Chương Chương 6 · The Eccentric Seclusion of the Old Lady

. 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 I think worth telling.

We were walking along a lonely terrace in Brompton together. The street

was full 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 Rupert and I passed them,

Rupert talking 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.”

“My resources are equal to that risk,” I said, laughing. “Done.”

We walked on for about a quarter of an hour in silence in the trail of

the mysterious milkman. He walked quicker and quicker, and we had some

ado to keep up with him; and every now and then he left a splash of

milk, silver in the lamplight. Suddenly, almost before we could note it,

he disappeared down the area steps of a house. I believe Rupert really

believed that the milkman was a fairy; for a second he seemed to accept

him as having vanished. Then calling something to me which somehow took

no hold on my mind, he darted after the mystic milkman, and disappeared

himself into the area.

I waited for at least five minutes, leaning against a lamp-post in the

lonely street. Then the milkman came swinging up the steps without his

can and hurried off clattering down the road. Two or three minutes more

elapsed, and then Rupert came bounding up also, his face pale but yet

laughing; a not uncommon contradiction in him, denoting excitement.

“My friend,” he said, rubbing his hands, “so much for all your

scepticism. So much for your philistine ignorance of the possibilities

of a romantic city. Two and sixpence, my boy, is the form in which your

prosaic good nature will have to express itself.”

“What?” I said incredulously, “do you mean to say that you really did

find anything the matter with the poor milkman?”

His face fell.

“Oh, the milkman,” he said, with a miserable affectation at having

misunderstood me. “No, I--I--didn't exactly bring anything home to the

milkman himself, I--”

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

“Well, to tell the truth,” said Rupert, shifting restlessly from

one foot to another, “the milkman himself, as far as merely physical

appearances went, just said, 'Milk, Miss,' and handed in the can. That

is not to say, of course, that he did not make some secret sign or

some--”

I broke into a violent laugh. “You idiot,” I said, “why don't you own

yourself wrong and have done with it? Why should he have made a secret

sign any more than any one else? You own he said nothing and did nothing

worth mentioning. You own that, don't you?”

His face grew grave.

“Well, since you ask me, I must admit that I do. It is possible that

the milkman did not betray himself. It is even possible that I was wrong

about him.”

“Then come along with you,” I said, with a certain amicable anger, “and

remember that you owe me half a crown.”

“As to that, I differ from you,” said Rupert coolly. “The milkman's

remarks may have been quite innocent. Even the milkman may have been.

But I do not owe you half a crown. For the terms of the bet were, I

think, as follows, as I propounded them, that wherever that milkman came

to a real stop I should find out something curious.”

“Well?” I said.

“Well,” he answered, “I jolly well have. You just come with me,” and

before I could speak he had turned tail once more and whisked through

the blue dark into the moat or basement of the house. I followed almost

before I made any decision.

When we got down into the area I felt indescribably foolish literally,

as the saying is, in a hole. There was nothing but a closed door,

shuttered windows, the steps down which we had come, the ridiculous

well in which I found myself, and the ridiculous man who had brought me

there, and who stood there with dancing eyes. I was just about to turn

back when Rupert caught me by the elbow.

“Just listen to that,” he said, and keeping my coat gripped in his right

hand, he rapped with the knuckles of his left on the shutters of the

basement window. His air was so definite that I paused and even inclined

my head for a moment towards it. From inside was coming the murmur of an

unmistakable human voice.

“Have you been talking to somebody inside?” I asked suddenly, turning to

Rupert.

“No, I haven't,” he replied, with a grim smile, “but I should very much

like to. Do you know what somebody is saying in there?”

“No, of course not,” I replied.

“Then I recommend you to listen,” said Rupert sharply.

In the dead silence of the aristocratic street at evening, I stood a

moment and listened. From behind the wooden partition, in which there

was a long lean crack, was coming a continuous and moaning sound which

took the form of the words: “When shall I get out? When shall I get out?

Will they ever let me out?” or words to that effect.

“Do you know anything about this?” I said, turning upon Rupert very

abruptly.

“Perhaps you think I am the criminal,” he said sardonically, “instead

of being in some small sense the detective. I came into this area two or

three minutes ago, having told you that I knew there was something funny

going on, and this woman behind the shutters (for it evidently is a

woman) was moaning like mad. No, my dear friend, beyond that I do

not know anything about her. She is not, startling as it may seem, my

disinherited daughter, or a member of my secret seraglio. But when

I hear a human being wailing that she can't get out, and talking to

herself like a mad woman and beating on the shutters with her fists,

as she was doing two or three minutes ago, I think it worth mentioning,

that is all.”

