“Well,” said Basil, with a slow and singular smile, “the fact is I was detained by a visitor. I have him, as a point of fact, in my bedroom.” “In your bedroom?” I repeated; but my imagination had reached that point when he might have said in his coal scuttle or his waistcoat pocket. Grant stepped to the door of an inner room, flung it open and walked in. Then he came out again with the last of the bodily wonders of that wild night. He introduced into the sitting-room, in an apologetic manner, and by the nape of the neck, a limp clergyman with a bald head, white whiskers and a plaid shawl. “Sit down, gentlemen,” cried Grant, striking his hands heartily. “Sit down all of you and have a glass of wine. As you say, there is no harm in it, and if Captain Fraser had simply dropped me a hint I could have saved him from dropping a good sum of money. Not that you would have liked that, eh?” The two duplicate clergymen, who were sipping their Burgundy with two duplicate grins, laughed heartily at this, and one of them carelessly pulled off his whiskers and laid them on the table. “Basil,” I said, “if you are my friend, save me. What is all this?” He laughed again. “Only another addition, Cherub, to your collection of Queer Trades. These two gentlemen (whose health I have now the pleasure of drinking) are Professional Detainers.” “And what on earth's that?” I asked. “It's really very simple, Mr Swinburne,” began he who had once been the Rev. Ellis Shorter, of Chuntsey, in Essex; and it gave me a shock indescribable to hear out of that pompous and familiar form come no longer its own pompous and familiar voice, but the brisk sharp tones of a young city man. “It is really nothing very important. We are paid by our clients to detain in conversation, on some harmless pretext, people whom they want out of the way for a few hours. And Captain Fraser--” and with that he hesitated and smiled. Basil smiled also. He intervened. “The fact is that Captain Fraser, who is one of my best friends, wanted us both out of the way very much. He is sailing tonight for East Africa, and the lady with whom we were all to have dined is--er--what is I believe described as 'the romance of his life'. He wanted that two hours with her, and employed these two reverend gentlemen to detain us at our houses so as to let him have the field to himself.” “And of course,” said the late Mr Shorter apologetically to me, “as I had to keep a gentleman at home from keeping an appointment with a lady, I had to come with something rather hot and strong--rather urgent. It wouldn't have done to be tame.” “Oh,” I said, “I acquit you of tameness.” “Thank you, sir,” said the man respectfully, “always very grateful for any recommendation, sir.” The other man idly pushed back his artificial bald head, revealing close red hair, and spoke dreamily, perhaps under the influence of Basil's admirable Burgundy.