rigin of it?"

"I haven't the vaguest idea."

"Then why don't you accept the ordinary explanation?"

Basil continued for a little to glare at the coals, and seemed
collecting his thoughts in a humble and even painful way. Then he said:

"Suppose you went out into the moonlight. Suppose you passed through
silent, silvery streets and squares until you came into an open and
deserted space, set with a few monuments, and you beheld one dressed as
a ballet girl dancing in the argent glimmer. And suppose you looked, and
saw it was a man disguised. And suppose you looked again, and saw it was
Lord Kitchener. What would you think?"

He paused a moment, and went on:

"You could not adopt the ordinary explanation. The ordinary explanation
of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice in them; you would
not think that Lord Kitchener dressed up like a ballet girl out of
ordinary personal vanity. You would think it much more likely that
he inherited a dancing madness from a great grandmother; or had been
hypnotised at a seance; or threatened by a secret society with death if
he refused the ordeal. With Baden-Powell, say, it might be a bet--but
not with Kitchener. I should know all that, because in my public days
I knew him quite well. So I know that letter quite well, and criminals
quite well. It's not a criminal's letter. It's all atmospheres." And he
closed his eyes and passed his hand over his forehead.

Rupert and the Major were regarding him with a mixture of respect and
pity. The former said,

"Well, I'm going, anyhow, and shall continue to think--until your
spiritual mystery turns up--that a man who sends a note recommending a
crime, that is, actually a crime that is actually carried out, at
least tentatively, is, in all probability, a little casual in his moral
tastes. Can I have that revolver?"

"Certainly," said Basil, getting up. "But I am coming with you." And he
flung an old cape or cloak round him, and took a sword-stick from the
corner.

"You!" said Rupert, with some surprise, "you scarcely ever leave your
hole to look at anything on the face of the earth."

Basil fitted on a formidable old white hat.

"I scarcely ever," he said, with an unconscious and colossal arrogance,
"hear of anything on the face of the earth that I do not understand at
once, without going to see it."

And he led the way out into the purple night.

We four swung along the flaring Lambeth streets, across Westminster
Bridge