Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/44

The Club of Queer Trades streets and squares until you came into an open and deserted space set with a few monuments, and you beheld one dressed as a ballet-girl dancing in the argent glimmer. And suppose you looked and saw it was a man disguised. And suppose you looked again and saw it was Lord Kitchener. What would you think?"

He paused a moment and went on:

"You could not adopt the ordinary explanation. The ordinary explanation of putting on singular clothes is that you look nice in them; you would not think that Lord Kitchener dressed up like a ballet-girl out of ordinary personal vanity. You would think it much more likely that he inherited a dancing madness from a great-grandmother, or had been hypnotized at a'séance, or threatened by a secret society with death if he refused the ordeal. With Baden-Powell, say, it might be a bet—but not with Kitchener. I should know all that, because in my public days I knew him quite well. So I know that letter quite well, and criminals quite well. It's not a criminal's letter. 30