For some reason we had a long wait, and Carter had to ring the bell several times before the door was opened. When it was thrown aside, a woman, whom I judged must be the housekeeper, looked at us in a questioning manner. Carter mentioned that we were invited to dinner, and then, after remarking that she knew this, she rather nervously opened the door wider and asked us to come in. Taking us down a long hall, she showed us into the living room and left.
It was an enormous room. The floor was covered with valuable rugs. Etchings and pictures, which Warren had picked up in all parts of the world, were on the walls. Cabinets which were filled with priceless china, and curios of all sorts were on every side of us. It was an odd sort of a room, partly because of the great confusion it was in. It almost looked as if the explorer had simply thrown into the one room all the things which he had picked up in his travels.
But it was an interesting room because of the things it contained. Ranville smiled a happy little smile as he went from one article to another. The various curios so interested us that we forgot the passing of time and almost an hour passed before it dawned upon us that we had been alone in the room a long time. Then all at once Carter gave a glance at his watch and uttered a low exclamation of surprise.
“Do you know what time it is?” he asked.
Without waiting for a reply he went on: “It's now eight o'clock, and Warren said the dinner was to be at seven. It's odd he has kept us waiting as long as this.”
There was nothing we could say, and no one spoke. Again we turned to the curios in the cabinets, but as the moments passed and there was no sign of either our host or his housekeeper, we began to look at one another. It seemed very strange to be invited to dinner and not have our host welcome us. And we had seen no signs of him. There was not a sound in the house, and if it had not been that the housekeeper had let us in, we might have thought we were alone. And then, just as we began to wonder what we had better do, the housekeeper came into the room.
It needed but a glance at her flushed face to tell that not only was she nervous, but also rather perplexed. She was a rather large woman with a determined face—a face which now looked very troubled. She must have known Carter, for she came across the room to his side and said:
“Mr. Carter, my dinner has been waiting since seven o'clock. But Mr. Warren is not in the house.”
He made the usual reply that one would make at such a remark, only to have the woman say:
“He cannot have been delayed, for I know where he is.”