“My dear fellow,” I said, “I apologize; this is no time for arguing.

What is to be done?”

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

“First of all,” he said, “house-breaking.” And he forced the blade into

the crevice of the wood and broke away a huge splinter, leaving a gap

and glimpse of the dark window-pane inside. The room within was entirely

unlighted, so that for the first few seconds the window seemed a dead

and opaque surface, as dark as a strip of slate. Then came a realization

which, though in a sense gradual, made us step back and catch our

breath. Two large dim human eyes were so close to us that the window

itself seemed suddenly to be a mask. A pale human face was pressed

against the glass within, and with increased distinctness, with the

increase of the opening came the words:

“When shall I get out?”

“What can all this be?” I said.

Rupert made no answer, but lifting his walking-stick and pointing the

ferrule like a fencing sword at the glass, punched a hole in it, smaller

and more accurate than I should have supposed possible. The moment he

had done so the voice spouted out of the hole, so to speak, piercing and

querulous and clear, making the same demand for liberty.

“Can't you get out, madam?” I said, drawing near the hole in some

perturbation.

“Get out? Of course I can't,” moaned the unknown female bitterly. “They

won't let me. I told them I would be let out. I told them I'd call the

police. But it's no good. Nobody knows, nobody comes. They could keep me

as long as they liked only--”

I was in the very act of breaking the window finally with my stick,

incensed with this very sinister mystery, when Rupert held my arm hard,

held it with a curious, still, and secret rigidity as if he desired to

stop me, but did not desire to be observed to do so. I paused a moment,

and in the act swung slightly round, so that I was facing the supporting

wall of the front door steps. The act froze me into a sudden stillness

like that of Rupert, for a figure almost as motionless as the pillars of

the portico, but unmistakably human, had put his head out from between

the doorposts and 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 housemaid stood in it.

“Pray excuse me,” said Rupert, in a voice which he contrived to make

somehow or other at once affable 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 motionless figure in the portico suddenly disappeared.

“Well, what do you make of that?” asked Rupert, slapping his gloves

together when we got into the street.

I do not mind admitting that I was seriously upset. Under such

conditions I had but one thought.

“Don't you think,” I said a trifle timidly, “that we had better tell

your brother?”

“Oh, if you like,” said Rupert, in a 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-office 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 Oriental

fatalism in modern thought, which had been well typified by some of the

official's ingenious but perverse fallacies. At last we managed to get

him to understand that we had made an astounding discovery. When he

did listen, he listened attentively, walking between us up and down

the lamp-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 pretext would look dubious. To go on a different pretext would

look worse. You may be quite certain that the inquisitive gentleman

who looked at you looked thoroughly, and will wear, so to speak,

your portraits next to his heart. If you want to find out if there

is anything in this without a police raid I fancy you had better wait

outside. I'll go in and see them.”

His slow and reflective walk brought us at length within sight of the

house. It stood up ponderous and purple against the last pallor of

twilight. It looked like an ogre's castle. And so apparently it was.

“Do you think it's safe, Basil,” said his brother, pausing, a little

pale, under the lamp, “to go into that place alone? Of course we

shall be near enough to hear if you yell, but these devils might do

something--something sudden--or odd. I can't feel it's safe.”

“I know of nothing that is safe,” said Basil composedly, “except,

possibly--death,” and he went up the steps and rang at the bell. When

the massive respectable door opened for an instant, cutting a square of

gaslight in the gathering dark, and then closed with a bang, burying

our friend inside, we could not repress a shudder. It had been like

the heavy gaping and closing of the dim lips of some evil leviathan. A

freshening night breeze began to blow up the street, and we turned up

the collars of our coats. At the end of twenty minutes, in which we

had scarcely moved or spoken, we were as cold as icebergs, but more, I

think, from apprehension than the atmosphere. Suddenly Rupert made an

abrupt movement towards the house.

“I can't stand this,” he began, but almost as he spoke sprang back into

the shadow, for the panel of gold was again cut out of the black house

front, and the burly figure of Basil was silhouetted against it coming

out. He was roaring with laughter and talking so loudly that you

could have heard every syllable across the street. Another voice, or,

possibly, two voices, were laughing and talking back at him from within.

