She perceived No. 14 to be a “converted” house. A great black building that might once have housed a merchant prince, but was now the warren of retired grocers, oddities, solicitors, and divorcees.
Margaret mounted the steps, slowly. The porter’s lobby in the hall was empty. From one of a series of brass plates she divined that flat 6b was the burrow of one James Masterson. Flat 6b, it seemed, was on the first floor. The lift was unattended. She walked up the stairs.
Frantically she reviewed her stories, testing them at every point. She wished she hadn’t come, had waited till Hastings had got back!
Facing the door of Flat 6b, Miss Margaret Warren took herself in hand, addressed rude remarks to herself, and applied firm pressure to the bell-push.
There was no sound of footsteps; there was no hand on the latch—but the door swung open.
Margaret fell back, stifling a scream. A small squeak broke from her lips. It was such a funny squeak that it made her laugh.
“Don’t be a fool, Margaret,” she told herself sternly. “Haven’t you heard of contraptions to open doors? Hundred per cent. labour-saving.”
But her heart was thudding violently as she entered the little hall. From a room on her right came a man’s voice, querulous, high-pitched.
“Who’s that,” it said. “Come in, damn you! Come in!”
She turned the handle, and entered a bedroom well furnished but in a state of appalling disorder. A dying fire—the temperature that day had been over ninety in the shade—belched out from the littered grate occasional puffs of black smoke. The bed-clothes were tossed and rumpled; half of them on the floor. A small table sprawled on its side in the middle of the room. Crumpled newspapers were everywhere, everywhere. Huddled in an arm-chair by the fireplace was a man.