Chapter 4. The Singular Speculation of the House-Agent
Lieutenant Drummond Keith was a man about whom conversation always burstlike a thunderstorm the moment he left the room. This arose from manyseparate touches about him. He was a light, loose person, who worelight, loose clothes, generally white, as if he were in the tropics; hewas 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 adegree so exaggerated as immeasurably to eclipse the most miserable ofthe unemployed; I mean the habit of continual change of lodgings. Thereare inland tracts of London where, in the very heart of artificialcivilization, humanity has almost become nomadic once more. But in thatrestless interior there was no ragged tramp so restless as the elegantofficer in the loose white clothes. He had shot a great many things inhis time, to judge from his conversation, from partridges to elephants,but his slangier acquaintances were of opinion that "the moon" had beennot unfrequently amid the victims of his victorious rifle. The phrase isa fine one, and suggests a mystic, elvish, nocturnal hunting.
He carried from house to house and from parish to parish a kit whichconsisted practically of five articles. Two odd-looking, large-bladedspears, tied together, the weapons, I suppose, of some savage tribe, agreen umbrella, a huge and tattered copy of the Pickwick Papers, a biggame rifle, and a large sealed jar of some unholy Oriental wine. Thesealways went into every new lodging, even for one night; and they went inquite undisguised, tied up in wisps of string or straw, to the delightof the poetic gutter boys in the little grey streets.
I had forgotten to mention that he always carried also his oldregimental sword. But this raised another odd question about him. Slimand active as he was, he was no longer very young. His hair, indeed, wasquite grey, though his rather wild almost Italian moustache retained itsblackness, and his face was careworn under its almost Italian gaiety.To find a middle-aged man who has left the Army at the primitive rankof lieutenant is unusual and not necessarily encouraging. With themore cautious and solid this fact, like his endless flitting, did themysterious gentleman no good.
Lastly, he was a man who told the kind of adventures which win a manadmiration, but not respect. They came out of queer places, where a goodman would scarcely find himself, out of opium dens and gambling hells;they had the heat of the thieves' kitchens or smelled of a strangesmoke from cannibal incantations. These are the kind of stories whichdiscredit a person almost equally whether they are believed or no. IfKeith's tales were false he was a liar; if they were true he had had, atany rate, every opportunity of being a scamp.
He had just left the room in which I sat with Basil Grant and hisbrother Rupert, the voluble amateur detective. And as I say wasinvariably the case, we were all talking about him. Rupert Grant wasa clever young fellow, but he had that tendency which youth andcleverness, when sharply combined, so often produce, a somewhatextravagant scepticism. He saw doubt and guilt everywhere, and itwas meat and drink to him. I had often got irritated with this boyishincredulity of his, but on this particular occasion I am bound to saythat I thought him so obviously right that I was astounded at Basil'sopposing him, however banteringly.
I could swallow a good deal, being naturally of a simple turn, but Icould not swallow Lieutenant Keith's autobiography.
"You don't seriously mean, Basil," I said, "that you think that thatfellow really did go as a stowaway with Nansen and pretend to be the MadMullah and--"
"He has one fault," said Basil thoughtfully, "or virtue, as you mayhappen 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 allhis life in one ancestral manor."
"No, he's extremely fond of change of scene," replied Basildispassionately, "and of living in odd places. That doesn't prevent hischief trait being verbal exactitude. What you people don't understand isthat telling a thing crudely and coarsely as it happened makes it soundfrightfully strange. The sort of things Keith recounts are not the sortof things that a man would make up to cover himself with honour; theyare too absurd. But they are the sort of things that a man would do ifhe were sufficiently filled with the soul of skylarking."
"So far from paradox," said his brother, with something rather like asneer, "you seem to be going in for journalese proverbs. Do you believethat 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 iscongenial to it."
"Well, your lieutenant's truth is stranger, if it is truth, thananything I ever heard of," said Rupert, relapsing into flippancy. "Doyou, 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 Rupertcynically.
"I must say, I think you can hardly regard him as unimpeachable merelyin himself," I said mildly; "his mode of life--"
Before I could complete the sentence the door was flung open andDrummond Keith appeared again on the threshold, his white Panama on hishead.