“No, no, no,” Basil was calling out, with a sort of hilarious hostility.

“That's quite wrong. That's the most ghastly heresy of all. It's the

soul, my dear chap, the soul that's the arbiter of cosmic forces. When

you see a cosmic force you don't like, trick it, my boy. But I must

really be off.”

“Come and pitch into us again,” came the laughing voice from out of the

house. “We still have some bones unbroken.”

“Thanks very much, I will--good night,” shouted Grant, who had by this

time reached the street.

“Good night,” came the friendly call in reply, before the door closed.

“Basil,” said Rupert Grant, in a hoarse whisper, “what are we to do?”

The elder brother looked thoughtfully from one of us to the other.

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

“I'm not sure,” said Basil doubtfully. “What do you say to getting some

dinner somewhere and going to the Court Theatre tonight? I tried to get

those fellows to come, but they couldn't.”

We stared blankly.

“Go to the Court Theatre?” repeated Rupert. “What would be the good of

that?”

“Good? What do you mean?” answered Basil, staring also. “Have you turned

Puritan or Passive Resister, or something? For fun, 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?”

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

“Oh, that,” he said. “I'd forgotten that. That's all right. Some

mistake, possibly. Or some quite trifling private affair. 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 affairs? 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?”

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 ease?” persisted his brother

angrily.

“My dear chap, the thing's obvious,” answered Basil, holding a return

ticket between his teeth while he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket.

“Those two fellows never committed a crime in their lives. They're not

the kind. Have either of you chaps got a halfpenny? I want to get a

paper before the omnibus comes.”

“Oh, curse the paper!” cried Rupert, in a fury. “Do you mean to tell

me, Basil Grant, that you are going to leave a fellow creature in pitch

darkness in a private dungeon, because you've had ten minutes' talk with

the keepers of it and thought them rather good men?”

“Good men do commit crimes sometimes,” said Basil, taking the ticket

out of his mouth. “But this kind of good man doesn't commit that kind of

crime. Well, shall we get on this omnibus?”

The great green vehicle was indeed plunging and lumbering along the

dim wide street towards us. Basil had stepped from the curb, and for an

instant it was touch and go whether we should all have leaped on to it

and been borne away to the restaurant and the theatre.

“Basil,” I said, taking him firmly by the shoulder, “I simply won't

leave this street and this house.”

“Nor will I,” said Rupert, glaring at it and biting his fingers.

“There's some black work going on there. If I left it I should never

sleep again.”

Basil Grant looked at us both seriously.

“Of course if you feel like that,” he said, “we'll investigate further.

You'll find it's all right, though. They're only two young Oxford

fellows. Extremely 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?”

“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?”

“Delighted, of course,” said a young voice, the unmistakable voice

of the Isis, and I realized that the door had been opened, not by the

decorous little servant girl, but by one of our hosts in person. He was

a short, but shapely young gentleman, with curly dark hair and a

square, snub-nosed face. He wore slippers and a sort of blazer of some

incredible college purple.

“This way,” he said; “mind the steps by the staircase. This house is

more crooked and old-fashioned than you would think from its snobbish

exterior. There are quite a lot of odd corners in the place really.”

“That,” said Rupert, with a savage smile, “I can quite believe.”

We were by this time in the study or back parlour, used by the young

inhabitants as a sitting-room, an apartment littered with magazines

and books ranging from Dante to detective stories. The other youth, who

stood with his back to the fire smoking a corncob, was big and burly,

with dead brown hair brushed forward and a Norfolk jacket. He was that

particular type of man whose every feature and action is heavy and

clumsy, and yet who is, you would say, rather exceptionally a gentleman.

“Any more arguments?” he said, when introductions had been effected. “I

must say, Mr Grant, you were rather severe upon eminent men of science

such as we. I've half a mind to chuck my D.Sc. and turn minor poet.”

“Bosh,” answered Grant. “I never said a word against eminent men of

science. What I complain of is a vague popular philosophy which supposes

itself to be scientific when it is really nothing but a sort of new

religion and an uncommonly nasty one. When people talked about the fall

of man they knew they were talking about a mystery, a thing they didn't

understand. Now that they talk about the survival of the fittest they

think they do understand it, whereas they have not merely no notion,

they have an elaborately false notion of what the words mean. The

Darwinian movement has made no difference to mankind, except that,

instead of talking unphilosophically about philosophy, they now talk

unscientifically about science.”

