G. K. Chesterton

“ 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.” ”

“ Splendid and exciting as life was in continual contact with an intellect like Basil's, I had always the feeling that that splendour and excitement were on the borderland of sanity. He lived perpetually near the vision of the reason of things which makes men lose their reason. And I felt of his insanity as men feel of the death of friends with heart disease. It might come anywhere, in a field, in a hansom cab, looking at a sunset, smoking a cigarette. ”

“ It was, as it were, a base infinitude, a squalid eternity, and we felt the real horror of the poor parts of London, the horror that is so totally missed and misrepresented by the sensational novelists who depict it as being a matter of narrow streets, filthy houses, criminals and maniacs, and dens of vice. In a narrow street, in a den of vice, you do not expect civilization, you do not expect order. But the horror of this was the fact that there was civilization, that there was order, but that civilisation only showed its morbidity, and order only its monotony. ”

“ The gigantic Burrows, on the other hand, was heaving with herculean laughter.
“Well,” said Basil, in his cheeriest way, “I think we must be getting away. We've so much enjoyed our evening. Far too much regard for you to stand on ceremony. If I may so express myself, we've made ourselves at home. Good night. Thanks so much. Come along, Rupert.”
“Basil,” said Rupert desperately, “for God's sake come and see what you can make of the woman downstairs. I can't get the discomfort out of my mind. I admit that things look as if we had made a mistake. But these gentlemen won't mind perhaps...” ”

“ 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 detective of fiction. The finest among his many fine qualities was his boyish appetite for the colour and poetry of London. ”

“ You are quite right to champion the Zulus, but for all that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you know the Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before blowing one's nose; but for all that you don't understand them as well as I do, who don't know an assegai from an alligator. You are more learned, Chadd, but I am more Zulu. Why is it that the jolly old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage. ”

“ The police had already pushed into the centre with their ponderous omnipotence, and even as they did so, Rupert Grant sprang forward with his incontrollable and intolerable secret.
“That is the man, constable,” he shouted, pointing at the battered lieutenant. “He is a suspicious character. He did the murder.”
“There's been no murder done, sir,” said the policeman, with his automatic civility. “The poor man's only hurt. I shall only be able to take the names and addresses of the men in the scuffle and have a good eye kept on them.” ”

“ We were maniacs akin to the foolish landscape, for we were come to chase the wild goose which has led men and left men in bogs from the beginning. We were three dazed men under the captaincy of a madman going to look for a man whom we knew was not there in a house that had no existence. A livid sunset seemed to look at us with a sort of sickly smile before it died.
Basil went on in front with his coat collar turned up, looking in the gloom rather like a grotesque Napoleon. We crossed swell after swell of the windy common in increasing darkness and entire silence. ”

“ But they are the sort of things that a man would do if he were sufficiently filled with the soul of skylarking.”
“So far from paradox,” said his brother, with something rather like a sneer, “you seem to be going in for journalese proverbs. Do you believe that truth is stranger than fiction?”
“Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction,” said Basil placidly. “For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”
“Well, your lieutenant's truth is stranger, if it is truth, than anything I ever heard of,” said Rupert, relapsing into flippancy. ”

“ But to see them taper towards the earth made me feel lost in space, like a falling star.
“Can nothing be done to stop Basil?” I called out.
“No,” answered my fellow climber. “He's too far up. He must get to the top, and when he finds nothing but wind and leaves he may go sane again. Hark at him above there; you can just hear him talking to himself.”
“Perhaps he's talking to us,” I said.
“No,” said Rupert, “he'd shout if he was. I've never known him to talk to himself before; I'm afraid he really is bad tonight; it's a known sign of the brain going.” ”

“ The waiting almost makes one wish the frightful thing would happen once and for all.”
And even as she spoke, a sudden rending cry broke the stillness. From low down on the pavement of the dim street (it was already twilight) a voice cried out with a raucous and merciless distinctness:
“Major Brown, Major Brown, where does the jackal dwell?”
Brown was decisive and silent in action. He strode to the front door and looked out. There was no sign of life in the blue gloaming of the street, where one or two lamps were beginning to light their lemon sparks. ”

“ Basil's eyes were shining in the twilight like lamps.
“I thought,” he said, “that I had outlived vanity.”
“What do you want now?” I cried.
“I want,” he cried out, “what a girl wants when she wears her new frock; I want what a boy wants when he goes in for a clanging match with a monitor—I want to show somebody what a fine fellow I am. I am as right about that man as I am about your having a hat on your head. You say it cannot be tested. I say it can. I will take you to see my old friend Beaumont. He is a delightful man to know.” ”

“ At this moment another roar of laughter came from within.
“I only ask,” said Basil, “because of the last two friends of yours who had the modern mind; one thought it wrong to eat fishes and the other thought it right to eat men. I beg your pardon—this way, if I remember right.”
“Do you know,” said Lord Beaumont, with a sort of feverish entertainment, as he trotted after us towards the interior, “I can never quite make out which side you are on. Sometimes you seem so liberal and sometimes so reactionary. Are you a modern, Basil?” ”

“ That notion that civilization isn't poetical is a civilised delusion. Wait till you've really lost yourself in nature, among the devilish woodlands and the cruel flowers. Then you'll know that there's no star like the red star of man that he lights on his hearthstone; no river like the red river of man, the good red wine, which you, Mr Rupert Grant, if I have any knowledge of you, will be drinking in two or three minutes in enormous quantities.”
Rupert and I exchanged glances of fear. Basil went on heartily, as the wind died in the dreary trees. ”

