rifling private affair. But I'm sorry
those fellows couldn't come with us. Shall we take one of these green
omnibuses? There is a restaurant in Sloane Square."

"I sometimes think you play the fool to frighten us," I said irritably.
"How can we leave that woman locked up? How can it be a mere private
affair? How can crime and kidnapping and murder, for all I know, be
private affairs? If you found a corpse in a man's drawing-room, would
you think it bad taste to talk about it just as if it was a confounded
dado or an infernal etching?"

Basil laughed heartily.

"That's very forcible," he said. "As a matter of fact, though, I know
it's all right in this case. And there comes the green omnibus."

"How do you know it's all right in this ease?" persisted his brother
angrily.

"My dear chap, the thing's obvious," answered Basil, holding a return
ticket between his teeth while he fumbled in his waistcoat pocket.
"Those two fellows never committed a crime in their lives. They're not
the kind. Have either of you chaps got a halfpenny? I want to get a
paper before the omnibus comes."

"Oh, curse the paper!" cried Rupert, in a fury. "Do you mean to tell
me, Basil Grant, that you are going to leave a fellow creature in pitch
darkness in a private dungeon, because you've had ten minutes' talk with
the keepers of it and thought them rather good men?"

"Good men do commit crimes sometimes," said Basil, taking the ticket
out of his mouth. "But this kind of good man doesn't commit that kind of
crime. Well, shall we get on this omnibus?"

The great green vehicle was indeed plunging and lumbering along the
dim wide street towards us. Basil had stepped from the curb, and for an
instant it was touch and go whether we should all have leaped on to it
and been borne away to the restaurant and the theatre.

"Basil," I said, taking him firmly by the shoulder, "I simply won't
leave this street and this house."

"Nor will I," said Rupert, glaring at it and biting his fingers.
"There's some black work going on there. If I left it I should never
sleep again."

Basil Grant looked at us both seriously.

"Of course if you feel like that," he said, "we'll investigate further.
You'll find it's all right, though. They're only two young Oxford
fellows. Extremely nice, too, though rather infected with this
pseudo-Darwinian business. Ethics of evolution and all that."

"I think," said Rupert darkly, ringing the bell, "that we shall
enlighten