Melrose stared at him.
"Come along here!" he said, roughly. Opening the door of the library, he turned down the broad corridor to the right. Undershaw followed unwillingly. He was due at a consultation at Keswick, and had no time to waste with this old madman.
Melrose, still grumbling to himself, took a bunch of keys out of his pocket, and fitted one to the last door in the passage. It opened with difficulty. Undershaw saw dimly a large room, into which the light of a rainy June day penetrated through a few chinks in the barred shutters. Melrose went to the windows, and with a physical strength which amazed his companion unshuttered and opened them all, helped by Undershaw. One of them was a glass door leading down by steps to the garden outside. Melrose dragged the heavy iron shutter which closed it open, and then, panting, looked round at his companion.
"Will this do for you?"
"Wonderful!" said Undershaw heartily, staring in amazement at the lovely tracery which incrusted the ceiling, at the carving of the doors, at the stately mantelpiece, with its marble caryatides, and at the Chinese wall-paper which covered the walls, its mandarins and pagodas, and its branching trees. "I never saw such a place. But what is my patient to do with an unfurnished room?"
"Furniture!" snorted Melrose. "Have you any idea, sir, what this house contains?"
Undershaw shook his head.
Melrose pondered a moment, and took breath. Then he turned to Undershaw.
"You are going back to Pengarth? You pass that shop, Barclay's—the upholsterer's. Tell him to send me over four men here to-morrow, to do what they're told. Stop also at the nurseryman's—Johnson's. No—I'll write. Give me three days—and you'll see."
He studied the doctor's face with his hawk's eyes.