but steps upon the fiddle and the bow what's a lying on the floor. 'Now then,' I says; 'where's the party as put you there?' Believe me, or believe me not, there wasn't a creature in the place. It ain't a large shop, you see, and I routs in every corner. I looks at the window and the door. The shutters was up, and the door was locked and bolted just as I left it I thought it queer; but I thought it queerer when the same thing comes the next night, and the next, and the next. It preys upon my mind so, not being used to nor yet partial to ghostesses and such-like rubbishes, that I says to myself, I'll get rid of the thing, even if I does it at a loss."
As we were going away I said to Ernest—
"Rather a curious story that of the lady's."
Ernest was sitting back in the cab. He seemed to be lost in reflecting.
"Very." There was a momentary silence. "I told you it was Coursault's violin. That was Philip, the queer little man with the long black hair and the great big eyes. I used to half fear sometimes that in those big eyes genius was struggling with insanity; he was at times so strange. 'Starved for a month of Sundays'—Philip! What a wrench to have parted with his violin—how bitterly he must have been amused by her offer of five shillings. He played his last tune and kissed it—Philip!"
We dismissed the cabman at the corner of the square. The night had become fine. We walked together towards my house. We were distant from it, perhaps, twenty yards, when Ernest, pausing, laid his hand upon my arm.
