“I know he’s asleep. Do you suppose I thought he was standing on his head waiting for the dawn? Go and waken him—and quicker than that! Here, I’ll go with you.”
The two men went upstairs together, and Mr. Bruno, principal trombone-player of the band, was soon sitting up in bed, awaking to the presence of his chief.
“Bruno, my lad,” said Carpentaria, “give me your trombone.”
“My trombone, sir?”
“Yes,” said Carpentaria. “Mendelssohn once remarked that the trombone was an instrument too sacred to use often, but I think the supreme occasion has arrived for me to use it to-night.”
“It’s there, in the corner, sir,” said Bruno, wondering vaguely what was this latest caprice of Carpentaria’s.
Carpentaria rushed to the thing, took it out of its case, and put it to his mouth.
“H’m!” he murmured, after he had sounded a note gently. “I can do it, I think. Listen, Bruno! The occasion is not only supreme; it is unique. You are to rouse all the men; you are to dress, and take your instruments; and you are to go out quietly and surround the bungalow of our honoured President, Mr. Josephus Ilam. You are to make no noise of any kind until you hear me give the first bars of a tune, either with my mouth or with this instrument. You are then to join in that tune.”
“What tune, sir?”
“You will hear.”