable went on calmly, referring
to a paper. a
“ A young man with grey hair. Had light grey
clothes, very good, but torn in the struggle. Gave his
11 une as Drummond Keith.” .
“ This is amusing,” said Basil, laughing. “ I was

llr-h-a


116 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
there this morning before any of you were awake.
And there’s no such house. In fact, there are hardly
any houses at all. Though it is so near London, it’s
a blank moor with hardly ﬁve trees on it, to say no-
thing of Christians. Oh, no, sir, the address was a
fraud right enough. He was a clever rascal, and
chose one of those scraps of lost England that people
know nothing about. Nobody could say off-hand
that there was not a particular house dropped some-
where about the heath. But as a fact, there isn’t.”
Basil’s face during this sensible speech had been
growing darker and darker with a sort of desperate
sagacity. He was cornered almost for the ﬁrst time
since I had known him ; and to tell the truth I rather
wondered at the almost childish obstinacy which
kept him so close to his original prejudice in favour
of the wildly questionable lieutenant. At length he
said :
“ You really searched the common ‘! And the
address was really not known in the district—by the
way, what Was the address ? ”
The constable selected one of his slips of paper and
consulted it, but before he could speak Rupert Grant,
who was leaning in the window in a perfect posture
of the quiet and triumphant detective, struck in with
the sharp and suave voice he loved so much to use.
“ Why, I can tell you that, Basil,” he said graciously
as he idly plucked leaves from a plant in the window.
“ I took the precaution to get this man’s address from
the constable last night.”
“ And what was it ? ” asked his brother gruffiy.
“The constable will correct me if I am wrong,”
.m, __ 't-‘-—n


SPECULATION OF THE HOUSE AGENT 117


said Rupert, looking sweetly at the ceiling. “ It
was ‘ The Elms, Buxton Common, near Purley,
Surrey.’ ”
“ Right, sir,” said the policemen, laughing and
folding up his papers.
There was a silence, and the blue eyes of Basil looked
blindly for a few seconds into the void. Then his head
fell back in his chair so suddenly that I started up,
thinking him ill. But before I could move further his
lips had ﬂown apart (I can use no other phrase) and
a peal of gigantic laughter struck and shook the
ceiling—laughter that shook the laughter, laughter
redoubled, laughter incurable, laughter that could not
stop.
Two whole minutes afterwards it was still unended ;
Basil was ill with laughter ; but still he laughed. The
rest of us were by this time ill almost with terror.
“ Excuse me,” said the insane creature, getting at
last to his feet. “ I am awfully sorry. It is horribly
rude. And stupid, too. And also unpractical, be-
cause we have not much time to lose if we’re to get
down to that place. The train service is confoundedly
bad, as I happen to know. It’s quite out of proportion
to 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. “ Some-
thing Common near Purley. Has any one got a time-
table ? ” w
“ You don’t seriously mean,” cried Rupert, who had
been staring in a sort of confusion of emotions. “ You
9


118 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
11;. 1 V. -._..na=wxv.z..._.-----

don’t mean that you want to go to Buxton Common,
do you ? You can’t mean that! ”
“ Why shouldn’t I go to Buxton Common '4 ” asked
Basil, smiling.
“ Why should you ’4 ” said his brother, catching
hold 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 ’2 ”
Rupert broke a branch brutally from the plant and
ﬂung it impatiently on the ﬂoor. “ And in order to
ﬁnd him,” he said, “ you suggest the admirable ex-
pedient of going to the only place on the habitable
earth where we know he can’t be.”
The constable and I could not avoid breaking into
a kind of assenting laugh, and Rupert, who had family
eloquence, was encouraged to go on with a reiterated
gesture :
“ He may be in Buckingham Palace; he may be
sitting 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 innumer-
able points of space, there is only one where he has
just been systematically looked for and where we know
that he is not to be found—and that, if I understand
you rightly, is where you want us to go.”
“ Exactly,” said Basil calmly, getting into his great
coat; “ I thought you might care to accompany me.
If not, of course, make yourselves jolly here till I come
backfi


SPECULATION OF THE HOUSE AGENT 119
It is our nature always to follow vanishing things
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 decisively with his great coat and his stick.
Rupert ran after him with a considerable ﬂurry of
rationality.
“ My dear chap,” he cried, “ do you really mean
that you see any good in going down to this ridiculous
scrub, where there is nothing but beaten tracks and
a few twisted trees, simply because it was the ﬁrst
place that came into a rowdy lieutenant’s head when
he wanted to give a lying reference in a scrape '2 ”
“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
matter of 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. I was rather too impetuous.
Very likely he wouldn’t be in. But if we get down
by the 5.15, which gets to Purley about 6, I expect
we shall just catch him.”
“ Catch him! ” cried his brother, in a kind of ﬁnal
anger. “ I wish we could. Where the deuce shall
we catch him now '5 i’
“ 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.


120 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
We all followed him. We snatched our hats from
the hat-stand and our sticks from the umbrella-stand ;
and why we followed him we did not and do not know.
But we always followed him, whatever was the mean-
ing of the fact, whatever was the nature of his mastery.
And the strange thing was that we followed him the
more completely the more nonsenical 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 with Ten Tails,” we should have
followed him to the end of the world.
I don’t know whether this mystical feeling of 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 twilight when we struck southward from
Purley. Suburbs and things on the London border
may be, in most cases, commonplace and comfortable.
But if ever by any chance they really are empty
solitudes they are to the human spirit more desolate
and dehumanised than any Yorkshire moors or High-
land hills, because the suddenness with which the
traveller drops into that silence has something about
it as of evil elf-land. It seems to be one of the ragged
suburbs of the cosmos half-forgotten by God—such a
place was Buxton Common, near Purley.
There was certainly a sort of grey utility in the
landscape itself. But it was enormously increased
by the sense of grey futility in our expedition. The
tracts of grey turf looked useless, the occasional wind-
stricken trees looked useless, but we, the human
beings, more useless than the hopeless turf or the idle


122 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
any knowledge of you, will be drinking in two or three
minutes in enormous quantities.”
Rupert and I exchanged glances of fear. Basil went
on heartily, as the wind died in the dreary trees.
“ You’ll ﬁnd our host a much more simple kind of
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 greatest virtue remains what I
said originally.”
“ What do you mean '4 ” I asked, ﬁnding his speech
straying towards a sort of sanity. “What is his
greatest virtue 'i ”
“ His greatest virtue,” replied Basil, “is that he
always tells the literal truth.”
“ Well, really,” cried Rupert, stamping about
between cold and anger, and slapping himself like a
cabman, “ he doesn’t seem to have been very literal
or truthful in this case, nor you either. Why the
deuce, may I ask, have you brought us out to this
infernal place ’2 ”
“ He was too truthful, I confess,” said Basil, lean—
ing against the tree ; “ too hardly veracious, too
severely accurate. He should have indulged in a
little more suggestiveness and legitimate romance.
But come it’s time we went in. We shall be late for
dinner.” r.
Rupert whispered to me with a white face :
“Is it a hallucination, do you think? Does he
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,
.4-Q‘tgk ,, . ,._.. _,-__. ._, Mm


SPECULATION OF THE HOUSE AGENT 123


but which sounded in my ears almost as strange as
the wind:
“ Come, come, Basil, my dear fellow. Where do
you want us to go '2 ”
“ Why, up here,” cried Basil, and with a bound
and 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 the dark-
ness, with the voice of a schoolboy. “ Come up.
You’ll be late for dinner.”
The two great elms stood so close together that
there was scarcely a yard anywhere, and in some
places not more than a foot, between them. Thus
occasional branches and even bosses and holes formed
a series of footholds that almost amounted to a rude
natural ladder. They must, I supposed, have been
some sport of growth, Siamese twins of vegetation.
Why we did it I cannot think ; perhaps, as I have
said, the mystery of the waste and dark had brought
out and made primary something wholly mystical in
Basil’s supremacy. But we only felt that there was
a giant’s staircase going somewhere, perhaps to the
stars; and the victorious voice above called to us
out of heaven. We hoisted ourselves up after him.
Half-way up some cold tongue of the night air
struck and sobered me suddenly. . The hypnotism
of the madman above fell from me, and I saw the
whole map of our silly actions as clearly as if it were
printed. I saw three modern men in black coats who
had begun with a perfectly sensible suspicion of a
doubtful adventurer and who had ended, God knows
how, half-way up a naked tree on a naked moorland,


