I might well ask.  Until that moment I had appeared to be the only lunatic at large, either outside the house or in it, but, on a sudden, a second lunatic came on the scene, and that with a vengeance.  A window was crashed open from within,—­the one over the front door, and someone came plunging through it on to the top of the portico.  That it was a case of intended suicide I made sure,—­and I began to be in hopes that I was about to witness the suicide of Paul.  But I was not so assured of the intention when the individual in question began to scramble down the pillar of the porch in the most extraordinary fashion I ever witnessed,—­I was not even convinced of a suicidal purpose when he came tumbling down, and lay sprawling in the mud at my feet.

I fancy, if I had performed that portion of the act I should have lain quiet for a second or two, to consider whereabouts I was, and which end of me was uppermost.  But there was no nonsense of that sort about that singularly agile stranger,—­if he was not made of india-rubber he ought to have been.  So to speak, before he was down he was up,—­it was all I could do to grab at him before he was off like a rocket.

Such a figure as he presented is seldom seen,—­at least, in the streets of London.  What he had done with the rest of his apparel I am not in a position to say,—­all that was left of it was a long, dark cloak which he strove to wrap round him.  Save for that,—­and mud!—­he was bare as the palm of my hand, Yet it was his face that held me.  In my time I have seen strange expressions on men’s faces, but never before one such as I saw on his.  He looked like a man might look who, after living a life of undiluted crime, at last finds himself face to face with the devil.  It was not the look of a madman,—­far from it; it was something worse.

It was the expression on the man’s countenance, as much as anything else, which made me behave as I did.  I said something to him,—­some nonsense, I know not what.  He regarded me with a silence which was supernatural.  I spoke to him again;—­not a word issued from those rigid lips; there was not a tremor of those awful eyes,—­eyes which I was tolerably convinced saw something which I had never seen, or ever should.  Then I took my hand from off his shoulder, and let him go.  I know not why,—­I did.

He had remained as motionless, as a statue while I held him,—­ indeed, for any evidence of life he gave, he might have been a statue; but, when my grasp was loosed, how he ran!  He had turned the corner and was out of sight before I could say, ‘How do!’

It was only then,—­when he had gone, and I had realised the extra-double-express-flash-of-lightning rate at which he had taken his departure—­that it occurred to me of what an extremely sensible act I had been guilty in letting him go at all.  Here was an individual who had been committing burglary, or something very like it, in the house of a budding cabinet minister, and who had tumbled plump into my arms, so that all I had to do was to call a policeman and get him quodded,—­and all that I had done was something of a totally different kind.