The Club of Queer Trades

Ch. 2: The Painful Fall of a Great Reputation

Basil Grant and I were talking one day in what is perhaps the most

perfect place for talking on earth--the top of a tolerably deserted

tramcar. To talk on the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the

top of a flying hill is a fairy tale.

The vast blank space of North London was flying by; the very pace

gave us a sense of its immensity and its meanness. It was, as it

were, a base infinitude, a squalid eternity, and we felt the real

horror of the poor parts of London, the horror that is so totally

missed and misrepresented by the sensational novelists who depict

it as being a matter of narrow streets, filthy houses, criminals

and maniacs, and dens of vice. In a narrow street, in a den of

vice, you do not expect civilization, you do not expect order. But

the horror of this was the fact that there was civilization, that

there was order, but that civilisation only showed its morbidity,

and order only its monotony. No one would say, in going through a

criminal slum, "I see no statues. I notice no cathedrals." But here

there were public buildings; only they were mostly lunatic asylums.

Here there were statues; only they were mostly statues of railway

engineers and philanthropists--two dingy classes of men united by

their common contempt for the people. Here there were churches;

only they were the churches of dim and erratic sects, Agapemonites

or Irvingites. Here, above all, there were broad roads and vast

crossings and tramway lines and hospitals and all the real marks of

civilization. But though one never knew, in one sense, what one

would see next, there was one thing we knew we should not

see--anything really great, central, of the first class, anything

that humanity had adored. And with revulsion indescribable our

emotions returned, I think, to those really close and crooked

entries, to those really mean streets, to those genuine slums which

lie round the Thames and the City, in which nevertheless a real

possibility remains that at any chance corner the great cross of

the great cathedral of Wren may strike down the street like a

thunderbolt.

"But you must always remember also," said Grant to me, in his heavy

abstracted way, when I had urged this view, "that the very vileness

of the life of these ordered plebeian places bears witness to the

victory of the human soul. I agree with you. I agree that they have

to live in something worse than barbarism. They have to live in a

fourth-rate civilization. But yet I am practically certain that the

majority of people here are good people. And being good is an

adventure far more violent and daring than sailing round the world.

Besides--"

"Go on," I said.

No answer came.

"Go on," I said, looking up.

The big blue eyes of Basil Grant were standing out of his head and

he was paying no attention to me. He was staring over the side of

the tram.

"What is the matter?" I asked, peering over also.

"It is very odd," said Grant at last, grimly, "that I should have

been caught out like this at the very moment of my optimism. I said

all these people were good, and there is the wickedest man in

England."

"Where?" I asked, leaning over further, "where?"

"Oh, I was right enough," he went on, in that strange continuous

and sleepy tone which always angered his hearers at acute moments,

"I was right enough when I said all these people were good. They

are heroes; they are saints. Now and then they may perhaps steal a

spoon or two; they may beat a wife or two with the poker. But they

are saints all the same; they are angels; they are robed in white;

they are clad with wings and haloes--at any rate compared to that

man."

"Which man?" I cried again, and then my eye caught the figure at

which Basil's bull's eyes were glaring.

He was a slim, smooth person, passing very quickly among the

quickly passing crowd, but though there was nothing about him

sufficient to attract a startled notice, there was quite enough to

demand a curious consideration when once that notice was attracted.

He wore a black top-hat, but there was enough in it of those

strange curves whereby the decadent artist of the eighties tried to

turn the top-hat into something as rhythmic as an Etruscan vase.

His hair, which was largely grey, was curled with the instinct of

one who appreciated the gradual beauty of grey and silver. The rest

of his face was oval and, I thought, rather Oriental; he had two

black tufts of moustache.

"What has he done?" I asked.

"I am not sure of the details," said Grant, "but his besetting sin

is a desire to intrigue to the disadvantage of others. Probably he

has adopted some imposture or other to effect his plan."

"What plan?" I asked. "If you know all about him, why don't you

tell me why he is the wickedest man in England? What is his name?"

Basil Grant stared at me for some moments.

