Running soon brought us up to the broad back of the pompous old baronet, whose white whiskers shone silver in the fitful lamplight.
My brain was utterly bewildered.I grasped nothing.
"Charlie," said Basil hoarsely, "can you believe in my common sense for four minutes?""Of course," I said, panting.
"Then help me to catch that man in front and hold him down.Do it at once when I say `Now'.Now!"We sprang on Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh, and rolled that portly old gentleman on his back.He fought with a commendable valour, but we got him tight.I had not the remotest notion why.He had a splendid and full-blooded vigour; when he could not box he kicked, and we bound him; when he could not kick he shouted, and we gagged him.
Then, by Basil's arrangement, we dragged him into a small court by the street side and waited.As I say, I had no notion why.
"I am sorry to incommode you," said Basil calmly out of the darkness; "but I have made an appointment here.""An appointment!" I said blankly.
"Yes," he said, glancing calmly at the apoplectic old aristocrat gagged on the ground, whose eyes were starting impotently from his head.
"I have made an appointment here with a thoroughly nice young fellow.
An old friend.Jasper Drummond his name is--you may have met him this afternoon at the Beaumonts.He can scarcely come though till the Beaumonts' dinner is over."For I do not know how many hours we stood there calmly in the darkness.
By the time those hours were over I had thoroughly made up my mind that the same thing had happened which had happened long ago on the bench of a British Court of Justice.Basil Grant had gone mad.I could imagine no other explanation of the facts, with the portly, purple-faced old country gentleman flung there strangled on the floor like a bundle of wood.
After about four hours a lean figure in evening dress rushed into the court.A glimpse of gaslight showed the red moustache and white face of Jasper Drummond.
"Mr Grant," he said blankly, "the thing is incredible.You were right; but what did you mean? All through this dinner-party, where dukes and duchesses and editors of Quarterlies had come especially to hear him, that extraordinary Wimpole kept perfectly silent.He didn't say a funny thing.He didn't say anything at all.What does it mean?"Grant pointed to the portly old gentleman on the ground.
"That is what it means," he said.
Drummond, on observing a fat gentleman lying so calmly about the place, jumped back, as from a mouse.
"What?" he said weakly, "...what?"
Basil bent suddenly down and tore a paper out of Sir Walter's breastpocket, a paper which the baronet, even in his hampered state, seemed to make some effort to retain.
It was a large loose piece of white wrapping paper, which Mr Jasper Drummond read with a vacant eye and undisguised astonishment.As far as he could make out, it consisted of a series of questions and answers, or at least of remarks and replies, arranged in the manner of a catechism.The greater part of the document had been torn and obliterated in the struggle, but the termination remained.It ran as follows:
C.Says...Keep countenance.
W.Keep...British Museum.
C.Know whom talk...absurdities.
W.Never talk absurdities without "What is it?" cried Drummond, flinging the paper down in a sort of final fury.
"What is it?" replied Grant, his voice rising into a kind of splendid chant."What is it? It is a great new profession.A great new trade.A trifle immoral, I admit, but still great, like piracy.""A new profession!" said the young man with the red moustache vaguely; "a new trade!""A new trade," repeated Grant, with a strange exultation, "a new profession! What a pity it is immoral.""But what the deuce is it?" cried Drummond and I in a breath of blasphemy.
"It is," said Grant calmly, "the great new trade of the Organizer of Repartee.This fat old gentleman lying on the ground strikes you, as I have no doubt, as very stupid and very rich.Let me clear his character.He is, like ourselves, very clever and very poor.He is also not really at all fat; all that is stuffing.He is not particularly old, and his name is not Cholmondeliegh.He is a swindler, and a swindler of a perfectly delightful and novel kind.
He hires himself out at dinner-parties to lead up to other people's repartees.According to a preconcerted scheme (which you may find on that piece of paper), he says the stupid things he has arranged for himself, and his client says the clever things arranged for him.In short, he allows himself to be scored off for a guinea a night.""And this fellow Wimpole--" began Drummond with indignation.
"This fellow Wimpole," said Basil Grant, smiling, "will not be an intellectual rival in the future.He had some fine things, elegance and silvered hair, and so on.But the intellect is with our friend on the floor.""That fellow," cried Drummond furiously, "that fellow ought to be in gaol.""Not at all," said Basil indulgently; "he ought to be in the Club of Queer Trades."
