They did not hear the first peal of the midnight clock, until the sudden darkness which that stroke heralded reminded them of the hour.

The place which had blazed with light was now as black as some sea-floor cavern, and that should have been the signal for a hundred horns and rattlers and shouts of greeting, and the reaching of hands to meet and grasp other hands across the tables.  But in Kenley’s it was quiet except for those peals of music that came from the platform.  At last the strains ended in silence, and a deep breath passed among the tables as though from one composite pair of lungs.  Then once more the instrument spoke—­spoke with a grotesque inappropriateness for a night that was not to end till morning—­for the notes that sounded across the place were the opening bars of, “Home, Sweet Home.”

There were only a few bars—­and after that a loud crash as though a number of hands had simultaneously fallen, with violence, upon the keys—­and then the lights blazed again from all the opalescent chandeliers and all the wall brackets.

Instantly from tables near the center two young women, in paper caps, leaped up from their seats and kissed the men and women of their party.  A wave of greetings swept the place.

Across one end of the room gleamed a huge electric sign, “Happy New Year”—­and lying hunched forward with his face on the keyboard of the instrument sagged the unmoving figure of Paul Burton.

At once the lights went out again, leaving the place dark, and the voice of the manager was heard from the platform, a little strained in tone as he sought to conceal the tragedy which, should it become known, would end the night’s profit for his establishment.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he lied resourcefully, “I hope you will all keep your seats and indulge the management for a few moments.  A fuse has burned out, but it will at once be remedied.  Our pianist, I will add, has suffered a fainting spell, but is in no danger.”

When the lights came on again, the figure at the piano was no longer there.  Just back of the platform was a door used by the cabaret performers, and through this he had been borne.

But the faintness which had come upon Paul Burton was the faintness of death, and there were those among the merry-makers who could not forget the grotesque attitude of which they had caught a glimpse, and who found subsequent merry-making impossible.

“Notify the coroner,” ordered the policeman who had come in from the corner through a service entrance.  “This is a case for him.”

The manager bent an ear toward the outer door and recognized that there had been no resumption of the saturnalian chorus between his walls.  “Mr. Thayre,” he commented bitterly to the guest who had followed into the private room, “your friend there has put New Year’s eve on the blink for my place—­this thing costs me thousands.”

“Who’s the dead man?” demanded the officer bluntly, and when Thayre replied with two words, “Paul Burton,” he gave a long, low whistle of astonishment.  The name of Burton was not yet forgotten in New York.