Ryder was not fond of company, he avoided strangers and lived in continual apprehension of the subpoena server.

Not that he feared the law, only he usually found it inconvenient to answer questions in court under oath.

The explicit instructions to the servants, therefore, were to admit no one under any pretext whatever unless the visitor had been approved by the Hon.

Fitzroy Bagley, Mr.Ryder's aristocratic private secretary, and to facilitate this preliminary inspection there had been installed between the library upstairs and the front door one of those ingenious electric writing devices, such as are used in banks, on which a name is hastily scribbled, instantly transmitted elsewhere, immediately answered and the visitor promptly admitted or as quickly shown the door.
Indeed the house, from the street, presented many of the characteristics of a prison.

It had massive doors behind a row of highly polished steel gates, which would prove as useful in case of attempted invasion as they were now ornamental, and heavily barred windows, while on either side of the portico were great marble columns hung with chains and surmounted with bronze lions rampant.