The words were of no great depth or worth, and the music was too intentionally heart-wringing to be sincerely fine, yet sung by that man's voice, the piano softly touched by his hands, the poor old song took my self-control and shivered it like thin glass. Tears burst from Mrs. Beckett's eyes, and she hid her face on my shoulder, sobbing beneath her breath: "Oh, Jim—Jim!"
When the singer had finished he looked at her, not in surprise, but thoughtfully. "Perhaps I oughtn't to have sung that stuff, Mr. Beckett," he said. "But your son liked it at St. Raphael. We knew each other there, very well."
As he spoke his eyes turned to me, deliberately, with meaning. There was a gentle, charming smile on his southern face, but I knew, as if he had told me in so many words, that my secret was his.
Involuntarily I glanced at the girl. She had not moved. She stood as before, her elbows on the piano, her small face propped between her hands. But she, too, was looking at me. She had no expression whatever. Her eyes told as little as two shut windows with blinds drawn down. The fancy flashed through me that a judge might look thus waiting to hear the verdict of the jury in a murder case.
"These two have followed us on purpose to denounce me," I thought. Yet it seemed a stupidly melodramatic conclusion, like the climax of a chapter in an old-fashioned, sentimental story. Besides, the man—evidently the leader—had not at all the face of Nemesis. He looked a merry, happy-go-lucky Italian, only a little subdued at the moment by the pathos of his own nightingale voice and the memory of Jim Beckett. I was bewildered. My reason did not know what to make of him. But my instinct warned me of danger.
Mother Beckett dried her eyes with one of her dainty handkerchiefs which always smell like lavender and grass pinks—her leitmotif in perfume. "You knew our Jim?" she exclaimed, choking back tears. "Why, then, perhaps you and Mary—Miss O'Malley——"
What would have happened if she had finished her sentence I shall never know, for just then came a crash as if the house were falling. Window-glass shivered. The hotel shook as though in an earthquake. Out went the electric light, leaving only our candles aglow under red shades.
Bar-le-Duc was in for an air raid.