The Club of Queer Trades

Ch. 4: The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent

Lieutenant Drummond Keith was a man about whom conversation always

burst like a thunderstorm the moment he left the room. This arose

from many separate touches about him. He was a light, loose

person, who wore light, loose clothes, generally white, as if he

were in the tropics; he was lean and graceful, like a panther, and

he had restless black eyes.

He was very impecunious. He had one of the habits of the poor,

in a degree so exaggerated as immeasurably to eclipse the most

miserable of the unemployed; I mean the habit of continual change

of lodgings. There are inland tracts of London where, in the very

heart of artificial civilization, humanity has almost become

nomadic once more. But in that restless interior there was no

ragged tramp so restless as the elegant officer in the loose white

clothes. He had shot a great many things in his time, to judge

from his conversation, from partridges to elephants, but his

slangier acquaintances were of opinion that "the moon" had been

not unfrequently amid the victims of his victorious rifle. The

phrase is a fine one, and suggests a mystic, elvish, nocturnal

hunting.

He carried from house to house and from parish to parish a kit

which consisted practically of five articles. Two odd-looking,

large-bladed spears, tied together, the weapons, I suppose, of

some savage tribe, a green umbrella, a huge and tattered copy of

the Pickwick Papers, a big game rifle, and a large sealed jar of

some unholy Oriental wine. These always went into every new

lodging, even for one night; and they went in quite undisguised,

tied up in wisps of string or straw, to the delight of the poetic

gutter boys in the little grey streets.

I had forgotten to mention that he always carried also his old

regimental sword. But this raised another odd question about him.

Slim and active as he was, he was no longer very young. His hair,

indeed, was quite grey, though his rather wild almost Italian

moustache retained its blackness, and his face was careworn under

its almost Italian gaiety. To find a middle-aged man who has left

the Army at the primitive rank of lieutenant is unusual and not

necessarily encouraging. With the more cautious and solid this

fact, like his endless flitting, did the mysterious gentleman no

good.

Lastly, he was a man who told the kind of adventures which win a

man admiration, but not respect. They came out of queer places,

where a good man would scarcely find himself, out of opium dens and

gambling hells; they had the heat of the thieves' kitchens or

smelled of a strange smoke from cannibal incantations. These are

the kind of stories which discredit a person almost equally whether

they are believed or no. If Keith's tales were false he was a liar;

if they were true he had had, at any rate, every opportunity of

being a scamp.

He had just left the room in which I sat with Basil Grant and his

brother Rupert, the voluble amateur detective. And as I say was

invariably the case, we were all talking about him. Rupert Grant

was a clever young fellow, but he had that tendency which youth and

cleverness, when sharply combined, so often produce, a somewhat

extravagant scepticism. He saw doubt and guilt everywhere, and it

was meat and drink to him. I had often got irritated with this

boyish incredulity of his, but on this particular occasion I am

bound to say that I thought him so obviously right that I was

astounded at Basil's opposing him, however banteringly.

I could swallow a good deal, being naturally of a simple turn, but

I could not swallow Lieutenant Keith's autobiography.

"You don't seriously mean, Basil," I said, "that you think that

that fellow really did go as a stowaway with Nansen and pretend to

be the Mad Mullah and--"

"He has one fault," said Basil thoughtfully, "or virtue, as you

may happen to regard it. He tells the truth in too exact and bald

a style; he is too veracious."

"Oh! if you are going to be paradoxical," said Rupert

contemptuously, "be a bit funnier than that. Say, for instance,

that he has lived all his life in one ancestral manor."

"No, he's extremely fond of change of scene," replied Basil

dispassionately, "and of living in odd places. That doesn't

prevent his chief trait being verbal exactitude. What you people

don't understand is that telling a thing crudely and coarsely as

it happened makes it sound frightfully strange. The sort of things

Keith recounts are not the sort of things that a man would make up

to cover himself with honour; they are too absurd. But they are

the sort of things that a man would do if he were sufficiently

filled with the soul of skylarking."

"So far from paradox," said his brother, with something rather

like a sneer, "you seem to be going in for journalese proverbs. Do

you believe that truth is stranger than fiction?"

"Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction," said Basil

placidly. "For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and

therefore is congenial to it."

"Well, your lieutenant's truth is stranger, if it is truth, than

anything I ever heard of," said Rupert, relapsing into flippancy.

"Do you, on your soul, believe in all that about the shark and the

camera?"

"I believe Keith's words," answered the other. "He is an honest

man."

"I should like to question a regiment of his landladies," said

Rupert cynically.

"I must say, I think you can hardly regard him as unimpeachable

merely in himself," I said mildly; "his mode of life--"

Before I could complete the sentence the door was flung open and

Drummond Keith appeared again on the threshold, his white Panama

on his head.

