“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, 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. Basil, who walked behind, with his face turned blindly to the stars, had the look of a somnambulist. Rupert paused at the corner of Tanner's Court, with a quiver of delight at danger, and gripped Basil's revolver in his great-coat pocket. “Shall we go in now?” he asked. “Not get police?” asked Major Brown, glancing sharply up and down the street. “I am not sure,” answered Rupert, knitting his brows. “Of course, it's quite clear, the thing's all crooked. But there are three of us, and--” “I shouldn't get the police,” said Basil in a queer voice. Rupert glanced at him and stared hard. “Basil,” he cried, “you're trembling. What's the matter--are you afraid?” “Cold, perhaps,” said the Major, eyeing him. There was no doubt that he was shaking.