“Gee!” he cried. “Makes you feel you’ve quit the dam old north country, an’ hit up against some buzzy-headed Turk’s harem. Say, get a peek at them di-vans. An’ them curtain things. An’ them junk china pots. Holy—!”
He broke off and his grinning eyes sobered. A thought had flashed through his impulsive brain and held him silent.
Wilder was regarding him. All that Mike had only just sensed he had realised from the moment they had set foot in the house. The place was a miniature palace, something decaying, but the whole interior told of Eastern tastes, Eastern habits, Eastern life. The place had been furnished for oriental occupation. And realising this the name of one race alone had flashed into his mind. Japanese!
A surge of excitement stirred. He gazed about the great hall, with its silken hangings, heavily encumbered with the dust of years, with its low silken couches. Then the carved wooden screen, and the central fireplace elaborately built under its smoke funnel. He glanced at the bureau bookcase of modern fashioning, and with every detail added conviction came to him.
But desertion, or at least neglect, was stamped everywhere. There was dust on everything. There was a curious musty smell which could not be mistaken. But, somehow, for all that, there were signs, unmistakable signs that desertion was not absolute. There had been remains of food in the pantries. There were ashes in the cookstoves in the kitchen. There was _water_ in various pitchers and buckets. No. Utter neglect, but not complete desertion. This was Wilder’s final verdict, gaining corroboration as he remembered the sounds of breaking bush which Red Mike’s ears had been so swift to detect.
“We best make the sleeping quarters, Mike,” Wilder said after awhile. “They’re liable to tell us the last thing we need to know.” And he passed round the room in search of an outlet which might lead to the apartments above.
Wilder flung the curtains quickly aside. It was an arched entrance to one of the upper rooms. He stepped within the room closely followed by Mike, and they stood silently regarding the interior with appraising eyes.
Here again there was no occupant. It was a bedroom, and, judging by its proportions, the principal bedroom. As it had been in the hall below the furnishings were largely of Eastern fashion. But a modern, Western bedstead occupied the central place, and a bureau dressing-chest stood near to a window. For the rest there were silken curtains of lavish wistaria and chrysanthemum design hanging at the windows, and the floor of yellow pine was covered with Eastern, tufted rugs.