On the first landing things looked a little more promising. There was a carpet, and outside each of the three doors a small, black skin rug, while against the wall, on a bracket of dark wood, with a looking-glass let in the back, there burned a lamp with a pink glass shade. Lauriston knocked at the door which he judged to be that of the room in the windows of which he had seen a light. There was no answer, and there was no sound. He waited a few moments, and then knocked again--a sounding rat-tat-tat with the handle of his umbrella, such as none but a deaf person or a person fast asleep could fail to hear. Again no answer; again no sound. He tried the other two doors with the same result; then, much puzzled by this reception, he went back to the first door, and after a third fruitless knock, turned the handle and peeped in. Nothing but black darkness in the two inches he allowed himself to see. He opened the next door. Although the blind was down and there was no light inside, he could see quite clearly that it was a small room with nobody in it. Now, as this apartment looked on to the street, it was evident that the lights he had seen in the windows must be those of the room into which he had first peeped, as the two doors were on a line with each other. “There must be a double door,” he said to himself, and going back again, he opened the first door wide and found, not indeed the obstacle he had expected, but a heavy curtain, thick as a carpet, which might well be supposed to deaden all outer sounds. He drew this back, and in a moment became conscious of an intoxicating change from the gloom and the drizzle outside. A faint, sweet perfume, like the smell of a burning fir-forest, a soft, many-tinted subdued light, the gentle plash-plash of falling water all became manifest to his senses at the same moment, and filled him with bewilderment and surprise. In front of him, at the distance of three or four feet, was a high screen of fine sandal-wood lattice work, over which was flung a dark curtain, embroidered thickly with golden lilies. Through the interstices of the aromatic wood were seen the glimmer of quaint brass lamps, the flashing of gold and silver embroideries, the soft green of large-leaved plants. Lauriston knew he must have made some awful mistake; no young English engineer would go in for this sort of thing. But his curiosity was so great concerning the inhabitants of this Eastern palace on a first floor in Mary Street, that he was unable to resist the temptation of a further peep into the interior. He stepped forward and looked behind the screen.