ing a Christmas card?" I asked incredulously.
"Ah bah," he returned as he kicked off his purple lizardskin slippers and leaped into bed, "what matters it what we think? Unless I am more mistaken than I think, we shall know with certitude before very long." And turning his back upon me, he buried his face in the pillow and dropped off to sleep.
I might have slept an hour, perhaps only a few minutes, when the sharp impact of an elbow against my ribs roused me. "Eh?" I demanded, sitting up in bed and rubbing my eyes sleepily.
"Trowbridge, my friend," de Grandin's sharp whisper came through the darkness, "listen! Do you hear it?"
"Huh?" I responded, but:
"Ps-s-st!" he shut me off with a minatory hiss, and I held my peace, straining my ears through the chill November night.
At first I heard nothing but the skirling of the wind-fiends racing past the turreted walls, and the occasional creak of a rusty hinge as some door or shutter swung loose from its fastenings; then, very faint and far-away seeming, but growing in clarity as my ears became attuned to it, I caught the subdued notes of a piano played very softly.
"Come!" de Grandin breathed, slipping from the bed and donning a mauve-silk gown.
Obeying his summons, I rose and followed him on tiptoe across the balcony and down the stairs. As we descended, the music became clearer, more distinct. Someone was in the music room, touching the keys of the big grand piano with a delicate harpsichord touch. Liebestraum the composition was, and the gently struck notes fell, one after another, like drops of limpid water dripping from a moss-covered ledge into a quiet woodland pool.
"Why, it's exquisite," I began, but de Grandin's upraised hand cut short my commendation as he motioned me forward.
Seated on the bancal before the piano was Dunroe O'Shane, her long, ivory fingers flitting over the ivory keys, her loosened tawny hair flowing over her uncovered white shoulders like a spilth of molten bronze from a blast-furnace runner. From gently swelling breast to curving instep she was draped in a clinging shift of black-silk tissue which revealed the gracious curves of her pale body with a subtle glow, like a winter moon half seen through veils of banking stormclouds.
As we paused at the doorway the dulcet German air came to an abrupt ending, the girl's fingers began weaving sinuous patterns over the keys, as though she would conjure up some nether-world spirit from their pallid smoothness, and the room was suddenly filled with a libidinous, macabre theme in B minor, beautiful and seductive, but revolting as a painted-face corpse already touched by the hand of putrefaction. Swaying gently to the rhythm of the frenetic music, she turned her face toward us, and I saw her eyes were closed, long lashes sweeping against white cheeks, pale, fine-veined lids calmly lowered.
"Why," I exclaimed softly, "why, de Grandin, she's asleep, she's"
A quick movement of his hand stayed my words, as he stole softly across the rug-strewn floor, bent forward till his face was but a few inches from hers, and stared intently into her veiled eyes. I could see the small blue veins in his temples swell and throb, and the muscles of his throat bunch and contract with the physical effort he made to project his will into her consciousness. His thin, firm lips moved, forming soundless words, and one of his small, white hands rose slowly, finger-tips together, as though reeling thread from an invisible skein, paused a moment before her face, then
