









                          Chapter V

               The Allegorical Practical Joker


The criminal specialist who had come with Dr. Warner was a
somewhat more urbane and even dapper figure on closer
inspection than he had appeared when clutching the railings
and craning his neck into the garden.  He even looked
comparatively young when he took his hat off, having fair
hair parted in the middle and carefully curled on each side,
and lively movements, especially of the hands.  He had a
dandified monocle slung round his neck by a broad black
ribbon, and a big bow tie, as if a big American moth had
alighted on him.  His dress and gestures were bright enough
for a boy's; it was only when you looked at the fish-bone
face that you beheld something acrid and old.  His manners
were excellent, though hardly English, and he had two
half-conscious tricks by which people who only met him once
remembered him.  One was a trick of closing his eyes when he
wished to be particularly polite; the other was one of
lifting his joined thumb and forefinger in the air as if
holding a pinch of snuff, when he was hesitating or hovering
over a word.  But hose who were longer in his company tended
to forget these oddities in the stream of his quaint and
solemn conversation and really singular views.
   "Miss Hunt," said Dr. Warner, "this is Dr. Cyrus Pym."
   Dr. Cyrus Pym shut his eyes during the introduction,
rather as if he were "playing fair" in some child's game,
and gave a prompt little bow, which somehow suddenly
revealed him as a citizen of the United States.
   "Dr. Cyrus Pym," continued Warner (Dr. Pym shut his eyes
again), "is perhaps the first criminological expert of
America.  We are very fortunate to be able to consult with
him in this extraordinary case --"
   "I can't make head or tail of anything," said Rosamund. 
"How can poor Mr. Smith be so dreadful as he is by your
account?"
   "Or by your telegram," said Herbert Warner, smiling.
   "Oh, you don't understand," cried the girl impatiently. 
"Why, he's done us all more good than going to church."
   "I think I can explain to the young lady," said Dr. Cyrus
Pym.  "This criminal or maniac Smith is a very genius of
evil, and has a method of his own, a method of the most
daring ingenuity.  He is popular wherever he goes, for he
invades every house as an uproarious child.  People are
getting suspicious of all the respectable disguises for a
scoundrel; so he always uses the disguise of -- what shall I
say -- the Bohemian, the blameless Bohemian.  He always
carries people off their feet.  People are used to the mask
of conventional good conduct.  He goes in for eccentric
good-nature.  You expect a Don Juan to dress up as a solemn
and solid Spanish merchant; but you're not prepared when he
dresses up as Don Quixote.  You expect a humbug to behave
like Sir Charles Grandison; because (with all respect, Miss
Hunt, for the deep, tear-moving tenderness of Samuel
Richardson) Sir Charles Grandison so often behaved like a
humbug.  But no real red-blooded citizen is quite ready for
a humbug that models himself not on Sir Charles Grandison
but on Sir Roger de Coverly.  Setting up to be a good man a
little cracked is a new criminal incognito, Miss Hunt.  It's
been a great notion, and commonly successful; but its
success just makes it mighty cruel.  I can forgive Dick
Turpin if he impersonates Dr. Busby; I can't forgive him
when he impersonates Dr. Johnson.  The saint with a tile
loose is a bit too sacred, I guess, to be parodied."
   "But how do you know," cried Rosamund desperately, "that
Mr. Smith is a known criminal?"
   "I collated all the documents," said the American, "when
my friend Warner knocked me up on receipt of your cable.  It
is my professional affair to know these facts, Miss Hunt;
and there's no more doubt about them than about the Bradshaw
down at the depot.  This man has hitherto escaped the law,
through his admirable affectations of infancy or insanity. 
But I myself, as a specialist, have privately authenticated
notes of some eighteen or twenty crimes attempted or
achieved in this manner.  He comes to houses as he has to
this, and gets a grand popularity.  He makes things go. 
They do go; when he's gone the things are gone.  Gone, Miss
Hunt, gone, a man's life or a man's spoons, or more often a
woman.  I assure you I have all the memoranda."
   "I have seen them," said Warner solidly, "I can assure
you that all this is correct."
   "The most unmanly aspect, according to my feelings," went
on the American doctor, "is this perpetual deception of
innocent women by a wild simulation of innocence.  From
almost every house where this great imaginative devil has
been, he has taken some poor girl away with him; some say
he's got a hypnotic eye with his other queer features, and
that they go like automata.  What's become of all those poor
girls nobody knows.  Murdered, I dare say; for we've lots of
instances, besides this one, of his turning his hand to
murder, though none ever brought him under the law.  Anyhow,
our most modern methods of research can't find any trace of
the wretched women.  It's when I think of them that I am
real moved, Miss Hunt.  And I've really nothing else to say
just now except what Dr. Warner has said."
   "Quite so," said Warner, with a smile that seemed moulded
in marble -- "that we all have to thank you very much for
that telegram."
