This long, narrow, comfortless strip of a room was Dick's armoury, den,
and refuge. It was furnished with extreme simplicity. At the further end
two rusty leather arm-chairs flanked a cast-iron stove in the corner, and
were balanced in the other and darker corner by a knee-hole writing-desk
littered with seeds and bulbs and spurs and bits of fishing tackle, and
equipped for its real purpose with a forbidding-looking pen and inkpot,
and a torn piece of weather-beaten blotting-paper. At about a third of
the way down from the terrace door a great screen, covered with American
cloth, cut the room almost in two. Against this screen stood two suits
of beautifully-finished fifteenth-century Italian armour. Between them
and the further end of the room ran a long deal table, with a green
baize cover. An odd, dilapidated chair or two stood lonely and
disconsolate against the opposite wall. The floor was covered with old
matting and a few faded rugs. The walls, however, and the cases ranged
along them gave an air of distinction to the room.
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