As he spoke he shuffled heavily to the adjoining music-room, and let his dreary gaze stray toward its two windows. On the veranda, framed in the newly unshuttered window-space, stood four Secret Service men, grimly on guard. Hade strode to one window after the other, with the cranky mien and action of a thwarted child, and slammed the shutters together, barring out the sinister sight of his guards. Gavin did not try to prevent him from this act of boyish spite. The master-mind's reaction, in its hour of brokenness, roused his pity. From the windows, Hade's gloomy eyes strayed to the piano. On it lay a violin case. He picked it up and took out an age-mellowed violin. "I think clearer when I play," he said, glumly, to Brice. "And I've nearly a million dollars' worth of thinking to do in this half hour. Is it forbidden to fiddle? Milo's father paid $4,000 for this violin. It's a genuine Strad. And it gives me peace and clear vision. May I play, or--?" "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.