fire.
The servant presently brought in a ham omelette, and on that and the
cold stuff we dined. I remember there was nothing to drink but water.
It puzzled me how Stumm kept his great body going on the very moderate
amount of food he ate. He was the type you expect to swill beer by the
bucket and put away a pie in a sitting.

When we had finished, he rang for the old man and told him that we
should be in the study for the rest of the evening. 'You can lock up
and go to bed when you like,' he said, 'but see you have coffee ready
at seven sharp in the morning.'

Ever since I entered that house I had the uncomfortable feeling of
being in a prison. Here was I alone in this great place with a fellow
who could, and would, wring my neck if he wanted. Berlin and all the
rest of it had seemed comparatively open country; I had felt that I
could move freely and at the worst make a bolt for it. But here I was
trapped, and I had to tell myself every minute that I was there as a
friend and colleague. The fact is, I was afraid of Stumm, and I don't
mind admitting it. He was a new thing in my experience and I didn't
like it. If only he had drunk and guzzled a bit I should have been
happier.

We went up a staircase to a room at the end of a long corridor. Stumm
locked the door behind him and laid the key on the table. That room
took my breath away, it was so unexpected. In place of the grim
bareness of downstairs here was a place all luxury and colour and
light. It was very large, but low in the ceiling, and the walls were
full of little recesses with statues in them. A thick grey carpet of
velvet pile covered the floor, and the chairs were low and soft and
upholstered like a lady's boudoir. A pleasant fire burned on the
hearth and there was a flavour of scent in the air, something like
incense or burnt sandalwood. A French clock on the mantelpiece told me
that it was ten minutes past eight. Everywhere on little tables and in
cabinets was a profusion of knickknacks, and there was some beautiful
embroidery framed on screens. At first sight you would have said it
was a woman's drawing-room.

But it wasn't. I soon saw the difference. There had never been a
woman's hand in that place. It was the room of a man who had a passion
for frippery, who had a perverted taste for soft delicate things. It
was the complement to his bluff brutality. I began to see the queer
other side to my host, that evil side which gossip ha