SPECULATION OF THE HOUSE AGENT 125

4
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 to-night ; it’s a known sign of the brain
going.”
“Yes,” I said, sadly and listened. Basil’s voice
certainly was sounding above us, and not by any
means in the rich and riotous tones in 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 a very
strange voice. “ He’s not talking to himself.”
“ Then he is talking to us,” I cried.
“ No,” said Rupert simply, “ he’s talking to some-
body else.”
Great branches of the elm loaded with leaves swung
about us in a sudden burst of wind, but when it died
down I could still hear the conversational voice
above. I could hear two voices.
Suddenly from aloft came Basil’s boisterous hailing
voice as before: “ Come up, you fellows. Here’s
Lieutenant Keith.”
And a second afterwards came the half-American
voice we had heard in our chambers more than once.
T4 ‘ ".4. .
“


126 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“ Happy to see you, gentlemen; pray come
in.”
Out of a hole in an enormous dark egg-shaped
thin pendant in the branches like a wasp’s nest, was
protruding the pale face and ﬁerce moustache of the
lieutenant, his teeth shining with that slightly South-
ern air that belonged to 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 a circular seat around it. At this table sat three
people. One was Basil, who, in the instant after
alighting there, had fallen into an attitude of mar-
moreal ease as if he had been there from boyhood;
he was smoking a cigar with a slow pleasure. The
second was Lieutenant Drummond Keith, who
looked happy also, but feverish and doubtful com-
pared with his granite guest. The third was the little
bald-headed house-agent with the wild whiskers,
who called himself Montmorency. The spears, the
green umbrella, and the cavalry sword hung in paral-
lels on the wall. The sealed jar of strange wine was
on the mantelpieee, the enormous riﬂe in the corner.
In the middle of the table was a magnum of cham-
pagne. Glasses were already set 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 might in a mild sea.
Our glasses were ﬁlled, and we still sat there dazed
and dumb. Then Basil spoke.
“ You seem still a little doubtful, Rupert. Surely


128 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
Rupert could not help laughing. “Do you have
much custom 'i ” he asked.
“ N-not much,” replied Mr. Montmorency, and
then he glanced at Keith, who was (I am convinced}
his only client. “ But what there is—very select.”
“My dear friends,” said Basil, puﬂing his cigar,
“ always remember two facts. The ﬁrst is that though
when you are guessing about any one who is sans.
the sanest thing is the most likely; when you an
guessing about any one who is, like our host, insane,
the maddest thing is the most likely. The second is
to remember that very plain literal fact always seems
fantastic. If Keith had taken a little brick 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.
Simply because it was a great blaring, swaggering lie
you would have believed it.”
“ Drink your wine, gentlemen,” said Keith, laugh-
ing, “for this confounded wind will upset it.”
We drank, and as we did so, although the hanging
house, by a cunning mechanism, swung only slightly,
we knew that the great head of the elm-tree swayed
in the sky like a stricken thistle,


V
THE NOTICEABLE CONDUCT OF
PROFESSOR CHADD


. ._ ...- .-.~
_ JA- n-_‘


132 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
"~ " ' " " ’ h :< -'—=;4~_l.lh'u\__
certainly precisely like every 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, the compound of the
selﬁshness of an old bachelor and the scrupulosity of
an old maid. They had 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 the ‘
National Liberal Club, and exchanged a few words
about the weather. Then we had talked for about
half an hour about politics and God ; for men always
talk about the most important things to total ‘
strangers. It is because in the total stranger we
perceive man himself; the image of God is not dis-
guised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the
wisdom of a moustache.
One of the most interesting of Basil’s motley group
of acquaintances was Professor Chadd. He was
known to the ethnological world (which is a very
interesting 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 a
bearded man with a bald head, spectacles, and a
patient face, the face of an unaccountable Noncon-
formist who had forgotten how to be angry. He
went to and fro between the British Museum and
a selection of blameless tea-shops, with an armful of
books and a poor but honest umbrella. He was never


THE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD 133

seen without the books and the umbrella, and was
supposed (by the lighter wits of the Persian MS. room)
to go to bed with them in his little brick villa in the
neighbourhood of Shepherd’s Bush. There he lived
with three sisters, ladies of solid goodness, but sinister
demeanour. His life was happy, as are almost all
the lives of methodical students, but one would not
have called it exhilarating. His only hours of ex-
hilaration occurred when his friend, Basil Grant, came
into the house, late at night, a tornado of conversa-
tion.
Basil, though close on sixty, had moods of boisterous
babyishness, and these seemed for some reason or
other to descend upon him, particularly in the house
of his studious and almost dingy friend. I can
remember vividly (for I was acquainted with both
parties and often dined with them) the gaiety of
Grant on that particular evening when the strange
calamity fell upon the professor. Professor Chadd
was, like most of 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 that more dis-
criminating and not uncommon type of Radical who
passes most of his time in abusing the Radical party.
Chadd had just contributed to a magazine an article
called “ Zulu Interests and the New Makango Fron-
tier,” in which a precise scientiﬁc report of his study
of the customs of the people of T’Chaka was rein-
forced by a severe protest against certain interference
with these customs both by the British and the
Germans. He was sitting with the magazine in front


