"Sorry to bother you, Basil," he gasped. "I took a liberty--made an
appointment here with a man--a client--in five minutes--I beg your
pardon, sir," and he gave me a bow of apology.

Basil smiled at me. "You didn't know," he said, "that I had a
practical brother. This is Rupert Grant, Esquire, who can and does
all there is to be done. Just as I was a failure at one thing, he
is a success at everything. I remember him as a journalist, a
house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a publisher, a
schoolmaster, a--what are you now, Rupert?"

"I am and have been for some time," said Rupert, with some dignity,
"a private detective, and there's my client."

A loud rap at the door had cut him short, and, on permission being
given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper man
walked swiftly into the room, set his silk hat with a clap on the
table, and said, "Good evening, gentlemen," with a stress on the
last syllable that somehow marked him out as a martinet, military,
literary and social. He had a large head streaked with black and
grey, and an abrupt black moustache, which gave him a look of
fierceness which was contradicted by his sad sea-blue eyes.

Basil immediately said to me, "Let us come into the next room,
Gully," and was moving towards the door, but the stranger said:

"Not at all. Friends remain. Assistance possibly."

The moment I heard him speak I remembered who he was, a certain
Major Brown I had met years before in Basil's society. I had