CHAPTER FIVE
Waste PaperThe upper hall, like the lower one, was high and heavily corniced, and ended at the rear with a glassed door; Gamadge supposed that these doors concealed service stairways and landings. He followed his host over sound-absorbent carpeting to the large sitting room which occupied two-thirds of the house frontage, and which contained six people; but only five of them looked up as the two came in. The sixth, a big young man with thick blond hair, sat hunched at a table between the west windows, pencil in hand and eyes fixed on a paper game, until his companion—another young man, but a thin and active one—rose and touched him on the arm. Then he too got up, and stood vaguely and amiably smiling.
Two women, one reclining on a wheeled invalid chair, sat opposite each oth
