Anything seemed possible here

[17] More than twelve feet wide, paved with limestone tiles featured through most of the main floor of the house, this hall was graced by softly colored contemporary Persian carpets. High-quality French antiques—all from the Empire period, and including the late-Empire style called Biedermeier—furnished the long space: chairs, chests, a desk, a sideboard. Even with furniture to both sides, Ethan could have driven a car through the hall without grazing a single antique. He might have enjoyed driving a car through the hall if he would not have had to explain himself to Mrs. McBee afterward. During the invigorating hike to the library, he encountered two uniformed maids and a porter with whom he exchanged greetings. Because he occupied what Mrs. McBee defined as an executive position on the staff, he referred to these fellow workers by their first names, but they called him Mr. Truman. Prior to each new employee’s first day on the job, Mrs. McBee provided a ring-bound notebook titled Standards and Practices, which she herself had composed and assembled. Woe be to the benighted soul who did not memorize its contents and perform always according to its directions. The library floor was walnut, stained a dark warm reddish-brown. Here the Persian carpets were antiques that appreciated in value far faster than the blue-chip stocks of the country’s finest companies. Club chairs in comfortable seating arrangements alternated with mazes of mahogany shelves that held over thirty-six thousand volumes. Some of the books were shelved on a second level served by a six-foot-wide catwalk that could be reached by an open staircase with an elaborate gilded-iron railing. If you didn’t look up at the ceiling to help you define the true size of the enormous chamber, you might succumb to the illusion that it went on forever. Maybe it did. Anything seemed possible here.