“Go ahead, if you want to,” vouchsafed Gavin, fancying he read the attempt of a charlatan to remain picturesque to the end.  “Only get your thinking done, and come to a decision before the half hour is up.  And, by the way, let me warn you again that those men out there have orders to shoot, if you make a move to escape.”

“No use in asking you to play my accompaniments, Claire?” asked Hade, in pathetic attempt at gayety as he walked to the hallway door.  “No?  I’m sorry.  Nobody else ever played them as you do.”

He tried to smile.  The effort was a failure.  He yanked the curtains shut that hung between music room and hall.  Then, at a gesture from Gavin, he pulled them halfway open again, and, standing in the doorway, drew his bow across the strings.

Gavin sat down on the long hall couch, a yard outside the music-room door, beside Claire and the still stupefied Milo.  The Jap took up his position back of them, alert and tense as a fox terrier.  The three Secret Service men in the front doorway stood at attention, yet evidently wondering at the prisoner’s queer freak.

From under the deftly wielded bow, the violin wailed forth into stray chords and phrases, wild, unearthly, discordant.  Hade, his face bent over the instrument, swayed in time with its undisciplined rhythm.

Then, from dissonance and incoherence, the music merged into Gounod’s Ave Maria.  And, from swaying, Hade began to walk.  To and fro, urged by the melody, his feet strayed.  Now he was in full view, between the half-open curtains.  Now, he was hidden for an instant, and then he was crossing once more before the opening.

His playing was exquisite.  More—­it was authoritative, masterly, soaring.  It gripped the hearers’ senses and heartstrings.  The beauty and dreaminess of the Ave Maria flooded the air with loveliness.  Brice listened, enthralled.  Down Claire’s cheek rolled a teardrop, of whose existence she was not even aware.

The last notes of the melody throbbed away.  Brice drew a long breath.  Then, at once the violin spoke again.  And now it sang forth into the night, in the Schubert Serenade,—­gloriously sweet, a surge of passionate tenderness.

Back and forth, under the spell of his own music, wandered Hade.  Then he stopped.  Gavin leaned forward.  He saw that Hade was leaning against the piano, as he played.  His head was bowed over the instrument as though in reverence.  His black eyes were dreamy and exalted.  Gavin sat back on the couch and once more gave himself over to the mystic enthrallment of the music.  The Serenade wailed itself into silence with one last hushedly exquisite tone.  Brice drew a long breath, as of a man coming out of a trance.

Simon Cameron had jumped into Claire’s lap.  But, receiving no attention from the music-rapt girl, the cat now dropped to the floor, and started toward the stairs.

At the same time, the violin sounded anew.  And Gavin frowned in disappointment.  For, no longer was it singing its heart out in the magic of an immortal melody.  Instead, it swung into the once-popular strains of “Oh, Promise Me!”