"I say, Grant," he said, knocking off his cigarette ash against

the door, "I've got no money in the world till next April. Could

you lend me a hundred pounds? There's a good chap."

Rupert and I looked at each other in an ironical silence. Basil,

who was sitting by his desk, swung the chair round idly on its

screw and picked up a quill-pen.

"Shall I cross it?" he asked, opening a cheque-book.

"Really," began Rupert, with a rather nervous loudness, "since

Lieutenant Keith has seen fit to make this suggestion to Basil

before his family, I--"

"Here you are, Ugly," said Basil, fluttering a cheque in the

direction of the quite nonchalant officer. "Are you in a hurry?"

"Yes," replied Keith, in a rather abrupt way. "As a matter of fact

I want it now. I want to see my--er--business man."

Rupert was eyeing him sarcastically, and I could see that it was

on the tip of his tongue to say, inquiringly, "Receiver of stolen

goods, perhaps." What he did say was:

"A business man? That's rather a general description, Lieutenant

Keith."

Keith looked at him sharply, and then said, with something rather

like ill-temper:

"He's a thingum-my-bob, a house-agent, say. I'm going to see him."

"Oh, you're going to see a house-agent, are you?" said Rupert Grant

grimly. "Do you know, Mr Keith, I think I should very much like to

go with you?"

Basil shook with his soundless laughter. Lieutenant Keith started

a little; his brow blackened sharply.

"I beg your pardon," he said. "What did you say?"

Rupert's face had been growing from stage to stage of ferocious

irony, and he answered:

"I was saying that I wondered whether you would mind our strolling

along with you to this house-agent's."

The visitor swung his stick with a sudden whirling violence.

"Oh, in God's name, come to my house-agent's! Come to my bedroom.

Look under my bed. Examine my dust-bin. Come along!" And with a

furious energy which took away our breath he banged his way out of

the room.

Rupert Grant, his restless blue eyes dancing with his detective

excitement, soon shouldered alongside him, talking to him with that

transparent camaraderie which he imagined to be appropriate from

the disguised policeman to the disguised criminal. His

interpretation was certainly corroborated by one particular detail,

the unmistakable unrest, annoyance, and nervousness of the man with

whom he walked. Basil and I tramped behind, and it was not

necessary for us to tell each other that we had both noticed this.

Lieutenant Drummond Keith led us through very extraordinary and

unpromising neighbourhoods in the search for his remarkable

house-agent. Neither of the brothers Grant failed to notice this

fact. As the streets grew closer and more crooked and the roofs

lower and the gutters grosser with mud, a darker curiosity deepened

on the brows of Basil, and the figure of Rupert seen from behind

seemed to fill the street with a gigantic swagger of success. At

length, at the end of the fourth or fifth lean grey street in that

sterile district, we came suddenly to a halt, the mysterious

lieutenant looking once more about him with a sort of sulky

desperation. Above a row of shutters and a door, all indescribably

dingy in appearance and in size scarce sufficient even for a penny

toyshop, ran the inscription: "P. Montmorency, House-Agent."

"This is the office of which I spoke," said Keith, in a cutting

voice. "Will you wait here a moment, or does your astonishing

tenderness about my welfare lead you to wish to overhear everything

I have to say to my business adviser?"

Rupert's face was white and shaking with excitement; nothing on

earth would have induced him now to have abandoned his prey.

"If you will excuse me," he said, clenching his hands behind his

back, "I think I should feel myself justified in--"

"Oh! Come along in," exploded the lieutenant. He made the same

gesture of savage surrender. And he slammed into the office, the

rest of us at his heels.

P. Montmorency, House-Agent, was a solitary old gentleman sitting

behind a bare brown counter. He had an egglike head, froglike jaws,

and a grey hairy fringe of aureole round the lower part of his

face; the whole combined with a reddish, aquiline nose. He wore a

shabby black frock-coat, a sort of semi-clerical tie worn at a very

unclerical angle, and looked, generally speaking, about as unlike a

house-agent as anything could look, short of something like a

sandwich man or a Scotch Highlander.

We stood inside the room for fully forty seconds, and the odd old

gentleman did not look at us. Neither, to tell the truth, odd as he

was, did we look at him. Our eyes were fixed, where his were fixed,

upon something that was crawling about on the counter in front of

him. It was a ferret.

The silence was broken by Rupert Grant. He spoke in that sweet and

steely voice which he reserved for great occasions and practised

for hours together in his bedroom. He said:

"Mr Montmorency, I think?"

The old gentleman started, lifted his eyes with a bland

bewilderment, picked up the ferret by the neck, stuffed it alive

into his trousers pocket, smiled apologetically, and said:

"Sir."

