He turned, furious, his face still dripping the finest Pilsener beer.

“If your dress-coat is not wiped instantly, it will be ruined,” said Audrey.

“Ach!  Meiner Frack!” exclaimed Mr. Ziegler, forgetting his deep knowledge of English.  His economic instincts had been swiftly aroused, and they dominated all the other instincts. “Meiner Frack! Vill you vipe it?” His glance was imploring.

“Oh!  Mrs. Spatt will attend to it,” said Audrey with solemnity, and walked out of the room into the hall.  There was not a sign of Musa; the disappearance of the violinist was disquieting; and yet it made her glad—­so much so that she laughed aloud.  A few moments later Mr. Ziegler stalked forth from the house which he was never to enter again, and his silent scorn and the grandeur of his displeasure were terrific.  He entirely ignored Audrey, who had nevertheless been the means of saving his Frack for him.

CHAPTER XXVI

NOCTURNE

Soon afterwards Audrey, who had put on a hat, went out with Mr. Spatt to look for Musa.  Not until shortly before the musical performance had the Spatts succeeded in persuading Musa to “accept their hospitality for the night.” (The phrase was their own.  They were incapable of saying “Let us put you up.”) Meanwhile his bag had been left in the hall.  This bag had now vanished.  The parlourmaid, questioned, said frigidly that she had not touched it because she had received no orders to touch it.  Musa himself must therefore have removed it.  With bag in one hand and fiddle case in the other, he must have fled, relinquishing nothing but the mute in his flight.  He knew naught of England, naught of Frinton, and he was the least practical creature alive.  Hence Audrey, who was in essence his mother, and who knew Frinton as some people know London, had said that she would go and look for him.  Mr. Spatt, ever chivalrous, had impulsively offered to accompany her.  He could indeed do no less.  Mrs. Spatt, overwhelmed by the tragic sequel to her innocent triumphant, had retired to the first floor.

The wind blew, and it was very dark, as Audrey and her squire passed along Third Avenue to the front.  They did not converse—­they were both too shy, too impressed by the peculiarity of the predicament.  They simply peered.  They peered everywhere for the truant form of Musa balanced on one side by a bag and on the other by a fiddle case.  From the trim houses, each without exception new, twinkled discreet lights, with glimpses of surpassingly correct domesticity, and the wind rustled loudly through the foliage of the prim gardens, ruffling them as it might have ruffled the unwilling hair of the daughters of an arch-deacon.  Nobody was abroad.  Absurd thoughts ran through Audrey’s head.  A letter from Mr. Foulger had followed her to Birmingham, and in the letter Mr. Foulger had acquainted her with the