"I say, Grant," he said, knocking off his cigarette ash against thedoor, "I've got no money in the world till next April. Could you lend mea hundred pounds? There's a good chap."
Rupert and I looked at each other in an ironical silence. Basil, who wassitting by his desk, swung the chair round idly on its screw and pickedup a quill-pen.
"Shall I cross it?" he asked, opening a cheque-book.
"Really," began Rupert, with a rather nervous loudness, "sinceLieutenant Keith has seen fit to make this suggestion to Basil beforehis family, I--"
"Here you are, Ugly," said Basil, fluttering a cheque in the directionof the quite nonchalant officer. "Are you in a hurry?"
"Yes," replied Keith, in a rather abrupt way. "As a matter of fact Iwant it now. I want to see my--er--business man."
Rupert was eyeing him sarcastically, and I could see that it was onthe 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 likeill-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 Grantgrimly. "Do you know, Mr Keith, I think I should very much like to gowith you?"
Basil shook with his soundless laughter. Lieutenant Keith started alittle; 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 alongwith 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. Lookunder my bed. Examine my dust-bin. Come along!" And with a furiousenergy which took away our breath he banged his way out of the room.
Rupert Grant, his restless blue eyes dancing with his detectiveexcitement, soon shouldered alongside him, talking to him with thattransparent camaraderie which he imagined to be appropriate from thedisguised policeman to the disguised criminal. His interpretationwas certainly corroborated by one particular detail, the unmistakableunrest, annoyance, and nervousness of the man with whom he walked. Basiland I tramped behind, and it was not necessary for us to tell each otherthat we had both noticed this.
Lieutenant Drummond Keith led us through very extraordinary andunpromising neighbourhoods in the search for his remarkable house-agent.Neither of the brothers Grant failed to notice this fact. As the streetsgrew closer and more crooked and the roofs lower and the gutters grosserwith mud, a darker cu
riosity deepened on the brows of Basil, and thefigure of Rupert seen from behind seemed to fill the street with agigantic swagger of success. At length, at the end of the fourth orfifth lean grey street in that sterile district, we came suddenly to ahalt, the mysterious lieutenant looking once more about him with asort of sulky desperation. Above a row of shutters and a door, allindescribably dingy in appearance and in size scarce sufficient even fora 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 aboutmy welfare lead you to wish to overhear everything I have to say to mybusiness adviser?"
Rupert's face was white and shaking with excitement; nothing on earthwould 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 gestureof savage surrender. And he slammed into the office, the rest of us athis heels.
P. Montmorency, House-Agent, was a solitary old gentleman sitting behinda bare brown counter. He had an egglike head, froglike jaws, and a greyhairy fringe of aureole round the lower part of his face; the wholecombined with a reddish, aquiline nose. He wore a shabby blackfrock-coat, a sort of semi-clerical tie worn at a very unclericalangle, and looked, generally speaking, about as unlike a house-agent asanything could look, short of something like a sandwich man or a ScotchHighlander.
We stood inside the room for fully forty seconds, and the odd oldgentleman did not look at us. Neither, to tell the truth, odd as hewas, did we look at him. Our eyes were fixed, where his were fixed, uponsomething that was crawling about on the counter in front of him. It wasa ferret.
The silence was broken by Rupert Grant. He spoke in that sweet andsteely voice which he reserved for great occasions and practised forhours 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 trouserspocket, 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 eyeswandered unquietly towards Lieutenant Keith, the only man present thathe 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 coquettishsmile. "I am a house-agent... oh, yes."
"Well, I think," said Rupert, with a sardonic sleekness, "thatLieutenant 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--aboutthe br--"
"Right," cried Keith, cutting the word short with the startling neatnessof a gunshot. "We needn't bother about all that. If you've done what Itold you, all right."
And he turned sharply towards the door.
Mr Montmorency, House-Agent, presented a picture of pathos. Afterstammering a moment he said: "Excuse me... Mr Keith... there was anothermatter... about which I wasn't quite sure. I tried to get all theheating apparatus possible under the circumstances ... but in winter...at that elevation..."
"Can't expect much, eh?" said the lieutenant, cutting in with the samesudden skill. "No, of course not. That's all right, Montmorency. Therecan't be any more difficulties," and he put his hand on the handle ofthe door.