"You are a house-agent, are you not?" asked Rupert.

To the delight of that criminal investigator, Mr Montmorency's eyes

wandered unquietly towards Lieutenant Keith, the only man present

that he knew.

"A house-agent," cried Rupert again, bringing out the word as if it

were "burglar'.

"Yes . . . oh, yes," said the man, with a quavering and almost

coquettish smile. "I am a house-agent . . . oh, yes."

"Well, I think," said Rupert, with a sardonic sleekness, "that

Lieutenant Keith wants to speak to you. We have come in by his

request."

Lieutenant Keith was lowering gloomily, and now he spoke.

"I have come, Mr Montmorency, about that house of mine."

"Yes, sir," said Montmorency, spreading his fingers on the flat

counter. "It's all ready, sir. I've attended to all your

suggestions er--about the br--"

"Right," cried Keith, cutting the word short with the startling

neatness of a gunshot. "We needn't bother about all that. If

you've done what I told you, all right."

And he turned sharply towards the door.

Mr Montmorency, House-Agent, presented a picture of pathos. After

stammering a moment he said: "Excuse me . . . Mr Keith . . . there

was another matter . . . about which I wasn't quite sure. I tried

to get all the heating apparatus possible under the circumstances

. . . but in winter . . . at that elevation . . ."

"Can't expect much, eh?" said the lieutenant, cutting in with

the same sudden skill. "No, of course not. That's all right,

Montmorency. There can't be any more difficulties," and he put

his hand on the handle of the door.

"I think," said Rupert Grant, with a satanic suavity, "that Mr

Montmorency has something further to say to you, lieutenant."

"Only," said the house-agent, in desperation, "what about the

birds?"

"I beg your pardon," said Rupert, in a general blank.

"What about the birds?" said the house-agent doggedly.

Basil, who had remained throughout the procedings in a state of

Napoleonic calm, which might be more accurately described as a

state of Napoleonic stupidity, suddenly lifted his leonine head.

"Before you go, Lieutenant Keith," he said. "Come now. Really,

what about the birds?"

"I'll take care of them," said Lieutenant Keith, still with his

long back turned to us; "they shan't suffer."

"Thank you, sir, thank you," cried the incomprehensible

house-agent, with an air of ecstasy. "You'll excuse my concern,

sir. You know I'm wild on wild animals. I'm as wild as any of

them on that. Thank you, sir. But there's another thing. . ."

The lieutenant, with his back turned to us, exploded with an

indescribable laugh and swung round to face us. It was a laugh,

the purport of which was direct and essential, and yet which one

cannot exactly express. As near as it said anything, verbally

speaking, it said: "Well, if you must spoil it, you must. But you

don't know what you're spoiling."

"There is another thing," continued Mr Montmorency weakly. "Of

course, if you don't want to be visited you'll paint the house

green, but--"

"Green!" shouted Keith. "Green! Let it be green or nothing. I

won't have a house of another colour. Green!" and before we could

realize anything the door had banged between us and the street.

Rupert Grant seemed to take a little time to collect himself; but

he spoke before the echoes of the door died away.

"Your client, Lieutenant Keith, appears somewhat excited," he

said. "What is the matter with him? Is he unwell?"

"Oh, I should think not," said Mr Montmorency, in some confusion.

"The negotiations have been somewhat difficult--the house is

rather--"

"Green," said Rupert calmly. "That appears to be a very important

point. It must be rather green. May I ask you, Mr Montmorency,

before I rejoin my companion outside, whether, in your business,

it is usual to ask for houses by their colour? Do clients write

to a house-agent asking for a pink house or a blue house? Or, to

take another instance, for a green house?"

"Only," said Montmorency, trembling, "only to be inconspicuous."

Rupert had his ruthless smile. "Can you tell me any place on earth

in which a green house would be inconspicuous?"

The house-agent was fidgeting nervously in his pocket. Slowly

drawing out a couple of lizards and leaving them to run on the

counter, he said:

"No; I can't."

"You can't suggest an explanation?"

"No," said Mr Montmorency, rising slowly and yet in such a way as

to suggest a sudden situation, "I can't. And may I, as a busy man,

be excused if I ask you, gentlemen, if you have any demand to make

of me in connection with my business. What kind of house would you

desire me to get for you, sir?"

He opened his blank blue eyes on Rupert, who seemed for the second

staggered. Then he recovered himself with perfect common sense and

answered:

"I am sorry, Mr Montmorency. The fascination of your remarks has

unduly delayed us from joining our friend outside. Pray excuse my

apparent impertinence."

"Not at all, sir," said the house-agent, taking a South American

spider idly from his waistcoat pocket and letting it climb up the

slope of his desk. "Not at all, sir. I hope you will favour me

again."