"I think you've made a mistake in my meaning," he said. "I don't

know his name. I never saw him before in my life."

"Never saw him before!" I cried, with a kind of anger; "then what

in heaven's name do you mean by saying that he is the wickedest man

in England?"

"I meant what I said," said Basil Grant calmly. "The moment I saw

that man, I saw all these people stricken with a sudden and

splendid innocence. I saw that while all ordinary poor men in the

streets were being themselves, he was not being himself. I saw that

all the men in these slums, cadgers, pickpockets, hooligans, are

all, in the deepest sense, trying to be good. And I saw that that

man was trying to be evil."

"But if you never saw him before--" I began.

"In God's name, look at his face," cried out Basil in a voice that

startled the driver. "Look at the eyebrows. They mean that infernal

pride which made Satan so proud that he sneered even at heaven when

he was one of the first angels in it. Look at his moustaches, they

are so grown as to insult humanity. In the name of the sacred

heavens look at his hair. In the name of God and the stars, look at

his hat."

I stirred uncomfortably.

"But, after all," I said, "this is very fanciful--perfectly absurd.

Look at the mere facts. You have never seen the man before, you--"

"Oh, the mere facts," he cried out in a kind of despair. "The mere

facts! Do you really admit--are you still so sunk in superstitions,

so clinging to dim and prehistoric altars, that you believe in

facts? Do you not trust an immediate impression?"

"Well, an immediate impression may be," I said, "a little less

practical than facts."

"Bosh," he said. "On what else is the whole world run but immediate

impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of

this world may be founded on facts, its business is run on

spiritual impressions and atmospheres. Why do you refuse or accept

a clerk? Do you measure his skull? Do you read up his physiological

state in a handbook? Do you go upon facts at all? Not a scrap. You

accept a clerk who may save your business--you refuse a clerk that

may rob your till, entirely upon those immediate mystical

impressions under the pressure of which I pronounce, with a perfect

sense of certainty and sincerity, that that man walking in that

street beside us is a humbug and a villain of some kind."

"You always put things well," I said, "but, of course, such things

cannot immediately be put to the test."

Basil sprang up straight and swayed with the swaying car.

"Let us get off and follow him," he said. "I bet you five pounds

it will turn out as I say."

And with a scuttle, a jump, and a run, we were off the car.

The man with the curved silver hair and the curved Eastern face

walked along for some time, his long splendid frock-coat flying

behind him. Then he swung sharply out of the great glaring road

and disappeared down an ill-lit alley. We swung silently after

him.

"This is an odd turning for a man of that kind to take," I said.

"A man of what kind?" asked my friend.

"Well," I said, "a man with that kind of expression and those

boots. I thought it rather odd, to tell the truth, that he should

be in this part of the world at all."

"Ah, yes," said Basil, and said no more.

We tramped on, looking steadily in front of us. The elegant

figure, like the figure of a black swan, was silhouetted suddenly

against the glare of intermittent gaslight and then swallowed

again in night. The intervals between the lights were long, and a

fog was thickening the whole city. Our pace, therefore, had become

swift and mechanical between the lamp-posts; but Basil came to a

standstill suddenly like a reined horse; I stopped also. We had

almost run into the man. A great part of the solid darkness in

front of us was the darkness of his body.

At first I thought he had turned to face us. But though we were

hardly a yard off he did not realize that we were there. He tapped

four times on a very low and dirty door in the dark, crabbed

street. A gleam of gas cut the darkness as it opened slowly. We

listened intently, but the interview was short and simple and

inexplicable as an interview could be. Our exquisite friend handed

in what looked like a paper or a card and said:

"At once. Take a cab."

A heavy, deep voice from inside said:

"Right you are."

And with a click we were in the blackness again, and striding

after the striding stranger through a labyrinth of London lanes,

the lights just helping us. It was only five o'clock, but winter

and the fog had made it like midnight.

"This is really an extraordinary walk for the patent-leather

boots," I repeated.