"I think," said Rupert Grant, with a satanic suavity, "that MrMontmorency 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 proceedings in a state ofNapoleonic calm, which might be more accurately described as a state ofNapoleonic stupidity, suddenly lifted his leonine head.
"Before you go, Lieutenant Keith," he said. "Come now. Really, whatabout the birds?"
"I'll take care of them," said Lieutenant Keith, still with his longback 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'mwild 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 anindescribable laugh and swung round to face us. It was a laugh, thepurport of which was direct and essential, and yet which one cannotexactly express. As near as it said anything, verbally speaking, itsaid: "Well, if you must spoil it, you must. But you don't know whatyou'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 havea house of another colour. Green!" and before we could realize anythingthe door had banged between us and the street.
Rupert Grant seemed to take a little time to collect himself; but hespoke 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. "Thenegotiations 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 rejoinmy companion outside, whether, in your business, it is usual to ask forhouses by their colour? Do clients write to a house-agent asking for apink house or a blue house? Or, to take another instance, for a greenhouse?"
"Only," said Montmorency, trembling, "only to be inconspicuous."
Rupert had his ruthless smile. "Can you tell me any place on earth inwhich a green house would be inconspicuous?"
The house-agent was fidgeting nervously in his pocket. Slowly drawingout 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 tosuggest a sudden situation, "I can't. And may I, as a busy man, beexcused if I ask you, gentlemen, if you have any demand to make of me inconnection with my business. What kind of house would you desire me toget for you, sir?"
He opened his blank blue eyes on Rupert, who seemed for the secondstaggered. Then he recovered himself with perfect common sense andanswered:
"I am sorry, Mr Montmorency. The fascination of your remarks has undulydelayed us from joining our friend outside. Pray excuse my apparentimpertinence."
"Not at all, sir," said the house-agent, taking a South American spideridly from his waistcoat pocket and letting it climb up the slope of hisdesk. "Not at all, sir. I hope you will favour me again."
Rupert Grant dashed out of the office in a gust of anger, anxiousto face Lieutenant Keith. He was gone. The dull, starlit street wasdeserted.
"What do you say now?" cried Rupert to his brother. His brother saidnothing now.
We all three strode down the street in silence, Rupert feverish, myselfdazed, Basil, to all appearance, merely dull. We walked through greystreet after grey street, turning corners, traversing squares, scarcelymeeting anyone, except occasional drunken knots of two or three.
In one small street, however, the knots of two or three began abruptlyto thicken into knots of five or six and then into great groups and theninto a crowd. The crowd was stirring very slightly. But anyone with aknowledge of the eternal populace k
nows that if the outside rim of acrowd stirs ever so slightly it means that there is madness in theheart and core of the mob. It soon became evident that something reallyimportant had happened in the centre of this excitement. We wormed ourway to the front, with the cunning which is known only to cockneys, andonce there we soon learned the nature of the difficulty. There had beena brawl concerned with some six men, and one of them lay almost deadon the stones of the street. Of the other four, all interesting matterswere, as far as we were concerned, swallowed up in one stupendous fact.One of the four survivors of the brutal and perhaps fatal scuffle wasthe immaculate Lieutenant Keith, his clothes torn to ribbons, his eyesblazing, blood on his knuckles. One other thing, however, pointed at himin a worse manner. A short sword, or very long knife, had been drawn outof 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 ponderousomnipotence, and even as they did so, Rupert Grant sprang forward withhis incontrollable and intolerable secret.
"That is the man, constable," he shouted, pointing at the batteredlieutenant. "He is a suspicious character. He did the murder."
"There's been no murder done, sir," said the policeman, with hisautomatic civility. "The poor man's only hurt. I shall only be able totake the names and addresses of the men in the scuffle and have a goodeye kept on them."
"Have a good eye kept on that one," said Rupert, pale to the lips, andpointing to the ragged Keith.
"All right, sir," said the policeman unemotionally, and went the roundof the people present, collecting the addresses. When he had completedhis task the dusk had fallen and most of the people not immediatelyconnected with the examination had gone away. He still found, however,one eager-faced stranger lingering on the outskirts of the affair. Itwas Rupert Grant.