   The little Yankee scientist had been speaking with such
evident sincerity that one forgot the tricks of his voice
and manner -- the falling eyelids, the rising intonation,
and the poised finger and thumb -- which were at other times
a little comic.  It was not so much that he was cleverer
than Warner; perhaps he was not so clever, though he was
more celebrated.  But he had what Warner never had, a fresh
and unaffected seriousness -- the great American virtue of
simplicity.  Rosamund knitted her brows and looked gloomily
toward the darkening house that contained the dark prodigy.
   Broad daylight still endured; but it had already changed
from gold to silver, and was changing from silver to gray. 
The long plumy shadows of the one or two trees in the garden
faded more and more upon a dead background of dusk.  In the
sharpest and deepest shadow, which was the entrance to the
house by the big French windows, Rosamund could watch a
hurried consultation between Inglewood (who was still left
in charge of the mysterious captive) and Diana, who had
moved to his assistance from without.  After a few sentences
and gestures they went inside, shutting the glass doors upon
the garden; and the garden seemed to grow grayer still. 
   The American gentleman named Pym seemed to be turning and
on the move in the same direction; but before he started he
spoke to Rosamund with a flash of that guileless tact which
redeemed much of his childish vanity, and with something of
that spontaneous poetry which made it difficult, pedantic as
he was, to call him a pedant.
   "I'm vurry sorry, Miss Hunt," he said; "but Dr. Warner
and I, as two quali-FIED practitioners, had better take Mr.
Smith away in that cab, and the less said about it the
better.  Don't you agitate yourself, Miss Hunt.  You've just
got to think that we're taking away a monstrosity, something
that oughtn't to be at all -- something like one of those
gods in your Britannic Museum, all wings, and beards, and
legs, and eyes, and no shape.  That's what Smith is, and you
shall soon be quit of him."
   He had already taken a step towards the house, and Warner
was about to follow him, when the glass doors were opened
again and Diana Duke came out with more than her usual
quickness across the lawn.  Her face was aquiver with worry
and excitement, and her dark earnest eyes fixed only on the
other girl.
   "Rosamund," she cried in despair, "what shall I do with
her?"
   "With her?" cried Miss Hunt, with a violent jump.  "O
lord, he isn't a woman too, is he?"
   "No, no, no," said Dr. Pym soothingly, as if in common
fairness.  "A woman? no, really, he is not so bad as that."
   "I mean your friend Mary Gray," retorted Diana with equal
tartness.  "What on earth am I to do with her?"
   "How can we tell her about Smith, you mean," answered
Rosamund, her face at once clouding and softening.  "Yes, it
will be pretty painful."
   "But I HAVE told her," exploded Diana, with more than her
congenital exasperation.  "I have told her, and she doesn't
seem to mind.  She still says she's going away with Smith in
that cab."
   "But it's impossible!" ejaculated Rosamund.  "Why, Mary
is really religious.  She --"
   She stopped in time to realize that Mary Gray was
comparatively close to her on the lawn.  Her quiet companion
had come down very quietly into the garden, but dressed very
decisively for travel.  She had a neat but very ancient blue
tam-o'-shanter on her head, and was pulling some rather
threadbare gray gloves on to her hands.  Yet the two tints
fitted excellently with her heavy copper-coloured hair; the
more excellently for the touch of shabbiness: for a woman's
clothes never suit her so well as when they seem to suit her
by accident.
   But in this case the woman had a quality yet more unique
and attractive.  In such gray hours, when the sun is sunk
and the skies are already sad, it will often happen that one
reflection at some occasional angle will cause to linger the
last of the light.  A scrap of window, a scrap of water, a
scrap of looking-glass, will be full of the fire that is
lost to all the rest of the earth.  The quaint, almost
triangular face of Mary Gray was like some triangular piece
of mirror that could still repeat the splendour of hours
before.  Mary, though she was always graceful, could never
have properly been called beautiful; and yet her happiness
amid all that misery was so beautiful as to make a man catch
his breath.
   "O Diana," cried Rosamund in a lower voice and altering
her phrase; "but how did you tell her?"
   "It is quite easy to tell her," answered Diana sombrely;
"it makes no impression at all."
   "I'm afraid I've kept everything waiting," said Mary Gray
apologetically, "and now we must really say good-bye. 
Innocent is taking me to his aunt's over at Hampstead, and
I'm afraid she goes to bed early."
   Her words were quite casual and practical, but there was
a sort of sleepy light in her eyes that was more baffling
than darkness; she was like one speaking absently with her
eye on some very distant object.
   "Mary, Mary," cried Rosamund, almost breaking down, "I'm
so sorry about it, but the thing can't be at all.  We -- we
have found out all about Mr. Smith."
   "All?" repeated Mary, with a low and curious intonation;
"why, that must be awfully exciting."
   There was no noise for an instant and no motion except
that the silent Michael Moon, leaning on the gate, lifted
his head, as it might be to listen.  Then Rosamund remaining
speechless, Dr. Pym came to her rescue in his definite way.