134 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
of him, the lamplight shining on his spectacles, a
wrinkle in his forehead, not of anger, but of per-
plexity, 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 sympathise with them. No doubt
you know the Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the
Zulu prayer before blowing one’s nose; but for all
that you don’t understand them 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
championed by 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 rosy illusion.
Look in the glass. Ask your sisters. Consult the
librarian of the British Museum. Look at this um-
brella.” And he held up that sad but still respect-
able article. “ Look at it. 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 never
occurred to you to give one wild yell and hurl it like
a javelin—thus———”
And he sent the umbrella whizzing past the pro-
fessor’s bald head, so that it knocked over a pile of
books with a crash and left a vase rocking.
Professor Chadd appeared totally unmoved, with


THE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD 135


'.
i
his face still lifted to the lamp and the wrinkle cut
in his forehead. _
“Your mental processes,” he said, “always go a
little too fast. And they are stated without method.
There is no kind of inconsistency ”—and no words
can convey the time he took to get to the end of the
word—“ between valuing the right of the aborigines
to adhere to their stage in the evolutionary process,
so long as they ﬁnd it congenial and requisite to do
so. There is, I say, no inconsistency between this
concession which I have just described to you and
the view that the evolutionary stage in question is,
nevertheless, so far as we can form any estimate of
values in the variety 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 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 far from being
certain that the Zulu is on an inferior evolutionary
stage, whatever the blazes that may mean. I do not
think there is anything stupid or ignorant about
howling at 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 of existence itself ? Sup~
pose, my dear Chadd, suppose it is we who are the
idiots because we are not afraid of devils in the dark '! ”
Professor Chadd slit open a page of the magazine
ﬁ—ﬂ


138 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
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 than man, woman, or child. I
have often been afraid that unless something of this
kind occurred we should really have to be careful of
his brain. But I believe it is practically settled.”
“ I am delighted,” began Basil, but with a worried
face, “ but these red-tape negotiations are so terribly
chancy that I really can’t advise you to build on hope,
only to be hurled down into bitterness. I’ve known
men, and good men like your brother, come nearer
than this and be disappointed. Of course, if it is
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 into the room
still with the mazed look in his eyes.
“ Is it true '! ” asked Basil, with burning eyes.
“ Not a bit true,” answered Chadd after a moment’s
bewilderment. “ Your argument was in three points
fallacious.”
“ What do you mean ? ” demanded Grant.
“ Well,” said the professor slowly, “in saying that
you could possess a knowledge of the essence of Zulu
life distinct from—”
“ Oh ! confound Zulu life,” cried Grant, with a
burst of laughter. “ I mean, have you got the
post 2 ”
“ You mean the post of keeper of the Asiatic
manuscripts,” he said, opening his eye with childlike


THE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD 139

wonder. “ Oh, yes, I got that. But the real objec-
tion to your argument, which has only, I admit,
occurred to me since I have been out of the room, is
that it does not merely presuppose a Zulu truth apart
from the facts, but infers that the discovery of it is
absolutely impeded by the facts.”
“ I am crushed,” said Basil, and sat down to laugh,
while the professor’s sister retired to her room, pos-
sibly, possibly not.
a gig * 4: a
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 may be our
excuse for the fact that we (for I was stopping the
night with Grant) got down to breakfast next day at a
time inexpressibly criminal, a time, in point of fact,
close upon 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 letters by his plate, and I doubt if
he would have opened any of them if there had not
lain on the top that one thing which has succeeded
amid modern carelessness in being really,urgent
and coercive—a telegram. This he opened with
the same heavy distraction with which he 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 pulled together suddenly as strings are tightened
on a slack guitar. Though he said nothing and did
not move, I knew that he had been for an instant


140 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
cleared and sharpened with a shock of cold water.
It was scarcely any surprise to me when a man had
drifted sullenly to his seat and fallen into it, kicked
it away like a cur from under him and came round to
me in two strides.
“ What do you make of that 'i ” he said, and
ﬂattened out the wire in front of me.
It ran : “ Please come at once. James’ mental
state dangerous. Chadd.”
“What does the woman mean '2 ” I said after a
pause, irritably. “Those women have been saying
that the poor old professor was mad ever since he
was born.”
“ You are mistaken,” said Grant composedly.
“ It is true that all sensible women 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 put it 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 down under the eye of a
strange woman in a post-oﬁce that her brother is
off his head you may be perfectly certain that she did
it because it was a matter of life and death, and she 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 West-
minster Bridge, through Trafalgar Square, along
Piccadilly, and up the Uxbridge Road. Only as he
was opening the gate he spoke.


