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Rh the house. And Eaton, feeling his muscles tighten, strove to control himself and examine the room with only casual curiosity. It would well excuse any one's interest.

It was very large, perhaps forty feet long and certainly thirty in width. There was a huge stone fireplace on the west wall where the wing connected with the main part of the house; and all about the other wall, and particularly to the east, were high and wide windows; and through those to the south, the sunlight now was flooding in. Bookcases were built between the windows up to the ceiling, and bookcases covered the west wall on both sides of the fireplace. And every case was filled with books; upon a table at one side lay a pile of volumes evidently recently received and awaiting reading and classification. There was a great rack where periodicals of every description—popular, financial, foreign and American—were kept; and there were great presses preserving current newspapers.

At the center of the room was a large table-desk with a chair and a lounge beside it; there were two other lounges in the room, one at the south in the sun and another at the end toward the lake. There were two smaller table-desks on the north side of the room, subordinate to the large desk. There were two "business phonograph" machines with cabinets for records; there was a telephone on the large desk and others on the two smaller tables. A safe, with a combination lock, was built into a wall. The most extraordinary feature of the room was a steep, winding staircase, in the corner beyond the fireplace, evidently connecting with the room above.

The room in which they were was so plainly Basil