The yearning anguish in Helen’s eyes made answer enough.

They crossed the hall together; but—­as they passed down the corridor leading to the studio—­they stopped simultaneously, and their eyes sought one another in silent surprise and uncertainty.

The deep full tones of a ’cello, reached them where they stood; tones so rich, so plaintively sweet, so full of passion and melody, that, to the anxious listeners in the dimly lighted corridor, they gave the sense of something weird, something altogether uncanny in its power, unearthly in its beauty.

They each spoke at the same moment.

“It cannot be Ronnie,” they said.

“It must be Ronnie,” amended Helen.  “There is no one else in the house.”

“You go in,” whispered Dick.  “I will wait here.  Call, if you want me.  Don’t startle him.  Go in very softly.  Be very—­er—­you know?”

Helen moved forward alone.

She laid her hand upon the handle of the studio door.

She wished the weird music within would cease for one moment, that she might feel more able to enter.

Cold shivers ran down her spine.

Try as she would, she could not connect that music with Ronnie.

Somebody else was also in the studio, of that she felt quite certain.

She nearly went back to Dick.

Then—­rating herself for cowardice—­she turned the handle of the door and passed in.

Dick saw her disappear.

Almost at that moment the ’cello-playing ceased; there was a crash, a cry from Helen, a silence, and then—­a wild shriek from Helen, a sound holding so much of fear and of horror, that Dick shouted in reply as he dashed forward.

He found himself in a low room, oak-panelled, lighted only by the uncertain flame a log-fire.  The door by which Dick had centered was to the left of the fireplace.  On the wall at the farther end of the room, opposite both door and fireplace, hung an immense mirror in a massive gilt frame.

On the floor in the centre of the room lay Ronnie, unconscious, on his back.  The chair upon which he had been sitting and which had gone over backwards with him, lay broken beneath him.  His ’cello rested on his chest.  He gripped it there, with both his hands.  They fell away from it, as Dick looked at him.

Ronnie’s wife knelt on the floor beside him, but she was not looking at Ronnie.  She was staring, with white face and starting eyes, into the mirror.  Her left arm, stretched out before her, was rigid with horror, from the shoulder to the tip of the pointing finger.

“Look, Dick!” she shrieked.  “Oh, heavens!  Look!”

Dick flashed up the electric light; then looked into the mirror.

He saw himself loom large, dishevelled, grimy, travel-stained.  Then he saw Ronnie and the Infant in a dark heap on the floor, and the white face of Ronnie’s wife, kneeling beside him with outstretched arm and eyes upon the mirror.  On the other side of Ronnie, in the very centre of the scene, stood a queer old chair of Italian workmanship, the heads of lions completing its curved arms, on its carved back the fleur-de-lis of Florence, its seat of padded leather, embossed in crimson and gold.