Basil Grant and I were talking one day in what is perhaps the most perfect place for talking on earth—the top of a tolerably deserted¹ tramcar. To talk on the top of a hill is superb, but to talk on the top of a flying hill is a fairy tale.  
The vast blank space of North London was flying by; the very pace gave us a sense of its immensity and its meanness. It was, as it were, a base infinitude, a squalid eternity², and we felt the real horror of the poor parts of London, the horror that is so totally missed and misrepresented by the sensational³ novelists who depict⁴ it as being a matter of narrow streets, filthy⁵ houses, criminals and maniacs⁶, and dens⁷ of vice⁹. In a narrow street, in a den⁸ of vice, you do not expect civilization, you do not expect order. But the horror of this was the fact that there was civilization, that there was order, but that civilisation¹⁰ only showed its morbidity¹¹, and order only its monotony. No one would say, in going through a criminal slum, “I see no statues. I notice no cathedrals.” But here there were public buildings; only they were mostly lunatic asylums¹². Here there were statues; only they were mostly statues of railway engineers and philanthropists—two dingy¹³ classes of men united by their common contempt for the people. Here there were churches; only they were the churches of dim and erratic¹⁴ sects¹⁵, Agapemonites or Irvingites. Here, above all, there were broad roads and vast crossings and tramway lines and hospitals and all the real marks of civilization. But though one never knew, in one sense, what one would see next, there was one thing we knew we should not see—anything really great, central, of the first class, anything that humanity had adored. And with revulsion indescribable our emotions returned, I think, to those really close and crooked¹⁶ entries, to those really mean streets, to those genuine slums which lie round the Thames and the City, in which nevertheless a real possibility remains¹⁷ that at any chance corner the great cross of the great cathedral of Wren¹⁸ may strike down the street like a thunderbolt.
 
“But you must always remember also,” said Grant to me, in his heavy abstracted way, when I had urged this view, “that the very vileness¹⁹ of the life of these ordered plebeian²⁰ places bears witness to the victory of the human soul. I agree with you. I agree that they have to live in something worse than barbarism. They have to live in a fourth-rate civilization. But yet I am practically certain that the majority of people here are good people. And being good is an adventure far more violent and daring than sailing round the world. Besides—”
 
“Go on,” I said.
 
No answer came.
 
“Go on,” I said, looking up.
 
The big blue eyes of Basil Grant were standing²¹ out of his head and he was paying no attention to me. He was staring over the side of the tram.
 
“What is the matter?” I asked, peering over also.
 
“It is very odd,” said Grant at last, grimly, “that I should have been caught out like this at the very moment of my optimism. I said all these people were good, and there is the wickedest man in England.”
 
“Where?” I asked, leaning over further, “where?”
 
“Oh, I was right enough,” he went on, in that strange continuous and sleepy tone which always angered his hearers at acute moments, “I was right enough when I said all these people were good. They are heroes; they are saints. Now and then they may perhaps steal a spoon or two; they may beat a wife or two with the poker²². But they are saints all the same; they are angels; they are robed in white; they are clad with wings and haloes—at any rate compared to that man.”
 
“Which man?” I cried again, and then my eye caught the figure at which Basil's bull's eyes were glaring.
 
He was a slim, smooth person, passing very quickly among the quickly passing crowd, but though there was nothing about him sufficient to attract a startled notice, there was quite enough to demand a curious consideration when once that notice was attracted. He wore a black top-hat, but there was enough in it of those strange curves whereby the decadent²³ artist of the eighties tried to turn the top-hat into something as rhythmic²⁴ as an Etruscan vase. His hair, which was largely grey, was curled with the instinct of one who appreciated the gradual beauty of grey and silver. The rest of his face was oval and, I thought, rather Oriental; he had two black tufts of moustache.
 
“What has he done?” I asked.
 
“I am not sure of the details,” said Grant, “but his besetting²⁵ sin is a desire to intrigue²⁶ to the disadvantage of others. Probably he has adopted some imposture²⁷ or other to effect his plan.”
 
“What plan?” I asked. “If you know all about him, why don't you tell me why he is the wickedest man in England? What is his name?”
 
Basil Grant stared at me for some moments.
 
“I think you've made a mistake in my meaning,” he said. “I don't know his name. I never saw him before in my life.”
 
“Never saw him before!” I cried, with a kind of anger; “then what in heaven's name do you mean by saying that he is the wickedest man in England?”
 
