“Well, he took up spiritualism or something, didn’t he? At any rate, he lived at Fountain Court, an old red-brick house in a large neglected garden there, until his death a couple of years ago. Then, as Groat’s Heath had suddenly become a popular suburb with a tube railway, a land company acquired the estate, the house was razed to the ground and in a twinkling a colony of Noah’s ark villas took its place. There is Metrobe Road here, and Court Crescent there, and Mansion Drive and what not, and Elsie’s little place perpetuates another landmark.”
“I have Metrobe’s last book there,” said Carrados, nodding towards a point on his shelves. “In fact he sent me a copy. ‘The Flame beyond the Dome’ it is called—the queerest farrago of balderdash and metaphysics imaginable. But what about the neighbour, Louis? Did you settle what we might almost term ‘his hash’?”
“Oh, he is mad, of course. I advised her to make as little fuss about it as possible, seeing that the man lives next door and might become objectionable, but I framed a note for her to send which will probably have a good effect.”
“Is he mad, Louis?”
“Well, I don’t say that he is strictly a lunatic, but there is obviously a screw loose somewhere. He may carry indiscriminate benevolence towards Yorkshire terriers to irrational lengths. Or he may be a food specialist with a grievance. In effect he is mad on at least that one point. How else are we to account for the circumstances?”
“I was wondering,” replied Carrados thoughtfully.
“You suggest that he really may have a sane object?”
“I suggest it—for the sake of argument. If he has a sane object, what is it?”
“That I leave to you, Max,” retorted Mr Carlyle conclusively. “If he has a sane object, pray what is it?”
“For the sake of the argument I will tell you that in half-a-dozen words, Louis,” replied Carrados, with good-humoured tolerance. “If he is not mad in the sense which you have defined, the answer stares us in the face. His object is precisely that which he is achieving.”