The next moment an inner glass door was opened, and a fair, weedy, young man, in a frock-coat, entered from within.
“Mr. Hopson,” said Northover, “this is Major Brown. Will you please finish that thing for him I gave you this morning and bring it in?”
“Yes, sir,” said Mr. Hopson, and vanished like lightning.
“You will excuse me, gentlemen,” said the egregious Northover, with his radiant smile, “if I continue to work until Mr. Hopson is ready. I have some books that must be cleared up before I get away on my holiday tomorrow. And we all like a whiff of the country, don’t we? Ha! ha!”
The criminal took up his pen with a childlike laugh, and a silence ensued; a placid and busy silence on the part of Mr. P. G. Northover; a raging silence on the part of everybody else.
At length the scratching of Northover’s pen in the stillness was mingled with a knock at the door, almost simultaneous with the turning of the handle, and Mr. Hopson came in again with the same silent rapidity, placed a paper before his principal, and disappeared again.
The man at the desk pulled and twisted his spiky moustache for a few moments as he ran his eye up and down the paper presented to him. He took up his pen, with a slight, instantaneous frown, and altered something, muttering—“Careless.” Then he read it again with the same impenetrable reflectiveness, and finally handed it to the frantic Brown, whose hand was beating the devil’s tattoo on the back of the chair.
“I think you will find that all right, Major,” he said briefly.
The Major looked at it; whether he found it all right or not will appear later, but he found it like this:
Major Brown to P. G. Northover £ s. d. January 1, to account rendered 5 6 0 May 9, to potting and embedding of 200 pansies 2 0 0 To cost of trolley with flowers 0 15 0 To hiring of man with trolley 0 5 0 To hire of house and garden for one day 1 0 0 To furnishing of room in peacock curtains, copper ornaments, etc. 3 0 0 To salary of Miss Jameson 1 0 0 To salary of Mr. Plover 1 0 0 Total £14 6 0 A Remittance will oblige.
“What,” said Brown, after a dead pause, and with eyes that seemed slowly rising out of his head, “What in heaven’s name is this?”
“What is it?” repeated Northover, cocking his eyebrow with amusement. “It’s your account, of course.”
“My account!” The Major’s ideas appeared to be in a vague stampede. “My account! And what have I got to do with it?”
“Well,” said Northover, laughing outright, “naturally I prefer you to pay it.”
The Major’s hand was still resting on the back of the chair as the words came. He scarcely stirred otherwise, but he lifted the chair bodily into the air with one hand and hurled it at Northover’s head.
The legs crashed against the desk, so that Northover only got a blow on the elbow as he sprang up with clenched fists, only to be seized by the united rush of the rest of us. The chair had fallen clattering on the empty floor.
“Let me go, you scamps,” he shouted. “Let me—”
“Stand still,” cried Rupert authoritatively. “Major Brown’s action is excusable. The abominable crime you have attempted—”
“A customer has a perfect right,” said Northover hotly, “to question an alleged overcharge, but, confound it all, not to throw furniture.”
“What, in God’s name, do you mean by your customers and overcharges?” shrieked Major Brown, whose keen feminine nature, steady in pain or danger, became almost hysterical in the presence of a long and exasperating mystery. “Who are you? I’ve never seen you or your insolent tomfool bills. I know one of your cursed brutes tried to choke me—”
“Mad,” said Northover, gazing blankly round; “all of them mad. I didn’t know they travelled in quartettes.”
“Enough of this prevarication,” said Rupert; “your crimes are discovered. A policeman is stationed at the corner of the court. Though only a private detective myself, I will take the responsibility of telling you that anything you say—”
“Mad,” repeated Northover, with a weary air.
And at this moment, for the first time, there struck in among them the strange, sleepy voice of Basil Grant.
“Major Brown,” he said, “may I ask you a question?”
The Major turned his head with an increased bewilderment.
“You?” he cried; “certainly, Mr. Grant.”
“Can you tell me,” said the mystic, with sunken head and lowering brow, as he traced a pattern in the dust with his sword-stick, “can you tell me what was the name of the man who lived in your house before you?”
The unhappy Major was only faintly more disturbed by this last and futile irrelevancy, and he answered vaguely:
“Yes, I think so; a man named Gurney something—a name with a hyphen—Gurney-Brown; that was it.”
“And when did the house change hands?” said Basil, looking up sharply. His strange eyes were burning brilliantly.
“I came in last month,” said the Major.
And at the mere word the criminal Northover suddenly fell into his great office chair and shouted with a volleying laughter.
“Oh! it’s too perfect—it’s too exquisite,” he gasped, beating the arms with his fists. He was laughing deafeningly; Basil Grant was laughing voicelessly; and the rest of us only felt that our heads were like weathercocks in a whirlwind.
“Confound it, Basil,” said Rupert, stamping. “If you don’t want me to go mad and blow your metaphysical brains out, tell me what all this means.”
Northover rose.
“Permit me, sir, to explain,” he said. “And, first of all, permit me to apologize to you, Major Brown, for a most abominable and unpardonable blunder, which has caused you menace and inconvenience, in which, if you will allow me to say so, you have behaved with astonishing courage and dignity. Of course you need not trouble about the bill. We will stand the loss.” And, tearing the paper across, he flung the halves into the waste-paper basket and bowed.
Poor Brown’s face was still a picture of distraction. “But I don’t even begin to understand,” he cried. “What bill? what blunder? what loss?”
Mr. P. G. Northover advanced in the centre of the room, thoughtfully, and with a great deal
