"Г.К.Честертон. The Club of Queer Trades " - читать интересную книгу автора

for four minutes?"

"Of course," I said, panting.

"Then help me to catch that man in front and hold him down. Do it
at once when I say `Now'. Now!"

We sprang on Sir Walter Cholmondeliegh, and rolled that portly old
gentleman on his back. He fought with a commendable valour, but we
got him tight. I had not the remotest notion why. He had a splendid
and full-blooded vigour; when he could not box he kicked, and we
bound him; when he could not kick he shouted, and we gagged him.
Then, by Basil's arrangement, we dragged him into a small court by
the street side and waited. As I say, I had no notion why.

"I am sorry to incommode you," said Basil calmly out of the
darkness; "but I have made an appointment here."

"An appointment!" I said blankly.

"Yes," he said, glancing calmly at the apoplectic old aristocrat gagged on the ground, whose eyes were starting impotently from his head. "I have made an appointment here with a thoroughly nice young fellow. An old friend. Jasper Drummond his name is--you may have met him this afternoon at the Beaumonts. He can scarcely come though till the Beaumonts' dinner is over."

For I do not know how many hours we stood there calmly in the darkness. By the time those hours were over I had thoroughly made up my mind that the same thing had happened which had happened long ago on the bench of a British Court of Justice. Basil Grant had gone mad. I could imagine no other explanation of the facts, with the portly, purple-faced old country gentleman flung there strangled on the floor like a bundle of wood.

After about four hours a lean figure in evening dress rushed into
the court. A glimpse of gaslight showed the red moustache and white
face of Jasper Drummond.

"Mr Grant," he said blankly, "the thing is incredible. You were
right; but what did you mean? All through this dinner-party, where
dukes and duchesses and editors of Quarterlies had come especially
to hear him, that extraordinary Wimpole kept perfectly silent. He
didn't say a funny thing. He didn't say anything at all. What does
it mean?"

Grant pointed to the portly old gentleman on the ground.

"That is what it means," he said.

Drummond, on observing a fat gentleman lying so calmly about the
place, jumped back, as from a mouse.

"What?" he said weakly, ". . . what?"

Basil bent suddenly down and tore a paper out of Sir Walter's
breastpocket, a paper which the baronet, even in his hampered
state, seemed to make some effort to retain.

It was a large loose piece of white wrapping paper, which Mr Jasper
Drummond read with a vacant eye and undisguised astonishment. As