“I meant what I said,” said Basil Grant calmly. “The moment I saw that man, I saw all these people stricken with a sudden and splendid innocence²⁸. I saw that while all ordinary poor men in the streets were being themselves, he was not being himself. I saw that all the men in these slums, cadgers, pickpockets²⁹, hooligans, are all, in the deepest sense, trying to be good. And I saw that that man was trying to be evil.”
 
“But if you never saw him before—” I began.
 
“In God's name, look at his face,” cried out Basil in a voice that startled the driver. “Look at the eyebrows³⁰. They mean that infernal pride which made Satan so proud that he sneered³¹ even at heaven when he was one of the first angels in it. Look at his moustaches, they are so grown as to insult humanity. In the name of the sacred heavens look at his hair. In the name of God and the stars, look at his hat.”
 
I stirred uncomfortably.
 
“But, after all,” I said, “this is very fanciful—perfectly³² absurd. Look at the mere³³ facts. You have never seen the man before, you—”
 
“Oh, the mere facts,” he cried out in a kind of despair. “The mere facts! Do you really admit—are you still so sunk in superstitions³⁴, so clinging to dim and prehistoric³⁵ altars, that you believe in facts? Do you not trust an immediate³⁶ impression?”
 
“Well, an immediate impression may be,” I said, “a little less practical than facts.”
 
“Bosh,” he said. “On what else is the whole world run but immediate impressions? What is more practical? My friend, the philosophy of this world may be founded on facts, its business is run on spiritual impressions and atmospheres. Why do you refuse or accept a clerk? Do you measure his skull³⁷? Do you read up his physiological³⁸ state in a handbook? Do you go upon facts at all? Not a scrap³⁹. You accept a clerk who may save your business—you refuse a clerk that may rob your till, entirely⁴⁰ upon those immediate mystical impressions under the pressure of which I pronounce, with a perfect sense of certainty and sincerity⁴¹, that that man walking in that street beside us is a humbug⁴² and a villain⁴³ of some kind.”
 
“You always put things well,” I said, “but, of course, such things cannot immediately be put to the test.”
 
Basil sprang up straight and swayed with the swaying car.
 
“Let us get off and follow him,” he said. “I bet you five pounds it will turn out as I say.”
 
And with a scuttle⁴⁴, a jump, and a run, we were off the car.
 
The man with the curved silver hair and the curved Eastern face walked along for some time, his long splendid frock-coat flying behind him. Then he swung sharply out of the great glaring road and disappeared down an ill-lit alley⁴⁵. We swung silently after him.
 
“This is an odd turning for a man of that kind to take,” I said.
 
“A man of what kind?” asked my friend.
 
“Well,” I said, “a man with that kind of expression and those boots. I thought it rather odd, to tell the truth, that he should be in this part of the world at all.”
 
“Ah, yes,” said Basil, and said no more.
 
We tramped on, looking steadily⁴⁶ in front of us. The elegant figure, like the figure of a black swan, was silhouetted⁴⁷ suddenly against the glare of intermittent⁴⁸ gaslight and then swallowed again in night. The intervals⁴⁹ between the lights were long, and a fog was thickening the whole city. Our pace, therefore, had become swift and mechanical between the lamp-posts; but Basil came to a standstill suddenly like a reined⁵⁰ horse; I stopped also. We had almost run into the man. A great part of the solid darkness in front of us was the darkness of his body.
 
At first I thought he had turned to face us. But though we were hardly a yard off he did not realize that we were there. He tapped four times on a very low and dirty door in the dark, crabbed⁵¹ street. A gleam of gas cut the darkness as it opened slowly. We listened intently, but the interview was short and simple and inexplicable⁵² as an interview could be. Our exquisite⁵³ friend handed in what looked like a paper or a card and said:
 
“At once. Take a cab.”
 
A heavy, deep voice from inside said:
 
“Right you are.”
 
And with a click we were in the blackness again, and striding after the striding stranger through a labyrinth⁵⁴ of London lanes, the lights just helping⁵⁵ us. It was only five o'clock, but winter and the fog had made it like midnight.
 
“This is really an extraordinary walk for the patent-leather boots,” I repeated.
 
“I don't know,” said Basil humbly⁵⁶. “It leads to Berkeley Square.”
 
As I tramped on I strained my eyes through the dusky atmosphere and tried to make out the direction described. For some ten minutes I wondered and doubted; at the end of that I saw that my friend was right. We were coming to the great dreary⁵⁷ spaces of fashionable London—more dreary, one must admit, even than the dreary plebeian spaces.
 
“This is very extraordinary!” said Basil Grant, as we turned into Berkeley Square.
 
“What is extraordinary?” I asked. “I thought you said it was quite natural.”
 
