think of being driven to a doctor. Everybody wanted
to know more about Kid Shannon, and in just what consisted the terror
and efficacy of his name. But Barbara could only say that he was a
friend of hers, and a sort of henchman of their host for the evening.
Then she said, smiling:

"I'm sorry he didn't come himself, but anyway his whistle is a perfectly
good whistle, and another time I'll know enough to blow it before
anybody gets hurt."

Mrs. Bruce insisted on having her husband ride with her, so Blythe took
his place in Barbara's cab, and they reached Marrow Lane without further
molestation. Indeed, it seemed as if rumor had gone ahead of them,
saying that they were not as other swells, but East-Siders in disguise,
integral parts of the master's organization, armed with the whistle of
his lieutenant. They were stared at, it is true, and commented upon, but
with awe now and childish admiration.

The door of Blizzard's house was opened for them by Kid Shannon.

"Why, Mr. Shannon," exclaimed Barbara, "I blew your whistle, and you
never came."

"And wasn't the whistling enough?"

"Why, yes."

He smiled the smile of a general who knows that his troops are in a
state of perfect discipline. "The boss is expecting you," he said.
"Please step right in."

A faint odor of roses greeted them.

XXV

One light, not strong, illuminated the legless man's face. Barbara and
her friends sat in half-darkness. Kid Shannon went out of the room on
tiptoe, closing the door softly behind him. Of Rose, crouched under the
key-board of the grand piano, her hands on the pedals, nothing could be
seen, owing to a grouping of small palms and flowers in pots. The stump
of Blizzard's right leg touched her shoulder. She was trembling. So was
Blizzard. He was trembling with stage fright; she with Blizzard fright.
His hands, thick with agile muscles and heavy as hams, though he had
just been soaking them in hot water, seemed powerless to him, and stiff.

He struck a chord, and it sounded to him not like the voices of a
musical instrument, but like a clattering together of tin dishes. This
enraged him. His self-consciousness vanished. Those ivory keys and
well-tempered wires had fooled him. He hated his piano. And he began to
punish it. The heavy hands, rising and falling with the speed and
strength of lightning strokes, produced a volume of tone which perhaps
no other player in the world could have equalled.

Blythe, a great amat