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.
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