Randolph took another stiffish drink and settled back into a dull sullen abstraction.

Rodney wanted to say, “I hear from Rose you had a little visit with her in New York.”  But, with his host’s mood what it was, he shrank from introducing that topic.  Finally, for the sake of saying something, he remarked: 

“This is a wonderful room, isn’t it?”

Randolph roused himself.  “Never been in here before?” he asked.

“I’ve never been in the house before, I’m ashamed to say.”

“What!” Randolph cried.  “My God!  Well, then, come along.”

Rodney resisted a little.  He was comfortable.  They could look over the house later.  But Randolph wouldn’t listen.

“That’s the first thing to do,” he insisted.  “Indispensable preliminary.  You can’t enjoy the opera without a libretto.  Come along.”

It was a remarkable house.  Before the first fifteen minutes of their inspection were over, Rodney had come to the conclusion that though Bertie Willis might be an ass, was indeed an indisputable ass, he was no fool.  It was almost uncannily clever, the way all the latest devices for modern comfort wore, so demurely, the mask of a perfectly consistent medievalism.  And there were some effects that were really magnificent.  The view of the drawing-room, for instance, from the recessed dais at the far end of it, where the grand piano stood—­a piano that contrived to look as if it might have been played upon by the second wife of Henry VIII,—­down toward the magnificent stone chimney at the other; the octagonal dining-room with the mysterious audacity of its lighting; the kitchen with its flag floor (only they were not flags, but an artful linoleum), its great wrought-iron chains and hoods beneath which all the cooking was done—­by electricity.

Randolph took him over the whole thing from bottom to top.  Through it all, he kept up the glib patter of a showman; the ironic intent of it becoming more and more marked all the while.

They brought up at last in the study they had started from.

“Oh, but wait a moment!” Randolph said.  “Here’s two more rooms for you to see.”

The first one explained its purpose at a glance, with a desk and typewriter, and filing cabinets around the walls.

“Rubber floor,” Randolph pointed out, “felt ceiling; absolutely sound-proof.  Here’s where my stenographer sits all day, ready,—­like a fireman.  And this,” he concluded, leading the way to the other room, “is the holy of holies.”

It had a rubber floor, too, and Rodney supposed, a felt ceiling.  But its only furniture was one straight-back chair and a canvas cot.

“Sound-proof too,” said Randolph.  “But sounding-boards or something in all the walls.  I press this button, start a dictaphone, and talk in any direction, anywhere.  It’s all taken down.  Here’s where I’m supposed to think, make discoveries, and things.  No distractions.  One hundred per cent. efficient.  My God!  I tried it for a while.  Felt like a fool actor in a Belasco play.  Do you remember?  The one with the laboratory and the doctor?”