"Constable," he said, "I have a very particular reason for asking youa question. Would you mind telling me whether that military fellow whodropped his sword-stick in the row gave you an address or not?"
"Yes, sir," said the policeman, after a reflective pause; "yes, he gaveme his address."
"My name is Rupert Grant," said that individual, with some pomp. "Ihave assisted the police on more than one occasion. I wonder whether youwould 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, BuxtonCommon, near Purley, Surrey."
"Thank you," said Rupert, and ran home through the gathering night asfast as his legs could carry him, repeating the address to himself.
Rupert Grant generally came down late in a rather lordly way tobreakfast; he contrived, I don't know how, to achieve always theattitude of the indulged younger brother. Next morning, however, whenBasil and I came down we found him ready and restless.
"Well," he said sharply to his brother almost before we sat down to themeal. "What do you think of your Drummond Keith now?"
"What do I think of him?" inquired Basil slowly. "I don't think anythingof him."
"I'm glad to hear it," said Rupert, buttering his toast with an energythat was somewhat exultant. "I thought you'd come round to my view, butI own I was startled at your not seeing it from the beginning. The manis a translucent liar and knave."
"I think," said Basil, in the same heavy monotone as before, "that I didnot make myself clear. When I said that I thought nothing of him I meantgrammatically what I said. I meant that I did not think about him; thathe did not occupy my mind. You, however, seem to me to think a lot ofhim, since you think him a knave. I should say he was glaringly goodmyself."
"I sometimes think you talk paradox for its own sake," said Rupert,breaking an egg with unnecessary sharpness. "What the deuce is thesense of it? Here's a man whose original position was, by our commonagreement, dubious. He's a wanderer, a teller of tall tales, a man whodoesn't conceal his acquaintance with all the blackest and bloodiestscenes on earth. We take the trouble to follow him to one of hisappointments, and if ever two human beings were plotting together andlying to every one else, he and that impossible house-agent were doingit. We followed him home, and the very same night he is in the thickof 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 glaredoes not dazzle me."
Basil was quite unmoved. "I admit his moral goodness is of a certainkind, a quaint, perhaps a casual kind. He is very fond of change andexperiment. But all the points you so ingeniously make against him aremere coincidence or special pleading. It's true he didn't want to talkabout his house business in front of us. No man would. It's true that hecarries a sword-stick. Any man might. It's true he drew it in the shockof a street fight. Any man would. But there's nothing really dubious inall 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 apoliceman wants to see you."
"Show him in," said Basil, amid the blank silence.
The heavy, handsome constable who appeared at the door spoke almost assoon as he appeared there.
"I think one of you gentlemen," he said, curtly but respectfully, "waspresent at the affair in Copper Street last night, and drew my attentionvery strongly to a particular man."
Rupert half rose from his chair, with eyes like diamonds, but theconstable went on calmly, referring to a paper.
"A young man with grey hair. Had light grey clothes, very good, but tornin the struggle. Gave his name as Drummond Keith."
"This is amusing," said Basil, laughing. "I was in the very act ofclearing 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 hadthem all watched. It wasn't serious enough to do more than that. All theother 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, slappingboth 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 knittedbrows. "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 ofrapture, "I don't wonder you couldn't be a judge. You think every oneas good as yourself. Isn't the thing plain enough now? A doubtfulacquaintance; rowdy stories, a most suspicious conversation, meanstreets, a concealed knife, a man nearly killed, and, finally, a falseaddress. That's what we call glaring goodness."
"It's certainly very extraordinary," repeated Basil. And he strolledmoodily about the room. Then he said: "You are quite sure, constable,that there's no mistake? You got the address right, and the police havereally gone to it and found it was a fraud?"
"It was very simple, sir," said the policeman, chuckling. "The placehe named was a well-known common quite near London, and our people weredown there this morning before any of you were awake. And there's nosuch house. In fact, there are hardly any houses at all. Though it isso near London, it's a blank moor with hardly five trees on it, tosay nothing of Christians. Oh, no, sir, the address was a fraud rightenough. He was a clever rascal, and chose one of those scraps of lostEngland that people know nothing about. Nobody could say off-hand thatthere was not a particular house dropped somewhere about the heath. Butas a fact, there isn't."