   "To begin with," he said, "this man Smith is constantly
attempting murder.  The Warden of Brakespeare College --"
   "I know," said Mary, with a vague but radiant smile. 
"Innocent told me."
   "I can't say what he told you," replied Pym quickly, "but
I'm very much afraid it wasn't true.  The plain truth is
that the man's stained with every known human crime.  I
assure you I have all the documents.  I have evidence of his
committing burglary, signed by a most eminent English
curate.  I have --"
   "Oh, but there were two curates," cried Mary, with a
certain gentle eagerness; "that was what made it so much
funnier."
   The darkened glass doors of the house opened once more,
and Inglewood appeared for an instant, making a sort of
signal.  The American doctor bowed, the English doctor did
not, but they both set out stolidly towards the house.  No
one else moved, not even Michael hanging on the gate; but
the back of his head and shoulders had still an
indescribable indication that he was listening to every
word.
   "But don't you understand, Mary," cried Rosamund in
despair; "don't you know that awful things have happened
even before our very eyes.  I should have thought you would
have heard the revolver shots upstairs."
   "Yes, I heard the shots," said Mary almost brightly; "but
I was busy packing just then.  And Innocent had told me he
was going to shoot at Dr. Warner; so it wasn't worth while
to come down."
   "Oh, I don't understand what you mean," cried Rosamund
Hunt, stamping, "but you must and shall understand what I
mean.  I don't care how cruelly I put it, if only I can save
you.  I mean that your Innocent Smith is the most awfully
wicked man in the world.  He has sent bullets at lots of
other men and gone off in cabs with lots of other women. 
And he seems to have killed the women too, for nobody can
find them."
   "He is really rather naughty sometimes," said Mary Gray,
laughing softly as she buttoned her old gray gloves.
   "Oh, this is really mesmerism, or something," said
Rosamund, and burst into tears.
   At the same moment the two black-clad doctors appeared
out of the house with their great green-clad captive between
them.  He made no resistance, but was still laughing in a
groggy and half-witted style.  Arthur Inglewood followed in
the rear, a dark and red study in the last shades of
distress and shame.  In this black, funereal, and painfully
realistic style the exit from Beacon House was made by a man
whose entrance a day before had been effected by the happy
leaping of a wall and the hilarious climbing of a tree.  No
one moved of the groups in the garden except Mary Gray, who
stepped forward quite naturally, calling out, "Are you
ready, Innocent?  Our cab's been waiting such a long time."
   "Ladies and gentlemen," said Dr. Warner firmly, "I must
insist on asking this lady to stand aside.  We shall have
trouble enough as it is, with the three of us in a cab."
   "But it IS our cab," persisted Mary.  "Why, there's
Innocent's yellow bag on the top of it."
   "Stand aside," repeated Warner roughly.  "And you, Mr.
Moon, please be so obliging as to move a moment.  Come,
come! the sooner this ugly business is over the better --
and how can we open the gate if you will keep leaning on
it?"
   Michael Moon looked at his long lean forefinger, and
seemed to consider and reconsider this argument.  "Yes," he
said at last; "but how can I lean on this gate if you keep
on opening it?"
   "Oh, get out of the way!" cried Warner, almost
good-humouredly.  "You can lean on the gate any time."
   "No," said Moon reflectively.  "Seldom the time and the
place and the blue gate altogether; and it all depends
whether you come of an old country family.  My ancestors
leaned on gates before any one had discovered how to open
them."
   "Michael!" cried Arthur Inglewood in a kind of agony,
"are you going to get out of the way?"
   "Why, no; I think not," said Michael, after some
meditation, and swung himself slowly round, so that he
confronted the company, while still, in a lounging attitude,
occupying the path.
   "Hullo!" he called out suddenly; "what are you doing to
Mr. Smith?"
   "Taking him away," answered Warner shortly, "to be
examined."
   "Matriculation?" asked Moon brightly.
   "By a magistrate," said the other curtly.
   "And what other magistrate," cried Michael, raising his
voice, "dares to try what befell on this free soil, save
only the ancient and independent Dukes of Beacon?  What
other court dares to try one of our company, save only the
High Court of Beacon?  Have you forgotten that only this
afternoon we flew the flag of independence and severed
ourselves from all the nations of the earth?"
   "Michael," cried Rosamund, wringing her hands, "how can
you stand there talking nonsense?  Why, you saw the dreadful
thing yourself.  You were there when he went mad.  It was
you that helped the doctor up when he fell over the
flower-pot."
   "And the High Court of Beacon," replied Moon with
hauteur, "has special powers in all cases concerning
lunatics, flower-pots, and doctors who fall down in
gardens.  It's in our very first charter from Edward I: `Si
medicus quisquam in horto prostratus --'"
   "Out of the way!" cried Warner with sudden fury, "or we
will force you out of it."
   "What!" cried Michael Moon, with a cry of hilarious
fierceness.  "Shall I die in defence of this sacred pale? 
