第 一 章 · The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown
. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown
Rabelais, or his wild illustrator Gustave Dore, 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 Company in one of the great buildings in Norfolk Street,
and sent in a mild man in spectacles to answer inquiries, no inquiries
would be made. And the Club of Queer Trades reigns in a great edifice
hidden like a fossil in a mighty cliff 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 candidate
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
furniture 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 affair, said wittily and keenly) is the same. Secondly, the
trade must be a genuine commercial source of income, the support of its
inventor. Thus the Club would not receive a man simply because 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 realize that there were ten new 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 so 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 youth, I collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, perhaps,
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 misinterpreted; and the world shall know at last 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 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 welcome 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 powerful, 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 themselves 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 thrill was probably given when he said
to a man who had attempted a crime of passion: “I sentence you to
three years imprisonment, under the firm, and solemn, and God-given
conviction, that what you require is three months at the seaside.” He
accused criminals from the bench, not so much of their obvious legal
crimes, but of things that had never been heard of in a court of
justice, monstrous egoism, lack of humour, and morbidity deliberately
encouraged. Things came to a head in that celebrated diamond case in
which the Prime Minister himself, that brilliant patrician, had to come
forward, gracefully and reluctantly, to give evidence against his valet.
After the detailed life of the household had been thoroughly exhibited,
the judge requested the Premier again to step forward, which he did with
quiet dignity. The judge then said, in a sudden, grating voice: “Get a
new soul. That thing's not fit for a dog. Get a new soul.” All this, of
course, in the eyes of the sagacious, was premonitory of that melancholy
and farcical day when his wits actually deserted him in open court.
It was a libel case between two very eminent and powerful financiers,
against both of whom charges of considerable defalcation were brought.
The case was long and complex; the advocates were long and eloquent; but
at last, after weeks of work and rhetoric, the time came for the great
judge to give a summing-up; and one of his celebrated masterpieces of
lucidity and pulverizing logic was eagerly looked for. He had spoken
very little during the prolonged affair, and he looked sad and lowering
at the end of it. He was silent for a few moments, and then burst 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 dreamily,
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.
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 journalist, a house-agent, a naturalist,
an inventor, a publisher, a schoolmaster, a--what are you now, Rupert?”
“I am and have been for some time,” said Rupert, with some dignity, “a
private detective, and there's my client.”
A loud rap at the door had cut him short, and, on permission being
given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper 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 possibly.”
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 consisted 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 distinguished soldier, but he
was anything but a warlike person. Like many among the iron men who
recovered British India, he was a man with the natural beliefs and
tastes of an old maid. In his dress he was dapper and yet demure; in his
habits he was precise to the point of the exact adjustment of a tea-cup.
One enthusiasm he had, which was of the nature of a religion--the
cultivation of pansies. And when he talked about his collection, his
blue eyes glittered like a child's at a new toy, the eyes that had
remained untroubled when the troops were roaring victory round Roberts
at Candahar.
“Well, Major,” said Rupert Grant, with a lordly heartiness, flinging
himself into a chair, “what is the matter with you?”
“Yellow pansies. Coal-cellar. P. G. Northover,” said the Major, with
righteous indignation.
We glanced at each other with inquisitiveness. Basil, who had his eyes
shut in his abstracted way, said simply:
“I beg your pardon.”
“Fact is. Street, you know, man, pansies. On wall. Death to me.
Something. Preposterous.”
We shook our heads gently. Bit by bit, and mainly by the seemingly
sleepy assistance of Basil Grant, we pieced together the Major's
fragmentary, but excited narration. It would be infamous to submit the
reader to what we endured; therefore I will tell the story of Major
Brown in my own words. But the reader must imagine the scene. The eyes
of Basil closed as in a trance, after his habit, and the eyes of Rupert
and myself getting rounder and rounder as we listened to one of the
most astounding stories in the world, from the lips of the little man in
black, sitting bolt upright in his chair and talking like a telegram.
