“A lot you got out of him!” Dennis remarked.
“I got what I was looking for, dope on some of the families and their servants,” replied McCarty. “I didn’t want to crowd him too much at the first go, and besides, we’ve no more time to spend on him just now.”
“Going to tackle that Chink again?” asked the other innocently.
“I’m going to tackle every last mother’s son of them!” McCarty set his lips firmly and his step quickened. “I want a talk with Orbit, too, before the inspector breaks the news.”
In response to their ring at the bell the door was presently opened by a fat little Chinese boy, whose round, yellow face was wreathed in smiles. On seeing them he bowed straight forward from the waist with both short arms spread wide and ushered them into a huge, dim room at the left, where their footsteps rang on a bare, mosaic floor of exquisite design and inlay. McCarty observed that the whole opposite wall was of glass, curving out in a swelling arc, like a gigantic bow window. It was filled with a mass of strange, vivid flowering plants, the like of which neither of the visitors had ever seen before, and a delicate, elusive fragrance hung upon the super-heated atmosphere.
On their right, at the back, the pipes of an enormous organ reared their slender tubes. Stone settles and benches were scattered about, backed by towering masses of palms and cacti, but the echoing, high-ceilinged room held no other furnishing.
They seated themselves on the nearest marble bench and McCarty, who was commencing to perspire freely, pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead.
“’Tis for all the world like that grand undertaker’s where the lodge gave Corcoran his funeral!” Dennis had spoken in his normal tones but they swiftly sank to a hoarse whisper as they reverberated. “God save us, did you hear that? It’s worse than a tunnel!”
“Wisht! The little heathen is still hanging around.” McCarty admonished. “Come here, son.”
The little boy who had lingered in the doorway smiled again and sidled forward silently in his soft embroidered slippers.