The Club of Queer Trades, G. K. Chesterton [book series for 12 year olds .TXT] 📗

dubious. He’s a wanderer, a teller of tall tales, a man who doesn’t conceal his acquaintance with all the blackest and bloodiest scenes on earth. We take the trouble to follow him to one of his appointments, and if ever two human beings were plotting together and lying to everyone else, he and that impossible house-agent were doing it. We followed him home, and the very same night he is in the thick of 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 glare does not dazzle me.”

Basil was quite unmoved. “I admit his moral goodness is of a certain kind, a quaint, perhaps a casual kind. He is very fond of change and experiment. But all the points you so ingeniously make against him are mere coincidence or special pleading. It’s true he didn’t want to talk about his house business in front of us. No man would. It’s true that he carries a sword-stick. Any man might. It’s true he drew it in the shock of a street fight. Any man would. But there’s nothing really dubious in all 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 a policeman wants to see you.”

“Show him in,” said Basil, amid the blank silence.

The heavy, handsome constable who appeared at the door spoke almost as soon as he appeared there.

“I think one of you gentlemen,” he said, curtly but respectfully, “was present at the affair in Copper Street last night, and drew my attention very strongly to a particular man.”

Rupert half rose from his chair, with eyes like diamonds, but the constable went on calmly, referring to a paper.

“A young man with grey hair. Had light grey clothes, very good, but torn in the struggle. Gave his name as Drummond Keith.”

“This is amusing,” said Basil, laughing. “I was in the very act of clearing 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 had them all watched. It wasn’t serious enough to do more than that. All the other 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, slapping both 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 knitted brows. “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 of rapture, “I don’t wonder you couldn’t be a judge. You think everyone as good as yourself. Isn’t the thing plain enough now? A doubtful acquaintance; rowdy stories, a most suspicious conversation, mean streets, a concealed knife, a man nearly killed, and, finally, a false address. That’s what we call glaring goodness.”

“It’s certainly very extraordinary,” repeated Basil. And he strolled moodily about the room. Then he said: “You are quite sure, constable, that there’s no mistake? You got the address right, and the police have really gone to it and found it was a fraud?”

“It was very simple, sir,” said the policeman, chuckling. “The place he named was a well-known common quite near London, and our people were down there this morning before any of you were awake. And there’s no such house. In fact, there are hardly any houses at all. Though it is so near London, it’s a blank moor with hardly five trees on it, to say nothing of Christians. Oh, no, sir, the address was a fraud right enough. He was a clever rascal, and chose one of those scraps of lost England that people know nothing about. Nobody could say offhand that there was not a particular house dropped somewhere about the heath. But as a fact, there isn’t.”

Basil’s face during this sensible speech had been growing darker and darker with a sort of desperate sagacity. He was cornered almost for the first time since I had known him; and to tell the truth I rather wondered at the almost childish obstinacy which kept him so close to his original prejudice in favour of the wildly questionable lieutenant. At length he said:

“You really searched the common? And the address was really not known in the district⁠—by the way, what was the address?”

The constable selected one of his slips of paper and consulted it, but before he could speak Rupert Grant, who was leaning in the window in a perfect posture of the quiet and triumphant detective, struck in with the sharp and suave voice he loved so much to use.

“Why, I can tell you that, Basil,” he said graciously as he idly plucked leaves from a plant in the window. “I took the precaution to get this man’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, looking sweetly 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 few seconds into the void. Then his head fell back in his chair so suddenly that I started up, thinking him ill. But before I could move further his lips had flown apart (I can use no other phrase) and a peal of gigantic laughter 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 with laughter; but still he laughed. The rest of us were by this time ill almost 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