Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/70

60 out, he left me to cool my heels where I stood, and to ruminate on the queerness of my position. In five minutes or so he returned and signed me to follow him.

The hall was in keeping with the outside of the building, lofty and imposing. The floor was of oak, almost black with age, the walls were beautifully wainscoted and carved, and here and there tall armoured figures looked down upon me in disdainful silence. But the crowning glory of all was the magnificent staircase that ran up from the centre. It was wide enough and strong enough to take a coach and four, the pillars that supported it were exquisitely carved, as were the banisters and rails. Half-way up was a sort of landing, from which again the stairs branched off to right and left.

Above this landing-place, and throwing a lovely light down into the hall, was a magnificent stained-glass window, and on a lozenge in the centre of it the arms that had so much puzzled me on the gateway. A nobler hall no one could wish to possess, but brooding over it was the same air of poverty and neglect I had noticed all about the place. By the time I had taken in these things, my guide had reached a door at the farther end. Pushing it open he signed to me to enter, and I did so, to find a tall, elderly man of stern aspect awaiting my coming.

He, like his servant, was dressed entirely in black, with the exception of a white tie, which gave his figure a semi-clerical appearance. His face was long and somewhat pinched, his chin and upper lip were shaven, and his snow-white, close-cropped whiskers ran in two straight lines from his jaw up to level with his piercing, hawk-like eyes. He would probably have been about seventy-five years of age, but he did not carry it well.