Under Groby's
vigorous measures the musician's flabby, redundant figure sat 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.
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