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." Once more, Roke grinned broadly. "I ain't seen hide nor hair of Mr. Hade, not since this afternoon," said he. "I been spendin' the evenin' over to Landon's. Landon is a tryin' to sell me his farm. Says the soil on it is so rich that he ships carloads of it up North, to use for fertilizer. Says--" "Sato!" broke in Brice. "Can you make him talk? Miss Standish, will you please go somewhere else for five minutes? This is not going to be a pretty sight." As the girl turned, obediently yet reluctantly, from the room, the Jap, with a smile of perfect bliss on his yellow face, advanced toward Roke. The big man wheeled, contemptuously, upon him. Sato sprang at him. With a hammerlike fist, Roke smote at the oncoming pigmy. The arm struck, to its full length. But it did not reach its mark, nor return to the striker's side. By a queerly crablike shift of his wiry body, the Jap had eluded the blow, and had fastened upon the arm, above the elbow and at the wrist. A cross-pull wrench of the Jap's body brought a howl of pain from Roke and sent him floundering helplessly to his knees, while the merest leverage pressure from his conqueror held him there. But the Jap was doing more. The giant's arm was bending backward and sideways at an impossible angle. Nor could its owner make a move to avert the growing unbearable torture. It was one of the simplest, yet one of the most effective and agonizing, holds in all jiujutsu.