The Club of Queer Trades | Page 9

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.
"Let me go, you scamps," he shouted. "Let me--"
"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--"
"Mad," said Northover, gazing blankly round; "all of them mad. I didn't
know they travelled in quartettes."
"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--"
"Mad," repeated Northover, with a weary air.
And at this moment, for the first time, there struck in among them the
strange, sleepy voice of Basil Grant.
"Major Brown," he said, "may I ask you a question?"
The Major turned his head with an increased bewilderment.

"You?" he cried; "certainly, Mr Grant."
"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?"
The unhappy Major was only faintly more disturbed by this last and
futile irrelevancy, and he answered vaguely:
"Yes, I think so; a man named Gurney something--a name with a
hyphen--Gurney-Brown; that was it."
"And when did the house change hands?" said Basil, looking up
sharply. His strange eyes were burning brilliantly.
"I came in last month," said the Major.
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."
Northover rose.
"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.
"Do you know where you are, Major?" he said.
"God knows I don't," said the warrior, with fervour.
"You are standing," replied Northover, "in the office of the Adventure
and Romance Agency, Limited."
"And what's that?" blankly inquired Brown.
The man of business leaned over the back of the chair, and fixed his
dark eyes on the other's face.
"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?"
"Certainly not," said the Major shortly.
"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