"I don't know," said Basil humbly. "It leads to Berkeley Square."

As I tramped on I strained my eyes through the dusky atmosphere

and tried to make out the direction described. For some ten

minutes I wondered and doubted; at the end of that I saw that

my friend was right. We were coming to the great dreary spaces

of fashionable London--more dreary, one must admit, even than

the dreary plebeian spaces.

"This is very extraordinary!" said Basil Grant, as we turned into

Berkeley Square.

"What is extraordinary?" I asked. "I thought you said it was quite

natural."

"I do not wonder," answered Basil, "at his walking through nasty

streets; I do not wonder at his going to Berkeley Square. But I do

wonder at his going to the house of a very good man."

"What very good man?" I asked with exasperation.

"The operation of time is a singular one," he said with his

imperturbable irrelevancy. "It is not a true statement of the case

to say that I have forgotten my career when I was a judge and a

public man. I remember it all vividly, but it is like remembering

some novel. But fifteen years ago I knew this square as well as

Lord Rosebery does, and a confounded long sight better than that

man who is going up the steps of old Beaumont's house."

"Who is old Beaumont?" I asked irritably.

"A perfectly good fellow. Lord Beaumont of Foxwood--don't you know

his name? He is a man of transparent sincerity, a nobleman who

does more work than a navvy, a socialist, an anarchist, I don't

know what; anyhow, he's a philosopher and philanthropist. I admit

he has the slight disadvantage of being, beyond all question, off

his head. He has that real disadvantage which has arisen out of

the modern worship of progress and novelty; and he thinks anything

odd and new must be an advance. If you went to him and proposed to

eat your grandmother, he would agree with you, so long as you put

it on hygienic and public grounds, as a cheap alternative to

cremation. So long as you progress fast enough it seems a matter

of indifference to him whether you are progressing to the stars or

the devil. So his house is filled with an endless succession of

literary and political fashions; men who wear long hair because it

is romantic; men who wear short hair because it is medical; men

who walk on their feet only to exercise their hands; and men who

walk on their hands for fear of tiring their feet. But though the

inhabitants of his salons are generally fools, like himself, they

are almost always, like himself, good men. I am really surprised

to see a criminal enter there."

"My good fellow," I said firmly, striking my foot on the pavement,

"the truth of this affair is very simple. To use your own eloquent

language, you have the `slight disadvantage' of being off your

head. You see a total stranger in a public street; you choose to

start certain theories about his eyebrows. You then treat him as a

burglar because he enters an honest man's door. The thing is too

monstrous. Admit that it is, Basil, and come home with me. Though

these people are still having tea, yet with the distance we have to

go, we shall be late for dinner."

Basil's eyes were shining in the twilight like lamps.

"I thought," he said, "that I had outlived vanity."

"What do you want now?" I cried.

"I want," he cried out, "what a girl wants when she wears her new

frock; I want what a boy wants when he goes in for a clanging match

with a monitor--I want to show somebody what a fine fellow I am. I

am as right about that man as I am about your having a hat on your

head. You say it cannot be tested. I say it can. I will take you to

see my old friend Beaumont. He is a delightful man to know."

"Do you really mean--?" I began.

"I will apologize," he said calmly, "for our not being dressed

for a call," and walking across the vast misty square, he walked

up the dark stone steps and rang at the bell.

A severe servant in black and white opened the door to us: on

receiving my friend's name his manner passed in a flash from

astonishment to respect. We were ushered into the house very

quickly, but not so quickly but that our host, a white-haired

man with a fiery face, came out quickly to meet us.

"My dear fellow," he cried, shaking Basil's hand again and again,

"I have not seen you for years. Have you been--er--" he said,

rather wildly, "have you been in the country?"

"Not for all that time," answered Basil, smiling. "I have long

given up my official position, my dear Philip, and have been

living in a deliberate retirement. I hope I do not come at an

inopportune moment."

"An inopportune moment," cried the ardent gentleman. "You come at

the most opportune moment I could imagine. Do you know who is

here?"

