The Club of Queer Trades Part 17

"Dr Colman," said Basil, turning to him, "will you entertain Professor Chadd again for a little while? I am sure that he needs you. Mr Bingham, might I have the pleasure of a few moments' private conversation? My name is Grant."

Mr Bingham, of the British Museum, bowed in a manner that was respectful but a trifle bewildered.

"Miss Chadd will excuse me," continued Basil easily, "if I know my way about the house." And he led the dazed librarian rapidly through the back door into the parlour.

"Mr Bingham," said Basil, setting a chair for him, "I imagine that Miss Chadd has told you of this distressing occurrence."

"She has, Mr Grant," said Bingham, looking at the table with a sort of compa.s.sionate nervousness. "I am more pained than I can say by this dreadful calamity. It seems quite heart-rending that the thing should have happened just as we have decided to give your eminent friend a position which falls far short of his merits. As it is, of course--really, I don't know what to say. Professor Chadd may, of course, retain--I sincerely trust he will--his extraordinarily valuable intellect. But I am afraid--I am really afraid--that it would not do to have the curator of the Asiatic ma.n.u.scripts--er--dancing about."

"I have a suggestion to make," said Basil, and sat down abruptly in his chair, drawing it up to the table.

"I am delighted, of course," said the gentleman from the British Museum, coughing and drawing up his chair also.

The clock on the mantelpiece ticked for just the moments required for Basil to clear his throat and collect his words, and then he said:

"My proposal is this. I do not know that in the strict use of words you could altogether call it a compromise, still it has something of that character. My proposal is that the Government (acting, as I presume, through your Museum) should pay Professor Chadd L800 a year until he stops dancing."

"Eight hundred a year!" said Mr Bingham, and for the first time lifted his mild blue eyes to those of his interlocutor--and he raised them with a mild blue stare. "I think I have not quite understood you. Did I understand you to say that Professor Chadd ought to be employed, in his present state, in the Asiatic ma.n.u.script department at eight hundred a year?"

Grant shook his head resolutely.

"No," he said firmly. "No. Chadd is a friend of mine, and I would say anything for him I could. But I do not say, I cannot say, that he ought to take on the Asiatic ma.n.u.scripts. I do not go so far as that. I merely say that until he stops dancing you ought to pay him L800 Surely you have some general fund for the endowment of research."

Mr Bingham looked bewildered.

"I really don't know," he said, blinking his eyes, "what you are talking about. Do you ask us to give this obvious lunatic nearly a thousand a year for life?"

"Not at all," cried Basil, keenly and triumphantly. "I never said for life. Not at all."

"What for, then?" asked the meek Bingham, suppressing an instinct meekly to tear his hair. "How long is this endowment to run? Not till his death? Till the Judgement day?"

"No," said Basil, beaming, "but just what I said. Till he has stopped dancing." And he lay back with satisfaction and his hands in his pockets.

Bingham had by this time fastened his eyes keenly on Basil Grant and kept them there.

"Come, Mr Grant," he said. "Do I seriously understand you to suggest that the Government pay Professor Chadd an extraordinarily high salary simply on the ground that he has (pardon the phrase) gone mad? That he should be paid more than four good clerks solely on the ground that he is flinging his boots about in the back yard?"

"Precisely," said Grant composedly.

"That this absurd payment is not only to run on with the absurd dancing, but actually to stop with the absurd dancing?"

"One must stop somewhere," said Grant. "Of course."

Bingham rose and took up his perfect stick and gloves.

"There is really nothing more to be said, Mr Grant," he said coldly.

"What you are trying to explain to me may be a joke--a slightly unfeeling joke. It may be your sincere view, in which case I ask your pardon for the former suggestion. But, in any case, it appears quite irrelevant to my duties. The mental morbidity, the mental downfall, of Professor Chadd, is a thing so painful to me that I cannot easily endure to speak of it. But it is clear there is a limit to everything. And if the Archangel Gabriel went mad it would sever his connection, I am sorry to say, with the British Museum Library."

He was stepping towards the door, but Grant's hand, flung out in dramatic warning, arrested him.

"Stop!" said Basil sternly. "Stop while there is yet time. Do you want to take part in a great work, Mr Bingham? Do you want to help in the glory of Europe--in the glory of science? Do you want to carry your head in the air when it is bald or white because of the part that you bore in a great discovery? Do you want--"

Bingham cut in sharply:

"And if I do want this, Mr Grant--"

"Then," said Basil lightly, "your task is easy. Get Chadd L800 a year till he stops dancing."

With a fierce flap of his swinging gloves Bingham turned impatiently to the door, but in pa.s.sing out of it found it blocked. Dr Colman was coming in.

"Forgive me, gentlemen," he said, in a nervous, confidential voice, "the fact is, Mr Grant, I--er--have made a most disturbing discovery about Mr Chadd."

Bingham looked at him with grave eyes.

"I was afraid so," he said. "Drink, I imagine."

"Drink!" echoed Colman, as if that were a much milder affair. "Oh, no, it's not drink."

Mr Bingham became somewhat agitated, and his voice grew hurried and vague. "Homicidal mania--" he began.

"No, no," said the medical man impatiently.

"Thinks he's made of gla.s.s," said Bingham feverishly, "or says he's G.o.d--or--"

"No," said Dr Colman sharply; "the fact is, Mr Grant, my discovery is of a different character. The awful thing about him is--"

"Oh, go on, sir," cried Bingham, in agony.

"The awful thing about him is," repeated Colman, with deliberation, "that he isn't mad."

"Not mad!"

"There are quite well-known physical tests of lunacy," said the doctor shortly; "he hasn't got any of them."

"But why does he dance?" cried the despairing Bingham. "Why doesn't he answer us? Why hasn't he spoken to his family?"

"The devil knows," said Dr Colman coolly. "I'm paid to judge of lunatics, but not of fools. The man's not mad."

"What on earth can it mean? Can't we make him listen?" said Mr Bingham.

"Can none get into any kind of communication with him?"

Grant's voice struck in sudden and clear, like a steel bell:

"I shall be very happy," he said, "to give him any message you like to send."

Both men stared at him.

"Give him a message?" they cried simultaneously. "How will you give him a message?"