"So I hear," he said, in a kindly yet somehow formal voice, "Ihear, madam, that my friends have been trying to rescue you.But without success.""No one, naturally, knows my faults better than you," answered the lady with a high colour."But you have not found me guilty of treachery.""I willingly attest it, madam," replied Basil, in the same level tones, "and the fact is that I am so much gratified with your exhibition of loyalty that I permit myself the pleasure of exercising some very large discretionary powers.You would not leave this room at the request of these gentlemen.But you know that you can safely leave it at mine."The captive made another reverence."I have never complained of your injustice," she said."I need scarcely say what I think of your generosity."And before our staring eyes could blink she had passed out of the room, Basil holding the door open for her.
He turned to Greenwood with a relapse into joviality."This will be a relief to you," he said.
"Yes, it will," replied that immovable young gentleman with a face like a sphinx.
We found ourselves outside in the dark blue night, shaken and dazed as if we had fallen into it from some high tower.
"Basil," said Rupert at last, in a weak voice, "I always thought you were my brother.But are you a man? I mean--are you only a man?""At present," replied Basil, "my mere humanity is proved by one of the most unmistakable symbols--hunger.We are too late for the theatre in Sloane Square.But we are not too late for the restaurant.Here comes the green omnibus!" and he had leaped on it before we could speak.
------------------------------------------------------------------------As I said, it was months after that Rupert Grant suddenly entered my room, swinging a satchel in his hand and with a general air of having jumped over the garden wall, and implored me to go with him upon the latest and wildest of his expeditions.He proposed to himself no less a thing than the discovery of the actual origin, whereabouts, and headquarters of the source of all our joys and sorrows--the Club of Queer Trades.I should expand this story for ever if I explained how ultimately we ran this strange entity to its lair.The process meant a hundred interesting things.The tracking of a member, the bribing of a cabman, the fighting of roughs, the lifting of a paving stone, the finding of a cellar, the finding of a cellar below the cellar, the finding of the subterranean passage, the finding of the Club of Queer Trades.
I have had many strange experiences in my life, but never a stranger one than that I felt when I came out of those rambling, sightless, and seemingly hopeless passages into the sudden splendour of a sumptuous and hospitable dining-room, surrounded upon almost every side by faces that I knew.There was Mr Montmorency, the Arboreal House-Agent, seated between the two brisk young men who were occasionally vicars, and always Professional Detainers.There was Mr P.G.Northover, founder of the Adventure and Romance Agency.There was Professor Chadd, who invented the dancing Language.
As we entered, all the members seemed to sink suddenly into their chairs, and with the very action the vacancy of the presidential seat gaped at us like a missing tooth.
"The president's not here," said Mr P.G.Northover, turning suddenly to Professor Chadd.
"N--no," said the philosopher, with more than his ordinary vagueness."I can't imagine where he is.""Good heavens," said Mr Montmorency, jumping up, "I really feel a little nervous.I'll go and see." And he ran out of the room.
An instant after he ran back again, twittering with a timid ecstasy.
"He's there, gentlemen--he's there all right--he's coming in now,"he cried, and sat down.Rupert and I could hardly help feeling the beginnings of a sort of wonder as to who this person might be who was the first member of this insane brotherhood.Who, we thought indistinctly, could be maddest in this world of madmen: what fantastic was it whose shadow filled all these fantastics with so loyal an expectation?
Suddenly we were answered.The door flew open and the room was filled and shaken with a shout, in the midst of which Basil Grant, smiling and in evening dress, took his seat at the head of the table.