"I do not," answered Grant, with gravity. Even as he spoke a roar

of laughter came from the inner room.

"Basil," said Lord Beaumont solemnly, "I have Wimpole here."

"And who is Wimpole?"

"Basil," cried the other, "you must have been in the country.

You must have been in the antipodes. You must have been in the

moon. Who is Wimpole? Who was Shakespeare?"

"As to who Shakespeare was," answered my friend placidly, "my views

go no further than thinking that he was not Bacon. More probably he

was Mary Queen of Scots. But as to who Wimpole is--" and his speech

also was cloven with a roar of laughter from within.

"Wimpole!" cried Lord Beaumont, in a sort of ecstasy. "Haven't

you heard of the great modern wit? My dear fellow, he has turned

conversation, I do not say into an art--for that, perhaps, it

always was but into a great art, like the statuary of Michael

Angelo--an art of masterpieces. His repartees, my good friend,

startle one like a man shot dead. They are final; they are--"

Again there came the hilarious roar from the room, and almost with

the very noise of it, a big, panting apoplectic old gentleman came

out of the inner house into the hall where we were standing.

"Now, my dear chap," began Lord Beaumont hastily.

"I tell you, Beaumont, I won't stand it," exploded the large old

gentleman. "I won't be made game of by a twopenny literary

adventurer like that. I won't be made a guy. I won't--"

"Come, come," said Beaumont feverishly. "Let me introduce you.

This is Mr Justice Grant--that is, Mr Grant. Basil, I am sure you

have heard of Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh."

"Who has not?" asked Grant, and bowed to the worthy old baronet,

eyeing him with some curiosity. He was hot and heavy in his

momentary anger, but even that could not conceal the noble though

opulent outline of his face and body, the florid white hair, the

Roman nose, the body stalwart though corpulent, the chin

aristocratic though double. He was a magnificent courtly gentleman;

so much of a gentleman that he could show an unquestionable

weakness of anger without altogether losing dignity; so much of a

gentleman that even his faux pas were well-bred.

"I am distressed beyond expression, Beaumont," he said gruffly,

"to fail in respect to these gentlemen, and even more especially

to fail in it in your house. But it is not you or they that are

in any way concerned, but that flashy half-caste jackanapes--"

At this moment a young man with a twist of red moustache and a

sombre air came out of the inner room. He also did not seem to be

greatly enjoying the intellectual banquet within.

"I think you remember my friend and secretary, Mr Drummond," said

Lord Beaumont, turning to Grant, "even if you only remember him as

a schoolboy."

"Perfectly," said the other. Mr Drummond shook hands pleasantly

and respectfully, but the cloud was still on his brow. Turning to

Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh, he said:

"I was sent by Lady Beaumont to express her hope that you were not

going yet, Sir Walter. She says she has scarcely seen anything of

you."

The old gentleman, still red in the face, had a temporary internal

struggle; then his good manners triumphed, and with a gesture of

obeisance and a vague utterance of, "If Lady Beaumont . . . a lady,

of course," he followed the young man back into the salon. He had

scarcely been deposited there half a minute before another peal of

laughter told that he had (in all probability) been scored off

again.

"Of course, I can excuse dear old Cholmondeliegh," said Beaumont,

as he helped us off with our coats. "He has not the modern mind."

"What is the modern mind?" asked Grant.

"Oh, it's enlightened, you know, and progressive--and faces the

facts of life seriously." At this moment another roar of laughter

came from within.

"I only ask," said Basil, "because of the last two friends of yours

who had the modern mind; one thought it wrong to eat fishes and the

other thought it right to eat men. I beg your pardon--this way, if

I remember right."

"Do you know," said Lord Beaumont, with a sort of feverish

entertainment, as he trotted after us towards the interior, "I can

never quite make out which side you are on. Sometimes you seem so

liberal and sometimes so reactionary. Are you a modern, Basil?"

"No," said Basil, loudly and cheerfully, as he entered the crowded

drawing-room.

