“The house with the bronze face,” as it was called by people living in the neighborhood, was situated in a quiet street just off Russell Square. It had acquired that curious appellation owing to its front door being made conspicuous by a huge old Florentine bronze knocker representing a woman’s laughing face. The face was really that of a bacchante, and a very wicked-looking bacchante at that, and many were the stories told about the house in consequence. Some said the woman’s face possessed a lurid significance, and that within those portals.... Another rumor often credited was that the face could cast a spell over those who sought to probe its history, and that on more than one occasion persons who had entered the house had never come out again.
Those were, of course, foolish legends, yet the fact remained that an atmosphere of mystery surrounded the house with the bronze face. Obviously at some period it had been a private residence. Now it was ostensibly the headquarters of a private inquiry agency which had sprung into existence shortly before the war, and was known to be patronized by many fashionable and rich people.
It was nearly midnight, and in a comfortably furnished office in the middle of the building, so that no light showed in the street outside, a venerable-looking old gentleman and a handsome young woman, the latter with a semitic cast of countenance, sat side by side examining some documents.
A shaded electric reading-lamp on the table gave the only light in the room, and the documents lay in the ray which it shed immediately in front of them.
Neither spoke. Both were working rapidly. First the old man would take a document off the pile, read through it carefully, then pass it to his companion, who, after quickly scanning its contents, would make a marginal note or two, and then docket it. Thus they continued in silence for over half an hour, when the pile of papers came to an end.
The man leant back in his chair, stretched himself, and yawned.
“We have had about enough of this, eh, Camille?” he said, turning with a curious expression to his companion.
“Not half!” she answered with a foreign accent, which made the slang sound quaint. “Après minuit,” she added, glancing at her wrist-watch. “I call it crewel.”
“Never mind; it can’t last,” he said. “Or at least it won’t if I have much to do with it. Give me one of your chipre cigarettes.”
She took a cigarette herself and lit it, then handed him her case.