at up in bewildered
semi-consciousness like an ice-cream that has been taught to beg.
Groby prodded him into complete wakefulness, and then the pettish
self-satisfied pianist fairly lost his temper and slapped his
domineering visitant on the hand. In another moment Spabbink was being
nearly stifled and very effectually gagged by a pillow-case tightly
bound round his head, while his plump pyjama'd limbs were hauled out of
bed and smacked, pinched, kicked, and bumped in a catch-as-catch-can
progress across the floor, towards the flat shallow bath in whose
utterly inadequate depths Groby perseveringly strove to drown him. For
a few moments the room was almost in darkness: Groby's candle had
overturned in an early stage of the scuffle, and its flicker scarcely
reached to the spot where splashings, smacks, muffled cries, and
splutterings, and a chatter of ape-like rage told of the struggle that
was being waged round the shores of the bath. A few instants later the
one-sided combat was brightly lit up by the flare of blazing curtains
and rapidly kindling panelling.

When the hastily aroused members of the house-party stampeded out on to
the lawn, the Georgian wing was well alight and belching forth masses
of smoke, but some moments elapsed before Groby appeared with the
half-drowned pianist in his arms, having just bethought him of the
superior drowning facilities offered by the pond at the bottom of the
lawn. The cool night air sobered his rage, and when he found that he
was innocently acclaimed as the heroic rescuer of poor Leonard
Spabbink, and loudly commended for his presence of mind in tying a wet
cloth round his head to protect him from smoke suffocation, he accepted
the situation, and subsequently gave a graphic account of his finding
the musician asleep with an overturned candle by his side and the
conflagration well started. Spabbink gave HIS version some days later,
when he had partially recovered from the shock of his midnight
castigation and immersion, but the gentle pitying smiles and evasive
comments with which his story was greeted warned him that the public
ear was not at his disposal. He refused, however, to attend the
ceremonial presentation of the Royal Humane Society's life-saving medal.

It was about this time that Groby's pet monkey fell a victim to the
disease which attacks so many of its kind when brought under the
influence of a northern climate. Its master appeared to be profoundly
affected