This caused a slight diversion, and some eyes were turned away

from our slim friend with the Oriental face for the first time

that afternoon. Two people, however, still looked at him. One was

the daughter of the house, Muriel Beaumont, who gazed at him with

great violet eyes and with the intense and awful thirst of the

female upper class for verbal amusement and stimulus. The other

was Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh, who looked at him with a still and

sullen but unmistakable desire to throw him out of the window.

He sat there, coiled rather than seated on the easy chair;

everything from the curves of his smooth limbs to the coils of his

silvered hair suggesting the circles of a serpent more than the

straight limbs of a man--the unmistakable, splendid serpentine

gentleman we had seen walking in North London, his eyes shining

with repeated victory.

"What I can't understand, Mr Wimpole," said Muriel Beaumont

eagerly, "is how you contrive to treat all this so easily. You say

things quite philosophical and yet so wildly funny. If I thought

of such things, I'm sure I should laugh outright when the thought

first came."

"I agree with Miss Beaumont," said Sir Walter, suddenly exploding

with indignation. "If I had thought of anything so futile, I should

find it difficult to keep my countenance."

"Difficult to keep your countenance," cried Mr Wimpole, with an air

of alarm; "oh, do keep your countenance! Keep it in the British

Museum."

Every one laughed uproariously, as they always do at an already

admitted readiness, and Sir Walter, turning suddenly purple,

shouted out:

"Do you know who you are talking to, with your confounded

tomfooleries?"

"I never talk tomfooleries," said the other, "without first knowing

my audience."

Grant walked across the room and tapped the red-moustached

secretary on the shoulder. That gentleman was leaning against the

wall regarding the whole scene with a great deal of gloom; but, I

fancied, with very particular gloom when his eyes fell on the young

lady of the house rapturously listening to Wimpole.

"May I have a word with you outside, Drummond?" asked Grant. "It is

about business. Lady Beaumont will excuse us."

I followed my friend, at his own request, greatly wondering, to

this strange external interview. We passed abruptly into a kind of

side room out of the hall.

"Drummond," said Basil sharply, "there are a great many good

people, and a great many sane people here this afternoon.

Unfortunately, by a kind of coincidence, all the good people are

mad, and all the sane people are wicked. You are the only person I

know of here who is honest and has also some common sense. What do

you make of Wimpole?"

Mr Secretary Drummond had a pale face and red hair; but at this his

face became suddenly as red as his moustache.

"I am not a fair judge of him," he said.

"Why not?" asked Grant.

"Because I hate him like hell," said the other, after a long pause

and violently.

Neither Grant nor I needed to ask the reason; his glances towards

Miss Beaumont and the stranger were sufficiently illuminating.

Grant said quietly:

"But before--before you came to hate him, what did you really think

of him?"

"I am in a terrible difficulty," said the young man, and his voice

told us, like a clear bell, that he was an honest man. "If I spoke

about him as I feel about him now, I could not trust myself. And I

should like to be able to say that when I first saw him I thought

he was charming. But again, the fact is I didn't. I hate him, that

is my private affair. But I also disapprove of him--really I do

believe I disapprove of him quite apart from my private feelings.

When first he came, I admit he was much quieter, but I did not

like, so to speak, the moral swell of him. Then that jolly old Sir

Walter Cholmondeliegh got introduced to us, and this fellow, with

his cheap-jack wit, began to score off the old man in the way he

does now. Then I felt that he must be a bad lot; it must be bad to

fight the old and the kindly. And he fights the poor old chap

savagely, unceasingly, as if he hated old age and kindliness. Take,

if you want it, the evidence of a prejudiced witness. I admit that

I hate the man because a certain person admires him. But I believe

that apart from that I should hate the man because old Sir Walter

hates him."

This speech affected me with a genuine sense of esteem and pity for

the young man; that is, of pity for him because of his obviously

hopeless worship of Miss Beaumont, and of esteem for him because of

the direct realistic account of the history of Wimpole which he had

given. Still, I was sorry that he seemed so steadily set against

the man, and could not help referring it to an instinct of his

personal relations, however nobly disguised from himself.