Major Brown was, I have said, a successful soldier, but by no means an
enthusiastic one. So far from regretting his retirement on half-pay,
it was with delight that he took a small neat villa, very like a doll's
house, and 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 adventure, such as he had never seen or
dreamed of in the horrible jungle, or the heat 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 altogether so in the Major's, for along the coarse
gravel footway was coming a thing which was to him what the passing of
a religious procession is to a devout person. A large, heavy man, with
fish-blue eyes and a ring of irradiating red beard, was pushing before
him a barrow, which was ablaze with incomparable flowers. There were
splendid specimens of almost every order, but the Major's own favourite
pansies predominated. The Major stopped and fell into conversation, and
then into bargaining. He treated the man after the manner of collectors
and other mad men, that is to say, he carefully and with a sort of
anguish selected the best roots from the less excellent, praised some,
disparaged others, made a subtle scale ranging from a thrilling worth
and rarity to a degraded insignificance, and then bought them all. The
man was just pushing off his barrow when he stopped and came close to
the Major.
“I'll tell you what, sir,” he said. “If you're interested in them
things, you just get on to that wall.”
“On the wall!” cried the scandalised Major, whose conventional soul
quailed within him at the thought of such fantastic trespass.
“Finest show of yellow pansies in England in that there garden, sir,”
hissed the tempter. “I'll help you up, sir.”
How it happened no one will ever know but that positive enthusiasm of
the Major's life triumphed over all its negative traditions, and with
an easy leap and swing that showed that he was in no need of physical
assistance, he stood on the wall at the end of the strange garden. The
second after, the flapping of the frock-coat at his knees made him feel
inexpressibly a fool. But the next instant all such trifling sentiments
were swallowed up by the most appalling shock of surprise the old
soldier had ever felt in all his bold and wandering existence. His eyes
fell upon the garden, and there across a large bed in the centre of the
lawn was a vast pattern of pansies; they were splendid flowers, but for
once it was not their horticultural aspects that Major Brown beheld, for
the pansies were arranged in gigantic capital letters so as to form the
sentence:
DEATH TO MAJOR BROWN
A kindly looking old man, with white whiskers, was watering them. Brown
looked sharply back at the road behind him; the man with the barrow had
suddenly vanished. Then he looked again at the lawn with its incredible
inscription. Another man might have thought he had gone mad, but Brown
did not. When romantic ladies gushed over his V.C. and his military
exploits, he sometimes felt himself to be a painfully prosaic person,
but by the same token he knew he was incurably sane. Another man, again,
might have thought himself a victim of a passing practical joke,
but Brown could not easily believe this. He knew from his own quaint
learning that the garden arrangement was an elaborate and expensive one;
he thought it extravagantly improbable that any one would pour out money
like water for a joke against him. Having no explanation whatever to
offer, he admitted the fact to himself, like a clear-headed man, and
waited as he would have done in the presence of a man with six legs.
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?” 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!”
“At your service,” said the Major, and alighted at a bound on the grass
beside him, without disarranging 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.”
“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 sprang 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.”
And even as she spoke, a sudden rending cry broke the stillness. From
low down on the pavement of the dim street (it was already twilight) a
voice cried out with a raucous 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 cloven 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 in a certain time to the
drawing-room. Scarcely had he done so than the terrific voice came:
“Major Brown, Major Brown, where did--”
Brown was in the street almost at a bound, and he was in time--in
time to see something which at first glance froze the blood. The cries
appeared to come from a decapitated head resting on the pavement.
The next moment the pale Major understood. It was the head of a man
thrust through the coal-hole in the street. The next moment, again,
it had vanished, and Major Brown turned to the lady. “Where's your
coal-cellar?” 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?” 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 suffocating darkness, 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 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?”
“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 tomorrow.
The coal-cellar, of course.
Yours faithfully, P. G. Northover.
Rupert Grant was leaning forward listening with hawk-like eyes. He cut
in:
“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? 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?” 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 his blue bright 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 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-off
animals, “how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly--in fact, I'm
off my head--but I never could believe in that man--what's his name,
in those 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?”
“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?”
“I haven't the vaguest idea.”
“Then why don't you accept the ordinary explanation?”
