Her room had an air of spartan simplicity. In the near right-hand corner stood a chest of drawers. Then came a big four-poster, a bedside table and in the right front corner an old easy-chair. Between the two windows stood a small table with a book or two and a vase of field flowers. In the left front corner stood an old typewriter desk of the type in which the machine sinks down to leave a flat top. It was down now and the surface bore a blotting-pad, ink-well, pens and stationery. Next to it came the door to the bathroom, then a dressing table and then, in the near left corner, a smaller door which opened into a clothes-closet.
Miss Mount led them to the bathroom door, passed through and unlocked the door beyond into darkness. In a moment three overhead lights and a hanging lamp with a green glass shade showed them a room packed almost everywhere with a collection of possessions in the wildest disorder. The exception was the workbench against the far wall, at and about which a place had been cleared. The hanging lamp shone down upon this, revealing rows of large and small tools stuck anyhow into racks along the wall, arrows and a bow dumped on the flat surface and in a vise a single unfletched arrow. Near the pile of arrows lay an old pair of soft leather gloves, several finger guards and an arm guard.
On chairs and tables about the rest of the room lay stamp albums and books on stamp collecting; thousands of stamps in envelopes and in heaps; sheets of loose manuscript written in a round, childish hand; boomerangs; an old box-kite; electrical parts of all sorts; clockwork; cross-bows, light and heavy; long bows and short bows, in one piece and spliced; also many lengths and types of arrows.
There were countless other articles, relics of previous fads impossible to catalogue in a brief inspection. If ever the disorder of a room expressed the pathetic, struggling disorder of a man’s mind, this one did.
Landis and Bernard and Graham, too, looked soberly about the silent room. After a moment Bernard spoke for all three.
“Thank you,” he said. “That’s all.”
They returned in silence to the head of the main staircase. Here Landis addressed Miss Mount, who had preserved a stony silence since they left her room.
“We may as well be thorough,” he said. “What about the third floor? Do the servants sleep up there?”
“Yes, all of them. Do you wish to see it?”