A little way down this street, before a black-windowed house, Clifford noted two empty, shadowy automobiles; he saw that they were alike at least in this, that both were low and long, built evidently for speed and the ability to maintain it. Having reached this darkened and seemingly empty house, Loveman turned and ran quickly up the high, old-fashioned stoop. The next instant he had let himself in with a latch-key. “I suppose you know what that place is?” whispered Uncle George, gripping Clifford’s forearm sharply. “Yes,” breathed Clifford--“the house of Joe Le Bain!” CHAPTER XXVIII THE HOUSE OF MONSIEUR LE BAIN Monsieur Le Bain, from catering to the reckless rich and to spendthrifts who had large sums that abode with them for a flitting month or so, and to monied persons about whose characters and designs he preferred to remain safely ignorant--Monsieur Le Bain had discovered that such as these, on occasion, desired a greater privacy than his Grand Alcazar or his Le Minuit or any other restaurant afforded them--a sumptuous exclusiveness in which, without danger of being seen by uninvited eyes or their merry-making marred or restrained by the propinquity of strangers, a party might dine or sup _en famille_. Quick to see and seize opportunities, Le Bain had devised the material equipment to please such patronage. In addition to the Grand Alcazar and Le Minuit, which he advertised and to which he welcomed all, he had set up another establishment which he did not advertise, and of which few even knew, and to which even fewer ever gained admission. This was an old brownstone house in the upper Forties between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, outwardly most discreet and decorous--and, moreover, inwardly so most of the time. The house was furnished as a private residence, and richly furnished, too, albeit somewhat garishly since Le Bain’s latter-day æsthetics had been founded upon the gilt and rococo of Broadway restaurants. There was a large drawing-room whose windows were so deftly curtained that no inner light ever filtered into the street; behind that a large dining-room, in which one might be as merry as one liked without passers-by being halted by laugh or song--or by any possible sound of a less happy character that might originate therein. And in the basement there was a perfect kitchen, which, on those occasions when the house was briefly inhabited, Le Bain peopled with his most efficient and reticent retainers--it being understood that after the dinner or supper had been served, and if the host so directed, these cooks and waiters and ladies’ maids should vanish. And that the party might not suffer from such withdrawal, there was installed in the butler’s pantry an ingenious refrigerator in which foods were kept cold and wines properly iced--and from which host and guests might serve themselves.