“That is all very well,” said the big young man, whose name appeared

to be Burrows. “Of course, in a sense, science, like mathematics or

the violin, can only be perfectly understood by specialists. Still, the

rudiments may be of public use. Greenwood here,” indicating the little

man in the blazer, “doesn't know one note of music from another. Still,

he knows something. He knows enough to take off his hat when they play

'God Save the King'. He doesn't take it off by mistake when they play

'Oh, Dem Golden Slippers'. Just in the same way science--”

Here Mr Burrows stopped abruptly. He was interrupted by an argument

uncommon in philosophical controversy and perhaps not wholly legitimate.

Rupert Grant had bounded on him from behind, flung an arm round his

throat, and bent the giant backwards.

“Knock the other fellow down, Swinburne,” he called out, and before I

knew where I was I was locked in a grapple with the man in the purple

blazer. He was a wiry fighter, who bent and sprang like a whalebone, but

I was heavier and had taken him utterly by surprise. I twitched one of

his feet from under him; he swung for a moment on the single foot, and

then we fell with a crash amid the litter of newspapers, myself on top.

My attention for a moment released by victory, I could hear Basil's

voice finishing some long sentence of which I had not heard the

beginning.

“... wholly, I must confess, unintelligible to me, my dear sir, and

I need not say unpleasant. Still one must side with one's old friends

against the most fascinating new ones. Permit me, therefore, in tying

you up in this antimacassar, to make it as commodious as handcuffs can

reasonably be while...”

I had staggered to my feet. The gigantic Burrows was toiling in the

garotte of Rupert, while Basil was striving to master his mighty hands.

Rupert and Basil were both particularly strong, but so was Mr Burrows;

how strong, we knew a second afterwards. His head was held back by

Rupert's arm, but a convulsive heave went over his whole frame. An

instant after his head plunged forward like a bull's, and Rupert Grant

was slung head over heels, a catherine wheel of legs, on the floor in

front of him. Simultaneously the bull's head butted Basil in the chest,

bringing him also to the ground with a crash, and the monster, with a

Berserker roar, leaped at me and knocked me into the corner of the

room, smashing the waste-paper basket. The bewildered Greenwood sprang

furiously to his feet. Basil did the same. But they had the best of it

now.

Greenwood dashed to the bell and pulled it violently, sending peals

through the great house. Before I could get panting to my feet, and

before Rupert, who had been literally stunned for a few moments,

could even lift his head from the floor, two footmen were in the room.

Defeated even when we were in a majority, we were now outnumbered.

Greenwood and one of the footmen flung themselves upon me, crushing me

back into the corner upon the wreck of the paper basket. The other two

flew at Basil, and pinned him against the wall. Rupert lifted himself on

his elbow, but he was still dazed.

In the strained silence of our helplessness I heard the voice of Basil

come with a loud incongruous cheerfulness.

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

I caught a glimpse of his face, flushed and forced against the bookcase,

from between the swaying limbs of my captors and his. To my astonishment

his eyes were really brilliant with pleasure, like those of a child

heated by a favourite game.

I made several apoplectic efforts to rise, but the servant was on top of

me so heavily that Greenwood could afford to leave me to him. He turned

quickly to come to reinforce the two who were mastering Basil. The

latter's head was already sinking lower and lower, like a leaking ship,

as his enemies pressed him down. He flung up one hand just as I thought

him falling and hung on to a huge tome in the bookcase, a volume, I

afterwards discovered, of St Chrysostom's theology. Just as Greenwood

bounded across the room towards the group, Basil plucked the ponderous

tome bodily out of the shelf, swung it, and sent it spinning through the

air, so that it struck Greenwood flat in the face and knocked him over

like a rolling ninepin. At the same instant Basil's stiffness broke, and

he sank, his enemies closing over him.

Rupert's head was clear, but his body shaken; he was hanging as best he

could on to the half-prostrate Greenwood. They were rolling over each

other on the floor, both somewhat enfeebled by their falls, but Rupert

certainly the more so. I was still successfully held down. The floor

was a sea of torn and trampled papers and magazines, like an immense

waste-paper basket. Burrows and his companion were almost up to the

knees in them, as in a drift of dead leaves. And Greenwood had his leg

stuck right through a sheet of the Pall Mall Gazette, which clung to it

ludicrously, like some fantastic trouser frill.

