It was an old house. The long hall was panelled and hung with the heads of animals. A torn banner of faded red and yellow with long tassels of gold hung above the stone fireplace. The floor was of stone, and some dim rugs of uncertain colour lay like splashes of damp here and there. The first thing of which he was aware was that a strong cold draught blew through the hall. It seemed to come from a wide oak staircase on his right. There were no portraits on the panelled walls. The house gave a deep sense of emptiness. Two Japanese servants, short, slim, immobile, their hair gleaming black, their faces impassive, waited. The outer door closed. The banner fluttered, the only movement in the house.
"Come in here, Mr. Harkness," Crispin said. "It is more comfortable."
His little figure moved forward. Harkness followed him, but he had had one moment with the girl as he entered the hall. The two Crispins had been for an instant back by the car. He had said, his lips scarcely moving:
"I gave him the message. He is coming," and she had answered without turning her head or looking at him: "Thank you."
Only as he walked after Crispin he wondered whether the Japanese could have understood. No. He was sure that no one could have heard those words, but he turned before leaving the hall, and he had a strange impression of the bare, empty, faded place, the staircase running darkly up into mystery, and the four figures, the two servants, Hesther and the younger Crispin, at that moment immobile, waiting as though they were listening—and for what?
The room into which Crispin led him was even shabbier than the hall. It was a large ugly place with dim cherry-coloured paper, and a great glass candelabrum suspended from the ceiling. The walls had, it seemed, once been covered with pictures of all shapes and sizes, because the wall-paper showed everywhere pale yellow squares and ovals and lozenges of colour where the frames had been. The wall-paper had indeed leprosy, and although there were still some pictures—a large Landseer, an engraving of a Millais, a shabby oil painting of a green and windy sea—it was these strange sea-sick evidences of a vanished hand that invaded the air.
There was very little furniture in the place, two shabby armchairs, a round shining table, a green sofa. The draught that had swept the hall crept here, now come now gone, stealing on hands and feet from corner to corner.
"You see," said Crispin, standing beside the empty fireplace, "I am here but little. I have pulled down the pictures from the walls and then left it all shabby. I enjoy the contrast." At the far end of the room were long oak cupboards. Crispin went to them and pulled back the heavy doors, and instantly in the shabby place there were blazing such treasures as Harkness had never set eyes on before.
Not very many as numbers went—some dozen shelves in all—but gleaming, glittering, shining, flinging out their flashes of purple and amber and gold, here crystalline, now deeply wine-coloured, pink with the petals of the rose, white with the purity of the rising moon. There was jewelry here that seemed to move with its own independent life before Harkness's eyes—Jaipur enamel of transparent red and green, lovely patterns with thick long strips of enamel on a ground of bright gold, over which, while still soft from the furnace, an open-work pattern of gold had been pressed; large rough turquoises set in silver; Chinese work of carved ivory and jade, cap ornaments exquisitely worked, a cap of a Chinese emperor with its embroidered gold dragon and its crown of pearls. Then the inlaid Chinese feather work, and at the sight of these tears of pleasure came into Harkness's eyes, cells made as though for cloisonné enamel, and into these are daintily affixed tiny fragments of king-fisher feather. Colours of blue, green and mauve here blend and tone one into another miraculously, and the effect of all is a glittering sheen of gold and blue. There was one tiny fish, barely half an inch long, and here there were thirty cells on the body, each with its separate piece of feather. Chinese enamel buttons and clasps, nail-guards beautifully ornamented, Japanese hair combs marvellously wrought in lacquer, horn, gold lac on wood, wood with ivory appliqués, and stained ivory.
Then the Netsukes! Had any one in the world such lovely things! With the ivory and its colour richly toned with age, the metal ones showing a glorious patina. The sword guards—made of various metals and alloys and gold and silver, the metal so beautifully finished that it had the rich texture of old lace.