The Club of Queer Trades | Page 5

window, looking
out.
"Madam," he said, bowing simply, "I am Major Brown."
"Sit down," said the lady; but she did not turn her head.
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:
"Major Brown, Major Brown, where does the jackal dwell?"
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.
"It is the end," she cried, with shaking lips; "it may be death for both of
us. Whenever--"
But even as she spoke her speech was cloven by another hoarse
proclamation from the dark street, again horribly articulate.
"Major Brown, Major Brown, how did the jackal die?"

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:
"Major Brown, Major Brown, where did--"
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.
She looked at him with wild grey eyes. "You will not go down," she
cried, "alone, into the dark hole, with that beast?"
"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