142 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES

from the audience in the manner of the Greek
chorus.
“ Sit down, won’t you i ” said one of them, in a
voice that was somewhat rigid with pain.
“I think you had better be told ﬁrst what has
happened.”
Then, with her bleak face looking unmeaningly
out of the window, she continued, in an even and
mechanical voice :
“ I had better state everything that occurred just
as it occurred. This morning I was clearing away the
breakfast things, my sisters were both 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 time staring at the empty grate. I said,
“ Were you looking for anything I could get 2 ”
He did not answer, but this constantly happens, as
he is often very abstracted. I repeated my question,
and still he did not answer. Sometimes he is so
wrapped up in his studies that nothing but a touch
on the shoulder would make him aware of one’s
presence, so I came round the table towards him. I
really do not know how to describe the sensation
which I then had. It seems simply silly, but at the
moment it seemed something enormous, upsetting
one’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.
VF‘ Yes,” replied the dead voice of the woman


144 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
';~-..;¢.l----‘- ’—


thought the air would do him good. And he can
scarcely go into the street.”
Basil and I walked rapidly to the window which
looked out on the garden. It was a small and some-
what snug suburban garden; the ﬂower beds a little
too neat and like the pattern of a coloured carpet;
but on this shining and 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 for-
bearing expression and owlish eyes, the strong sun-
light gleaming on his glasses as the lamplight had
gleamed 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 last night. That one thing was
that while the face listened reposefully the legs were
industrioust dancing like the legs of a marionette.
The neat ﬂowers and the sunny glitter of the garden
lent an indescribable sharpness and incredibility to
the prodigy—the prodigy of the head of a hermit and
the legs of a harlequin. For miracles should always
happen in broad daylight. The night makes them
credible and therefore commonplace.
The second sister had by this time entered the room
and came somewhat drearin to the window.
f‘ You know, Adelaide,” she said, “ that Mr.


THE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD 145

_—-———!

Bingham from the Museum is coming again at
three.”
“ I know,” said Adelaide Chadd bitterly. “ I
suppose we shall have to tell him about this. I thought
that no good fortune would ever come easily to us.”
Grant suddenly turned round. “ What do you
mean '2 ” he said. “ What will you have to tell Mr.
Bingham 2 ”
“ 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 to go on like that 'i ” And she pointed
for an instant at the ﬁgure in the garden, the shining,
listening face and the unresting feet.
Basil Grant took out his watch with an abrupt
movement. “ When did you say the British Museum
man was coming '4 ” 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 not walk straight
up to the doctor and lunatic, but strolling round the
garden path drew near them cautiously and yet
apparently carelessly. He stood a couple of feet off
them, seemingly counting halfpence out of his
trousers pocket, but, as I could see, looking up
steadily under the broad brim of his hat.
Suddenly he stepped up to Professor Chadd’s
elbow, and said, in a loud familiar voice, “Well,
my boy, do you still think the Zulus our inferiors ’4 ”
The doctor lmitted his brows and looked anxious,
K


THE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD 147


l?-
skull of the professor. The latter did not turn round
but danced away with his eyes on the horizon.
The doctor put on his glasses again, looked severely
at the two for some seconds, with his head on one side
like a bird’s, and then saying, shortly, “ All right,”
strutted away into the house, where the three Misses
Chadd were all looking out from the parlour window
on to the garden. They looked out on it with hungry
eyes for a full hour without moving, and they saw a
sight which was more extraordinary than madness
itself.
Basil Grant addressed a few questions to the mad-
man, without succeeding in making him do anything
but continue to caper, and when he had done this
slowly took a red note-book out of one pocket and a
large pencil out of another.
He began hurriedly to scribble notes. When the
lunatic skipped away from him he would walk a few
yards in pursuit, stop, and make notes 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 leaping and
playing like a child.
After about three-quarters of an hour of this im-
becile scene, Grant put the pencil in his pocket, but
kept the note-book open in his hand, and walking
round the mad professor, planted himself directly in
front of him.
Then occurred something that even those already
used to that wild morning had not anticipated or
dreamed. The professor, on ﬁnding Basil in front
of him, stared with a blank benignity for a few seconds,