Rupert Grant dashed out of the office in a gust of anger, anxious

to face Lieutenant Keith. He was gone. The dull, starlit street was

deserted.

"What do you say now?" cried Rupert to his brother. His brother

said nothing now.

We all three strode down the street in silence, Rupert feverish,

myself dazed, Basil, to all appearance, merely dull. We walked

through grey street after grey street, turning corners, traversing

squares, scarcely meeting anyone, except occasional drunken knots

of two or three.

In one small street, however, the knots of two or three began

abruptly to thicken into knots of five or six and then into great

groups and then into a crowd. The crowd was stirring very slightly.

But anyone with a knowledge of the eternal populace knows that if

the outside rim of a crowd stirs ever so slightly it means that

there is madness in the heart and core of the mob. It soon became

evident that something really important had happened in the centre

of this excitement. We wormed our way to the front, with the

cunning which is known only to cockneys, and once there we soon

learned the nature of the difficulty. There had been a brawl

concerned with some six men, and one of them lay almost dead on the

stones of the street. Of the other four, all interesting matters

were, as far as we were concerned, swallowed up in one stupendous

fact. One of the four survivors of the brutal and perhaps fatal

scuffle was the immaculate Lieutenant Keith, his clothes torn to

ribbons, his eyes blazing, blood on his knuckles. One other thing,

however, pointed at him in a worse manner. A short sword, or very

long knife, had been drawn out of his elegant walking-stick, and

lay in front of him upon the stones. It did not, however, appear to

be bloody.

The police had already pushed into the centre with their ponderous

omnipotence, and even as they did so, Rupert Grant sprang forward

with his incontrollable and intolerable secret.

"That is the man, constable," he shouted, pointing at the battered

lieutenant. "He is a suspicious character. He did the murder."

"There's been no murder done, sir," said the policeman, with his

automatic civility. "The poor man's only hurt. I shall only be

able to take the names and addresses of the men in the scuffle

and have a good eye kept on them."

"Have a good eye kept on that one," said Rupert, pale to the lips,

and pointing to the ragged Keith.

"All right, sir," said the policeman unemotionally, and went the

round of the people present, collecting the addresses. When he had

completed his task the dusk had fallen and most of the people not

immediately connected with the examination had gone away. He still

found, however, one eager-faced stranger lingering on the

outskirts of the affair. It was Rupert Grant.

"Constable," he said, "I have a very particular reason for asking

you a question. Would you mind telling me whether that military

fellow who dropped his sword-stick in the row gave you an address

or not?"

"Yes, sir," said the policeman, after a reflective pause; "yes, he

gave me his address."

"My name is Rupert Grant," said that individual, with some pomp.

"I have assisted the police on more than one occasion. I wonder

whether you would tell me, as a special favour, what address?"

The constable looked at him.

"Yes," he said slowly, "if you like. His address is: The Elms,

Buxton Common, near Purley, Surrey."

"Thank you," said Rupert, and ran home through the gathering night

as fast as his legs could carry him, repeating the address to

himself.

Rupert Grant generally came down late in a rather lordly way to

breakfast; he contrived, I don't know how, to achieve always the

attitude of the indulged younger brother. Next morning, however,

when Basil and I came down we found him ready and restless.

"Well," he said sharply to his brother almost before we sat down to

the meal. "What do you think of your Drummond Keith now?"

"What do I think of him?" inquired Basil slowly. "I don't think

anything of him."

"I'm glad to hear it," said Rupert, buttering his toast with an

energy that was somewhat exultant. "I thought you'd come round to

my view, but I own I was startled at your not seeing it from the

beginning. The man is a translucent liar and knave."

"I think," said Basil, in the same heavy monotone as before, "that

I did not make myself clear. When I said that I thought nothing of

him I meant grammatically what I said. I meant that I did not think

about him; that he did not occupy my mind. You, however, seem to me

to think a lot of him, since you think him a knave. I should say he

was glaringly good myself."

"I sometimes think you talk paradox for its own sake," said Rupert,

breaking an egg with unnecessary sharpness. "What the deuce is the

sense of it? Here's a man whose original position was, by our

common agreement, dubious. He's a wanderer, a teller of tall tales,

a man who doesn't conceal his acquaintance with all the blackest

and bloodiest scenes on earth. We take the trouble to follow him to

one of his appointments, and if ever two human beings were plotting

together and lying to every one else, he and that impossible

house-agent were doing it. We followed him home, and the very same

night he is in the thick of a fatal, or nearly fatal, brawl, in

which he is the only man armed. Really, if this is being glaringly

good, I must confess that the glare does not dazzle me."

