d rang the bell. He
waited patiently until his ring was answered. It was some time before
the door swung open. Inside that door Blake saw a solemn-eyed servant
in a black spiked-tailed service-coat and gray trousers.

"I want to see Mr. Copeland," was Blake's calmly assured announcement.

"Mr. Copeland is not at home," answered the man in the service-coat.
His tone was politely impersonal. His face, too, was impassive. But
one quick glance seemed to have appraised the man on the doorstep, to
have judged him, and in some way to have found him undesirable.

"But this is important," said Blake.

"I'm sorry, sir," answered, the impersonal-eyed servant. Blake made an
effort to keep himself in perfect control. He knew that his unkempt
figure had not won the good-will of that autocratic hireling.

"I 'm from Police Headquarters," the man on the doorstep explained,
with the easy mendacity that was a heritage of his older days.

He produced the one official card that remained with him, the one worn
and dog-eared and once water-soaked Deputy-Commissioner's card which
still remained in his dog-eared wallet. "I 've got to see him on
business, Departmental business!"

"Mr. and Mrs. Copeland are at the Metropolitan, sir," explained the
servant. "At the Opera. And they are not back yet."

"Then I 'll wait for him," announced Blake, placated by the humbler
note in the voice of the man in the service-coat.

"Very good, sir," announced the servant. And he led the way upstairs,
switching on the electrics as he went.

Blake found himself in what seemed to be a library. About this softly
hung room he peered with an acute yet heavy disdain, with an
indeterminate envy which he could not control. It struck him as being
feminine and over fine, that shadowy room with all its warm hangings
and polished wood. It stood for a phase of life with which he had no
patience. And he kept telling himself that it had not been come by
honestly, that on everything about him, from the silver desk ornaments
to the marble bust glimmering out of its shadowy background, he himself
had some secret claim. He scowled up at a number of signed etchings
and a row of diminutive and heavily framed canvases, scowled up at them
with quick contempt. Then he peered uncomfortably about at the shelves
of books, mottled streaks of vellum and morocco stippled with gold,
crowded pickets of soft-lettered color which seemed to stand between
him and a worl