Basil continued for a little to glare at the coals, and seemed
collecting his thoughts in a humble and even painful way. Then he said:
“Suppose you went out into the moonlight. Suppose 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 disguised. And suppose you looked again, and saw it was
Lord Kitchener. What would you think?”
He paused a moment, and went on:
“You could not adopt the ordinary explanation. The ordinary explanation
of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice in them; 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 seance; 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 tentatively, is, in all probability, a little casual in his moral
tastes. Can I have that revolver?”
“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 Embankment 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 contrast to the hound-like stoop
and flapping mantle of young Rupert Grant, who adopted, with childlike
delight, all the dramatic poses of the detective of fiction. The finest
among his many fine qualities was his boyish appetite for the colour and
poetry of London. Basil, who walked behind, with his face turned blindly
to the stars, had the look of a somnambulist.
Rupert paused at the corner of Tanner's Court, with a quiver of delight
at danger, and gripped Basil's revolver in his great-coat pocket.
“Shall we go in now?” he asked.
“Not get police?” asked Major Brown, 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?”
“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 confounded, 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 ruffians--”
“But I shouldn't call the police,” said Basil. “We four heroes are quite
equal to a host,” and he continued to quake with his 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 I say 'Four', follow me with a rush.
If I say 'Hold him', pin the fellows down, whoever they are. If I say
'Stop', stop. I shall say that if there are more than three. If
they attack us I shall empty my revolver on them. Basil, have your
sword-stick ready. Now--one, two, three, four!”
With the sound of the word the door burst open, and we fell into the
room like an invasion, only to stop dead.
The room, which was an ordinary and neatly appointed office, appeared,
at the first glance, to be empty. But on a second and more careful
glance, we saw seated behind a very large desk with pigeonholes and
drawers of bewildering multiplicity, a small man with a black waxed
moustache, and the air of a very average clerk, writing hard. He looked
up as we came to a standstill.
“Did you knock?” he asked pleasantly. “I am sorry if I did not hear.
What can I do for you?”
There was a doubtful pause, and then, by general consent, the Major
himself, the victim of the outrage, stepped forward.
The letter was in his hand, and he looked unusually grim.
“Is your name P. G. Northover?” he asked.
“That is my name,” replied the other, smiling.
“I think,” said Major Brown, with an increase in the dark glow of his
face, “that this letter was written by you.” And with a loud clap he
struck open the letter on the desk with his clenched fist. The man
called Northover looked at it with unaffected interest and merely
nodded.
“Well, sir,” said the Major, breathing hard, “what about that?”
“What about it, precisely,” said the man 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?”
“Say!” cried the Major, loosing a sudden tempest; “why, I want this
confounded thing settled. I want--”
“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.
“Mr Hopson,” said Northover, “this is Major Brown. Will you please
finish that thing for him I gave you this morning and bring it in?”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr Hopson, and vanished like lightning.
“You will excuse me, gentlemen,” said the egregious Northover, 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
tomorrow. And we all like a whiff of the country, don't we? Ha! ha!”
The criminal took up his pen with a childlike 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.
At length the scratching of Northover's pen in the stillness was mingled
with a knock at the door, almost simultaneous with the turning of the
handle, and Mr Hopson came in again with the same silent rapidity,
placed a paper before his principal, and disappeared again.
The man at the desk pulled and twisted his spiky moustache for a few
moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented to him.
He took up his pen, with a slight, instantaneous frown, and altered
something, muttering--“Careless.” Then he read it again with the same
impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it to the frantic Brown,
whose hand was beating the devil's tattoo on the back of the chair.
“I think you will find that all right, Major,” he said briefly.
The Major looked at it; whether he found it all right or not will appear
later, but he found it like this:
Major Brown to P. G. Northover. £ s. d.
January 1, to account rendered 5 6 0
May 9, to potting and embedding of 200 pansies 2 0 0
To cost of trolley with flowers 0 15 0
To hiring of man with trolley 0 5 0
To hire of house and garden for one day 1 0 0
To furnishing of room in peacock curtains, copper ornaments, etc. 3 0 0
To salary of Miss Jameson 1 0 0
To salary of Mr Plover 1 0 0
----------
Total L14 6 0
A Remittance will oblige.
