A Promoter of Counterfeits

The street, as he walked east, changed into a more fashionable neighborhood: a block or two of modern apartment-houses with flowers and fountains in their cement "courts"; a Christian Science temple expensively classical; some art nouveau houses manifestly designed to be furnished in "Mission" style; and then an avenue of Georgian residences with French windows closed upon lawns wholly ornamental, planted with trees that were still young and spindly, and forbiddingly surrounded by high iron palings as sharp as the pikes of the Swiss Guards.

Wain's house was one of this aristocracy. It had distinguished itself with a porte-cochère and a conservatory, a conspicuous garage, two "Colorado blue spruces" at the gateway, and a flight of cement steps imposing enough for an entrance to a public museum.

Burns climbed them thoughtfully. In his duties as body-guard at presidentia