The Club of Queer Trades
captaincy of a madman going to look for a man whom we knew was not there in a house that had no existence. A livid sun set seemed to look at us with a sort of sickly smile before it died.
Basil went on in front with his coat-collar turned up, looking in the gloom rather like a grotesque Napoleon. We crossed swell after swell of the windy common in increasing darkness and entire silence. Suddenly Basil stopped and turned to us, his hands in his pockets. Through the dusk I could just detect that he wore a broad grin as of comfortable success.
"Well," he cried, taking his heavily gloved hands out of his pockets and slapping them together, "here we are at last."
The wind swirled sadly over the homeless heath; two desolate elms rocked above us in the sky like shapeless clouds of gray. There was not a sign of man or beast to the sullen circle of the horizon, and in the midst of that wilderness Basil Grant stood rubbing his hands with the air of an innkeeper standing at an open door.
164
