The man hesitated, saying:
“Well, sir, I’ve no orders to show anyone over. Have you a card?”
I at once produced one from my cigarette-case, and added that I was a personal friend of the millionaire’s. He read my name and looked again at me. I assured him that I was not prospecting with a view to burglary.
“I’m only asking you to do me a favour,” I went on, and I put a couple of Treasury notes into his hand. “You can inquire about me at my office to-morrow, if you like. They will tell you, I expect, that I have been away on a month’s leave.”
The little palm-oil no doubt propitiated him, for he invited me in. Then he switched on the light in the hall, and as he did so, said:
“I don’t know what trouble I’d get into with the master. He’s a very eccentric man—as you, of course, know.”
I laughed as we ascended the soft carpeted stairs. I recollected the pattern.
A few moments later we were in the library. Yes. It was just as I remembered it. Nothing had been altered. There was the writing-table whereon I had copied out the death certificate; the big fireplace, now empty, and the deep chair in which I had sat.
There was the window, too—the window which I had opened in order to gasp for air after that suffocating odour of pot-pourri.