Will you paint these blue railings red with my gore?" and he
laid hold of one of the blue spikes behind him.  As
Inglewood had noticed earlier in the evening, the railing
was loose and crooked at this place, and the painted iron
staff and spearhead came away in Michael's hand as he shook
it.
   "See!" he cried, brandishing this broken javelin in the
air, "the very lances round Beacon Tower leap from their
places to defend it.  Ah, in such a place and hour it is a
fine thing to die alone!"  And in a voice like a drum he
rolled the noble lines of Ronsard --
   
"Ou pour l'honneur de Dieu, ou pour le droit de mon prince,
Navre, poitrine ouverte, au bord de mon province."
   
   "Sakes alive!" said the American gentleman, almost in an
awed tone.  Then he added, "Are there two maniacs here?"
   "No; there are five," thundered Moon.  "Smith and I are
the only sane people left."
   "Michael!" cried Rosamund; "Michael, what does it mean?"
   "It means bosh!" roared Michael, and slung his painted
spear hurtling to the other end of the garden.  "It means
that doctors are bosh, and criminology is bosh, and
Americans are bosh -- much more bosh than our Court of
Beacon.  It means, you fatheads, that Innocent Smith is no
more mad or bad than the bird on that tree."
   "But, my dear Moon," began Inglewood in his modest
manner, "these gentlemen --"
   "On the word of two doctors," exploded Moon again,
without listening to anybody else, "shut up in a private
hell on the word of two doctors!  And such doctors!  Oh, my
hat!  Look at 'em! -- do just look at 'em!  Would you read a
book, or buy a dog, or go to a hotel on the advice of twenty
such?  My people came from Ireland, and were Catholics. 
What would you say if I called a man wicked on the word of
two priests?"
   "But it isn't only their word, Michael," reasoned
Rosamund; "they've got evidence too."
   "Have you looked at it?" asked Moon.
   "No," said Rosamund, with a sort of faint surprise;
"these gentlemen are in charge of it."
   "And of everything else, it seems to me," said Michael. 
"Why, you haven't even had the decency to consult Mrs.
Duke."
   "Oh, that's no use," said Diana in an undertone to
Rosamund; "Auntie couldn't say `Bo!' to a goose."
   "I am glad to hear it," answered Michael, "for with such
a flock of geese to say it to, the horrid expletive might be
constantly on her lips.  For my part, I simply refuse to let
things be done in this light and airy style.  I appeal to
Mrs. Duke -- it's her house."
   "Mrs. Duke?" repeated Inglewood doubtfully.
   "Yes, Mrs. Duke," said Michael firmly, "commonly called
the Iron Duke."
   "If you ask Auntie," said Diana quietly, "she'll only be
for doing nothing at all.  Her only idea is to hush things
up or to let things slide.  That just suits her."
   "Yes," replied Michael Moon; "and, as it happens, it just
suits all of us.  You are impatient with your elders, Miss
Duke; but when you are as old yourself you will know what
Napoleon knew -- that half one's letters answer themselves
if you can only refrain from the fleshly appetite of
answering them."
   He was still lounging in the same absurd attitude, with
his elbow on the grate, but his voice had altered abruptly
for the third time; just as it had changed from the mock
heroic to the humanly indignant, it now changed to the airy
incisiveness of a lawyer giving good legal advice.
   "It isn't only your aunt who wants to keep this quiet if
she can," he said; "we all want to keep it quiet if we can. 
Look at the large facts -- the big bones of the case.  I
believe these scientific gentlemen have made a highly
scientific mistake.  I believe Smith is as blameless as a
buttercup.  I admit buttercups don't often let off loaded
pistols in private houses; I admit there is something
demanding explanation.  But I am morally certain there's
some blunder, or some joke, or some allegory, or some
accident behind all this.  Well, suppose I'm wrong.  We've
disarmed him; we're five men to hold him; he may as well go
to a lock-up later on as now.  But suppose there's even a
chance of my being right.  Is it anybody's interest here to
wash this linen in public?
   "Come, I'll take each of you in order.  Once take Smith
outside that gate, and you take him into the front page of
the evening papers.  I know; I've written the front page
myself.  Miss Duke, do you or your aunt want a sort of
notice stuck up over your boarding-house -- `Doctors shot
here'?  No, no -- doctors are rubbish, as I said; but you
don't want the rubbish shot here.  Arthur, suppose I am
right, or suppose I am wrong.  Smith has appeared as an old
schoolfellow of yours.  Mark my words, if he's proved
guilty, the Organs of Public Opinion will say you introduced
him.  If he's proved innocent, they will say you helped to
collar him.  Rosamund, my dear, suppose I am right or
wrong.  If he's proved guilty, they'll say you engaged your
companion to him.  If he's proved innocent, they'll print
that telegram.  I know the Organs, damn them."
   He stopped an instant; for this rapid rationalism left
him more breathless than had either his theatrical or his
real denunciation.  But he was plainly in earnest, as well
as positive and lucid; as was proved by his proceeding
quickly the moment he had found his breath.
