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, and along the Embankment in the direction of that part of
Fleet Street which contained Tanner's Court. The erect, black
figure of Major Brown, seen from behind, was a quaint contrast to
the hound-like stoop and flapping mantle of young Rupert Grant, who
adopted, with childlike delight, all the dramatic poses of the