THE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD 149

had a ccustomed him to the spectacle of two grey-
haired middle-class gentlemen in modern costume
throwi ng themselves about like acrobats as a substi-
tute for an after-dinner nap.
The professor continued his antics with perfect
placidit y, but Grant stopped abruptly. The doctor had
reappeared on the scene, and his shiny black eyes,
under h is shiny black hat, moved restlessly from one
of them to the other.
“ Dr. Colman,” said Basil, turning to him, “ will
you 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 conversa~
tion '! My name is Grant.”
Mr. Bingham, of the British Museum, bowed in a
manner that was respectful but a triﬂe bewildered.
“ Miss Chadd will excuse me,” continued Basil easily,
“if I know my way about the house.” And he led
the dazed librarian rapidly through the back door into
the parlour.
“ Mr. Bingham,” said Basil, setting a chair for him,
“ I imagine that Miss Chadd has told you of this dis-
tressing occurrence.”
“ She has, Mr. Grant,” said Bingham, looking at
the table with a sort of compassionate nerwusness.
“ I am more pained that I can say by this dreadful
calamity. It seems quite heart-tending that the thing
should have happened just as we have decided to give
your eminent friend a position which falls far short of
his merits. As it is, of course—really, I don’t know
what to say. Professor Chadd may, of course, retain
—I sincerely trust he will—his extraordinary valuable


150 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
intellect. But I am afraid—I am really afraid—that
it would not do to have the curator of the Asiatic
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 gentleman
from the British Museum, coughing and drawing up
his chair also.
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked for just the
moments required for Basil 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 you could altogether call it a com-
promise, still it has something of that character. My
proposal is that the Government (acting, as I pre-
sume, through your Museum) should pay Professor
Chadd £800 a year until he stops dancing.”
“ Eight hundred a year! ” said Mr. Bingham, and
for the ﬁrst time lifted his mild blue eyes to those
of his interlocutor—and he raised them with a mild
blue stare. “ I think I have not quite understood
you. Did I understand you to say that Professor
Chadd ought to be employed, in his present state, in
the Asiatic manuscript department at eight hundred
a year ? ”
Grant shook his head resolutely.
“ No,” he said ﬁrmly. “ N0. Chadd is a friend
of mine, and I would say anything for him I could.
But I do not say, I cannot say, that he ought to take
on the Asiatic manuscripts. I do not go so far as
that. I merely say that until he stops dancing you


152 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“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 slightly unfeeling
joke. It may be your sincere view, in which case
I ask your pardon for the former suggestion. _But,
in any case, it appears quite irrelevant to my duties.
The mental morbidity, the mental downfall, of Pro-
fessor Chadd, is a thing so painful to me that I cannot
easily endure to speak of it. But it is clear there is
a limit to everything. And if the Archangel Gabriel
went mad it would sever his connection, I am sorry
to say, with the British Museum Library.”
He was stepping towards the door, but Grant’s
hand, ﬂung out in dramatic warning, arrested him.
“ Stop! ” said Basil sternly. “ Stop while there
is yet time. Do you want to take part in a great
work, Mr. Bingham? Do you want to help in the
glory of Europe—in the glory of science? Do you
want to carry your head in the air when it is bald
or white because of the part that you bore in a great
discovery '5 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 £800 a year till he stops dancing.”
With a ﬁerce ﬂap of his swinging gloves Bingham
turned impatiently to the door, but in passing out
of it found it blocked. Dr. Colman 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 discovery about Mr.
Chadd.”


154 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
“I shall be very happy,” he said, “to give him
any message you like to send.” \
Both men stared at him.
“Give him a message ? ” they cried simultane-
ously. ' “ How will you give him a message '9 ”
Basil smiled in his slow way.
“ If you really want to know how I hall give him
your message,” he began, but Bingham cried :
“ Of course, of course,” with a sort of frenzy.
“ Well,” said Basil, “ like this.” And he suddenly
sprang a foot into the air, coming down with crashing
boots, and then stood on one leg.
His face was stern, though this effect was slightly
spoiled by the fact that 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 I will, for his own sake,
betray him.”
The sensitive face of Bingham took on an extra
expression of distress as of one anticipating some
disgraceful disclosure. “ Anything painful, of course
-——” he began.
Basil let his loose foot fall on the carpet with
a crash that struck them all rigid in their feeble
attitudes.
“ Idiots! ” he cried. “ Have you seen the man 2
Have you looked at James Chadd going dismally to
and fro from his dingy house to your miserable library,
with his futile books and his confounded umbrella,
and never seen that he has the eyes of a fanatic?
Have you never noticed, stuck casually behind his
spectacles and above his seedy old collar, the face of


