Winter felt at once relieved and displeased. Twice during the hour had his authority been disregarded. He was willing to ignore Clarke's method of doling out important facts because such was the man's secretive nature. But Furneaux! The urgent messages sent to every place where they might reach him, each and all summoned him to Scotland Yard without the slightest reference to the Feldisham Mansions crime. It was with a stiff upper lip, therefore, that the Chief Inspector acknowledged the salute of the constable who admitted him to the ill-fated Frenchwoman's abode. Furneaux was his friend, Furneaux might be admirable, Furneaux was the right man in the right place, but Furneaux must first receive an official reminder of the claims of discipline.
The subdued electric lights in the hall revealed within a vista of Oriental color blended with Western ideals of comfort. Two exquisitely fashioned lamps of hammered iron, rifled from a Pekin temple, softened by their dragons and lotus leaves the glare of the high-powered globes within them. Praying carpets, frayed by the deserts of Araby, covered the geometric design of a parquet floor, and bright-hued draperies of Mirzapur hid the rigid outlines of British carpentry. A perfume of joss-sticks still clung to the air: it suggested the apartments of a Sultana rather than the bower of a fashionable lady in the West End of London.
.....
"I was there at that time."
"How did you manage it? St. John's Wood is far away from either Victoria or Charing Cross, and I suppose you reached Kenterstone by way of Charing Cross?"