   "It is just the same," he cried, "with our medical
friends.  You will say that Dr. Warner has a grievance.  I
agree.  But does he want specially to be snapshotted by all
the journalists ~prostratus in horto~?  It was no fault of
his, but the scene was not very dignified even for him.  He
must have justice; but does he want to ask for justice, not
only on his knees, but on his hands and knees?  Does he want
to enter the court of justice on all fours?  Doctors are not
allowed to advertise; and I'm sure no doctor wants to
advertise himself as looking like that.  And even for our
American guest the interest is the same.  Let us suppose
that he has conclusive documents.  Let us assume that he has
revelations really worth reading.  Well, in a legal inquiry
(or a medical inquiry, for that matter) ten to one he won't
be allowed to read them.  He'll be tripped up every two or
three minutes with some tangle of old rules.  A man can't
tell the truth in public nowadays.  But he can still tell it
in private; he can tell it inside that house."
   "It is quite true," said Dr. Cyrus Pym, who had listened
throughout the speech with a seriousness which only an
American could have retained through such a scene.  "It is
quite true that I have been per-ceptibly less hampered in
private inquiries."
   "Dr. Pym!" cried Warner in a sort of sudden anger.  "Dr.
Pym! you aren't surely going to admit --"
   "Smith may be mad," went on the melancholy Moon in a
monologue that seemed as heavy as a hatchet, "but there was
something after all in what he said about Home Rule for
every home.  Yes, there is something, when all's said and
done, in the High Court of Beacon.  It is really true that
human beings might often get some sort of domestic justice
where just now they can only get legal injustice -- oh, I am
a lawyer too, and I know that as well.  It is true that
there's too much official and indirect power.  Often and
often the thing a whole nation can't settle is just the
thing a family could settle.  Scores of young criminals have
been fined and sent to jail when they ought to have been
thrashed and sent to bed.  Scores of men, I am sure, have
had a lifetime at Hanwell when they only wanted a week at
Brighton.  There IS something in Smith's notion of domestic
self-government; and I propose that we put it in practice. 
You have the prisoner; you have the documents.  Come, we are
a company of free, white, Christian people, such as might be
besieged in a town or cast up on a desert island.  Let us do
this thing ourselves.  Let us go into that house there and
sit down and find out with our own eyes and ears whether
this thing is true or not; whether this Smith is a man or a
monster.  If we can't do a little thing like that, what
right have we to put crosses on ballot papers?"
   Inglewood and Pym exchanged a glance; and Warner, who was
no fool, saw in that glance that Moon was gaining ground. 
The motives that led Arthur to think of surrender were
indeed very different from those which affected Dr. Cyrus
Pym.  All Arthur's instincts were on the side of privacy and
polite settlement; he was very English and would often
endure wrongs rather than right them by scenes and serious
rhetoric.  To play at once the buffoon and the
knight-errant, like his Irish friend, would have been
absolute torture to him; but even the semi-official part he
had played that afternoon was very painful.  He was not
likely to be reluctant if any one could convince him that
his duty was to let sleeping dogs lie.
   On the other hand, Cyrus Pym belonged to a country in
which things are possible that seem crazy to the English. 
Regulations and authorities exactly like one of Innocent's
pranks or one of Michael's satires really exist, propped by
placid policemen and imposed on bustling business men.  Pym
knew whole States which are vast and yet secret and
fanciful; each is as big as a nation yet as private as a
lost village, and as unexpected as an apple-pie bed.  States
where no man may have a cigarette, States where any man may
have ten wives, very strict prohibition States, very lax
divorce States -- all these large local vagaries had
prepared Cyrus Pym's mind for small local vagaries in a
smaller country.  Infinitely more remote from England than
any Russian or Italian, utterly incapable even of conceiving
what English conventions are, he could not see the social
impossibility of the Court of Beacon.  It is firmly believed
by those who shared the experiment, that to the very end Pym
believed in that phantasmal court and supposed it to be some
Britannic institution.
   Towards the synod thus somewhat at a standstill there
approached through the growing haze and gloaming a short
dark figure with a walk apparently founded on the imperfect
repression of a negro breakdown.  Something at once in the
familiarity and the incongruity of this being moved Michael
to even heartier outbursts of a healthy and humane
flippancy.
   "Why, here's little Nosey Gould," he exclaimed.  "Isn't
the mere sight of him enough to banish all your morbid
reflections?"
   "Really," replied Dr. Warner," I really fail to see how
Mr. Gould affects the question; and I once more demand --"
   "Hello! what's the funeral, gents?" inquired the newcomer
with the air of an uproarious umpire.  "Doctor demandin'
something?  Always the way at a boarding-house, you know. 
Always lots of demand.  No supply."
   As delicately and impartially as he could, Michael
restated his position, and indicated generally that Smith
had been guilty of certain dangerous and dubious acts, and
that there had even arisen an allegation that he was insane.
   "Well, of course he is," said Moses Gould equably; "it
don't need old 'Olmes to see that.  The 'awk-like face of
'Olmes," he added with abstract relish, "showed a shide of
disappointment, the sleuth-like Gould 'avin' got there
before 'im."
