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 decadent artist of the eighties tried to turn the top-hat into something as rhythmic 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 besetting sin is a desire to intrigue to the disadvantage of others. Probably he has adopted some imposture 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 innocence. 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, pickpockets, 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 eyebrows. They mean that infernal pride which made Satan so proud that he sneered 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.”