Tom looked up from the printed page, and our eyes met.
"That's a curious coincidence, Winifred," he remarked, musingly. "It's a family tradition that I used to yell like a young Indian whenever they tried to sing to me in my babyhood. A rattle-box would quiet me, but the sweetest lullaby always made me howl. But I must get on. Chopin began well, didn't he?"
There was silence for a time as Tom feverishly scanned the pages of his book.
"The dickens! Listen to this!" he exclaimed, presently. "'During his ninth year he was invited to assist at a concert for the benefit of the poor. He played a pianoforte concerto, the composition of Adalbert Gyrowetz, a famous composer of the time.'"
Tom placed the book on the table, and held the pages open with his hand as he glanced at me over his shoulder. "If he played that kind of thing at nine years of age, Winifred, there was something uncanny about it. It was just as unnatural as what happened to me to-night. I'm beginning to formulate a theory about this kind of thing, my dear." Tom placed the open book face downward, and turned squarely toward me. "Music, you see, may be, like electricity, imprisoned, as it were, in a universe of both conductors and non-conductors. It may be that a temperament, like mine for instance, that is permanently a non-conductor might, under given conditions become temporarily a conductor. Chopin played like a master at nine years of age. He had become a conductor, and remained so permanently. When he howled at music as a baby he was still a non-conductor--just as I had been up to to-night--or rather last night. Possibly, the conditions that made me a kind of spasmodic music-box, with the Chopin peg pulled out, may never occur again. What do you think, Winifred? Doesn't all that sound reasonable?"
Before I could formulate a sensible answer to a not very sensible proposition Tom had resumed the perusal of his book. He appeared to me like a man fascinated against his will by a line of investigation that he had begun as a disagreeable duty. But I was glad to see that he had regained full control of himself, and that his countenance no longer displayed traces of intense mental disquietude.
"He was a pretty lively boy," remarked Tom, a few moments later. "Listen, Winifred! 'At school, Frederic was a prime favorite, and was always in the midst of any fun or mischief that was going on. His talent for mimicry was always extraordinary, and has been commented on not only by George Sand and Liszt but by Balzac.'"
Tom gazed at me, musingly. "Do you consider that significant, my dear?" he asked, with a seriousness that struck me as both ludicrous and pathetic. I was getting worried by Tom's persistence in this futile line of endeavor.
"It's nearly three o'clock, Tom Remsen," I cried, standing erect. "Come up-stairs at once. It won't be fair to your clients for you to get to your office fagged out for lack of sleep."
"Sit down, Winifred," he said, peremptorily. "It's little use I'll be to my clients until I find out what happened to me in the music-room. Suppose that I should have an attack of--what shall I call it?--Chopinitis--in the court-room? I should suddenly begin to sing--or perhaps whistle a--what-d'you-call'em?--pianoforte concerto--what would the judge say? I'd be disbarred, Winifred, for indecent exposure of musical genius. No; I'm going to find out more about this strange affair--here and now."