And now it seemed as though Hade were wantonly making fun of his earlier beautiful playing and of the effect he must have known it had had upon his hearers.  For he played heavily, monotonously, more like a dance-hall soloist than a master.  And, as though his choice of an air were not sharp enough contrast to his other selections, he strummed amateurishly and without a shred of technique or of feeling.

Jarring as was the result upon Brice, it seemed even more so on Simon Cameron.  The cat had stopped in his progress toward the stairs, and now stared round-eyed at the music-room doorway, his absurd little nostrils sniffing the air.  Then, deliberately, Simon Cameron walked to the doorway and sat down there, his huge furry tail curled around round him, staring with idiotic intentness at the player.

Gavin noted the cat’s odd behavior.  Simon Cameron was far too familiar with Hade’s presence in the house to give Rodney a second glance.  Indeed, he had only jumped up into Claire’s lap, because the fascinatingly new Secret Service men at the front door smelt strongly of tobacco,—­the smell a Persian cat hates above all others.  But now, he was gazing in delighted interest at the violinist.

At the sight, a wild conjecture flashed into Gavin’s brain.  With a sharp order to the Jap, he sprang up and rushed into the music room.

Leaning against the piano, playing the rebellious violin, was —­Roke!

Rodney Hade had vanished.

The windows were still shuttered.  No other door gave exit from the music room.  There were no hangings, except the door-curtains, and there was no furniture behind which a child could hide unseen.  Yet Hade was no longer there.

Roke laid aside his violin, at sight of Gavin and the Jap.  At the former’s exclamation of amaze, two more of the Secret Service men left their post at the front door and ran in.  The tramp of their hurrying feet made the guards outside the open windows of the music room fling wide the closed shutters.  Clearly, Hade had not escaped past them.

Folding his arms, and grinning impudently at the astounded cordon of faces, Roke drawled: 

“I just dropped in to say ‘Howdy’ to Mr. Standish.  Nobody was around.  So I made bold to pick up the fiddle and have a little spiel.  I ain’t done any harm, and there’s nothing you-all can hold me on.”

For ten seconds nobody answered.  Nobody spoke or moved.  Then, Gavin Brice’s face went crimson with sudden fury at his own outwitting.  He recalled the musical afternoon at Roustabout Key which his presence had interrupted, and Roke’s fanatical devotion to Hade.

“I begin to understand,” he said, his voice muffled in an attempt to subdue his anger.  “You and Hade were fond of the violin, eh?  And for some reason or other you long ago worked up a series of signals on it, as the mind-reader with the guitar-accompanist used to do in the vaudeville shows.  Those discordant phrases he started off with were your signal to come to the rescue.  And you came.  But how did you come?  And how did he go?  Both by the same way, of course.  But—­there isn’t even a chimney-piece in the room.”