"Ah!" he said, stood a moment longer, contemplating her, then turned abruptly and flung open the door against which he stood.
It led into a winding passage of such a totally different character from the stone staircase they had just mounted that Juliet stood gazing down it for some seconds before she obeyed his mute gesture to pass through. It was thickly carpeted, deadening all sound, and the walls were hung with some heavy material, in the colour of old oak. It was lighted by three long perpendicular slits of windows, let into a twelve-foot thickness of wall. Juliet had a glimpse of many pine trees as she passed them.
The passage ended in heavy curtains of the same dark-brown material. She stopped and looked at her companion.
"What is it?" he said, with a laugh. "Are you afraid of my inner sanctuary?"
He parted the curtains, disclosing a tall oak door. She saw no latch upon it, but his hand went up behind the curtain, and she heard the click of a spring. In a moment the tall door opened before her.
"Go in!" he said easily.
She entered a strange room, oak-panelled, shaped like a cone, lighted only by a glass dome in the roof. It was the most curious chamber she had ever seen. She trod on a tiger-skin as she entered, and noted that the floor was covered with them. There was no chair anywhere, only a long, deep couch, also draped with tiger-skins. Tiger faces glared at her from all directions. She heard the door click behind her and turning realized that it had disappeared in the oak panelling against which her host was standing.
He laughed at her quizzically, "I believe you are frightened."
She looked around her, seeing no exit anywhere. "It is just the sort of freak apartment I should expect you to delight in," she said.
"You wouldn't have come if you had known, would you?" he said, a faint note of jeering in his voice.