Basil was quite unmoved. "I admit his moral goodness is of a

certain kind, a quaint, perhaps a casual kind. He is very fond of

change and experiment. But all the points you so ingeniously make

against him are mere coincidence or special pleading. It's true he

didn't want to talk about his house business in front of us. No

man would. It's true that he carries a sword-stick. Any man might.

It's true he drew it in the shock of a street fight. Any man

would. But there's nothing really dubious in all this. There's

nothing to confirm--"

As he spoke a knock came at the door.

"If you please, sir," said the landlady, with an alarmed air,

"there's a policeman wants to see you."

"Show him in," said Basil, amid the blank silence.

The heavy, handsome constable who appeared at the door spoke

almost as soon as he appeared there.

"I think one of you gentlemen," he said, curtly but respectfully,

"was present at the affair in Copper Street last night, and drew

my attention very strongly to a particular man."

Rupert half rose from his chair, with eyes like diamonds, but the

constable went on calmly, referring to a paper.

"A young man with grey hair. Had light grey clothes, very good, but

torn in the struggle. Gave his name as Drummond Keith."

"This is amusing," said Basil, laughing. "I was in the very act of

clearing that poor officer's character of rather fanciful

aspersions. What about him?"

"Well, sir," said the constable, "I took all the men's addresses

and had them all watched. It wasn't serious enough to do more than

that. All the other addresses are all right. But this man Keith

gave a false address. The place doesn't exist."

The breakfast table was nearly flung over as Rupert sprang up,

slapping both his thighs.

"Well, by all that's good," he cried. "This is a sign from heaven."

"It's certainly very extraordinary," said Basil quietly, with

knitted brows. "It's odd the fellow should have given a false

address, considering he was perfectly innocent in the--"

"Oh, you jolly old early Christian duffer," cried Rupert, in a

sort of rapture, "I don't wonder you couldn't be a judge. You

think every one as good as yourself. Isn't the thing plain enough

now? A doubtful acquaintance; rowdy stories, a most suspicious

conversation, mean streets, a concealed knife, a man nearly

killed, and, finally, a false address. That's what we call glaring

goodness."

"It's certainly very extraordinary," repeated Basil. And he

strolled moodily about the room. Then he said: "You are quite

sure, constable, that there's no mistake? You got the address

right, and the police have really gone to it and found it was a

fraud?"

"It was very simple, sir," said the policeman, chuckling. "The

place he named was a well-known common quite near London, and our

people were down there this morning before any of you were awake.

And there's no such house. In fact, there are hardly any houses at

all. Though it is so near London, it's a blank moor with hardly

five trees on it, to say nothing of Christians. Oh, no, sir, the

address was a fraud right enough. He was a clever rascal, and

chose one of those scraps of lost England that people know nothing

about. Nobody could say off-hand that there was not a particular

house dropped somewhere about the heath. But as a fact, there

isn't."

Basil's face during this sensible speech had been growing darker

and darker with a sort of desperate sagacity. He was cornered

almost for the first time since I had known him; and to tell the

truth I rather wondered at the almost childish obstinacy which kept

him so close to his original prejudice in favour of the wildly

questionable lieutenant. At length he said:

"You really searched the common? And the address was really not

known in the district--by the way, what was the address?"

The constable selected one of his slips of paper and consulted it,

but before he could speak Rupert Grant, who was leaning in the

window in a perfect posture of the quiet and triumphant detective,

struck in with the sharp and suave voice he loved so much to use.

"Why, I can tell you that, Basil," he said graciously as he idly

plucked leaves from a plant in the window. "I took the precaution

to get this man's address from the constable last night."

"And what was it?" asked his brother gruffly.

"The constable will correct me if I am wrong," said Rupert,

looking sweetly at the ceiling. "It was: The Elms, Buxton

Common, near Purley, Surrey."

"Right, sir," said the policeman, laughing and folding up his

papers.

There was a silence, and the blue eyes of Basil looked blindly for

a few seconds into the void. Then his head fell back in his chair

so suddenly that I started up, thinking him ill. But before I could

move further his lips had flown apart (I can use no other phrase)

and a peal of gigantic laughter struck and shook the ceiling--

laughter that shook the laughter, laughter redoubled, laughter

incurable, laughter that could not stop.

Two whole minutes afterwards it was still unended; Basil was ill

with laughter; but still he laughed. The rest of us were by this

time ill almost with terror.

"Excuse me," said the insane creature, getting at last to his feet.

"I am awfully sorry. It is horribly rude. And stupid, too. And also

unpractical, because we have not much time to lose if we're to get

down to that place. The train service is confoundedly bad, as I

happen to know. It's quite out of proportion to the comparatively

small distance."