Basil, shut from me in a human prison, a prison of powerful bodies,

might be dead for all I knew. I fancied, however, that the broad back of

Mr Burrows, which was turned towards me, had a certain bend of effort in

it as if my friend still needed some holding down. Suddenly that broad

back swayed hither and thither. It was swaying on one leg; Basil,

somehow, had hold of the other. Burrows' huge fists and those of the

footman were battering Basil's sunken head like an anvil, but nothing

could get the giant's ankle out of his sudden and savage grip. While his

own head was forced slowly down in darkness and great pain, the right

leg of his captor was being forced in the air. Burrows swung to and

fro with a purple face. Then suddenly the floor and the walls and the

ceiling shook together, as the colossus fell, all his length seeming to

fill the floor. Basil sprang up with dancing eyes, and with three blows

like battering-rams knocked the footman into a cocked hat. Then he

sprang on top of Burrows, with one antimacassar in his hand and another

in his teeth, and bound him hand and foot almost before he knew clearly

that his head had struck the floor. Then Basil sprang at Greenwood, whom

Rupert was struggling to hold down, and between them they secured him

easily. The man who had hold of me let go and turned to his rescue, but

I leaped up like a spring released, and, to my infinite satisfaction,

knocked the fellow down. The other footman, bleeding at the mouth

and quite demoralized, was stumbling out of the room. My late captor,

without a word, slunk after him, seeing that the battle was won.

Rupert was sitting astride the pinioned Mr Greenwood, Basil astride the

pinioned Mr Burrows.

To my surprise the latter gentleman, lying bound on his back, spoke in a

perfectly calm voice to the man who sat on top of him.

“And now, gentlemen,” he said, “since you have got your own way, perhaps

you wouldn't mind telling us what the deuce all this is?”

“This,” said Basil, with a radiant face, looking down at his captive,

“this is what we call the survival of the fittest.”

Rupert, who had been steadily collecting himself throughout the latter

phases of the fight, was intellectually altogether himself again at the

end of it. Springing up from the prostrate Greenwood, and knotting a

handkerchief round his left hand, which was bleeding from a blow, he

sang out quite coolly:

“Basil, will you mount guard over the captive of your bow and spear and

antimacassar? Swinburne and I will clear out the prison downstairs.”

“All right,” said Basil, rising also and seating himself in a leisured

way in an armchair. “Don't hurry for us,” he said, glancing round at the

litter of the room, “we have all the illustrated papers.”

Rupert lurched thoughtfully out of the room, and I followed him even

more slowly; in fact, I lingered long enough to hear, as I passed

through the room, the passages and the kitchen stairs, Basil's voice

continuing conversationally:

“And now, Mr Burrows,” he said, settling himself sociably in the chair,

“there's no reason why we shouldn't go on with that amusing argument.

I'm sorry that you have to express yourself lying on your back on the

floor, and, as I told you before, I've no more notion why you are there

than the man in the moon. A conversationalist like yourself, however,

can scarcely be seriously handicapped by any bodily posture. You were

saying, if I remember right, when this incidental fracas occurred, that

the rudiments of science might with advantage be made public.”

“Precisely,” said the large man on the floor in an easy tone. “I hold

that nothing more than a rough sketch of the universe as seen by science

can be...”

And here the voices died away as we descended into the basement. I

noticed that Mr Greenwood did not join in the amicable controversy.

Strange as it may appear, I think he looked back upon our proceedings

with a slight degree of resentment. Mr Burrows, however, was all

philosophy and chattiness. We left them, as I say, together, and sank

deeper and deeper into the under-world of that mysterious house, which,

perhaps, appeared to us somewhat more Tartarean than it really was,

owing to our knowledge of its semi-criminal mystery and of the human

secret locked below.

The basement floor had several doors, as is usual in such a house; doors

that would naturally lead to the kitchen, the scullery, the pantry,

the servants' hall, and so on. Rupert flung open all the doors with

indescribable rapidity. Four out of the five opened on entirely empty

apartments. The fifth was locked. Rupert broke the door in like a

bandbox, and we fell into the sudden blackness of the sealed, unlighted

room.

