ip interviewed the girl, fearing that she was in an
unbalanced state, and was not much reassured when she merely remarked
that she always went like that when she heard the barrel organ.
Becoming yet more hysterical and extravagant, she made a series of most
improbable statements--as, that she was engaged to the barrel-organ man,
that he was in the habit of serenading her on that instrument,
that she was in the habit of playing back to him upon the typewriter
(in the style of King Richard and Blondel), and that the organ man's
musical ear was so exquisite and his adoration of herself so ardent
that he could detect the note of the different letters on the machine,
and was enraptured by them as by a melody. To all these statements
of course our Mr. Trip and the rest of us only paid that sort of assent
that is paid to persons who must as quickly as possible be put in the
charge of their relations. But on our conducting the lady downstairs,
her story received the most startling and even exasperating confirmation;
for the organ-grinder, an enormous man with a small head and manifestly
a fellow-lunatic, had pushed his barrel organ in at the office doors
like a battering-ram, and was boisterously demanding his alleged fiancee.
When I myself came on the scene he was flinging his great, ape-like arms about
and reciting a poem to her. But we were used to lunatics coming and reciting
poems in our office, and we were not quite prepared for what followed.
The actual verse he uttered began, I think,

`O vivid, inviolate head,
Ringed --'

but he never got any further. Mr. Trip made a sharp
movement towards him, and the next moment the giant picked
up the poor lady typewriter like a doll, sat her on top
of the organ, ran it with a crash out of the office doors,
and raced away down the street like a flying wheelbarrow.
I put the police upon the matter; but no trace of the amazing
pair could be found. I was sorry myself; for the lady was
not only pleasant but unusually cultivated for her position.
As I am leaving the service of Messrs. Hanbury and Bootle, I put
these things in a record and leave it with them.
(Signed) Aubrey Clarke,
Publishers' Reader.

"And the last document," said Dr. Pym complacently, "is from
one of those high-souled women who have in this age introduced
your English girlhood to hockey, the higher mathematics,
an