Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/26

The Club of Queer Trades A loud rap at the door had cut him short, and, on permission being given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper man walked swiftly into the room, set his silk hat with a clap on the table, and said, "Good-evening, gentlemen," with a stress on the last syllable that somehow marked him out as a martinet, military, literary, and social. He had a large head streaked with black and gray, and an abrupt black mustache, which gave him a look of fierceness which was contradicted by his sad, sea-blue eyes.

Basil immediately said to me, "Let us come into the next room, Gully," and was moving towards the door, but the stranger said:

"Not at all. Friends remain. Assistance possibly."

The moment I heard him speak I remembered who he was, a certain Major Brown I had met years before in Basil's society. I had forgotten altogether the black, dandified figure and the large, solemn head, but I remembered the peculiar speech, which consisted of only saying about a quarter of each 12