Down the stairs came a dim vapour that smelt of beef, whisky and tobacco, and in the distance was the regular click of billiard-balls and the brazen muffled tones of a gramophone.

Uncle Mathew seemed perfectly at home here, and it was strange to Maggie that he should be so nervous with Aunt Anne, his own sister, when he could be so happily familiar with the powdered lady in the black silk.
"We're to have dinner in a private room upstairs," said Uncle Mathew in a voice that was casual and at the same time important.

He led the way up the stairs.
Maggie had read in some old bound volume at home a very gruesome account of the "Life and Misdeeds of Mr.Palmer, the Rugeley Poisoner." The impression that still remained with her was of a man standing in the shadowy hall of just such an hotel as this, and pouring poison into a glass which he held up against the light.

This picture had been vividly with her during her childhood, and she felt that this must have been the very hotel where those fearful deeds occurred, and that the ghost of Mr.Palmer's friend must, at this very moment, be writhing in an upstairs bedroom--"writhing," as she so fearfully remembered, bent "like a hoop." However, these reminiscences did not in the least terrify her; she welcomed their definite outlines in contrast with the shadowy possibilities of her aunts' house.

And she had Martin Warlock ...