y 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.

"If you really want to know how I shall give him your message," he
began, but Bingham cried:

"Of course, of course," with a sort of frenzy.

"Well," said Basil, "like this." And he suddenly sprang a foot into the
air, coming down with crashing boots, and then stood on one leg.

His face was stern, though this effect was slightly spoiled by the fact
that one of his feet was making wild circles in the air.

"You drive me to it," he said. "You drive me to betray my friend. And I
will, for his own sake, betray him."

The sensitive face of Bingham took on an extra expression of distress as
of one anticipating some disgraceful disclosure. "Anything painful, of
course--" he began.

Basil let his loose foot fall on the carpet with a crash that struck
them all rigid in their feeble attitudes.

"Idiots!" he cried. "Have you seen the man? Have you looked at James
Chadd going dismally to and fro from his dingy house to your miserable
library, with his futile books and his confounded umbrella, and never
seen that he has the eyes of a fanatic? Have you never noticed, stuck
casually behind his spectacles and above his seedy old collar, the face
of a man who might have burned heretics, or died for the philosopher's
stone? It is all my fault, in a way: I lit the dynamite of his deadly
faith. I argued against him on the score of his famous theory about
language--the theory that language was complete in certain individuals
and was picked up by others simply by watching them. I also chaffed him
about not understanding things in rough and ready practice. What has
this glorious bigot done? He has answered me. He has worked out a system
of language of his own (it would take too long to explain); he has made
up, I say, a language of his own. And he has sworn that till people
understand it, till he can speak to us in this language, he will not
speak in any other. And he shall