When Pauline, standing outside Carpentaria’s bungalow, had communicated to Carpentaria the fateful fact that all Ilam’s servants had disappeared from their rooms, and had given expression to the vague and terrible fear that was beginning to take possession of her, the musician said in reply:

“You have every reason to be afraid, and yet I shall ask you to try to calm your apprehensions. Whether the servants are there or not, nobody can get into your house without our knowing it, and when anybody starts to attempt to get in, there will be plenty of time for you to alarm yourself then.”

“But Rosie alone there with poor Mrs. Ilam!” sighed Pauline.

“Mrs. Ilam can’t do her any harm, at any rate,” said Carpentaria comfortingly.

And with that he commenced a cautious perambulation of the exterior of Ilam’s house, Pauline following him.

“I wish you would go to my sister until I have something to report,” he murmured. “You will take cold, and you will work yourself up into a fever, and do no good to anybody.”

“I shall not work myself up into a fever,” replied Pauline firmly. “I am capable of being just as calm as you are yourself. Let us go at once into the house—let us go to Rosie.”

“What!” expostulated Carpentaria, “and spoil whatever scheme is going on? No, my dear young lady, we have gone so far that we must go a little further. We must catch the schemers red-handed. If we do not, our night’s work will have been wasted.”

The idea of weakly and pusillanimously changing a course of conduct at the very moment when that course promised the most interesting adventures shocked all the artist in him.

They stared blankly at the house, whose form was clearly revealed in the misty moonlight, but none of whose windows showed the slightest glimmer of light. It was an extremely modern tenement, and its architecture was in no way startlingly original; nevertheless, in those moments it seemed to both of them the strangest, the most mysterious, the most insubstantial house that the hand of man had ever raised.

Suddenly Pauline clutched his arm.

“I hear some one walking somewhere in the grounds,” she said.

They both listened. In the stillness of the night regular steps sounded plainly from a distance.

“It is the patrol on the terrace,” said Carpentaria.

“It is assuredly on the terrace—the sound of heavy boots on stone flags, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Pauline agreed, loosing his arm.

They were twenty or thirty yards from the house.

“I want you to be brave and to do something for me.”

Carpentaria turned to her.

“What is it?”

“Go to the patrol, and tell him I have sent you, and that he is to remain within sight of the boat there, until further orders, keeping as much in the background as possible. Will you go?”

“Alone?”

“Alone. There is no danger. Besides, one of us must remain here, and one person can more easily keep out of sight than two. My fear is that the boat may be used again. The patrol is not to prevent the boat being used. He is not to show himself; he is merely to observe. You understand?”

“Then you insist on my going?”

“No, I entreat you to go.”

And without more words she went. It was her figure, and not the figure of Rosie, that Mr. Jetsam had seen in the gardens when he peeped out of the window of Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom.

Carpentaria, now alone, recommenced from a fresh spot his vigil over the closed house. He argued with himself with much ingenuity as to what point the persons who wished to enter it would choose for their appearance, but he could decide nothing. They might, he thought, come by the avenue, or round by the back from the other side of the buildings of the Central Way, or even through the gardens. He was growing impatient of a delay apparently interminable, and then his glance happened to wander upwards to the roof of the house. He could not see the roof itself, because he was now too near the wall, but it appeared to him that he detected a phenomenon above the roof which was somewhat unusual. He walked carefully away from the house until the expanse of roof became visible; and, indeed, he had not been mistaken. There was a radiance there. The small square pane of the attic, flat with the surface of the roof itself, was illuminated, and sent up a faint shaft of light into the sky.

Instantly he saw his own shortcomings as a counter-schemer against schemers. He had assumed that the schemers were not already in the house, whereas he had had no grounds for such an assumption. The schemers were most obviously in the house, and they had most obviously been there for a considerable time, since no one could have recently entered it without his knowledge. He was angry with the schemers, and he was more angry with himself, and one of those wild ideas seized him—one of those ideas which could only occur to a Carpentaria. He would catch these schemers himself, by his own devices, and he would do it leisurely, dramatically, and effectively. He would make such a capture as never had been made before. He did not know precisely who the schemers were, nor their numbers, nor their nefarious occupations in the house; and he did not care. When once he was in the toils of a grand romantic idea he cared for nothing except the execution of it. He laughed with joy.