Basil's face during this sensible speech had been growing darker anddarker with a sort of desperate sagacity. He was cornered almost forthe first time since I had known him; and to tell the truth I ratherwondered at the almost childish obstinacy which kept him so close to hisoriginal prejudice in favour of the wildly questionable lieutenant. Atlength he said:
"You really searched the common? And the address was really not known inthe district--by the way, what was the address?"
The constable selected one
of his slips of paper and consulted it, butbefore he could speak Rupert Grant, who was leaning in the window in aperfect posture of the quiet and triumphant detective, struck in withthe sharp and suave voice he loved so much to use.
"Why, I can tell you that, Basil," he said graciously as he idly pluckedleaves from a plant in the window. "I took the precaution to get thisman'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, lookingsweetly 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 fewseconds into the void. Then his head fell back in his chair so suddenlythat I started up, thinking him ill. But before I could move further hislips had flown apart (I can use no other phrase) and a peal of giganticlaughter 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 withlaughter; but still he laughed. The rest of us were by this time illalmost 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 alsounpractical, because we have not much time to lose if we're to get downto that place. The train service is confoundedly bad, as I happen toknow. 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 inhis pockets as he rose. "Something Common near Purley. Has any one got atimetable?"
"You don't seriously mean," cried Rupert, who had been staring in a sortof confusion of emotions. "You don't mean that you want to go to BuxtonCommon, 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 ofthe plant in the window and staring at the speaker.
"To find our friend, the lieutenant, of course," said Basil Grant. "Ithought you wanted to find him?"
Rupert broke a branch brutally from the plant and flung it impatientlyon the floor. "And in order to find him," he said, "you suggest theadmirable expedient of going to the only place on the habitable earthwhere we know he can't be."
The constable and I could not avoid breaking into a kind of assentinglaugh, and Rupert, who had family eloquence, was encouraged to go onwith a reiterated gesture:
"He may be in Buckingham Palace; he may be sitting astride the cross ofSt Paul's; he may be in jail (which I think most likely); he may bein the Great Wheel; he may be in my pantry; he may be in your storecupboard; but out of all the innumerable points of space, there is onlyone where he has just been systematically looked for and where we knowthat he is not to be found--and that, if I understand you rightly, iswhere you want us to go."
"Exactly," said Basil calmly, getting into his great-coat; "I thoughtyou might care to accompany me. If not, of course, make yourselves jollyhere till I come back."
It is our nature always to follow vanishing things and value them ifthey really show a resolution to depart. We all followed Basil, and Icannot say why, except that he was a vanishing thing, that he vanisheddecisively with his great-coat and his stick. Rupert ran after him witha considerable flurry of rationality.
"My dear chap," he cried, "do you really mean that you see any good ingoing down to this ridiculous scrub, where there is nothing but beatentracks and a few twisted trees, simply because it was the first placethat came into a rowdy lieutenant's head when he wanted to give a lyingreference in a scrape?"
"Yes," said Basil, taking out his watch, "and, what's worse, we've lostthe train."
He paused a moment and then added: "As a matter of fact, I think we mayjust as well go down later in the day. I have some writing to do, andI think you told me, Rupert, that you thought of going to the DulwichGallery. I was rather too impetuous. Very likely he wouldn't be in. Butif we get down by the 5.15, which gets to Purley about 6, I expect weshall just catch him."
"Catch him!" cried his brother, in a kind of final anger. "I wish wecould. Where the deuce shall we catch him now?"
"I keep forgetting the name of the common," said Basil, as he buttonedup his coat. "The Elms--what is it? Buxton Common, near Purley. That'swhere we shall find him."
"But there is no such place," groaned Rupert; but he followed hisbrother downstairs.
We all followed him. We snatched our hats from the hat-stand and oursticks from the umbrella-stand; and why we followed him we did not anddo not know. But we always followed him, whatever was the meaning of thefact, whatever was the nature of his mastery. And the strange thing wasthat we followed him the more completely the more nonsensical appearedthe thing which he said. At bottom, I believe, if he had risen fromour breakfast table and said: "I am going to find the Holy Pig with TenTails," we should have followed him to the end of the world.
