The Club of Queer Trades | Page 7

suppose you looked again,
and saw it was Lord Kitchener. What would you think?"
He paused a moment, and went on:
"You could not adopt the ordinary explanation. The ordinary
explanation of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice in them;

you would not think that Lord Kitchener dressed up like a ballet girl
out of ordinary personal vanity. You would think it much more likely
that he inherited a dancing madness from a great grandmother; or had
been hypnotised at a seance; or threatened by a secret society with
death if he refused the ordeal. With Baden-Powell, say, it might be a
bet--but not with Kitchener. I should know all that, because in my
public days I knew him quite well. So I know that letter quite well, and
criminals quite well. It's not a criminal's letter. It's all atmospheres."
And he closed his eyes and passed his hand over his forehead.
Rupert and the Major were regarding him with a mixture of respect and
pity. The former said
"Well, I'm going, anyhow, and shall continue to think--until your
spiritual mystery turns up--that a man who sends a note recommending
a crime, that is, actually a crime that is actually carried out, at least
tentatively, is, in all probability, a little casual in his moral tastes. Can I
have that revolver?"
"Certainly," said Basil, getting up. "But I am coming with you." And he
flung an old cape or cloak round him, and took a sword-stick from the
corner.
"You!" said Rupert, with some surprise, "you scarcely ever leave your
hole to look at anything on the face of the earth."
Basil fitted on a formidable old white hat.
"I scarcely ever," he said, with an unconscious and colossal arrogance,
"hear of anything on the face of the earth that I do not understand at
once, without going to see it."
And he led the way out into the purple night.
We four swung along the flaring Lambeth streets, across Westminster
Bridge, and along the Embankment in the direction of that part of Fleet
Street which contained Tanner's Court. The erect, black figure of Major
Brown, seen from behind, was a quaint contrast to the hound-like stoop

and flapping mantle of young Rupert Grant, who adopted, with
childlike delight, all the dramatic poses of the detective of fiction. The
finest among his many fine qualities was his boyish appetite for the
colour and poetry of London. Basil, who walked behind, with his face
turned blindly to the stars, had the look of a somnambulist.
Rupert paused at the corner of Tanner's Court, with a quiver of delight
at danger, and gripped Basil's revolver in his great-coat pocket.
"Shall we go in now?" he asked.
"Not get police?" asked Major Brown, glancing sharply up and down
the street.
"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--"
"I shouldn't get the police," said Basil in a queer voice. Rupert glanced
at him and stared hard.
"Basil," he cried, "you're trembling. What's the matter--are you afraid?"
"Cold, perhaps," said the Major, eyeing him. There was no doubt that
he was shaking.
At last, after a few moments' scrutiny, Rupert broke into a curse.
"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."
The four of us cowered instantly under the archway, rigid, except for
the old judge and his convulsion of merriment.
"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!"
With the sound of the word the door burst open, and we fell into the
room like an invasion, only to stop dead.
The room, which was an ordinary and neatly appointed office, appeared,
at the first glance, to be