Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/195

Rh mellowed into urbanity, as it seems to do with everything but human beings.

Then, as we passed through into a dream of a dining-room, I found a table laid for two. I stood for a moment staring rather stupidly down at that island of white damask floating in its sea of gloom, at the silver with the light glinting on it, at the cut-glass that seemed so cold and non-committal and at the same time so warm in its prismatic flashes of accidental color. That table, I knew, couldn't have been prepared for me. It wasn't a frame-up, as Bud would have phrased it. There had been no chance for any such move. So I found myself wondering if it was always kept in that condition of spotless preparedness, like the emergency room in a city hospital. I wondered if it was set out there every evening, like a poacher's night-line, to trap each and every nibbler that happened along.

Then I felt ashamed of my suspicion. For when your bait is worth more than your catch it doesn't exactly pay to fish. I knew, as I stared down at the round island of damask, with a vase of Richmond roses flaming at its center like a tiny volcano, that it wasn't a dead-fall in disguise. And I preferred to think of it as being suddenly conjured there, by a clap of the hands. It was some final touch of mid-