I don't know whether this mystical feeling of mine about Basil on thisoccasion has got any of the dark and cloudy colour, so to speak, of thestrange journey that we made the same evening. It was already very densetwilight when we struck southward from Purley. Suburbs and things on theLondon border may be, in most cases, commonplace and comfortable. But ifever by any chance they really are empty solitudes they are to thehuman spirit more desolate and dehumanized than any Yorkshire moors orHighland hills, because the suddenness with which the traveller dropsinto that silence has something about it as of evil elf-land. Itseems to be one of the ragged suburbs of the cosmos half-forgotten byGod--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 ourexpedition. The tracts of grey turf looked useless, the occasionalwind-stricken trees looked useless, but we, the human beings, moreuseless than the hopeless turf or the idle trees. We were maniacs akinto the foolish landscape, for we were come to chase the wild goose whichhas led men and left men in bogs from the beginning. We were three dazedmen under the captaincy of a madman going to look for a man whom we knewwas not there in a house that had no existence. A livid sunset seemed tolook at us with a sort of sickly smile before it died.
Basil went on in front with his coat collar turned up, looking in thegloom rather like a grotesque Napoleon. We crossed swell after swellof the windy common in increasing darkness and entire silence. SuddenlyBasil stopped and turned to us, his hands in his pockets. Through thedusk I could just detect that he wore a broad grin as of comfortablesuccess.
"Well," he cried, taking his heavily gloved hands out of his pockets andslapping them together, "here we are at last."
The wind swirled sadly over the homeless heath; two desolate elms rockedabove us in the sky like shapeless clouds of grey. There was not a signof man or beast to the sullen circle of the horizon, and in the midst ofthat wilderness Basil Grant stood rubbing his hands with the air of aninnkeeper standing at an open door.
"How jolly it is," he cried, "to get back to civilization. That notionthat civilization isn't poetical is a civilised delusion. Wait tillyou've really lost yourself in nature, among the devilish woodlands andthe cruel flowers. Then you'll know that there's no star like the redstar of man that he lights on his hearthstone; no river like the redriver of man, the good red wine, which you, Mr Rupert Grant, if Ihave any knowledge of you, will be drinking in two or three minutes inenormous quantities."
Rupert and I exchanged glances of fear. Basil went on heartily, as thewind died in the dreary trees.
"You'll find our host a much more simple kind of fellow in his ownhouse. 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 goodfellow. But his greatest virtue remains what
I said originally."
"What do you mean?" I asked, finding his speech straying towards a sortof sanity. "What is his greatest virtue?"
"His greatest virtue," replied Basil, "is that he always tells theliteral truth."
"Well, really," cried Rupert, stamping about between cold and anger,and slapping himself like a cabman, "he doesn't seem to have been veryliteral or truthful in this case, nor you either. Why the deuce, may Iask, 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 ina little more suggestiveness and legitimate romance. But come, it's timewe 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 ahouse?"
"I suppose so," I said. Then I added aloud, in what was meant to bea cheery and sensible voice, but which sounded in my ears almost asstrange 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 aboveour heads, swarming up the grey column of the colossal tree.
"Come up, all of you," he shouted out of the darkness, with the voice ofa schoolboy. "Come up. You'll be late for dinner."
The two great elms stood so close together that there was scarcely ayard anywhere, and in some places not more than a foot, between them.Thus occasional branches and even bosses and boles formed a series offootholds that almost amounted to a rude natural ladder. They must, Isupposed, have been some sport of growth, Siamese twins of vegetation.
Why we did it I cannot think; perhaps, as I have said, the mystery ofthe waste and dark had brought out and made primary something whollymystical in Basil's supremacy. But we only felt that there was a giant'sstaircase going somewhere, perhaps to the stars; and the victoriousvoice above called to us out of heaven. We hoisted ourselves up afterhim.
Half-way up some cold tongue of the night air struck and sobered mesuddenly. The hypnotism of the madman above fell from me, and I saw thewhole map of our silly actions as clearly as if it were printed. I sawthree modern men in black coats who had begun with a perfectly sensiblesuspicion of a doubtful adventurer and who had ended, God knows how,half-way up a naked tree on a naked moorland, far from that adventurerand all his works, that adventurer who was at that moment, in allprobability, laughing at us in some dirty Soho restaurant. He had plentyto laugh at us about, and no doubt he was laughing his loudest; but whenI thought what his laughter would be if he knew where we were at thatmoment, I nearly let go of the tree and fell.
