Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/144

The Club of Queer Trades "It's really very simple, Mr. Swinburne," began he who had once been the Reverend Ellis Shorter, of Chuntsey, in Essex; and it gave me a shock indescribable to hear out of that pompous and familiar form come no longer its own pompous and familiar voice, but the brisk, sharp tones of a young city man. "It is really nothing very important. We are paid by our clients to detain in conversation, on some harmless pretext, people whom they want out of the way for a few hours. And Captain Fraser—" And with that he hesitated and smiled.

Basil smiled also. He intervened.

"The fact is that Captain Fraser, who is one of my best friends, wanted us both out of the way very much. He is sailing to-night for East Africa, and the lady with whom we were all to have dined is—er—what is I believe described as 'the romance of his life.' He wanted that two hours with her, and employed these two reverend gentlemen to detain us at our houses so as to let him have the field to himself."

"And of course," said the late Mr. Shorter, 126