Behind him trailed the dumfounded
procession; Laddie still pattering happily along with the
Mistress. At the open door of a large room at the stairhead, the
author stood aside and pointed in silent despair through the
doorway.
"What's up?" queried Harmon, for perhaps the tenth time. "Is
anything--?"
His question ended in a grunt. And, like the others, he stared
aghast on the scene before him.
The room, very evidently, was a study. But much of its floor,
just now, was heaped, ankle high, with hundreds of pages of torn
and crumpled paper.
The desk-top and a Sheraton cabinet and table were bare of all
contents. On the floor reposed countless shattered articles of
glass and porcelain; jumbled together with blotters an pastepot
and shears and ink-stand and other utensils. Ink had been poured
in grotesque pattern on rugs and parquetry and window curtains.
In one corner lay a typewriter, its keys twisted and its carriage
broken. Books--some of them in rare bindings,--lay gutted and
ink-smeared, from one end of the place to the other.
Through the daze of general horror boomed the tremblingly
majestic voice of Rutherford Garretse.
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