He thought a shade of pallor showed itself on her ash-colored cheeks. Yet she smiled a little at the idea of her playing.
“There is no piano,” she said, and she put an enigmatical emphasis to the words.
“Nonsense,” cried Boyce, indignantly. “I heard a piano being played in this very house for hours last night!”
“You may enter,” said the old woman, with an accent more vicious than hospitable.
Boyce almost burst into the drawing-room. It was a dusty and forbidding place, with ugly furniture and gaudy walls. No piano nor any other musical instrument stood in it. The intruder turned an angry and baffled face to the old woman, who was smiling with ill-concealed exultation.
“I shall see the other rooms,” he announced. The old woman did not appear to be surprised at his impertinence.
“As you please,” she said.
So, with the hobbling creature, with her bandaged head, for a guide, he explored every room of the house, which being identical with his own, he could do without fear of leaving any apartment unentered. But no piano did he find!
“Explain,” roared Boyce at length, turning upon the leering old hag beside him. “Explain! For surely I heard music more beautiful than I can tell.”
“I know nothing,” she said. “But it is true I once had a lodger who rented the front room, and that he played upon the piano. I am poor at hearing, but he must have played well, for all the neighbors used to come in front of the house to listen, and sometimes they applauded him, and sometimes they were still. I could tell by watching their hands. Sometimes little children came and danced. Other times young men and women came and listened. But the young man died. The neighbors were angry. They came to look at him and said he had starved to death. It was no fault of mine. I sold his piano to pay his funeral expenses—and it took every cent to pay for them too, I'd have you know. But since then, sometimes—still, it must be nonsense, for I never heard it—folks say that he plays the piano in my room. It has kept me out of the letting of it more than once. But the family doesn't seem to mind—the family that lives here, you know. They will be back in September. Yes.”