is true that all sensible
women think all studious men mad. It is true, for the matter of that,
all women of any kind think all men of any kind mad. But they don't put
it in telegrams, any more than they wire to you that grass is green or
God all-merciful. These things are truisms, and often private ones at
that. If Miss Chadd has written down under the eye of a strange woman
in a post-office that her brother is off his head you may be perfectly
certain that she did it because it was a matter of life and death, and
she can think of no other way of forcing us to come promptly."

"It will force us of course," I said, smiling.

"Oh, yes," he replied; "there is a cab-rank near."

Basil scarcely said a word as we drove across Westminster Bridge,
through Trafalgar Square, along Piccadilly, and up the Uxbridge Road.
Only as he was opening the gate he spoke.

"I think you will take my word for it, my friend," he said; "this is
one of the most queer and complicated and astounding incidents that ever
happened in London or, for that matter, in any high civilization."

"I confess with the greatest sympathy and reverence that I don't quite
see it," I said. "Is it so very extraordinary or complicated that a
dreamy somnambulant old invalid who has always walked on the borders of
the inconceivable should go mad under the shock of great joy? Is it so
very extraordinary that a man with a head like a turnip and a soul
like a spider's web should not find his strength equal to a confounding
change of fortunes? Is it, in short, so very extraordinary that James
Chadd should lose his wits from excitement?"

"It would not be extraordinary in the least," answered Basil, with
placidity. "It would not be extraordinary in the least," he repeated,
"if the professor had gone mad. That was not the extraordinary
circumstance to which I referred."

"What," I asked, stamping my foot, "was the extraordinary thing?"

"The extraordinary thing," said Basil, ringing the bell, "is that he has
not gone mad from excitement."

The tall and angular figure of the eldest Miss Chadd blocked the doorway
as the door opened. Two other Miss Chadds seemed in the same way to be
blocking the narrow passage and the little parlour. There was a general
sense of their keeping something from view. They seemed like three
black-clad ladies in some strange play of Maeterlinck, veiling the
catastrophe from the audience in the manner of the Greek chorus.

"Sit down, won't