Chapter 1. The Tremendous Adventures of Major Brown (2)

    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 tenacious person had him hard by the coat collar and hung with the other hand to a beam. At length there came a strain in holding back this human bull, a strain under which Brown expected his hand to rend and part from the arm. But something else rent and parted; and the dim fat figure of the giant vanished out of the cellar, leaving the torn coat in the Major's hand; the only fruit of his adventure and the only clue to the mystery. For when he went up and out at the front door, the lady, the rich hangings, and the whole equipment of the house had disappeared. It had only bare boards and whitewashed walls.
    “The lady was in the conspiracy, of course,” said Rupert, nodding. Major Brown turned brick red. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I think not.”
    Rupert raised his eyebrows and looked at him for a moment, but said nothing. When next he spoke he asked:
    “Was there anything in the pockets of the coat?”
    “There was sevenpence halfpenny in coppers and a threepenny-bit,” said the Major carefully; “there was a cigarette-holder, a piece of string, and this letter,” and he laid it on the table. It ran as follows:
    Dear Mr Plover,
    I am annoyed to hear that some delay has occurred in the arrangements re Major Brown. Please see that he is attacked as per arrangement tomorrow. The coal-cellar, of course.
    Yours faithfully, P. G. Northover.
    Rupert Grant was leaning forward listening with hawk-like eyes. He cut in:
    “Is it dated from anywhere?”
    “No—oh, yes!” replied Brown, glancing upon the paper; “14 Tanner's Court, North—”
    Rupert sprang up and struck his hands together.
    “Then why are we hanging here? Let's get along. Basil, lend me your revolver.”
    Basil was staring into the embers like a man in a trance; and it was some time before he answered:
    “I don't think you'll need it.”
    “Perhaps not,” said Rupert, getting into his fur coat. “One never knows. But going down a dark court to see criminals—”
    “Do you think they are criminals?” asked his brother.
    Rupert laughed stoutly. “Giving orders to a subordinate to strangle a harmless stranger in a coal-cellar may strike you as a very blameless experiment, but—”
    “Do you think they wanted to strangle the Major?” asked Basil, in the same distant and monotonous voice.
    “My dear fellow, you've been asleep. Look at the letter.”
    “I am looking at the letter,” said the mad judge calmly; though, as a matter of fact, he was looking at the fire. “I don't think it's the sort of letter one criminal would write to another.”
    “My dear boy, you are glorious,” cried Rupert, turning round, with laughter in his blue bright eyes. “Your methods amaze me. Why, there is the letter. It is written, and it does give orders for a crime. You might as well say that the Nelson Column was not at all the sort of thing that was likely to be set up in Trafalgar Square.”
    Basil Grant shook all over with a sort of silent laughter, but did not otherwise move.
    “That's rather good,” he said; “but, of course, logic like that's not what is really wanted. It's a question of spiritual atmosphere. It's not a criminal letter.”
    “It is. It's a matter of fact,” cried the other in an agony of reasonableness.
    “Facts,” murmured Basil, like one mentioning some strange, far-off animals, “how facts obscure the truth. I may be silly—in fact, I'm off my head—but I never could believe in that man—what's his name, in those capital stories?—Sherlock Holmes. Every detail points to something, certainly; but generally to the wrong thing. Facts point in all directions, it seems to me, like the thousands of twigs on a tree. It's only the life of the tree that has unity and goes up—only the green blood that springs, like a fountain, at the stars.”
    “But what the deuce else can the letter be but criminal?”
    “We have eternity to stretch our legs in,” replied the mystic. “It can be an infinity of things. I haven't seen any of them—I've only seen the letter. I look at that, and say it's not criminal.”
    “Then what's the origin of it?”
    “I haven't the vaguest idea.”
    “Then why don't you accept the ordinary explanation?”
    Basil continued for a little to glare at the coals, and seemed collecting his thoughts in a humble and even painful way. Then he said:
