Читать книгу The Running Fight онлайн

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Alone in "the Den" Ilingsworth smiled as he looked about him. Fate was surely favouring him. The Den was a quasi-business office and smoking-room, a room where anybody might be interviewed by anybody of the household. It was in this room that Tiffany's man displayed his biggest, newest jewels to Mrs. Peter V.; it was in this room that Mrs. Peter V.'s women friends would drop in evenings for a chat with Peter V. as he smoked a black cigar; it was the comfortable place of the whole, big house. But to Ilingsworth it was something more: it was the place best fitted for the arena of events as events had shaped themselves. "The Den" had but one window—a high window that ran along one side of the wall just underneath the black-beamed ceiling and just above a long, comfortable, leather seat that ran along the wall. The window was above the head of an ordinary man, and was composed of leaded glass. It gave but little light, and afforded no view at all of the world without. For the rest, there was a big, flat-topped desk, heavy, leather-covered lounging-chairs, and heavy, dark red curtains everywhere about the walls. And but a single door.