“I do not wonder,” answered Basil, “at his walking through nasty streets; I do not wonder at his going to Berkeley Square. But I do wonder at his going to the house of a very good man.”
 
“What very good man?” I asked with exasperation⁵⁸.
 
“The operation of time is a singular one,” he said with his imperturbable⁵⁹ irrelevancy⁶⁰. “It is not a true statement of the case to say that I have forgotten my career when I was a judge and a public man. I remember it all vividly⁶¹, but it is like remembering some novel. But fifteen years ago I knew this square as well as Lord Rosebery does, and a confounded long sight better than that man who is going up the steps of old Beaumont's house.”
 
“Who is old Beaumont?” I asked irritably⁶².
 
“A perfectly good fellow. Lord Beaumont of Foxwood—don't you know his name? He is a man of transparent⁶³ sincerity, a nobleman who does more work than a navvy, a socialist⁶⁴, an anarchist⁶⁵, I don't know what; anyhow, he's a philosopher and philanthropist. I admit he has the slight disadvantage of being, beyond all question, off his head. He has that real disadvantage which has arisen out of the modern worship of progress and novelty; and he thinks anything odd and new must be an advance. If you went to him and proposed to eat your grandmother, he would agree with you, so long as you put it on hygienic and public grounds, as a cheap alternative to cremation⁶⁶. So long as you progress fast enough it seems a matter of indifference⁶⁷ to him whether you are progressing to the stars or the devil. So his house is filled with an endless succession of literary and political fashions; men who wear long hair because it is romantic; men who wear short hair because it is medical; men who walk on their feet only to exercise their hands; and men who walk on their hands for fear of tiring their feet. But though the inhabitants of his salons⁶⁸ are generally fools, like himself, they are almost always, like himself, good men. I am really surprised to see a criminal enter there.”
 
“My good fellow,” I said firmly, striking my foot on the pavement, “the truth of this affair is very simple. To use your own eloquent⁷⁰ language, you have the 'slight disadvantage' of being off your head. You see a total stranger in a public street; you choose to start certain theories about his eyebrows. You then treat him as a burglar because he enters an honest man's door. The thing is too monstrous⁷¹. Admit that it is, Basil, and come home with me. Though these people are still having tea, yet with the distance we have to go, we shall be late for dinner.”
 
Basil's eyes were shining in the twilight⁷² like lamps.
 
“I thought,” he said, “that I had outlived vanity.”
 
“What do you want now?” I cried.
 
“I want,” he cried out, “what a girl wants when she wears her new frock; I want what a boy wants when he goes in for a clanging match with a monitor—I want to show somebody what a fine fellow I am. I am as right about that man as I am about your having a hat on your head. You say it cannot be tested. I say it can. I will take you to see my old friend Beaumont. He is a delightful⁷³ man to know.”
 
“Do you really mean—?” I began.
 
“I will apologize,” he said calmly, “for our not being dressed for a call,” and walking across the vast misty⁷⁴ square, he walked up the dark stone steps and rang at the bell.
 
A severe servant in black and white opened the door to us: on receiving my friend's name his manner passed in a flash from astonishment⁷⁵ to respect. We were ushered⁷⁶ into the house very quickly, but not so quickly but that our host, a white-haired man with a fiery⁷⁷ face, came out quickly to meet us.
 
“My dear fellow,” he cried, shaking Basil's hand again and again, “I have not seen you for years. Have you been—er—” he said, rather wildly, “have you been in the country?”
 
“Not for all that time,” answered Basil, smiling. “I have long given up my official position, my dear Philip, and have been living in a deliberate retirement⁷⁸. I hope I do not come at an inopportune moment.”
 
“An inopportune moment,” cried the ardent⁸⁰ gentleman. “You come at the most opportune⁷⁹ moment I could imagine. Do you know who is here?”
 
“I do not,” answered Grant, with gravity. Even as he spoke⁸¹ a roar of laughter came from the inner room.
 
“Basil,” said Lord Beaumont solemnly, “I have Wimpole here.”
 
“And who is Wimpole?”
 
“Basil,” cried the other, “you must have been in the country. You must have been in the antipodes. You must have been in the moon. Who is Wimpole? Who was Shakespeare?”
 
“As to who Shakespeare was,” answered my friend placidly⁸², “my views go no further than thinking that he was not Bacon. More probably he was Mary Queen of Scots. But as to who Wimpole is—” and his speech also was cloven with a roar of laughter from within.
 
“Wimpole!” cried Lord Beaumont, in a sort of ecstasy⁸³. “Haven't you heard of the great modern wit? My dear fellow, he has turned conversation, I do not say into an art—for that, perhaps, it always was ............