The Club of Queer Trades
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 these 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
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