"Get down to that place?" I repeated blankly. "Get down to what

place?"

"I have forgotten its name," said Basil vaguely, putting his hands

in his pockets as he rose. "Something Common near Purley. Has any

one got a timetable?"

"You don't seriously mean," cried Rupert, who had been staring in

a sort of confusion of emotions. "You don't mean that you want to

go to Buxton Common, do you? You can't mean that!"

"Why shouldn't I go to Buxton Common?" asked Basil, smiling.

"Why should you?" said his brother, catching hold again restlessly

of the plant in the window and staring at the speaker.

"To find our friend, the lieutenant, of course," said Basil Grant.

"I thought you wanted to find him?"

Rupert broke a branch brutally from the plant and flung it

impatiently on the floor. "And in order to find him," he said,

"you suggest the admirable expedient of going to the only place

on the habitable earth where we know he can't be."

The constable and I could not avoid breaking into a kind of

assenting laugh, and Rupert, who had family eloquence, was

encouraged to go on with a reiterated gesture:

"He may be in Buckingham Palace; he may be sitting astride the

cross of St Paul's; he may be in jail (which I think most likely);

he may be in the Great Wheel; he may be in my pantry; he may be in

your store cupboard; but out of all the innumerable points of

space, there is only one where he has just been systematically

looked for and where we know that he is not to be found--and that,

if I understand you rightly, is where you want us to go."

"Exactly," said Basil calmly, getting into his great-coat; "I

thought you might care to accompany me. If not, of course, make

yourselves jolly here till I come back."

It is our nature always to follow vanishing things and value them

if they really show a resolution to depart. We all followed Basil,

and I cannot say why, except that he was a vanishing thing, that

he vanished decisively with his great-coat and his stick. Rupert

ran after him with a considerable flurry of rationality.

"My dear chap," he cried, "do you really mean that you see any good

in going down to this ridiculous scrub, where there is nothing but

beaten tracks and a few twisted trees, simply because it was the

first place that came into a rowdy lieutenant's head when he wanted

to give a lying reference in a scrape?"

"Yes," said Basil, taking out his watch, "and, what's worse, we've

lost the train."

He paused a moment and then added: "As a matter of fact, I think

we may just as well go down later in the day. I have some writing

to do, and I think you told me, Rupert, that you thought of going

to the Dulwich Gallery. I was rather too impetuous. Very likely he

wouldn't be in. But if we get down by the 5.15, which gets to

Purley about 6, I expect we shall just catch him."

"Catch him!" cried his brother, in a kind of final anger. "I wish

we could. Where the deuce shall we catch him now?"

"I keep forgetting the name of the common," said Basil, as he

buttoned up his coat. "The Elms--what is it? Buxton Common, near

Purley. That's where we shall find him."

"But there is no such place," groaned Rupert; but he followed his

brother downstairs.

We all followed him. We snatched our hats from the hat-stand and

our sticks from the umbrella-stand; and why we followed him we did

not and do not know. But we always followed him, whatever was the

meaning of the fact, whatever was the nature of his mastery. And

the strange thing was that we followed him the more completely the

more nonsensical appeared the thing which he said. At bottom, I

believe, if he had risen from our breakfast table and said: "I am

going to find the Holy Pig with Ten Tails," we should have followed

him to the end of the world.

I don't know whether this mystical feeling of mine about Basil on

this occasion has got any of the dark and cloudy colour, so to

speak, of the strange journey that we made the same evening. It was

already very dense twilight when we struck southward from Purley.

Suburbs and things on the London border may be, in most cases,

commonplace and comfortable. But if ever by any chance they really

are empty solitudes they are to the human spirit more desolate and

dehumanized than any Yorkshire moors or Highland hills, because the

suddenness with which the traveller drops into that silence has

something about it as of evil elf-land. It seems to be one of the

ragged suburbs of the cosmos half-forgotten by God--such a place

was Buxton Common, near Purley.

There was certainly a sort of grey futility in the landscape

itself. But it was enormously increased by the sense of grey

futility in our expedition. The tracts of grey turf looked

useless, the occasional wind-stricken trees looked useless, but

we, the human beings, more useless than the hopeless turf or the

idle trees. We were maniacs akin to the foolish landscape, for we

were come to chase the wild goose which has led men and left men

in bogs from the beginning. We were three dazed men under the

captaincy of a madman going to look for a man whom we knew was not

there in a house that had no existence. A livid sunset seemed to

look at us with a sort of sickly smile before it died.

Basil went on in front with his coat collar turned up, looking in

the gloom rather like a grotesque Napoleon. We crossed swell after

swell of the windy common in increasing darkness and entire

silence. Suddenly Basil stopped and turned to us, his hands in his

pockets. Through the dusk I could just detect that he wore a broad

grin as of comfortable success.

