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T THREE o'clock in the morning a great office building is not the most desolate place on earth, perhaps; but it approaches very closely to that definition.

At three o'clock on the morning of Ash Wednesday the great white Maison Blanche building was deserted and desolate, so far as its offices were concerned. The cleaners and scrub-women had long since finished their tasks and departed. Out in the streets the tag-ends of carnival were running on a swiftly ebbing tide. A single elevator in the building was, however, in use. A single suite of offices, with carefully drawn blinds, was lighted and occupied.

They were not ornate, these offices. They consisted of two rooms, a small reception room and a large private office, both lined to the ceiling with books, chiefly law books. 169