Scanlon made his way up the familiar staircase; from the high walls, the rows of painted faces looked down on him from their dull gilt frame.
"A fellow must feel a kind of a pressure on him to have an assorted gang of ancestors looking down on him this way all the time," said the big man, mentally. "I don't know whether I'd like it or not."
Stumph knocked at the study door, and when a voice bade them come in, he opened it and stood aside while Scanlon entered. Ashton-Kirk sat upon a deep sofa with his legs wrapped in a steamer-rug, smoking a briar pipe, and going over some closely typed pages.
"How are you?" greeted he. "Take a comfortable chair, will you? You'll find things to smoke on the table. And pardon me a moment while I finish this."
Scanlon lighted a cigarette and sat down. The criminologist plunged once more into the typed sheets, and while he was so engaged, Bat's eyes roved about the room. Through the partly open door at one end he had a detail of the laboratory with its shining retorts and racks of gleaming apparatus; in the study itself were rows of books standing upon everything that would hold them; cases were stuffed with them; they littered the tables and stands, some spotless in their fresh newness, others dingy and old, with warping leather backs and yellowed pages.
Ashton-Kirk put the sheets down at last and sat for a space smoking in thoughtful silence, the singular eyes half closed. Then he threw aside the rug and arose; pressing a call button he began pacing the room.
"This little case of ours is gaining in interest," said he. "Its scope is widening, too. I put one of my men, Burgess, on a detail which I wanted thoroughly searched, and it led him to New Orleans."
Scanlon elevated his brows.
"No!" said he. "Is that a fact?"
There were a number of newspapers scattered about the floor. Ashton-Kirk kicked one of them out of the way as he turned the table in his pacing.