"Well," he cried, taking his heavily gloved hands out of his

pockets and slapping them together, "here we are at last."

The wind swirled sadly over the homeless heath; two desolate elms

rocked above us in the sky like shapeless clouds of grey. There was

not a sign of man or beast to the sullen circle of the horizon, and

in the midst of that wilderness Basil Grant stood rubbing his hands

with the air of an innkeeper standing at an open door.

"How jolly it is," he cried, "to get back to civilization. That

notion that civilization isn't poetical is a civilised delusion.

Wait till you've really lost yourself in nature, among the devilish

woodlands and the cruel flowers. Then you'll know that there's no

star like the red star of man that he lights on his hearthstone; no

river like the red river of man, the good red wine, which you, Mr

Rupert Grant, if I have any knowledge of you, will be drinking in

two or three minutes in enormous quantities."

Rupert and I exchanged glances of fear. Basil went on heartily, as

the wind died in the dreary trees.

"You'll find our host a much more simple kind of fellow in his own

house. I did when I visited him when he lived in the cabin at

Yarmouth, and again in the loft at the city warehouse. He's really

a very good fellow. But his greatest virtue remains what I said

originally."

"What do you mean?" I asked, finding his speech straying towards a

sort of sanity. "What is his greatest virtue?"

"His greatest virtue," replied Basil, "is that he always tells the

literal truth."

"Well, really," cried Rupert, stamping about between cold and

anger, and slapping himself like a cabman, "he doesn't seem to have

been very literal or truthful in this case, nor you either. Why the

deuce, may I ask, have you brought us out to this infernal place?"

"He was too truthful, I confess," said Basil, leaning against the

tree; "too hardly veracious, too severely accurate. He should have

indulged in a little more suggestiveness and legitimate romance.

But come, it's time we went in. We shall be late for dinner."

Rupert whispered to me with a white face:

"Is it a hallucination, do you think? Does he really fancy he sees

a house?"

"I suppose so," I said. Then I added aloud, in what was meant to be

a cheery and sensible voice, but which sounded in my ears almost as

strange as the wind:

"Come, come, Basil, my dear fellow. Where do you want us to go?"

"Why, up here," cried Basil, and with a bound and a swing he was

above our heads, swarming up the grey column of the colossal tree.

"Come up, all of you," he shouted out of the darkness, with the

voice of a schoolboy. "Come up. You'll be late for dinner."

The two great elms stood so close together that there was scarcely

a yard anywhere, and in some places not more than a foot, between

them. Thus occasional branches and even bosses and boles formed a

series of footholds that almost amounted to a rude natural ladder.

They must, I supposed, have been some sport of growth, Siamese

twins of vegetation.

Why we did it I cannot think; perhaps, as I have said, the mystery

of the waste and dark had brought out and made primary something

wholly mystical in Basil's supremacy. But we only felt that there

was a giant's staircase going somewhere, perhaps to the stars; and

the victorious voice above called to us out of heaven. We hoisted

ourselves up after him.

Half-way up some cold tongue of the night air struck and sobered me

suddenly. The hypnotism of the madman above fell from me, and I saw

the whole map of our silly actions as clearly as if it were

printed. I saw three modern men in black coats who had begun with a

perfectly sensible suspicion of a doubtful adventurer and who had

ended, God knows how, half-way up a naked tree on a naked moorland,

far from that adventurer and all his works, that adventurer who was

at that moment, in all probability, laughing at us in some dirty

Soho restaurant. He had plenty to laugh at us about, and no doubt

he was laughing his loudest; but when I thought what his laughter

would be if he knew where we were at that moment, I nearly let go

of the tree and fell.

"Swinburne," said Rupert suddenly, from above, "what are we doing?

Let's get down again," and by the mere sound of his voice I knew

that he too felt the shock of wakening to reality.

"We can't leave poor Basil," I said. "Can't you call to him or get

hold of him by the leg?"

"He's too far ahead," answered Rupert; "he's nearly at the top

of the beastly thing. Looking for Lieutenant Keith in the rooks'

nests, I suppose."

We were ourselves by this time far on our frantic vertical

journey. The mighty trunks were beginning to sway and shake

slightly in the wind. Then I looked down and saw something which

made me feel that we were far from the world in a sense and to a

degree that I cannot easily describe. I saw that the almost

straight lines of the tall elm trees diminished a little in

perspective as they fell. I was used to seeing parallel lines

taper towards the sky. But to see them taper towards the earth

made me feel lost in space, like a falling star.

"Can nothing be done to stop Basil?" I called out.

"No," answered my fellow climber. "He's too far up. He must get

to the top, and when he finds nothing but wind and leaves he may

go sane again. Hark at him above there; you can just hear him

talking to himself."

