The motor drew up in front of the plain old country house, and as they followed their guide into the hall, they could see through an open doorway the table bright with silver and linen, set for six. "The girls," Danforth explained, "have been spending the day at Eastfield. They're coming over by motor; ought to be here any minute now. Just let me show you your room."
They followed him upstairs, and down the upper hall to the rear of the house, where he flung open the door of the guest room, and stood back for them to enter. "There," he said heartily, "make yourselves at home. I'm just going to the kitchen for a minute to see that everything's all right, and I'll be back again in no time."
He departed, closing the door behind him, and Mills throwing himself into an easy chair, gazed around him with approval. The room was old-fashioned and low studded, but comfortably furnished, and the drawn shades and the mellow light from the lamp on the table combined to give it an appearance both homelike and inviting. Blagden, after a similar appreciative glance, followed Mills' example, and both of them, wearied after many days of tense excitement around the ticker, followed by nights of wild carousal, sat in pleasurable silence, their thoughts busied with visions of enjoyment to come.
Presently they heard outside the throbbing of a motor. "There come the ladies," hazarded Mills, but after his surfeit of dissipation, he did not pay their fair companions the compliment of rising from his chair. Nor did Blagden stir. Yet he listened keenly to the sound of the motor, and suddenly observed, "That car wasn't coming, Tubby; it was going. What do you suppose that means?"
"Don't know and don't care," yawned Mills, stretching his huge arms luxuriously above his head, "but I've one fault, though, to find with Danforth's taste. He seems to have a prejudice against ventilation. It's fearfully close in here."
Blagden rose, with just the faintest shadow of anxiety upon his face. "You're right," he agreed. "Let's have some air."
As he spoke, he walked over to the window, snapped up the curtain, and then gave a cry so sharp and so fraught with alarm that Mills involuntarily leaped from his seat, and stood gazing with blanched cheeks at the space where a window should have been, but which, instead, was barricaded by a plate of solid steel. In spite of himself, Mills felt as if the blood had ceased flowing in his veins, and his voice sounded thick and strained as he cried, "What's this? Some fool joke?"