   "If he is mad," began Inglewood.
   "Well," said Moses, "when a cove gets out on the tiles
the first night there's generally a tile loose."
   "You never objected before," said Diana Duke rather
stiffly, "and you're generally pretty free with your
complaints."
   "I don't compline of him," said Moses magnanimously, "the
poor chap's 'armless enough; you might tie 'im up in the
garden her and 'e'd make noises at the burglars."
   "Moses," said Moon with solemn fervour, "you are the
incarnation of Common Sense.  You think Mr. Innocent is
mad.  Let me introduce you to the incarnation of Scientific
Theory.  He also thinks Mr. Innocent is mad. -- Doctor, this
is my friend Mr. Gould. -- Moses, this is the celebrated Dr.
Pym."  The celebrated Dr. Cyrus Pym closed his eyes and
bowed.  He also murmured his national war-cry in a low
voice, which sounded like "Pleased to meet you."
   "Now you two people," said Michael cheerfully, "who both
think our poor friend mad, shall jolly well go into that
house over there and prove him mad.  What could be more
powerful than the combination of Scientific Theory with
Common Sense?  United you stand; divided you fall.  I will
not be so uncivil as to suggest that Dr. Pym has no common
sense; I confine myself to recording the chronological
accident that he has not shown us any so far.  I take the
freedom of an old friend in staking my shirt that Moses has
no scientific theory.  Yet against this strong coalition I
am ready to appear, armed with nothing but an intuition --
which is American for a guess."
   "Distinguished by Mr. Gould's assistance," said Pym,
opening his eyes suddenly.  "I gather that though he and I
are identical in primary di-agnosis there is yet between us
something that cannot be called a disagreement, something
which we may perhaps call a --"  He put the points of thumb
and forefinger together, spreading the other fingers
exquisitely in the air, and seemed to be waiting for
somebody else to tell him what to say.
   "Catchin' flies?" inquired the affable Moses.
   "A divergence," said Dr. Pym, with a refined sigh of
relief; "a divergence.  Granted that the man in question is
deranged, he would not necessarily be all that science
requires in a homicidal maniac --"
   "Has it occurred to you," observed Moon, who was leaning
on the gate again, and did not turn round, "that if he were
a homicidal maniac he might have killed us all here while we
were talking."
   Something exploded silently underneath all their minds,
like sealed dynamite in some forgotten cellars.  They all
remembered for the first time for some hour or two that the
monster of whom they were talking was standing quite
silently among them.  They had left him in the garden like a
garden statue; there might have been a dolphin coiling round
his legs, or a fountain pouring out of his mouth, for all
the notice they had taken of Innocent Smith.  He stood with
his crest of blonde, blown hair thrust somewhat forward, his
fresh-coloured, rather short-sighted face looking patiently
downwards at nothing in particular, his huge shoulders
humped, and his hands in his trousers pockets.  So far as
they could guess he had not moved at all.  His green coat
might have been cut out of the green turf on which he
stood.  In his shadow Pym had expounded and Rosamund
expostulated, Michael had ranted and Moses had ragged.  He
had remained like a thing graven; the god of the garden.  A
sparrow had perched on one of his heavy shoulders; and then,
after correcting its costume of feathers, had flown away.
   "Why," cried Michael, with a shout of laughter, "the
Court of Beacon has opened -- and shut up again too.  You
all know now I am right.  Your buried common sense has told
you just what my buried common sense has told me.  Smith
might have fired off a hundred cannons instead of a pistol,
and you would still know he was harmless as I know he is
harmless.  Back we all go to the house and clear a room for
discussion.  For the High Court of Beacon, which has already
arrived at its decision, is just about to begin its
inquiry."
   "Just a goin' to begin!" cried little Mr. Moses in an
extraordinary sort of disinterested excitement, like that of
an animal during music or a thunderstorm.  "Follow on to the
'Igh Court of Eggs and Bacon; 'ave a kipper from the old
firm!  'Is Lordship complimented Mr. Gould on the 'igh
professional delicacy 'e had shown, and which was worthy of
the best traditions of the Saloon Bar -- and three of Scotch
hot, miss!  Oh, chase me, girls!"
   The girls betraying no temptation to chase him, he went
away in a sort of waddling dance of pure excitement; and had
made a circuit of the garden before he reappeared,
breathless but still beaming.  Moon had known his man when
he realized that no people presented to Moses Gould could be
quite serious, even if they were quite furious.  The glass
doors stood open on the side nearest to Mr. Moses Gould; and
as the feet of that festive idiot were evidently turned in
the same direction, everybody else went that way with the
unanimity of some uproarious procession.  Only Diana Duke
retained enough rigidity to say the thing that had been
boiling at her fierce feminine lips for the last few hours. 
Under the shadow of tragedy she had kept it back as
unsympathetic.  "In that case," she said sharply, "these
cabs can be sent away."