In the middle of these meditations, Grant whispered in my ear what

was perhaps the most startling of all interruptions.

"In the name of God, let's get away."

I have never known exactly in how odd a way this odd old man

affected me. I only know that for some reason or other he so

affected me that I was, within a few minutes, in the street

outside.

"This," he said, "is a beastly but amusing affair."

"What is?" I asked, baldly enough.

"This affair. Listen to me, my old friend. Lord and Lady Beaumont

have just invited you and me to a grand dinner-party this very

night, at which Mr Wimpole will be in all his glory. Well, there

is nothing very extraordinary about that. The extraordinary thing

is that we are not going."

"Well, really," I said, "it is already six o'clock and I doubt if

we could get home and dress. I see nothing extraordinary in the

fact that we are not going."

"Don't you?" said Grant. "I'll bet you'll see something

extraordinary in what we're doing instead."

I looked at him blankly.

"Doing instead?" I asked. "What are we doing instead?"

"Why," said he, "we are waiting for one or two hours outside this

house on a winter evening. You must forgive me; it is all my

vanity. It is only to show you that I am right. Can you, with the

assistance of this cigar, wait until both Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh

and the mystic Wimpole have left this house?"

"Certainly," I said. "But I do not know which is likely to leave

first. Have you any notion?"

"No," he said. "Sir Walter may leave first in a glow of rage. Or

again, Mr Wimpole may leave first, feeling that his last epigram is

a thing to be flung behind him like a firework. And Sir Walter may

remain some time to analyse Mr Wimpole's character. But they will

both have to leave within reasonable time, for they will both have

to get dressed and come back to dinner here tonight."

As he spoke the shrill double whistle from the porch of the great

house drew a dark cab to the dark portal. And then a thing happened

that we really had not expected. Mr Wimpole and Sir Walter

Cholmondeliegh came out at the same moment.

They paused for a second or two opposite each other in a natural

doubt; then a certain geniality, fundamental perhaps in both of

them, made Sir Walter smile and say: "The night is foggy. Pray

take my cab."

Before I could count twenty the cab had gone rattling up the street

with both of them. And before I could count twenty-three Grant had

hissed in my ear:

"Run after the cab; run as if you were running from a mad dog--

run."

We pelted on steadily, keeping the cab in sight, through dark mazy

streets. God only, I thought, knows why we are running at all, but

we are running hard. Fortunately we did not run far. The cab pulled

up at the fork of two streets and Sir Walter paid the cabman, who

drove away rejoicing, having just come in contact with the more

generous among the rich. Then the two men talked together as men do

talk together after giving and receiving great insults, the talk

which leads either to forgiveness or a duel--at least so it seemed

as we watched it from ten yards off. Then the two men shook hands

heartily, and one went down one fork of the road and one down

another.

Basil, with one of his rare gestures, flung his arms forward.

"Run after that scoundrel," he cried; "let us catch him now."

We dashed across the open space and reached the juncture of two paths.

"Stop!" I shouted wildly to Grant. "That's the wrong turning."

He ran on.

"i***t!" I howled. "Sir Walter's gone down there. Wimpole has

slipped us. He's half a mile down the other road. You're wrong . . .

Are you deaf? You're wrong!"

"I don't think I am," he panted, and ran on.

"But I saw him!" I cried. "Look in front of you. Is that Wimpole?

It's the old man . . . What are you doing? What are we to do?"

"Keep running," said Grant.

Running soon brought us up to the broad back of the pompous old

baronet, whose white whiskers shone silver in the fitful lamplight.

My brain was utterly bewildered. I grasped nothing.

"Charlie," said Basil hoarsely, "can you believe in my common sense

for four minutes?"

"Of course," I said, panting.

"Then help me to catch that man in front and hold him down. Do it

at once when I say `Now'. Now!"

We sprang on Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh, and rolled that portly old

gentleman on his back. He fought with a commendable valour, but we

got him tight. I had not the remotest notion why. He had a splendid

and full-blooded vigour; when he could not box he kicked, and we

bound him; when he could not kick he shouted, and we gagged him.

