d not kick he shouted, and we gagged him. Then, by Basil's
arrangement, we dragged him into a small court by the street side and
waited. As I say, I had no notion why.

"I am sorry to incommode you," said Basil calmly out of the darkness;
"but I have made an appointment here."

"An appointment!" I said blankly.

"Yes," he said, glancing calmly at the apoplectic old aristocrat gagged
on the ground, whose eyes were starting impotently from his head. "I
have made an appointment here with a thoroughly nice young fellow.
An old friend. Jasper Drummond his name is--you may have met him
this afternoon at the Beaumonts. He can scarcely come though till the
Beaumonts' dinner is over."

For I do not know how many hours we stood there calmly in the darkness.
By the time those hours were over I had thoroughly made up my mind that
the same thing had happened which had happened long ago on the bench of
a British Court of Justice. Basil Grant had gone mad. I could imagine
no other explanation of the facts, with the portly, purple-faced old
country gentleman flung there strangled on the floor like a bundle of
wood.

After about four hours a lean figure in evening dress rushed into the
court. A glimpse of gaslight showed the red moustache and white face of
Jasper Drummond.

"Mr Grant," he said blankly, "the thing is incredible. You were right;
but what did you mean? All through this dinner-party, where dukes and
duchesses and editors of Quarterlies had come especially to hear him,
that extraordinary Wimpole kept perfectly silent. He didn't say a funny
thing. He didn't say anything at all. What does it mean?"

Grant pointed to the portly old gentleman on the ground.

"That is what it means," he said.

Drummond, on observing a fat gentleman lying so calmly about the place,
jumped back, as from a mouse.

"What?" he said weakly, "... what?"

Basil bent suddenly down and tore a paper out of Sir Walter's
breastpocket, a paper which the baronet, even in his hampered state,
seemed to make some effort to retain.

It was a large loose piece of white wrapping paper, which Mr Jasper
Drummond read with a vacant eye and undisguised astonishment. As far as
he could make out, it consisted of a series of questions and answers, or
at least of remarks and replies, arranged in the manner of a catechism.
The greater part of the document had been torn and obliterated in the
struggle, but the termination remained. It ran as follows:

C. Says.