osed with a bang, burying
our friend inside, we could not repress a shudder. It had been like
the heavy gaping and closing of the dim lips of some evil leviathan. A
freshening night breeze began to blow up the street, and we turned up
the collars of our coats. At the end of twenty minutes, in which we
had scarcely moved or spoken, we were as cold as icebergs, but more, I
think, from apprehension than the atmosphere. Suddenly Rupert made an
abrupt movement towards the house.

"I can't stand this," he began, but almost as he spoke sprang back into
the shadow, for the panel of gold was again cut out of the black house
front, and the burly figure of Basil was silhouetted against it coming
out. He was roaring with laughter and talking so loudly that you
could have heard every syllable across the street. Another voice, or,
possibly, two voices, were laughing and talking back at him from within.

"No, no, no," Basil was calling out, with a sort of hilarious hostility.
"That's quite wrong. That's the most ghastly heresy of all. It's the
soul, my dear chap, the soul that's the arbiter of cosmic forces. When
you see a cosmic force you don't like, trick it, my boy. But I must
really be off."

"Come and pitch into us again," came the laughing voice from out of the
house. "We still have some bones unbroken."

"Thanks very much, I will--good night," shouted Grant, who had by this
time reached the street.

"Good night," came the friendly call in reply, before the door closed.

"Basil," said Rupert Grant, in a hoarse whisper, "what are we to do?"

The elder brother looked thoughtfully from one of us to the other.

"What is to be done, Basil?" I repeated in uncontrollable excitement.

"I'm not sure," said Basil doubtfully. "What do you say to getting some
dinner somewhere and going to the Court Theatre tonight? I tried to get
those fellows to come, but they couldn't."

We stared blankly.

"Go to the Court Theatre?" repeated Rupert. "What would be the good of
that?"

"Good? What do you mean?" answered Basil, staring also. "Have you turned
Puritan or Passive Resister, or something? For fun, of course."

"But, great God in Heaven! What are we going to do, I mean!" cried
Rupert. "What about the poor woman locked up in that house? Shall I go
for the police?"

Basil's face cleared with immediate comprehension, and he laughed.

"Oh, that," he said. "I'd forgotten that. That's all right. Some
mistake, possibly. Or some quite t