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

abyss:

“Whoever you are, come out. You are free. The people who held you

captive are captives themselves. We heard you crying and we came to

deliver you. We have bound your enemies upstairs hand and foot. You are

free.”

For some seconds after he had spoken into the darkness there was a dead

silence in it. Then there came a kind of muttering and moaning. We might

easily have taken it for the wind or rats if we had not happened to have

heard it before. It was unmistakably the voice of the imprisoned woman,

drearily demanding liberty, just as we had heard her demand it.

“Has anybody got a match?” said Rupert grimly. “I fancy we have come

pretty near the end of this business.”

I struck a match and held it up. It revealed a large, bare,

yellow-papered apartment with a dark-clad figure at the other end of

it near the window. An instant after it burned my fingers and dropped,

leaving darkness. It had, however, revealed something more practical--an

iron gas bracket just above my head. I struck another match and lit the

gas. And we found ourselves suddenly and seriously in the presence of

the captive.

At a sort of workbox in the window of this subterranean breakfast-room

sat an elderly lady with a singularly high colour and almost startling

silver hair. She had, as if designedly to relieve these effects, a pair

of Mephistophelian black eyebrows and a very neat black dress. The glare

of the gas lit up her piquant hair and face perfectly against the brown

background of the shutters. The background was blue and not brown in one

place; at the place where Rupert's knife had torn a great opening in the

wood about an hour before.

“Madam,” said he, advancing with a gesture of the hat, “permit me

to have the pleasure of announcing to you that you are free. Your

complaints happened to strike our ears as we passed down the street, and

we have therefore ventured to come to your rescue.”

The old lady with the red face and the black eyebrows looked at us for

a moment with something of the apoplectic stare of a parrot. Then she

said, with a sudden gust or breathing of relief:

“Rescue? Where is Mr Greenwood? Where is Mr Burrows? Did you say you had

rescued me?”

“Yes, madam,” said Rupert, with a beaming condescension. “We have very

satisfactorily dealt with Mr Greenwood and Mr Burrows. We have settled

affairs with them very satisfactorily.”

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

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

“We persuaded them, my dear madam,” said Rupert, laughing, “by knocking

them down and tying them up. But what is the matter?”

To the surprise of every one the old lady walked slowly back to her seat

by the window.

“Do I understand,” she said, with the air of a person about to begin

knitting, “that you have knocked down Mr Burrows and tied him up?”

“We have,” said Rupert proudly; “we have resisted their oppression and

conquered it.”

“Oh, thanks,” answered the old lady, and sat down by the window.

A considerable pause followed.

“The road is quite clear for you, madam,” said Rupert pleasantly.

The old lady rose, cocking her black eyebrows and her silver crest at us

for an instant.

“But what about Greenwood and Burrows?” she said. “What did I understand

you to say had become of them?”

“They are lying on the floor upstairs,” said Rupert, chuckling. “Tied

hand and foot.”

“Well, that settles it,” said the old lady, coming with a kind of bang

into her seat again, “I must stop where I am.”

Rupert looked bewildered.

“Stop where you are?” he said. “Why should you stop any longer where you

are? What power can force you now to stop in this miserable cell?”

“The question rather is,” said the old lady, with composure, “what power

can force me to go anywhere else?”

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

At last I said, “Do you really mean to say that we are to leave you

here?”

“I suppose you don't intend to tie me up,” she said, “and carry me off?

I certainly shall not go otherwise.”

“But, my dear madam,” cried out Rupert, in a radiant exasperation, “we

heard you with our own ears crying because you could not get out.”

“Eavesdroppers often hear rather misleading things,” replied the captive

grimly. “I suppose I did break down a bit and lose my temper and talk to

myself. But I have some sense of honour for all that.”

“Some sense of honour?” repeated Rupert, and the last light of

intelligence died out of his face, leaving it the face of an idiot with

rolling eyes.

He moved vaguely towards the door and I followed. But I turned yet once

more in the toils of my conscience and curiosity. “Can we do nothing for

you, madam?” I said forlornly.

“Why,” said the lady, “if you are particularly anxious to do me a little

favour you might untie the gentlemen upstairs.”

Rupert plunged heavily up the kitchen staircase, shaking it with his

vague violence. With mouth open to speak he stumbled to the door of the

sitting-room and scene of battle.

“Theoretically speaking, that is no doubt true,” Mr Burrows was saying,

lying on his back and arguing easily with Basil; “but we must consider

the matter as it appears to our sense. The origin of morality...”

