Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/259

The Seclusion of the Old Lady ? 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 237