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
