Curious! Carpentaria meditated as he retired to his abode. “Having fallen over a man lying drunk on his steps, why should my friend and partner, Mr. Josephus Ilam, totally deny that he has seen a drunken man? With my own eyes I saw him tumble. Now this mishap must have made Mr. Josephus Ilam angry, because he is just the sort of person who does get angry upon the provocation of a pure accident. Yet, so far as I could judge in the gloom, there was no trace of anger in his demeanour when he answered my question. On the contrary, he appeared to be rather subdued.
“And further—what has become of my friend the drunken man? The drunken man must exist somewhere. Is he in Ilam’s house? And, if so, why is he in Ilam’s house? Neither Josephus nor his mother is precisely a type of the Good Samaritan. And if he is not in Ilam’s house, has he suddenly recovered and walked away on his legs unaided? Impossible! I was once drunk, and I say, impossible. Then, has Josephus carried him somewhere? And where has he carried him, and why?”
Carpentaria unlocked his front-door and entered the hall of his dwelling, and then locked and bolted the door. He was not in the habit of either locking or bolting his front-door; the idea of so securing a house which stood in the middle of half a square mile of private property, well guarded at all its gates, seemed ridiculous. Nevertheless he did it, and he could have given no reason for doing it. He imagined that he heard footsteps in the passage leading from the hall to the kitchen, and he quickly turned on the electric light and looked down the passage. But there was nothing. He decided that he was very nervous and impressionable that night. The servants had, doubtless, long since gone to bed. He extinguished the light and made his way upstairs to his study, and sat down in his chair—the famous chair in which he composed his famous melodies. The faint illumination of the May night made the principal objects in the room vaguely visible. He could discern the pale square of the framed autograph letter from President McKinley which hung on the opposite wall. He tried to collect his ideas and think in a logical sequence.
Then, again, he fancied that he heard footsteps, and that he saw a dim form near the door.
“Who’s that?” he cried sharply.
“It’s only me,” answered a woman’s voice, and the electricity was at the same instant switched on.
Juliette stood there.
“Why are you sitting in the dark, Carlos?” she demanded.
Carlos was her pet name for him.
“I don’t know,” he said lamely.