“Why do you laugh?” said a voice behind him.

It was Pauline, who had returned. She had given the instructions to the patrol.

“An idea,” he replied—“a notion that appealed to me.” And then he perceived that he must at all costs get rid of Pauline, and he continued: “My sister is extremely disturbed,” he said. “Will you not, as a last favour, go and stay with her? Do not refuse me this. I will find some one to assist me in my work here—one of my trombone-players on whom I can rely. I—I really do not care for you to be out here like this. The strain is too much for you.”

“But Rosie——” she objected again.

“Rosie is all right,” he reassured her. “I will answer for Rosie’s safety with my life; and when I say that, I mean it.”

“I will do as you wish,” said Pauline at length.

“Let me see you into the house,” he murmured, enchanted.

He unlocked his front-door for her, and called out softly, “Juliette!”

“Is that you, Carlos?” said a voice in the darkness at the top of the stairs.

“Yes,” he said. “Here is Miss Dartmouth come to keep you company. Do not use a light—at least, use as little light as possible, until you hear some music.”

“Hear some music? What music?”

“Never mind what music. If you should hear some music you will know that you are at liberty to turn on all the lights you like. Miss Dartmouth will tell you why I want darkness at present. Here are the stairs, Miss Dartmouth. Cling to the rail. Au revoir.”

“But——” faltered Pauline.

“Au revoir, I said,” he whispered insistently.

Before leaving the house he rushed into the kitchen, found a long clothes-line, of which he seemed to know exactly the whereabouts, and appropriated it.

The next minute he was tying the handle of Ilam’s front-door firmly to the railing, so that it would be impossible to open the door from the inside. He secured in the same manner the side-door and also the gate in the wall of the kitchen yard. He then fixed pieces of rope under windows, in such a manner that a person endeavouring to leap from a window to the ground would almost certainly be caught in the rope, and break a leg or an arm, if not a neck or so.

“Cheerful for them!” he murmured maliciously. “I only hope it won’t be Miss Rosie who tries to make her exit by the window. I have answered for her. However, I must take the risks.”

He glanced finally round the house, throwing away some short unused pieces of rope, but keeping two long pieces. He surveyed the house with satisfaction.

“I think I can safely leave it for five minutes or so now,” he said to himself; and he shut his penknife with a vicious snap and put it in his pocket.

Then he ran off at a great speed in the direction of the Central Way. At the southern end of the Central Way, nearly opposite to the general offices of the City, was an elegant building known as the band-house. Here dwelt the majority of the members of Carpentaria’s world-renowned orchestra. Some members, being married to women instead of married to their art, had permission to possess domestic hearths in London and the suburbs, but these were few. The edifice was a very large one, as it. had need to be. A peculiar feature of it was the rehearsal-room on the top floor, constructed, like the finest flats in New York, in such a manner as to be absolutely sound-proof.

Carpentaria rang the electric bell at the portals of the band-house, and the portals were presently opened by a sleepy person whose duty it was to admit bandsmen returning after late leave.

“Look ’ere,” said the porter, “this is a bit thick, this is. Do you know as the hour is exactly——”

“Hold your tongue, you fool!” Carpentaria stopped him briefly, “and go and bring Mr. Bruno to me at once; it’s very important. Let’s have some light.”

“I beg pardon, sir,” said the porter, astounded by this nocturnal apparition of the autocrat of the band. “Mr. Bruno is asleep, sir. He had two whiskies to make him sleep, and went to bed afore midnight, sir.”

“I know he’s asleep. Do you suppose I thought he was standing on his head waiting for the dawn? Go and waken him—and quicker than that! Here, I’ll go with you.”

The two men went upstairs together, and Mr. Bruno, principal trombone-player of the band, was soon sitting up in bed, awaking to the presence of his chief.

“Bruno, my lad,” said Carpentaria, “give me your trombone.”

“My trombone, sir?”

“Yes,” said Carpentaria. “Mendelssohn once remarked that the trombone was an instrument too sacred to use often, but I think the supreme occasion has arrived for me to use it to-night.”

“It’s there, in the corner, sir,” said Bruno, wondering vaguely what was this latest caprice of Carpentaria’s.

Carpentaria rushed to the thing, took it out of its case, and put it to his mouth.

“H’m!” he murmured, after he had sounded a note gently. “I can do it, I think. Listen, Bruno! The occasion is not only supreme; it is unique. You are to rouse all the men; you are to dress, and take your instruments; and you are to go out quietly and surround the bungalow of our honoured President, Mr. Josephus Ilam. You are to make no noise of any kind until you hear me give the first bars of a tune, either with my mouth or with this instrument. You are then to join in that tune.”

“What tune, sir?”

“You will hear.”

“Where shall you be, sir?”

“You will see. Get up, now; don’t lose a second.” Carpentaria was off again. He returned to Ilam’s house, and climbed to the balcony of the window of Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom. It was fortunate that he had preserved the rope, for he could not have climbed with the trombone in his arms. His method was to leave the trombone on the ground, the rope tied to it; he kept the other end of the rope in his hand, and drew the trombone after him.

Then it was that he sounded on the trombone the terrible phrase of Beethoven’s, which put a period to the struggle between Ilam and Jetsam.

He felt for the handle of the French window, and, finding the window fastened on the inside, adopted the simple device of leaning with his full weight against the window-frame. The whole thing gave way, and through a crashing of glass, a splintering of wood, and the tearing of curtains he backed into the room, the trombone held precariously in one hand and his revolver very firmly in the other.

The scene that confronted him was sufficiently surprising. Amid the extraordinary disorder of the chamber he found its three occupants all stretched on the floor. The old woman was apparently oblivious, but the two men, releasing each other, gazed at him for all the world like two schoolboys caught in an act contrary to discipline.

“Did I startle you? I hope so,” said Carpentaria, when he had found his bearings. “I meant to.”

Jetsam was the first to rise.

“You with the red hair!” cried Jetsam. “You are trying to save my life again!”

“Never mind my red hair,” said Carpentaria, ruffled. “I am not trying to save anybody’s life. I’m here on a mission of inquiry. No one leaves this room until I have had a full explanation of everything. I have stood just about as much as I can stand of the mystery that has been hanging over this City for a week past. Ilam, let me beg you to get up and take a seat over there in that corner. Thanks!”

He relinquished the musical instrument as Ilam clumsily resumed his feet and obeyed.

“As for you, Mr. Jetsam,” continued Carpentaria, “you know, from accounts which have reached me, the precise moral effect of a loaded revolver such as I am now pointing at you. Go into the other corner.”

“I won’t,” said Jetsam. “You can fire if you like. As a matter of fact, you daren’t.”

“You propose to leave the room and defy me?”

“I propose to leave the room.”

“Listen,” said Carpentaria.

He took the trombone and blew on it loudly a few notes which neither Jetsam nor Ilam immediately recognized. But the musicians, who had by this time surrounded the house, recognized them. And at once there entered by the smashed window the solemn and moving strains of the Dead March in “Saul.” The house seemed to be ringed in a circle of awful melody.

Jetsam shuddered.

“Now kindly stay where you are,” said Carpentaria.

And Jetsam stayed where he was, at the foot of the bed, his back to Mrs. Ilam’s prone figure.

The playing continued.

“What foolery is this?” demanded Ilam slowly.

“It is part of a larger piece of foolery that has rescued you, Ilam,” Carpentaria replied, and he was crossing the room to approach Ilam, when he saw something in the looking-glass over the mantelpiece, and he started back.

Mrs. Ilam, the paralytic, roused in some strange way, either by the violence of the scenes at which she had assisted, or by the inexplicable influence of the music, was almost erect in her bed, and her trembling parchment hands had seized the revolver which Rosie had left on the floor, and she was endeavouring to point it between Jetsam’s shoulders. The other two men turned and saw the fatal and appalling movement of the aged creature, who was evidently in the grip of some tremendously powerful instinct—the kind of instinct that only dies with death.

Carpentaria alone retained his self-possession. With a swift and yet gentle movement he disarmed the terrible old woman, and she sank back, with streaming eyes, helpless and moveless as before. The incident was over in a few seconds.

“And now,” said Carpentaria, “I will hear your story, Mr. Jetsam. But first, we must lift this bed back to its proper-position.”

“Very well,” replied Jetsam, trembling in spite of himself. “You shall hear my story.”

The music ceased.