lordly way. "He is quite near, as
I promised to meet him at Gloucester Road Station. Shall we take a cab?
Perhaps, as you say, it might amuse him."

Gloucester Road Station had, as if by accident, a somewhat deserted
look. After a little looking about we discovered Basil Grant with his
great head and his great white hat blocking the ticket-office window. I
thought at first that he was taking a ticket for somewhere and being an
astonishingly long time about it. As a matter of fact, he was discussing
religion with the booking-office clerk, and had almost got his head
through the hole in his excitement. When we dragged him away it was
some time before he would talk of anything but the growth of an Oriental
fatalism in modern thought, which had been well typified by some of the
official's ingenious but perverse fallacies. At last we managed to get
him to understand that we had made an astounding discovery. When he
did listen, he listened attentively, walking between us up and down
the lamp-lit street, while we told him in a rather feverish duet of the
great house in South Kensington, of the equivocal milkman, of the lady
imprisoned in the basement, and the man staring from the porch. At
length he said:

"If you're thinking of going back to look the thing up, you must be
careful what you do. It's no good you two going there. To go twice on
the same pretext would look dubious. To go on a different pretext would
look worse. You may be quite certain that the inquisitive gentleman
who looked at you looked thoroughly, and will wear, so to speak,
your portraits next to his heart. If you want to find out if there
is anything in this without a police raid I fancy you had better wait
outside. I'll go in and see them."

His slow and reflective walk brought us at length within sight of the
house. It stood up ponderous and purple against the last pallor of
twilight. It looked like an ogre's castle. And so apparently it was.

"Do you think it's safe, Basil," said his brother, pausing, a little
pale, under the lamp, "to go into that place alone? Of course we
shall be near enough to hear if you yell, but these devils might do
something--something sudden--or odd. I can't feel it's safe."

"I know of nothing that is safe," said Basil composedly, "except,
possibly--death," and he went up the steps and rang at the bell. When
the massive respectable door opened for an instant, cutting a square of
gaslight in the gathering dark, and then cl