CHAPTER II
The Sign of the Three
OUT of doors, high noon, spring, the clamorous life of New York swift running through its brilliant streets.
Within doors, neither sound nor sunbeam disturbed a perennial quiet that was yet not peace.
The room was like a well of night, the haunt of shadows and sinister silences. Heavy hangings darkened its windows and masked its doors, a carpet of velvet muffled its floor, bookcases lined its walls. From the topmost shelves pale sculptured masks peered down, incarnadined by the dim glow from a solitary light that burned in that darkness like a smouldering ember.
The electric bulb of ruby glass was focussed upon a leather-bound desk-blotter on a black desk whose farther edges blended with the shadows.
Little was visible beyond the radius of that light and the figure of an old man that brooded over it, motionless in a great leather-bound chair.
His hair was as white as his heart was black; his nose was aquiline, finely chiselled, his cheek-bones
13
