The piano tuner was coatless and in his socks.  Evidently it was no less recent an event than the sound of the latchkey which had roused him from sleep.

“Oh,” he said.  “It’s you, sir.”  And added as he came a little wider awake, “I’m very glad you’ve come.”

John detected a reservation of some sort in this afterthought; faintly ironic perhaps.  There was, at any rate, a conspicuous absence of any implication that his presence was urgently needed just then, or eagerly waited for.

He replied with an irony a little more marked, “It’s an unexpected pleasure to find you here.  They’re wanting you rather badly up at Ravinia these days, I understand.”

March nodded, cast a glance in the direction of the stairs and led the way decisively into the drawing-room.  His pantomime made it clear that he did not wish the rest of the slumbering household aroused.  Considerate of him, of course, and all that, but the decisiveness of the action—­as if he somehow felt himself in charge, despite the arrival of his host—­roused in John a faint hostility.

He followed nevertheless.  He saw at once where his unaccountable visitor had made his bed.  A big cane davenport had been dragged into the bay window, its velvet cushions neatly stacked on the piano bench, and the composer’s coat, rolled with his deftness of experience, had served him for a pillow.  Not a bad bed for such a night as this that John himself had sweltered through so unsuccessfully.  Probably the coolest place in the house, right by those open south windows.  But all, the same ...

“Couldn’t Rush do better for you than that?” he said.  “There must be a dozen beds in the house.”

“Rush isn’t here,” March answered.  “I believe he went to Lake Geneva yesterday, for over Sunday.”

John Wollaston felt the blood come up into his face as the conviction sprang into his mind that Lucile wasn’t here, either.  She’d never have left the front door unbolted.  She’d never have permitted a guest, however explicit his preferences, to sleep upon the cane davenport in the drawing-room with his coat for a pillow.

It was as if March had followed his train of thought step by step.

“Miss Wollaston isn’t here either,” he said.  “She was detained by a broken spring in the car.  I believe she expects to arrive this morning.”

A faint amusement showed in his face and presently brightened into a smile.  “I’m really very relieved,” he added, “that it was you who got here first.”

And then the smile vanished and his voice took a new timbre, not of challenge, certainly not of defiance, but all the more for that of authority.  “The only other person in the house is Mary.”

A sudden weakness of the legs caused John to seat himself, with what appearance of deliberation he could manage, in the nearest chair.  March, however, remained on his feet.

“I brought her home last night,” he went on, “very late—­early this morning rather—­with the intention of leaving her here alone.  But I decided to stay.  Also it was her preference that I should.  I suspect she’s asleep.  She promised, at least, to call me if she didn’t.”