The interruption came from without.
From the parade ground of Wellington Barracks the drums and fifes sounding the tattoo shrilled through the open window with a startling clearness like a sharp summons, and diminished as the band marched away across the gravel and again grew loud.

Feversham did not change his attitude, but the look upon his face was now that of a man listening, and listening thoughtfully, just as he had read thoughtfully.

In the years which followed, that moment was to recur again and again to the recollection of each of Harry's three guests.

The lighted room, with the bright homely fire, the open window overlooking the myriad lamps of London, Harry Feversham seated with the telegram spread before him, the drums and fifes calling loudly, and then dwindling to music very small and pretty--music which beckoned where a moment ago it had commanded: all these details made up a picture of which the colours were not to fade by any lapse of time, although its significance was not apprehended now.
It was remembered that Feversham rose abruptly from his chair, just before the tattoo ceased.

He crumpled the telegram loosely in his hands, tossed it into the fire, and then, leaning his back against the chimney-piece and upon one side of the fireplace, said again:-- "I don't know;" as though he had thrust that message, whatever it might be, from his mind, and was summing up in this indefinite way the argument which had gone before.