   "Well, Innocent must have his bag, you know," said Mary
with a smile.  "I dare say the cabman would get it down for
us."
   "I'll get the bag," said Smith, speaking for the first
time in hours; his voice sounded remote and rude, like the
voice of a statue.
   Those who had so long danced and disputed round his
immobility were left breathless by his precipitance.  With a
run and spring he was out of the garden into the street;
with a spring and one quivering kick he was actually on the
roof of the cab.  The cabman happened to be standing by the
horse's head, having just removed its emptied nose-bag. 
Smith seemed for an instant to be rolling about on the cab's
back in the embraces of his own Gladstone bag.  The next
instant, however, he had rolled, as if by a royal luck, into
the high seat behind, and with a shriek of piercing and
appalling suddenness had sent the horse flying and
scampering far away down the street.
   His evanescence was so violent and swift, that this time
it was all the other people who were turned into garden
statues.  Mr. Moses Gould, however, being ill-adapted both
physically and morally for the purposes of permanent
sculpture, came to life some time before the rest, and,
turning to Moon, remarked, like a man starting chattily with
a stranger on an omnibus, "Tile loose, eh?  Cab loose
anyhow."  There followed a fatal silence; and then Dr.
Warner said, with a sneer like a club of stone, --
   "This is what comes of the Court of Beacon, Mr. Moon. 
You have let loose a maniac on the whole metropolis."
   Beacon House stood, as has been said, at the end of a
long crescent of continuous houses.  The little garden that
shut it in ran out into a sharp point like a green cape
pushed out into the sea of two streets.  Smith and his cab
shot up one side of the triangle, and certainly most of
those standing inside of it never expected to see him
again.  At the apex, however, he turned the horse sharply
round and drove with equal violence up the other side of the
garden, visible to all the group.  With a common impulse the
little crowd ran across the lawn as if to stop him, but they
soon had reason to duck and recoil.  Even as he vanished up
street for the second time, he let the big yellow bag fly
from his hand, so that it fell in the centre of the garden,
scattering the company like a bomb, and nearly damaging Dr.
Warner's hat for the third time.  Long before they had
collected themselves, the cab had shot away with a shriek
that went into a whisper.
   "Well," said Michael Moon, with a very queer note in his
voice; "you may as well all go inside anyhow; it's getting
rather dark and cold.  We've got two relics of Mr. Smith at
least; his fiancee and his trunk."
   "Why do you want us to go inside?" asked Arthur
Inglewood, in whose red brow and rough brown hair
botheration seemed to have reached its limit.
   "I want the rest to go in," said Michael in a clear
voice, "because I want the whole of this garden in which to
talk to you."
   There was an atmosphere of irrational doubt; it was
really getting colder, and a night wind had begun to wave
the one or two trees in the twilight.  Dr. Warner, however,
spoke in a voice devoid of indecision.
   "I refuse to listen to any such proposal," he said; "you
have lost this ruffian, and I must find him."
   "I don't ask you to listen to any proposal," answered
Moon quietly; "I only ask you to listen."
   He made a silencing movement with his hand, and
immediately the whistling noise that had been lost in the
dark streets on one side of the house could be heard from
quite a new quarter on the other side.  Through the
night-maze of streets the noise increased with incredible
rapidity, and the next moment the flying hoofs and flashing
wheels had swept up to the blue-railed gate at which they
originally stood.   Mr. Smith got down from his perch with
an air of absent-mindedness, and coming back into the garden
stood in the same elephantine attitude as before.
   "Get inside! get inside!" cried Moon hilariously, with
the air of one shooing a company of cats.  "Come, come, be
quick about it!  Didn't I tell you I wanted to talk to
Inglewood?"
   How they were all really driven into the house again it
would have been difficult afterwards to say.  They had
reached the point of being exhausted with incongruities, as
people at a farce are ill with laughing, and the brisk
growth of the storm among the trees seemed like a final
gesture of things in general.  Inglewood lingered behind
them, saying with a certain amicable exasperation, "I say,
do you really want to speak to me?"
   "I do," said Michael, "very much."
   Nigh had come as it generally does, quicker than the
twilight had seemed to promise.  While the human eye still
felt the sky as light gray, a very large and lustrous moon
appearing abruptly above a bulk of roofs and trees, proved
by contrast that the sky was already a very dark gray
indeed.  A drift of barren leaves across the lawn, a drift
of riven clouds across the sky, seemed to be lifted on the
same strong and yet laborious wind.
   "Arthur," said Michael, "I began with an intuition; but
now I am sure.  You and I are going to defend this friend of
yours before the blessed Court of Beacon, and to clear him
too -- clear him both of crime and lunacy.  Just listen to
me while I preach to you for a bit."  They walked up and
down the darkening garden together as Michael Moon went on.
   "Can you," asked Michael, "shut your eyes and see some of
those queer old hieroglyphics they stuck up on white walls
in the old hot countries.  How stiff they were in shape and
yet how gaudy in colour.  Think of some alphabet of
arbitrary figures picked out in black and red, or white and
green, with some old Semitic crowd of Nosey Gould's
ancestors staring at it, and try to think why the people put
it up at all."
