“Sleep! If I only could!” said Mr. Bennett, and did so five minutes after the door had closed.
He awoke half an hour later with a confused sense that something was wrong. He had been dreaming that he was walking down Fifth Avenue at the head of a military brass band, clad only in a bathing suit. As he sat up in bed, blinking in the dazed fashion of the half-awakened, the band seemed to be playing still. There was undeniably music in the air. The room was full of it. It seemed to be coming up through the floor and rolling about in chunks all round his bed.
Mr. Bennett blinked the last fragments of sleep out of his system, and became filled with a restless irritability. There was only one instrument in the house which could create this infernal din—the orchestrion in the drawing-room, immediately above which, he recalled, his room was situated.
He rang the bell for Webster.
“Is Mr. Mortimer playing that—that damned gas-engine in the drawing-room?”
“Yes, sir. Tosti’s ‘Good-bye.’ A charming air, sir.”
“Go and tell him to stop it!”
“Very good, sir.”
Mr. Bennett lay in bed and fumed. Presently the valet returned. The music still continued to roll about the room.
“I am sorry to have to inform you, sir,” said Webster, “that Mr. Mortimer declines to accede to your request.”