This is Rupert Grant, Esquire, who can and does all there is to be done.

Just as I was a failure at one thing, he is a success at everything.

I remember him as a journalist, a house-agent, a naturalist, an inventor, a publisher, a schoolmaster, a--what are you now, Rupert ?" "I am and have been for some time," said Rupert, with some dignity, "a private detective, and there's my client." A loud rap at the door had cut him short, and, on permission being given, the door was thrown sharply open and a stout, dapper man walked swiftly into the room, set his silk hat with a clap on the table, and said, "Good evening, gentlemen," with a stress on the last syllable that somehow marked him out as a martinet, military, literary and social.
He had a large head streaked with black and grey, and an abrupt black moustache, which gave him a look of fierceness which was contradicted by his sad sea-blue eyes.
Basil immediately said to me, "Let us come into the next room, Gully," and was moving towards the door, but the stranger said: "Not at all.

Friends remain.

Assistance possibly." The moment I heard him speak I remembered who he was, a certain Major Brown I had met years before in Basil's society.