p was in the billiard room exhibiting fancy shots and pretending
to receive the plaudits of a great multitude; Pescini and Van Hope were
in conversation on the veranda, and Fargo was wholly absent and
unaccounted for. I had missed Marten, the financier, for a moment; but
his reappearance was the signal for a fresh rush to the living-room.

The whole party met him with a yell. In the few moments of his absence
he had wrought a startling change in his appearance. Over his shoulders
he had thrown a gayly colored Indian blanket, completely hiding his trim
dinner coat. He had tied a red cloth over his head and waxed the points
of his iron-gray mustache until they stood stiff and erect, giving an
appearance of mock ferocity to his face. A silver key-ring and his own
gold signet dangled from his ears, tied on with invisible black thread.
And to cap the climax he carried a long, wicked-looking carving-knife
between his teeth.

Of course he was Godfrey Jason himself--the same character I had
portrayed in the invitations. Fargo made him do a Spanish dance to the
clang of an invisible tambourine.

Some of the gathering scattered out again, after his dramatic
appearance, drifting off on various enterprises and as the hour neared
midnight only four of us were left in the drawing-room. Marten stood in
the center, still in his ridiculous costume. Van Hope, Nealman, Pescini
and myself were grouped about him. And it might have been that in the
song that followed Pescini too slipped away. I know that I didn't see
him immediately thereafter.

With a little urging Marten was induced to sing Samuel Hall--a stirring
old ballad that quite fitted his costume. He had a pleasant baritone, he
sung the song with indescribable spirit and enthusiasm, and it was
decidedly worth hearing. Indeed it was the very peak of the evening--a
moment that to the assembled guests must have almost paid them for the
long journey.

"_For I shot a man in bed, man in bed--
For I shot a man in bed, and I left him there for dead,
With a bullet through his head--
Damn your eyes!_"

But the song halted abruptly. Whether he was at the middle of the verse,
a pause after a stanza, or even in the middle of a chord I do not know.
On this point no one will ever have exact knowledge. Marten stopped
singing because something screamed, shrilly and horribly, out toward the
lagoon.

The picture that followed is like a photograph, printed inde