As his cab drove up to the intricately ornamental little house of gray
stone, a big touring limousine wheeled out from the curb, and he caught
sight of Sanxon Orchil and Phoenix Mottly inside, evidently just leaving
Ruthven.
His smiling and very cordial bow was returned coolly by Orchil, and
apparently not observed at all by Mottly. He sat a second in his cab,
motionless, the obsequious smile still stencilled on his flushed face;
then the flush darkened; he got out of his cab and, bidding the man
wait, rang at the house of Ruthven.
Admitted, it was a long while before he was asked to mount the carved
stairway of stone. And when he did, on every step, hand on the bronze
rail, he had the same curious sense of occult resistance to his physical
progress; the same instinct of a new element arising into the scheme of
things the properties of which he felt a sudden fierce desire to test
and comprehend.
Ruthven in a lounging suit of lilac silk, sashed in with flexible
silver, stood with his back to the door as Neergard was announced; and
even after he was announced Ruthven took his time to turn and stare and
nod with a deliberate negligence that accented the affront.
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