"Perhaps he's talking to us," I said.

"No," said Rupert, "he'd shout if he was. I've never known him to

talk to himself before; I'm afraid he really is bad tonight; it's

a known sign of the brain going."

"Yes," I said sadly, and listened. Basil's voice certainly was

sounding above us, and not by any means in the rich and riotous

tones in which he had hailed us before. He was speaking quietly,

and laughing every now and then, up there among the leaves and

stars.

After a silence mingled with this murmur, Rupert Grant suddenly

said, "My God!" with a violent voice.

"What's the matter--are you hurt?" I cried, alarmed.

"No. Listen to Basil," said the other in a very strange voice.

"He's not talking to himself."

"Then he is talking to us," I cried.

"No," said Rupert simply, "he's talking to somebody else."

Suddenly from aloft came Basil's boisterous hailing voice as

before: "Come up, you fellows. Here's Lieutenant Keith."

And a second afterwards came the half-American voice we had heard

in our chambers more than once. It called out:

"Happy to see you, gentlemen; pray come in."

Out of a hole in an enormous dark egg-shaped thing, pendent in

the branches like a wasps' nest, was protruding the pale face and

fierce moustache of the lieutenant, his teeth shining with that

slightly Southern air that belonged to him.

Somehow or other, stunned and speechless, we lifted ourselves

heavily into the opening. We fell into the full glow of a lamp-lit,

cushioned, tiny room, with a circular wall lined with books, a

circular table, and a circular seat around it. At this table sat

three people. One was Basil, who, in the instant after alighting

there, had fallen into an attitude of marmoreal ease as if he had

been there from boyhood; he was smoking a cigar with a slow

pleasure. The second was Lieutenant Drummond Keith, who looked

happy also, but feverish and doubtful compared with his granite

guest. The third was the little bald-headed house-agent with the

wild whiskers, who called himself Montmorency. The spears, the

green umbrella, and the cavalry sword hung in parallels on the

wall. The sealed jar of strange wine was on the mantelpiece, the

enormous rifle in the corner. In the middle of the table was a

magnum of champagne. Glasses were already set for us.

The wind of the night roared far below us, like an ocean at the

foot of a light-house. The room stirred slightly, as a cabin might

in a mild sea.

Our glasses were filled, and we still sat there dazed and dumb.

Then Basil spoke.

"You seem still a little doubtful, Rupert. Surely there is no

further question about the cold veracity of our injured host."

"I don't quite grasp it all," said Rupert, blinking still in the

sudden glare. "Lieutenant Keith said his address was--"

"It's really quite right, sir," said Keith, with an open smile.

"The bobby asked me where I lived. And I said, quite truthfully,

that I lived in the elms on Buxton Common, near Purley. So I do.

This gentleman, Mr Montmorency, whom I think you have met before,

is an agent for houses of this kind. He has a special line in

arboreal villas. It's being kept rather quiet at present, because

the people who want these houses don't want them to get too common.

But it's just the sort of thing a fellow like myself, racketing

about in all sorts of queer corners of London, naturally knocks up

against."

"Are you really an agent for arboreal villas?" asked Rupert

eagerly, recovering his ease with the romance of reality.

Mr Montmorency, in his embarrassment, fingered one of his pockets

and nervously pulled out a snake, which crawled about the table.

"W-well, yes, sir," he said. "The fact was--er--my people wanted me

very much to go into the house-agency business. But I never cared

myself for anything but natural history and botany and things like

that. My poor parents have been dead some years now, but--naturally

I like to respect their wishes. And I thought somehow that an

arboreal villa agency was a sort of--of compromise between being a

botanist and being a house-agent."

Rupert could not help laughing. "Do you have much custom?" he asked.

"N-not much," replied Mr Montmorency, and then he glanced at

Keith, who was (I am convinced) his only client. "But what there

is--very select."

"My dear friends," said Basil, puffing his cigar, "always remember

two facts. The first is that though when you are guessing about

any one who is sane, the sanest thing is the most likely; when you

are guessing about any one who is, like our host, insane, the

maddest thing is the most likely. The second is to remember that

very plain literal fact always seems fantastic. If Keith had taken

a little brick box of a house in Clapham with nothing but railings

in front of it and had written `The Elms' over it, you wouldn't

have thought there was anything fantastic about that. Simply

because it was a great blaring, swaggering lie you would have

believed it."

"Drink your wine, gentlemen," said Keith, laughing, "for this

confounded wind will upset it."

We drank, and as we did so, although the hanging house, by a

cunning mechanism, swung only slightly, we knew that the great

head of the elm tree swayed in the sky like a stricken thistle.