Bob resolved to chance all on a bold throw. He felt pretty certain that Pietro had not taken in a partner. The man did not seem to be an Italian—far from it. And neither Pietro nor the landlord had said anything about a visitor.
Yet here was this man with the hook making himself very much at home in Pietro’s place. So Bob resolved on a bit of bluff.
“Aren’t you in the wrong room?” came the demand again.
“No more than you are!” countered Bob shortly. “Who are you, and what are you doing in Margolis’ place?”
The shot went home.
“Oh, you know him, do you?” asked the man.
“Of course I do!” and Bob followed up the advantage he thought he had gained. “I hired him to play at a party for me to-night.”
Bob would have been stuck there but for something that came into his mind. How could he explain his presence there in the absence of the room’s rightful inmate, when he had admitted that Pietro was at the party?
The lad, somehow, remembered that hand organs are operated by a round piece of brass, called a “barrel,” and that on this barrel are points of steel, like tiny pins. As the barrel revolves, to the turning of the crank, which operates a worm gear, these points open valves, allowing air to pass over the brass reed-tongues, thus producing “music.” Each barrel has on it a certain number of steel points, set in such a way that they play a set number of tunes, no more. To enable a hand organ, or a street piano, to play other melodies it is necessary to insert another barrel, with different pins on.
Why would not his party guests become tired of a repetition of a set number of tunes? Wouldn’t they demand others? And to get them it would be necessary to insert a new barrel in the organ, even as a new roll is put in a player piano.