Before him stretched a wide hall, dimly illumined by a single light
which splashed on the Italian table and went glimmering across the
floor. Across the hall was his destination--the broad balustraded
staircase, which swept grandly up to the second floor. Toward this he
tiptoed steadying himself with one hand against the wall. Almost to his
goal, he heard a muffled footfall and shrank against the wall with a
catlike agility, but, though the shadow fell steep and gloomy there,
luck was against him.

A middle-aged servant of solemn port, serene with the twofold dignity of
double chin and bald head, paused at the table in his progress across
the room, and swept the apartment with the judicial eye of one who knows
that everything is as it should be but will not trust even the silence
of night. So that bland blue eye struck first on the faintly shining
top hat of Anthony, ran down his overcoat, and lingered in gloomy dismay
on the telltale streak of white where the trouser leg should have been.

What he thought not even another Oedipus could have conjectured. The
young master very obviously did not wish to be observed, and in such
times Peters at could be blinder than the bat noon-day and more secret
than the River Styx. He turned away, unhurried, the fold of that double
chin a little more pronounced over the severe correctness of his collar.

A very sibilant whisper pursued him. He stopped again, still without
haste, and turned not directly toward Anthony, but at a discreet angle,
with his eyes fixed firmly upon the ceiling.