h makes men lose
their reason. And I felt of his insanity as men feel of the death of
friends with heart disease. It might come anywhere, in a field, in a
hansom cab, looking at a sunset, smoking a cigarette. It had come now.
At the very moment of delivering a judgement for the salvation of a
fellow creature, Basil Grant had gone mad.

"Your whiskers," he cried, advancing with blazing eyes. "Give me your
whiskers. And your bald head."

The old vicar naturally retreated a step or two. I stepped between.

"Sit down, Basil," I implored, "you're a little excited. Finish your
wine."

"Whiskers," he answered sternly, "whiskers."

And with that he made a dash at the old gentleman, who made a dash for
the door, but was intercepted. And then, before I knew where I was
the quiet room was turned into something between a pantomime and a
pandemonium by those two. Chairs were flung over with a crash, tables
were vaulted with a noise like thunder, screens were smashed, crockery
scattered in smithereens, and still Basil Grant bounded and bellowed
after the Rev. Ellis Shorter.

And now I began to perceive something else, which added the last
half-witted touch to my mystification. The Rev. Ellis Shorter, of
Chuntsey, in Essex, was by no means behaving as I had previously noticed
him to behave, or as, considering his age and station, I should have
expected him to behave. His power of dodging, leaping, and fighting
would have been amazing in a lad of seventeen, and in this doddering old
vicar looked like a sort of farcical fairy-tale. Moreover, he did not
seem to be so much astonished as I had thought. There was even a look of
something like enjoyment in his eyes; so there was in the eye of Basil.
In fact, the unintelligible truth must be told. They were both laughing.

At length Shorter was cornered.

"Come, come, Mr Grant," he panted, "you can't do anything to me. It's
quite legal. And it doesn't do any one the least harm. It's only a
social fiction. A result of our complex society, Mr Grant."

"I don't blame you, my man," said Basil coolly. "But I want your
whiskers. And your bald head. Do they belong to Captain Fraser?"

"No, no," said Mr Shorter, laughing, "we provide them ourselves. They
don't belong to Captain Fraser."

"What the deuce does all this mean?" I almost screamed. "Are you all
in an infernal nightmare? Why should Mr Shorter's bald head belong to
Captain Fraser? How could it? What the deuce has Captain Fraser