“ I have often been afraid that unless something of this kind occurred we should really have to be careful of his brain. But I believe it is practically settled.”
“I am delighted,” began Basil, but with a worried face, “but these red-tape negotiations are so terribly chancy that I really can't advise you to build on hope, only to be hurled down into bitterness. I've known men, and good men like your brother, come nearer than this and be disappointed. Of course, if it is true—”
“If it is true,” said the woman fiercely, “it means that people who have never lived may make an attempt at living.” ”

“ They came out of queer places, where a good man would scarcely find himself, out of opium dens and gambling hells; they had the heat of the thieves' kitchens or smelled of a strange smoke from cannibal incantations. These are the kind of stories which discredit a person almost equally whether they are believed or no. If Keith's tales were false he was a liar; if they were true he had had, at any rate, every opportunity of being a scamp.
He had just left the room in which I sat with Basil Grant and his brother Rupert, the voluble amateur detective. ”

“ There had been a brawl concerned with some six men, and one of them lay almost dead on the stones of the street. Of the other four, all interesting matters were, as far as we were concerned, swallowed up in one stupendous fact. One of the four survivors of the brutal and perhaps fatal scuffle was the immaculate Lieutenant Keith, his clothes torn to ribbons, his eyes blazing, blood on his knuckles. One other thing, however, pointed at him in a worse manner. A short sword, or very long knife, had been drawn out of his elegant walking-stick, and lay in front of him upon the stones. ”

“ I said firmly, striking my foot on the pavement, “the truth of this affair is very simple. To use your own eloquent language, you have the 'slight disadvantage' of being off your head. You see a total stranger in a public street; you choose to start certain theories about his eyebrows. You then treat him as a burglar because he enters an honest man's door. The thing is too monstrous. Admit that it is, Basil, and come home with me. Though these people are still having tea, yet with the distance we have to go, we shall be late for dinner.” ”

“ The man with the curved silver hair and the curved Eastern face walked along for some time, his long splendid frock-coat flying behind him. Then he swung sharply out of the great glaring road and disappeared down an ill-lit alley. We swung silently after him.
“This is an odd turning for a man of that kind to take,” I said.
“A man of what kind?” asked my friend.
“Well,” I said, “a man with that kind of expression and those boots. I thought it rather odd, to tell the truth, that he should be in this part of the world at all.”
“Ah, yes,” said Basil, and said no more. ”

“ I have had many strange experiences in my life, but never a stranger one than that I felt when I came out of those rambling, sightless, and seemingly hopeless passages into the sudden splendour of a sumptuous and hospitable dining-room, surrounded upon almost every side by faces that I knew. There was Mr Montmorency, the Arboreal House-Agent, seated between the two brisk young men who were occasionally vicars, and always Professional Detainers. There was Mr P. G. Northover, founder of the Adventure and Romance Agency. There was Professor Chadd, who invented the Dancing Language. ”

“ The old lady rose, cocking her black eyebrows and her silver crest at us for an instant.
“But what about Greenwood and Burrows?” she said. “What did I understand you to say had become of them?”
“They are lying on the floor upstairs,” said Rupert, chuckling. “Tied hand and foot.”
“Well, that settles it,” said the old lady, coming with a kind of bang into her seat again, “I must stop where I am.”
Rupert looked bewildered.
“Stop where you are?” he said. “Why should you stop any longer where you are? What power can force you now to stop in this miserable cell?” ”

“ The philosopher rose with a dazed look, which always indicates in such men the fact that they regard philosophy as a familiar thing, but practical life as a weird and unnerving vision, and walked dubiously out of the room.
“I hope you do not mind my being aware of it, Miss Chadd,” said Basil Grant, “but I hear that the British Museum has recognized one of the men who have deserved well of their commonwealth. It is true, is it not, that Professor Chadd is likely to be made keeper of Asiatic manuscripts?” ”

“ When I entered that wooden and scrappy interior, the white gleam of Basil's shirt-front and the lustre of his fur coat flung on the wooden settle, struck me as a contrast. He was drinking a glass of wine before retiring. I was right; he had come back from the dinner-party.
He listened to the repetition of the story of the Rev. Ellis Shorter with the genuine simplicity and respect which he never failed to exhibit in dealing with any human being. When it was over he said simply:
“Do you know a man named Captain Fraser?” ”

“ Why hasn't he spoken to his family?”
“The devil knows,” said Dr Colman coolly. “I'm paid to judge of lunatics, but not of fools. The man's not mad.”
“What on earth can it mean? Can't we make him listen?” said Mr Bingham. “Can none get into any kind of communication with him?”
Grant's voice struck in sudden and clear, like a steel bell:
“I shall be very happy,” he said, “to give him any message you like to send.”
Both men stared at him.
“Give him a message?” they cried simultaneously. “How will you give him a message?”
Basil smiled in his slow way. ”

“ No one would say, in going through a criminal slum, “I see no statues. I notice no cathedrals.” But here there were public buildings; only they were mostly lunatic asylums. Here there were statues; only they were mostly statues of railway engineers and philanthropists—two dingy classes of men united by their common contempt for the people. Here there were churches; only they were the churches of dim and erratic sects, Agapemonites or Irvingites. Here, above all, there were broad roads and vast crossings and tramway lines and hospitals and all the real marks of civilization. ”

“ The elegant figure, like the figure of a black swan, was silhouetted suddenly against the glare of intermittent gaslight and then swallowed again in night. The intervals between the lights were long, and a fog was thickening the whole city. Our pace, therefore, had become swift and mechanical between the lamp-posts; but Basil came to a standstill suddenly like a reined horse; I stopped also. We had almost run into the man. A great part of the solid darkness in front of us was the darkness of his body. ”