The Club of Queer Trades

Ch. 1: 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:

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?"

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:

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.

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.

"On the wall!" cried the scandalised Major, whose conventional soul

quailed within him at the thought of such fantastic trespass.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

But even as she spoke her speech was cloven by another hoarse

proclamation from the dark street, again horribly articulate.

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:

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.

"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."

"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:

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.

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--"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

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?"

"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.

"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."

"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."

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.

"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--"

"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."

"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!"

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.

"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.

"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.

"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?"

"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.

Major Brown to P. G. Northover. L s. d. January 1, to account rendered 5 6 0 May 9, to potting and embedding of zoo 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?"

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.

"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--"

"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--"

"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?"

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."

"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.

"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?"

"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."

"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.

"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'."

"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--"

"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."

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.

"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."

"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--"

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.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.