CHAPTER FOUR
I
The car crossed to the Avenue and bore north. Archie was again left high in air. He had expected to be piloted by circuitous routes to some vile thieves' den in the intricate mazes of the East Side, but the car and the smartly appareled men encouraged the hope of a very different destination. The Governor, evidently enjoying his companion's befuddlement, talked of the changes that had taken place in the upper city in his memory. His reminiscences did not interest Archie greatly. He thought it likely the Governor was uttering commonplaces for the benefit of the men on the box, who could easily hear their passengers' conversation through the partition windows. The car passed two clubs in which Archie was a member in good standing and he caught a fleeting glimpse down an intersecting thoroughfare of the apartment house in which he was a tenant with a recurrence of the disagreeable questionings he had experienced so frequently as to whether he was himself or some other and very different person.
The Governor had not warned him to avoid marking the route, which was as familiar to Archie as the palm of his hand, but somewhere in the Seventies he did for a moment lose track of the streets, and the car, swinging east, stopped midway of a block of handsome residences. There was still the chance that this was all by-play, a trick for concealing their arrival in town; but the footman was already ringing the bell of a house whose facade was the most distinguished in sight. The door was opened by a manservant, whose face expressed pleasure as the Governor passed him with all the airs of incontestable proprietorship.
"I think we may as well go at once to our rooms," he said. "You understand, Baring, that we dine at seven-thirty—places for three?"
"Very good, sir: I received your telegram."
Amid the various phases of surprise through which he had passed since reaching the station Archie had kept his ears open, thinking the servants would address their employer by a name, but no such clue was forthcoming. The house exhaled an atmosphere of luxury and taste, and the furnishings were rich and consistently chosen. Archie recalled twenty houses in which he was frequently a guest that in nowise approached the Governor's establishment for comfort and charm. If he had been puzzled before he was stupefied now. The enormous effrontery of the thing overwhelmed him. He knew the general neighborhood too well not to be sure that it was not a region where a housebreaker of even the most exalted rank could live unchallenged. To be sure this was summer, and most of the houses along the street were boarded up; but the Governor would certainly not be invading in broad daylight premises to which he had no claim, and the retinue of trained and decorous servants disposed effectually of any such speculations.
On the second floor the Governor lingered in the drawing-room to call his guest's attention to some pictures, contemporary American work, which Archie recognized instantly. Indeed he knew several of the painters very well.
"We must encourage our own artists," remarked the Governor. "It's the only way we shall ever develop an American art."
Continuing up another flight (there was an elevator, the Governor explained, but he preferred the stairs) Archie surveyed approvingly a lounging room, half library and half office.