"Swinburne," said Rupert suddenly, from above, "what are we doing? Let'sget down again," and by the mere sound of his voice I knew that he toofelt the shock of wakening to reality.
"We can't leave poor Basil," I said. "Can't you call to him or get holdof him by the leg?"
"He's too far ahead," answered Rupert; "he's nearly at the top of thebeastly thing. Looking for Lieutenant Keith in the rooks' nests, Isuppose."
We were ourselves by this time far on our frantic vertical journey. Themighty 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 farfrom 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 alittle in perspective as they fell. I was used to seeing parallel linestaper towards the sky. But to see them taper towards the earth made mefeel 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 thetop, 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 talkto himself before; I'm afraid he really is bad tonight; it's a knownsign of the brain going."
"Yes," I said sadly, and listened. Basil's voice certainly was soundingabove us, and not by any means in the rich and riotous tones in whichhe had hailed us before. He was speaking quietly, and laughing every nowand 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 nottalking to himself."
"Then he is talking to us," I cried.
"No," said Rupert simply, "he's talking to somebody else."
Great branches of the elm loaded with leaves swung about us in asudden burst of wind, but when it died down I could still hear theconversational voice above. I could hear two voices.
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 ourchambers 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 thebranches like a wasps' nest, was protruding the pale face and fiercemoustache of the lieutenant, his teeth shining with that slightlySouthern air that belonged to him.
Somehow or other, stunned and speechless, we lifted ourselves heavilyinto 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 wasBasil, who, in the instant after alighting there, had fallen into anattitude of marmoreal ease as if he had been there from boyhood; he wassmoking a cigar with a slow pleasure. The second was Lieutenant DrummondKeith, who looked happy also, but feverish and doubtful compared withhis granite guest. The third was the little bald-headed house-agent withthe wild whiskers, who called himself Montmorency. The spears, thegreen umbrella, and the cavalry sword hung in parallels on the wall. Thesealed jar of strange wine was on the mantelpiece, the enormous riflein 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 footof a light-house. The room stirred slightly, as a cabin might in a mildsea.
Our glasses were filled, and we still sat there dazed and dumb. ThenBasil spoke.
"You seem still a little doubtful, Rupert. Surely there is no furtherquestion about the cold veracity of our injured host."
"I don't quite grasp it all," said Rupert, blinking still in the suddenglare. "Lieutenant Keith said his address was--"
"It's really quite right, sir," said Keith, with an open smile. "Thebobby asked me where I lived. And I said, quite truthfully, that I livedin the elms on Buxton Common, near Purley. So I do. This gentleman, MrMontmorency, whom I think you have met before, is an agent for housesof this kind. He has a special line in arboreal villas. It's being keptrather quiet at present, because the people who want these houses don'twant them to get too common. But it's just the sort of thing a fellowlike 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 andnervously pulled out a snake, which crawled about the table.
"W-well, yes, sir," he said. "The fact was--er--my people wanted me verymuch to go into the house-agency business. But I never cared myself foranything but natural history and botany and things like that. My poorparents have been dead some years now, but--naturally I like to respecttheir wishes. And I thought somehow that an arboreal villa agency wasa sort of--of compromise between being a botanist and being ahouse-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, whowas (I am convinced) his only client. "But what there is--very select."
"My dear friends," said Basil, puffing his cigar, "always remember twofacts. The first is that though when you are guessing about any onewho is sane, the sanest thing is the most likely; when you are guessingabout any one who is, like our host, insane, the maddest thing is themost likely. The second is to remember that very plain literal factalways seems fantastic. If Keith had taken a little brick box of a housein Clapham with nothing but railings in front of it and had written 'TheElms' over it, you wouldn't have thought there was anything fantasticabout that. Simply because it was a great blaring, swaggering lie youwould have believed it."
"Drink your wine, gentlemen," said Keith, laughing, "for this confoundedwind will upset it."
We drank, and as we did so, although the hanging house, by a cunningmechanism, swung only slightly, we knew that the great head of the elmtree swayed in the sky like a stricken thistle.