    “Suppose you went out into the moonlight. Suppose you passed through silent, silvery streets and squares until you came into an open and deserted space, set with a few monuments, and you beheld one dressed as a ballet girl dancing in the argent glimmer. And suppose you looked, and saw it was a man disguised. And 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 empty. But on a second and more careful glance, we saw seated behind a very large desk with pigeonholes and drawers of bewildering multiplicity, a small man with a black waxed moustache, and the air of a very average clerk, writing hard. He looked up as we came to a standstill.
    “Did you knock?” he asked pleasantly. “I am sorry if I did not hear. What can I do for you?”
    There was a doubtful pause, and then, by general consent, the Major himself, the victim of the outrage, stepped forward.
    The letter was in his hand, and he looked unusually grim.
    “Is your name P. G. Northover?” he asked.
    “That is my name,” replied the other, smiling.
    “I think,” said Major Brown, with an increase in the dark glow of his face, “that this letter was written by you.” And with a loud clap he struck open the letter on the desk with his clenched fist. The man called Northover looked at it with unaffected interest and merely nodded.
    “Well, sir,” said the Major, breathing hard, “what about that?”
    “What about it, precisely,” said the man with the moustache.
    “I am Major Brown,” said that gentleman sternly.
    Northover bowed. “Pleased to meet you, sir. What have you to say to me?”
    “Say!” cried the Major, loosing a sudden tempest; “why, I want this confounded thing settled. I want—”
    “Certainly, sir,” said Northover, jumping up with a slight elevation of the eyebrows. “Will you take a chair for a moment.” And he pressed an electric bell just above him, which thrilled and tinkled in a room beyond. The Major put his hand on the back of the chair offered him, but stood chafing and beating the floor with his polished boot.
    The next moment an inner glass door was opened, and a fair, weedy, young man, in a frock-coat, entered from within.
    “Mr Hopson,” said Northover, “this is Major Brown. Will you please finish that thing for him I gave you this morning and bring it in?”
    “Yes, sir,” said Mr Hopson, and vanished like lightning.
    “You will excuse me, gentlemen,” said the egregious Northover, with his radiant smile, “if I continue to work until Mr Hopson is ready. I have some books that must be cleared up before I get away on my holiday tomorrow. And we all like a whiff of the country, don't we? Ha! ha!”
    The criminal took up his pen with a childlike laugh, and a silence ensued; a placid and busy silence on the part of Mr P. G. Northover; a raging silence on the part of everybody else.
    At length the scratching of Northover's pen in the stillness was mingled with a knock at the door, almost simultaneous with the turning of the handle, and Mr Hopson came in again with the same silent rapidity, placed a paper before his principal, and disappeared again.
    The man at the desk pulled and twisted his spiky moustache for a few moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented to him. He took up his pen, with a slight, instantaneous frown, and altered something, muttering—“Careless.” Then he read it again with the same impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it to the frantic Brown, whose hand was beating the devil's tattoo on the back of the chair.
    “I think you will find that all right, Major,” he said briefly.
    The Major looked at it; whether he found it all right or not will appear later, but he found it like this:

Major Brown to P. G. Northover. £ s. d.
 January 1, to account rendered 5 6 0
 May 9, to potting and embedding of 200 pansies 2 0 0
 To cost of trolley with flowers 0 15 0
 To hiring of man with trolley 0 5 0
 To hire of house and garden for one day 1 0 0
 To furnishing of room in peacock curtains, copper ornaments, etc. 3 0 0
 To salary of Miss Jameson 1 0 0
 To salary of Mr Plover 1 0 0
            —————
            Total £14 6 0
A Remittance will oblige.

    “What,” said Brown, after a dead pause, and with eyes that seemed slowly rising out of his head, “What in heaven's name is this?”
    “What is it?” repeated Northover, cocking his eyebrow with amusement. “It's your account, of course.”
    “My account!” The Major's ideas appeared to be in a vague stampede. “My account! And what have I got to do with it?”
    “Well,” said Northover, laughing outright, “naturally I prefer you to pay it.”
    The Major's hand was still resting on the back of the chair as the words came. He scarcely stirred otherwise, but he lifted the chair bodily into the air with one hand and hurled it at Northover's head.
    The legs crashed against the desk, 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?”