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

“Who won't come out?” asked Basil, a little cross at being interrupted

in an argument.

“The lady downstairs,” replied Rupert. “The lady who was locked up. She

won't come out. And she says that all she wants is for us to let these

fellows loose.”

“And a jolly sensible suggestion,” cried Basil, and with a bound he was

on top of the prostrate Burrows once more and was unknotting his bonds

with hands and teeth.

“A brilliant idea. Swinburne, just undo Mr Greenwood.”

In a dazed and automatic way I released the little gentleman in the

purple jacket, who did not seem to regard any of the proceedings as

particularly sensible or brilliant. The gigantic Burrows, on the other

hand, was heaving with herculean laughter.

“Well,” said Basil, in his cheeriest way, “I think we must be getting

away. We've so much enjoyed our evening. Far too much regard for you to

stand on ceremony. If I may so express myself, we've made ourselves at

home. Good night. Thanks so much. Come along, Rupert.”

“Basil,” said Rupert desperately, “for God's sake come and see what you

can make of the woman downstairs. I can't get the discomfort out of my

mind. I admit that things look as if we had made a mistake. But these

gentlemen won't mind perhaps...”

“No, no,” cried Burrows, with a sort of Rabelaisian uproariousness. “No,

no, look in the pantry, gentlemen. Examine the coal-hole. Make a tour of

the chimneys. There are corpses all over the house, I assure you.”

This adventure of ours was destined to differ in one respect from others

which I have narrated. I had been through many wild days with Basil

Grant, days for the first half of which the sun and the moon seemed to

have gone mad. But it had almost invariably happened that towards the

end of the day and its adventure things had cleared themselves like the

sky after rain, and a luminous and quiet meaning had gradually dawned

upon me. But this day's work was destined to end in confusion worse

confounded. Before we left that house, ten minutes afterwards, one

half-witted touch was added which rolled all our minds in cloud. If

Rupert's head had suddenly fallen off on the floor, if wings had begun

to sprout out of Greenwood's shoulders, we could scarcely have been more

suddenly stricken. And yet of this we had no explanation. We had to go

to bed that night with the prodigy and get up next morning with it and

let 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 explained. For the present I only state what happened.

When all five of us went down the kitchen stairs again, Rupert leading,

the two hosts bringing up the rear, we found the door of the 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 offered. 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 lighting up his strong face and figure. His

face wore an expression indescribably conscious, with the suspicion 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, 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.”

“No 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 joviality. “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 is proved by one of the

most unmistakable symbols--hunger. We are too late for the theatre in

Sloane Square. But we are not too late for the restaurant. Here comes

the green omnibus!” and he had leaped on it before we could speak.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As I said, it was months after that Rupert Grant suddenly entered my

room, swinging a satchel in his hand and with a general air of having

jumped over the garden wall, and implored me to go with him upon the

latest and wildest of his expeditions. He proposed to himself no less

a thing than the discovery of the actual origin, whereabouts, and

headquarters of the source of all our joys and sorrows--the Club of

Queer Trades. I should expand this story for ever if I explained how

ultimately we ran this strange entity to its lair. The process meant a

hundred interesting things. The tracking of a member, the bribing of

a cabman, the fighting of roughs, the lifting of a paving stone, the

finding of a cellar, the finding of a cellar below the cellar, the

finding of the subterranean passage, the finding of the Club of Queer

Trades.

I have had many strange experiences in my life, but never a stranger

one than that I felt when I came out of those rambling, sightless, and

seemingly hopeless passages into the sudden splendour of a sumptuous and

hospitable dining-room, surrounded upon almost every side by faces

that I knew. There was Mr Montmorency, the Arboreal House-Agent, seated

between the two brisk young men who were occasionally vicars, and always

Professional Detainers. There was Mr P. G. Northover, founder of the

Adventure and Romance Agency. There was Professor Chadd, who invented

the Dancing Language.

As we entered, all the members seemed to sink suddenly into their

chairs, and with the very action the vacancy of the presidential seat

gaped at us like a missing tooth.

“The president's not here,” said Mr P. G. Northover, turning suddenly to

Professor Chadd.

“N-no,” said the philosopher, with more than his ordinary vagueness. “I

can't imagine where he is.”

