Father asleep," Harriet said to Eaton.

"May I see you alone for a moment?" he asked.

"Of course," she said; and as Avery made no motion, she turned toward
the door of the large room in the further end of the south wing. Eaton
started to follow.

"Where are you taking him, Harriet?" Avery demanded of her sharply.

She had seemed to Eaton to have been herself about to reconsider her
action; but Avery decided her.

"In here," she replied; and proceeded to open the door which exposed
another door just within, which she opened and closed after she had
entered and Eaton had followed her in. Her manner was like that of
half an hour before, when she showed him the grounds beyond the house.
And Eaton, feeling his muscles tighten, strove to control himself and
examine the room with only casual curiosity. It would well excuse any
one's interest.

It was very large, perhaps forty feet long and certainly thirty in
width. There was a huge stone fireplace on the west wall where the
wing connected with the main part of the house; and all about the other
wall, and particularly to the east, were high and wide windows; and
through those to the south, the sunlight now was flooding in.
Bookcases were built between the windows up to the ceiling, and
bookcases covered the west wall on both sides of the fireplace. And
every case was filled with books; upon a table at one side lay a pile
of volumes evidently recently received and awaiting reading and
classification. There was a great rack where periodicals of every
description--popular, financial, foreign and American--were kept; and
there were great presses preserving current newspapers.

At the center of the room was a large table-desk with a chair and a
lounge beside it; there were two other lounges in the room, one at the
south in the sun and another at the end toward the lake. There were
two smaller table-desks on the north side of the room, subordinate to
the large desk. There were two "business phonograph" machines with
cabinets for records; there was a telephone on the large desk and
others on the two smaller tables. A safe, with a combination lock, was
built into a wall. The most extraordinary feature of the room was a
steep, winding staircase, in the corner beyond the fireplace, evidently
connecting with the room above.

The room in which they were was so plainly Basil Santoine's work-room
that the girl did not comment upon that; but as Eaton glanced at the
stair