THE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD 155

a man who might have burned heretics, or died for
the ] hilosopher’s stone ? It is all my fault, in a way :
I lit the dynamite of his deadly faith. I argued
against him on the score of his famous theory about
language—the theory that language was complete in
certain individuals and was picked up by others
simply by watching them. I also chaﬁed him about
not understanding things in rough and ready practice.
What has this glorious bigot done ’6 He has answered
me. He has worked out a system of language of 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
careful notice; and, by heaven, so shall the others.
This shall not be blown upon. He shall ﬁnish his
experiment. He shall have £800 a year from some-
where 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. Gran ,” he said. “ I hope I
shall be able to answer for the source of the £800,
and I fancy that I shall. Will you come in my
cab ? ” a
“ No, thank you very much, Mr. Bingham,” said
Grant heartily. “ I think I will go and have a chat
with the professor in the garden.”
The conversation between Chadd and Grant ap-
peared to be personal and friendly. They were still
dancing when I left.


“la-ha
In“. -_


VI
THE ECCENTRIC SECLUSION OF
THE OLD LADY
THE conversation of Rupert Grant had two great
elements 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 said of 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
Rupert as a whole, or no, it was certainly curiously
supported by one story about him which 1 think
worth telling. '
We were walking along a lonely terrace in Brompton
together. The street was fuli of that bright blue
twilight which comes about half-past eight in summer,
and which seems for the moment to be not so much
a coming of darkness as the turning on of a new
azure illuminator, as if the earth were lit suddenly
by a sapphire sun. In the cool blue the lemon tint
of the lamps had already begun to ﬂame, and as
159


160 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
Rupert and I passed them, Rupert tallnng excitedly,
one after another the pale sparks sprang out of the
dusk. Rupert was talking excitedly because he was
trying to prove to me the nine hundred and ninety-
ninth of his amateur detective theories. He would
go about London, with this mad logic in his brain,
seeing a conspiracy in a cab accident, and a special
providence in a falling fusee. His suspicions at the
moment were ﬁxed upon an unhappy milkman who
walked in front of us. So arresting were the incidents
which afterwards overtook us that I am really afraid
that I have forgotten what were the main outlines
of the milkman’s crime. I think it had something to
do with the fact that he had only one small can of
milk to carry, and that of that he had left the lid
loose and walked so quickly that he spilled milk on
the pavement. This showed that he was not thinking
of his small burden, and this again showed that he
anticipated some other than lacteal business at the
end of his walk, and this (taken in conjunction with
something about muddy boots) showed something
else that I have entirely forgotten. I am afraid that
I derided this detailed revelation unmercifully; and
I am afraid that Rupert Grant, who, though the best
of fellows, had a 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 with his profession, but
the cigar, I think, was nearly bitten through.
“ My dear fellow,” he said acidly, “I’ll bet you
half a croWn that wherever that milkman comes to a
real stop I’ll ﬁnd out something curious.”


166 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
was gazing down into the area. One of the lighted
lamps of the street was just behind his head, throwing
it into abrupt darkness. Consequently, nothing
whatever could be seen of his face beyond one fact,
that he was unquestionably staring at us. I must
say I thought 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 had
never had any beginning. The black glaring ﬁgure
in the portico did not stir. I almost thought it was
really a statue. In another moment the grey area
was golden with gaslight as the basement door was
opened suddenly and a small and decorous house-
maid stood in it.
“ Pray excuse me,” said Rupert, in a voice which
he contrived to make somehow or other at once aﬁable
and underbred, “ but we thought perhaps that you
might do something for the Waifs and Strays. We
don’t expect—”
“ Not here,” said the small servant, with the
incomparable severity of the menial of the non-
philanthropic, and slammed the door in our
faces.
“ Very sad, very sad—the indifference of these
people,” said the philanthropist, with gravity as we
went together up the steps. As we did so the motion-
less ﬁgure in the portico suddenly disappeared.
“ Well, what do you make of that ’5 ” asked Rupert,
slapping his gloves together when we got into the
street. '
I do not mind admitting that I was seriously upset.
Under such conditions I had but one thought.


