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256 threshold with the expectation of immediately encountering lights and gaiety, the first view of the interior came as a distinct shock. The main dining-room of the Manhattan Club was dim with the holy dimness of a cathedral. Its lamps, hung high, were buried in oriental trappings, and shone half-heartedly. Faintly through the gloom could be discerned white table-cloths, gleaming silver. The scene demanded hushed voices, noiseless footsteps. It got both.

The main dining-room was hollowed out of the center of the great stone building, and its roof was off in the dark three stories above. On each side of the entrance, stairways led to second and third-floor balconies which stretched around the room on three sides. From these balconies doors opened into innumerable rooms—rooms where lights shone brighter, and from which the chief of police, when he came to make certain financial arrangements with Mr. Stacy, heard frequently a gentle click-click.

It may have been that the furnishings of the main dining-room and the balconies were there before Mr. Stacy's coming, or again they may