“Too bad you didn’t understand that play! Dash it all! Very clever! On the twenty-first move, his Knight captured my pawn. Check. I moved the King to the Queen’s square. By Jove, he moved the Queen to Bishop’s sixth. Check. I captured his Queen with my Knight and then Orbit moved his Bishop to King’s seventh. Checkmate! Devilish trick, I should say. Really, McCarty, he had served me with what is known in chess parlance as ‘The Immortal Partie!’”
“‘Checkmate,’” repeated McCarty slowly. “That means calling the turn, then, blocking every play; not winning anything yourself but keeping the other fellow from moving! ’Tis a poor sort of victory, to my mind, but better than getting wiped off the board, and the secret of it is—looking ahead!”
CHAPTER XIX
DENNIS SUPPLIES A SIMILE
On Saturday morning, as McCarty opened his door to proceed to breakfast he caromed violently with Dennis at the head of the stairs.
“It’s a wonder you wouldn’t look where you’re going!” the latter observed. “I’ve come straight off duty without a bite or a shave to find out what’s new, but not to be thrown downstairs!”
“Come on, let’s eat, then,” invited McCarty. “You can get a shave after and join me back here, for I’ve had a ’phone from the inspector and he’ll be around soon; he’s got something to tell us.”
Their meal concluded, Dennis betook himself to his favorite barber and McCarty returned to his rooms with the usual collection of newspapers under his arm. Before the half-open door of the antique shop he paused. From an inner room at the rear came the deep strains of a ’cello in a simple, oddly insistent little tune, unsuited to the strains of a stringed instrument, until they swelled into a sweeping arpeggio accompaniment. Girard must have finished setting his stock in order, to be idling away the early morning hour with his everlasting fiddle!
Nevertheless McCarty listened for a moment longer and then, pushing open the door, he went in. The ’cello was silenced and the little old Frenchman’s withered face peered out inquiringly from between the curtains.
“Ah, it is you, my friend!” He came forward in welcome. “You have heard the ’cello? She is in a bad humor because I play upon her German music once more, but it is of a quaintness and charm, that witch’s song from ‘Hansel und Gretel’; I go every year to hear it.”
“Is that what you were playing?” McCarty asked politely. “Would it be opera, now? I’m not up in them, at all.”