THE SECLUSION OF THE OLD LADY 167


“ Don’t you think,” I said a. triﬂe timidly, “- that
we had better tell your brother '4 ”
“ Oh, if you like,” said Rupert, in a lordly way.
“ He is quite near, as I 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 deserted look. After a little looking
about we discovered Basil Grant with his great head
and his great white hat blocking the ticket-oﬁice
window. I thought at ﬁrst that he was taking a
ticket for somewhere and being an astonishingly long
time about it. As a matter of fact, he was discussing
religion with the booking-ofﬁce clerk, and had almost
got his head through the hole in his excitement.
When we dragged him away it was some time before
he would talk of anything but the growth of an Orien-
tal fatalism in modern thought, which had been well
typiﬁed by some of the oﬁicial’s ingenious but perverse
fallacies. At last we managed to get him to under-
stand that we had made an astounding discovery.
When he did listen, he listened attentively, walking
between us up and down the lamp-lit street, 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 from the porch. At length he said:
“ If you’re thinking of going back to look the thing
up, you must be careful what you do. It’s no good
you two going there. To go twice on the same pre-
text would look dubious. To go on a diﬁerent pretext
would look worse. You may be quite certain that


170 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES

~af w e » ---
“Go to the Court Theatre '2 ” repeated Rupert.
“ What would be the good of that '4 ”
“ Good ? What do you mean ’4 ” answered Basil,
staring also. “ Have you turned Puritan or Passive
Resister, or something? For fun, of course.”
“ But, great God in Heaven! What are we going
to do, I mean! ” cried Rupert. “What about the
poor woman locked up in that house ? Shall I go for
the police ’4 ”
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 aﬂair. But I’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 frighten
us,” I said irritably. “ How can we leave that
woman locked up? How can it be a mere private
affair ? How can crime and kidnapping and murder,
for all I know, be private aﬁairs? If you found a
corpse in a man’s drawing-room, would you think it
bad taste to talk about it just as if it was a confounded
dado or an infernal etching 'Q ”
Basil laughed heartily.
“ That’s very forcible,” he said. “ As a matter of
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 case 2 ’l
persisted his brother angrily.
-“ My dear chap, the thing’s obvious,” answered


172 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
nice, too, though rather infected with this pseudo-
Darwinian business. Ethics of evolution and all
that.”
“I think,” said Rupert darkly, ringing the bell,
“that we shall enlighten you further about their
ethics.”
“ And may I ask,” said Basil gloomily, “ what it is
that you propose to do '9 ”
“ I propose, ﬁrst of all,” said Rupert, “ to get into
this house; secondly, to have a look at these nice
young Oxford men'; thirdly, to knock 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 almost serves
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 little procession,
looking indifferent and sometimes even sulky, but
somehow the instant the door opened 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 l ”
“Delighted, of course,” said a young voice, the
unmistakable voice of the Isis, and I realised that the
door had been opened, not by the decorous little


186 THE CLUB OF QUEER TRADES
it stand in our memories for weeks and months. As
will be seen, it was not until months afterwards that
by another accident and in another way it was ex-
plained. 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 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 weird
preference 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-fashioned curtsey
or reverence. I looked quickly at Greenwood and
Burrows, to whom it was natural to suppose this
subservience had been oﬁered. I felt irritated at
what was implied in this subservience, and desired to
see the faces of the tyrants as they received 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 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 the group, the golden gaslight light-
ing up his strong face and ﬁgure. His face wore
an expressionjndescribably conscious, with the sus-
picion of a very grave smile. His head was slightly
bent with a restrained bow. It was he who had
acknowledged the lady’s obeisance. And it was he,


THE SECLUSION OF THE OLD LADY 187


beyond any 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 without success.”
“ N 0 one, naturally, knows my faults better than
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 exhibition of loyalty that I permit
myself the pleasure of exercising some very large
discretionary powers. You would not leave this room
at the request of these gentlemen. But you know
that you can safely leave it at mine.”
The captive made another reverence. “ I have
never complained of your injustice,” she said. “ I
need scarcely say what I think of your generosity.”
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 jovial-
ity. “ This will be a relief to you,” he said.
“ Yes, it will,” replied that immovable young
gentleman with a face like a sphinx.
We found ourselves outside in the dark blue night,
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 humanity