"Fiddle," laughed Steve. "Wonder if it's Mr. Durkin."
The wailing sounds ceased as Steve knocked and a voice called "Come in!" When they entered they saw a tall, lank youth standing in front of a music-rack close to the window. He held a violin to his chin and waved his bow in greeting.
"Hi!" he said. "Sit down and I'll be right with you. I've got one bit here that's been bothering me for an hour." He turned back to his music, waved his bow in the air, laid it across the strings and drew forth sounds that made the visitors squirm in the chairs they had taken. One excruciating wail after another came from the tortured instrument, the lank youth bending absorbedly over the notes in the failing light and apparently quite oblivious to the presence of the others. Finally, with a sigh of satisfaction, he laid his bow on the ledge of the stand, stood his violin in a corner of the window-seat and turned to the visitors.
He was an odd-looking chap, tall and thin, with a long, lean face under a mop of black hair that was badly in need of trimming. His near-sighted eyes blinked from behind the round lenses of a pair of rubber-rimmed spectacles and his rather nondescript clothes seemed on the point of falling off of him.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said politely, "but it's getting dark and I did want to get that thing before I quit. Want to buy something?"
CHAPTER X
"CHEAP FOR CASH"
"Yes, we saw that you had a Morris chair," replied Steve. He glanced perplexedly around the room. There was no Morris chair in sight, nor were any of the other articles advertised to be seen. "That is, if you're Durkin."
"That's me. The chair is downstairs in the storeroom. It's a corking chair, all right, and you're sure to want it. I'm sorry, though, you didn't get around before it got so dark, because the light down there isn't very good."