He awoke half an hour later with a confused sense that something was wrong. He had been dreaming that he was walking down Fifth Avenue at the head of a military brass band, clad only in a bathing suit. As he sat up in bed, blinking in the dazed fashion of the half-awakened, the band seemed to be playing still. There was undeniably music in the air. The room was full of it. It seemed to be coming up through the floor and rolling about in chunks all round his bed. Mr. Bennett blinked the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, his room was situated. He rang the bell for Webster. “Is Mr. Mortimer playing that—that damned gas-engine in the drawing-room?” “Yes, sir. Tosti’s ‘Good-bye.’ A charming air, sir.” “Go and tell him to stop it!” “Very good, sir.” Mr. Bennett lay in bed and fumed. Presently the valet returned. The music still continued to roll about the room. “I am sorry to have to inform you, sir,” said Webster, “that Mr. Mortimer declines to accede to your request.” “Oh, he said that, did he?” “That is the gist of his remarks, sir.” “Very good! Then give me my dressing-gown!” Webster swathed his employer in the garment indicated, and returned to the kitchen, where he informed the cook that, in his opinion, the guv’nor was not a force, and that, if he were a betting man, he would put his money in the forthcoming struggle on Consul, the Almost-Human—by which affectionate nickname Mr. Mortimer senior was generally alluded to in the servants’ hall. Mr. Bennett, meanwhile, had reached the drawing-room, and found his former friend lying at full length on a sofa, smoking a cigar, a full dozen feet away from the orchestrion, which continued to thunder out its dirge on the passing of Summer. “Will you turn that infernal thing off!” said Mr. Bennett. “No!” said Mr. Mortimer. “Now, now, now!” said a voice. Jane Hubbard was standing in the doorway with a look of calm reproof on her face. “We can’t have this, you know!” said Jane Hubbard. “You’re disturbing my patient.” She strode without hesitation to the instrument, explored its ribs with a firm finger, pushed something, and the orchestrion broke off in the middle of a bar. Then, walking serenely to the door, she passed out and closed it behind her. The baser side of his nature urged Mr. Bennett to triumph over the vanquished. “Now, what about it!” he said, ungenerously. “Interfering girl!” mumbled Mr. Mortimer, chafing beneath defeat. “I’ve a good mind to start it again.” “I dare you!” whooped Mr. Bennett, reverting to the phraseology of his vanished childhood. “Go on! I dare you!” “I’ve a perfect legal right.... Oh well,” he said, “there are lots of other things I can do!” “What do you mean?” exclaimed Mr. Bennett, alarmed.