“Yes,” Graham nodded, “through that door.”
Landis had moved away to the left and, after a peep through the little window it contained, had swung open the door at the end of the hall and vanished. Now he reappeared and joined them.
“Butler’s pantry opposite,” he told Bernard. “Kitchen farther back. Narrow hall to the back door. This side of it the cellar stairs go down. Above them and just beyond this door to the right the back stairs go up to the second floor. Just beyond this door on the left is another into the front hall on the far side of the main stairs.”
Bernard grunted an acknowledgment and frowned.
“Billiard-room behind those windows,” he told Landis, abruptly. “Might have a look at it.”
They crossed the hall diagonally and opened the heavy door to find themselves in an oak-paneled room parallel to and of the same length as the hall they had just left. It was pleasantly warm, the air hazy and fragrant with cigarette- and wood-smoke.
Their entrance failed to interrupt a desultory game of billiards being played by two young men in evening clothes. Both looked up. The more slender of the two nodded to Graham, his face in shadow. The other bent over the table, where the shaded lights revealed him as big and blond and good-looking. He finished his shot and made it.
Only the lights above the table were switched on, so that a big log fire at the far end cast dancing shadows on the walls and ceiling. It burned in a fireplace of rough stone flanked by deep leather chairs. The far side wall contained three windows hidden by lowered shades. Low, built-in wooden seats, upholstered with dark green, leather cushions ran along each side of the room, with billiard-racks above them and between the windows.
Another closed door faced the one through which they had entered. A pace or two distant, the middle of the end wall to their right was pierced by a generous archway. Heavy, drawn curtains concealed what lay beyond.
Landis nodded toward the opposite door. “Where does that go?” he asked Graham.