At about the time when Sam Marlowe was having the momentous interview with his father, described in the last chapter, Mr. Rufus Bennett woke from an after-luncheon nap in Mrs. Hignett's delightful old-world mansion, Windles, in the county of Hampshire. He had gone to his room after lunch, because there seemed nothing else to do. It was still raining hard, so that a ramble in the picturesque garden was impossible, and the only alternative to sleep, the society of Mr. Henry Mortimer, had become peculiarly distasteful to Mr. Bennett.

Much has been written of great friendships between man and man, friendships which neither woman can mar nor death destroy. Rufus Bennett had always believed that his friendship for Mr. Mortimer was of this order. They had been boys together in the same small town, and had kept together in after years. They had been Damon and Pythias, David and Jonathan. But never till now had they been cooped up together in an English country-house in the middle of a bad patch of English summer weather. So this afternoon Mr. Bennett, in order to avoid his life-long friend, had gone to bed.

He awoke now with a start, and a moment later realized what it was that had aroused him. There was 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. He blinked the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability.