“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