   Inglewood's first instinct was to think that his
perplexing friend had really gone off his head at last;
there seemed so reckless a flight of irrelevancy from the
tropic-pictured walls he was asked to imagine to the gray,
wind-swept, and somewhat chilly suburban garden in which he
was actually kicking his heels.  How he could be more happy
in one by imagining the other he could not conceive.  Both
(in themselves) were unpleasant.
   "Why does everybody repeat riddles," went on Moon
abruptly, "even if they've forgotten the answers?  Riddles
are easy to remember because they are hard to guess.  So
were those stiff old symbols in black, red, or green easy to
remember because they had been hard to guess.  Their colours
were plain.  Their shapes were plain.  Everything was plain
except the meaning."
   Inglewood was about to open his mouth in an amiable
protest, but Moon went on, plunging quicker and quicker up
and down the garden and smoking faster and faster.  "Dances,
too," he said; "dances were not frivolous.  Dances were
harder to understand than inscriptions and texts.  The old
dances were stiff, ceremonial, highly coloured but silent. 
Have you noticed anything odd about Smith?"
   "Well, really," cried Inglewood, left behind in a
collapse of humour, "have I noticed anything else?"
   "Have you noticed this about him," asked Moon, with
unshaken persistency, "that he has done so much and said so
little?  When first he came he talked, but in a gasping,
irregular sort of way, as if he wasn't used to it.  All he
really did was actions -- painting red flowers on black
gowns or throwing yellow bags on to the grass.  I tell you
that big green figure is figurative -- like any green figure
capering on some white Eastern wall."
   "My dear Michael," cried Inglewood, in a rising
irritation which increased with the rising wind, "you are
getting absurdly fanciful."
   "I think of what has just happened," said Michael
steadily.  "The man has not spoken for hours; and yet he has
been speaking all the time.  He fired three shots from a
six-shooter and then gave it up to us, when he might have
shot us dead in our boots.  How could he express his trust
in us better than that?  He wanted to be tried by us.  How
could he have shown it better than by standing quite still
and letting us discuss it?  He wanted to show that he stood
there willingly, and could escape if he liked.  How could he
have shown it better than by escaping in the cab and coming
back again?  Innocent Smith is not a madman -- he is a
ritualist.  He wants to express himself, not with his
tongue, but with his arms and legs -- with my body I thee
worship, as it says in the marriage service.  I begin to
understand the old plays and pageants.  I see why the mutes
at a funeral were mute.  I see why the mummers were mum. 
They MEANT something; and Smith means something too.  All
other jokes have to be noisy -- like little Nosey Gould's
jokes, for instance.  The only silent jokes are the
practical jokes.  Poor Smith, properly considered, is an
allegorical practical joker.  What he has really done in
this house has been as frantic as a war-dance, but as silent
as a picture."
   "I suppose you mean," said the other dubiously, "that we
have got to find out what all these crimes meant, as if they
were so many coloured picture-puzzles.  But even supposing
that they do mean something -- why, Lord bless my soul! --"
   Taking the turn of the garden quite naturally, he had
lifted his eyes to the moon, by this time risen big and
luminous, and had seen a huge, half-human figure sitting on
the garden wall.  It was outlined so sharply against the
moon that for the first flash it was hard to be certain even
that it was human: the hunched shoulders and outstanding
hair had rather the air of a colossal cat.  It resembled a
cat also in the fact that when first startled it sprang up
and ran with easy activity along the top of the wall.  As it
ran, however, its heavy shoulders and small stooping head
rather suggested a baboon.  The instant it came within reach
of a tree it made an ape-like leap and was lost in the
branches.  The gale, which by this time was shaking every
shrub in the garden, made the identification yet more
difficult, since it melted the moving limbs of the fugitive
in the multitudinous moving limbs of the tree.
   "Who is there?" shouted Arthur.  "Who are you?  Are you
Innocent?"
   "Not quite," answered an obscure voice among the leaves. 
"I cheated you once about a penknife."
   The wind in the garden had gathered strength, and was
throwing the tree backwards and forwards with the man in the
thick of it, just as it had on the gay and golden afternoon
when he had first arrived.
   "But are you Smith?" asked Inglewood, as in an agony.
   "Very nearly," said the voice out of the tossing tree.
   "But you must have some real names," shrieked Inglewood
in despair.  "You must call yourself something."
   "Call myself something," thundered the obscure voice,
shaking the tree so that all its ten thousand leaves seemed
to be talking at once.  "I call myself Roland Oliver Isaiah
Charlemagne Arthur Hildebrand Homer Danton Michaelangelo
Shakespeare Brakespeare --"
   "But, manalive!" began Inglewood in exasperation.
   "That's right! that's right!" came with a roar out of the
rocking tree; "that's my real name."  And he broke a branch,
and one or two autumn leaves fluttered away across the moon.
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