The Riddle of Ragstaff
I
“Well, Harry, my boy, and what’s the latest news from Venice?”
Harry Lorian stretched his long legs and lay back in his chair.
“I had a letter from the governor this morning, Colonel. He appears to be filling his portfolio with studies of windows and doorways and stair-rails and the other domestic necessities dear to his architectural soul!”
Colonel Reynor laughed in his short, gruff way, as my friend, Lorian, gazing sleepily about the quaint old hall in which we sat, but always bringing his gaze to one point—a certain door—blew rings of smoke straightly upward.
“I suppose,” said our host, the Colonel, “most of the material will be used for the forthcoming book?”
“I suppose so,” drawled Lorian, glancing for the twentieth time at the yet vacant doorway by the stair-foot. “The idea of architects and artists and other constitutionally languid people, having to write books, fills my soul with black horror.”
“He had a glorious time with our old panelling, Harry,” laughed the Colonel, waving his cigar vaguely toward the panelled walls and nooks which gradually were receding into the twilight.