“What,” said Brown, after a dead pause, and with eyes that seemed slowly
rising out of his head, “What in heaven's name is this?”
“What is it?” repeated Northover, cocking his eyebrow with amusement.
“It's your account, of course.”
“My account!” The Major's ideas appeared to be in a vague stampede. “My
account! And what have I got to do with it?”
“Well,” said Northover, laughing outright, “naturally I prefer you to
pay it.”
The Major's hand was still resting on the back of the chair as the words
came. He scarcely stirred otherwise, but he lifted the chair bodily into
the air with one hand and hurled it at Northover's head.
The legs crashed against the desk, so that Northover only got a blow on
the elbow as he sprang up with clenched fists, only to be seized by the
united rush of the rest of us. The chair had fallen clattering on the
empty floor.
“Let me go, you scamps,” he shouted. “Let me--”
“Stand still,” cried Rupert authoritatively. “Major Brown's action is
excusable. The abominable crime you have attempted--”
“A customer has a perfect right,” said Northover hotly, “to question an
alleged overcharge, but, confound it all, not to throw furniture.”
“What, in God's name, do you mean by your customers and overcharges?”
shrieked Major Brown, whose keen feminine nature, steady in pain
or danger, became almost hysterical in the presence of a long 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; “all of them mad. I didn't
know they travelled in quartettes.”
“Enough of this prevarication,” said Rupert; “your crimes are
discovered. A policeman is stationed at the corner of the court. 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?”
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.”
“And when did the house change hands?” said 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 metaphysical brains out, tell me what all this means.”
Northover rose.
“Permit me, sir, to explain,” he said. “And, first of all, permit me to
apologize to you, Major Brown, for a most abominable and 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. “What bill? what blunder? what loss?”
Mr P. G. Northover advanced in the centre of the room, thoughtfully, and
with a great deal of unconscious dignity. On closer consideration,
there were apparent about him other things beside a screwed moustache,
especially a lean, sallow face, hawk-like, and not without a careworn
intelligence. Then he looked up abruptly.
“Do you know where you are, Major?” he said.
“God knows I don't,” said the warrior, 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, feel the utter hunger for something to
happen--something, 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?”
“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 surround him with startling and weird events. As a 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 vortex 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 consider 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 predecessor 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?” 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 leaping from wall to wall, of fighting strange gentlemen,
of running down long streets from pursuers--all healthy and pleasant
exercises. We give him a glimpse of that great morning world of Robin
Hood or the Knights Errant, when one great game was played under the
splendid sky. We give him back his childhood, that godlike time when we
can act stories, be our own heroes, and at the same instant dance and
dream.”
Basil gazed at him curiously. The most singular psychological discovery
had been reserved to the end, for as the little business man ceased
speaking he had the blazing eyes of a fanatic.
Major Brown received the explanation with complete simplicity and good
humour.
“Of course; awfully dense, sir,” he said. “No doubt at all, the scheme
excellent. But I don't think--” He paused a moment, and looked dreamily
out of the window. “I don't think you will find me in it. Somehow, when
one's seen--seen the thing itself, you know--blood and men screaming,
one feels about having a little house and a little hobby; in the Bible,
you know, 'There remaineth a rest'.”
Northover bowed. Then after a pause he said:
“Gentlemen, may I offer you my card. If any of the rest of you desire,
at any time, to communicate with me, despite Major Brown's view of the
matter--”
“I should be obliged for your card, sir,” said the Major, in his abrupt
but courteous voice. “Pay for chair.”
The agent of Romance and Adventure handed his card, laughing.
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?” returned Northover. “Haven't you ever heard of the
Club of Queer Trades?”
“There seems to be a confounded lot of funny things we haven't heard
of,” said the little Major reflectively. “What's this one?”
“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
somewhat absurd inquiry.
“What! back again, Major?” cried Northover in surprise. “What can I do
for you?”
The Major shuffled feverishly into the room.
“It's 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?”
“Yes,” said the Major. “'Jackals', 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 understand--”
“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.
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 intellectualized 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 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,
perhaps, 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 recognizes 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 realize
the rest of those purple adventures in a better world.