“Good heavens,” said Mr Montmorency, jumping up, “I really feel a little

nervous. I'll go and see.” And he ran out of the room.

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

“He's there, gentlemen--he's there all right--he's coming in now,”

he cried, and sat down. Rupert and I could hardly help feeling the

beginnings of a sort of wonder as to who this person might be who

was the first member of this insane brotherhood. Who, we thought

indistinctly, could be maddest in this world of madmen: what fantastic

was it whose shadow filled all these fantastics with so loyal an

expectation?

Suddenly we were answered. The door flew open and the room was filled

and shaken with a shout, in the midst of which Basil Grant, smiling and

in evening dress, took his seat at the head of the table.

How we ate that dinner I have no idea. In the common way I am a person

particularly prone to enjoy the long luxuriance of the club dinner. But

on this occasion it seemed a hopeless and endless string of courses.

Hors-d'oeuvre sardines seemed as big as herrings, soup seemed a sort

of ocean, larks were ducks, ducks were ostriches until that dinner was

over. The cheese course was maddening. I had often heard of the moon

being made of green cheese. That night I thought the green cheese was

made of the moon. And all the time Basil Grant went on laughing and

eating and drinking, and never threw one glance at us to tell us why he

was there, the king of these capering idiots.

At last came the moment which I knew must in some way enlighten us, the

time of the club speeches and the club toasts. Basil Grant rose to his

feet amid a surge of songs and cheers.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “it is a custom in this society that the

president for the year opens the proceedings not by any general toast

of sentiment, but by calling upon each member to give a brief account of

his trade. We then drink to that calling and to all who follow it. It

is my business, as the senior member, to open by stating my claim to

membership of this club. Years ago, gentlemen, I was a judge; I did my

best in that capacity to do justice and to administer the law. But it

gradually dawned on me that in my work, as it was, I was not touching

even the fringe of justice. I was seated in the seat of the mighty, I

was robed in scarlet and ermine; nevertheless, I held a small and lowly

and futile post. I had to go by a mean rule as much as a postman, and

my red and gold was worth no more than his. Daily there passed before me

taut and passionate problems, the stringency of which I had to pretend

to relieve by silly imprisonments or silly damages, while I knew all the

time, by the light of my living common sense, that they would have

been far better relieved by a kiss or a thrashing, or a few words of

explanation, or a duel, or a tour in the West Highlands. Then, as this

grew on me, there grew on me continuously the sense of a mountainous

frivolity. Every word said in the court, a whisper or an oath, seemed

more connected with life than the words I had to say. Then came the time

when I publicly blasphemed the whole bosh, was classed as a madman and

melted from public life.”

Something in the atmosphere told me that it was not only Rupert and I

who were listening with intensity to this statement.

“Well, I discovered that I could be of no real use. I offered myself

privately as a purely moral judge to settle purely moral differences.

Before very long these unofficial courts of honour (kept strictly

secret) had spread over the whole of society. People were tried before

me not for the practical trifles for which nobody cares, such as

committing a murder, or keeping a dog without a licence. My criminals

were tried for the faults which really make social life impossible. They

were tried before me for selfishness, or for an impossible vanity, or

for scandalmongering, or for stinginess to guests or dependents. Of

course these courts had no sort of real coercive powers. The fulfilment

of their punishments rested entirely on the honour of the ladies and

gentlemen involved, including the honour of the culprits. But you would

be amazed to know how completely our orders were always obeyed. Only

lately I had a most pleasing example. A maiden lady in South Kensington

whom I had condemned to solitary confinement for being the means of

breaking off an engagement through backbiting, absolutely refused

to leave her prison, although some well-meaning persons had been

inopportune enough to rescue her.”

Rupert Grant was staring at his brother, his mouth fallen agape. So, for

the matter of that, I expect, was I. This, then, was the explanation of

the old lady's strange discontent and her still stranger content with

her lot. She was one of the culprits of his Voluntary Criminal Court.

She was one of the clients of his Queer Trade.

We were still dazed when we drank, amid a crash of glasses, the health

of Basil's new judiciary. We had only a confused sense of everything

having been put right, the sense men will have when they come into the

presence of God. We dimly heard Basil say:

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

And we heard equally dimly Northover beginning the statement he had made

long ago to Major Brown. Thus our epic ended where it had begun, like a

true cycle.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Club of Queer Trades, by G. K. Chesterton