Then, by Basil's arrangement, we dragged him into a small court by

the street side and waited. As I say, I had no notion why.

"I am sorry to incommode you," said Basil calmly out of the

darkness; "but I have made an appointment here."

"An appointment!" I said blankly.

"Yes," he said, glancing calmly at the apoplectic old aristocrat gagged on the ground, whose eyes were starting impotently from his head. "I have made an appointment here with a thoroughly nice young fellow. An old friend. Jasper Drummond his name is--you may have met him this afternoon at the Beaumonts. He can scarcely come though till the Beaumonts' dinner is over."

For I do not know how many hours we stood there calmly in the darkness. By the time those hours were over I had thoroughly made up my mind that the same thing had happened which had happened long ago on the bench of a British Court of Justice. Basil Grant had gone mad. I could imagine no other explanation of the facts, with the portly, purple-faced old country gentleman flung there strangled on the floor like a bundle of wood.

After about four hours a lean figure in evening dress rushed into

the court. A glimpse of gaslight showed the red moustache and white

face of Jasper Drummond.

"Mr Grant," he said blankly, "the thing is incredible. You were

right; but what did you mean? All through this dinner-party, where

dukes and duchesses and editors of Quarterlies had come especially

to hear him, that extraordinary Wimpole kept perfectly silent. He

didn't say a funny thing. He didn't say anything at all. What does

it mean?"

Grant pointed to the portly old gentleman on the ground.

"That is what it means," he said.

Drummond, on observing a fat gentleman lying so calmly about the

place, jumped back, as from a mouse.

"What?" he said weakly, ". . . what?"

Basil bent suddenly down and tore a paper out of Sir Walter's

breastpocket, a paper which the baronet, even in his hampered

state, seemed to make some effort to retain.

It was a large loose piece of white wrapping paper, which Mr Jasper

Drummond read with a vacant eye and undisguised astonishment. As

far as he could make out, it consisted of a series of questions and

answers, or at least of remarks and replies, arranged in the manner

of a catechism. The greater part of the document had been torn and

obliterated in the struggle, but the termination remained. It ran

as follows:

C. Says . . . Keep countenance.

W. Keep . . . British Museum.

C. Know whom talk . . . absurdities.

W. Never talk absurdities without

"What is it?" cried Drummond, flinging the paper down in a sort of

final fury.

"What is it?" replied Grant, his voice rising into a kind of

splendid chant. "What is it? It is a great new profession. A great

new trade. A trifle immoral, I admit, but still great, like

piracy."

"A new profession!" said the young man with the red moustache

vaguely; "a new trade!"

"A new trade," repeated Grant, with a strange exultation, "a new

profession! What a pity it is immoral."

"But what the deuce is it?" cried Drummond and I in a breath of

blasphemy.

"It is," said Grant calmly, "the great new trade of the Organizer

of Repartee. This fat old gentleman lying on the ground strikes

you, as I have no doubt, as very stupid and very rich. Let me clear

his character. He is, like ourselves, very clever and very poor. He

is also not really at all fat; all that is stuffing. He is not

particularly old, and his name is not Cholmondeliegh. He is a

swindler, and a swindler of a perfectly delightful and novel kind.

He hires himself out at dinner-parties to lead up to other people's

repartees. According to a preconcerted scheme (which you may find

on that piece of paper), he says the stupid things he has arranged

for himself, and his client says the clever things arranged for

him. In short, he allows himself to be scored off for a guinea a

night."

"And this fellow Wimpole--" began Drummond with indignation.

"This fellow Wimpole," said Basil Grant, smiling, "will not be an

intellectual rival in the future. He had some fine things, elegance

and silvered hair, and so on. But the intellect is with our friend

on the floor."

"That fellow," cried Drummond furiously, "that fellow ought to be

in gaol."

"Not at all," said Basil indulgently; "he ought to be in the Club

of Queer Trades."