Drake’s Wardour Street house is a fortified, secretive residence where Kelso Drake holds Dorothy Keeble and keeps a Keeble box, while an alien spacecraft occupies the great hall at its center. Its concealed approaches and shadowed rooms make the house a site of confinement and covert movement; its immense central space, by contrast, becomes the setting for Langdon St. Ives’s discovery and uncontrolled flight in the ship.

Setting and Hidden Approaches

The house stands on Wardour Street, but its access is not limited to the visible street entrance. Billy Deener and an accomplice use an opening in a cellar wall to enter the upper level of the Kermit Street sewer, then make their way underground toward the house. The breach lies in a cellar wall roughly three feet thick, where old brickwork has deteriorated under the sewer’s persistent damp. Their route runs over rotten planks and through low, difficult passages; they look for a mark that will signal their arrival at the house. The underground approach turns the city’s neglected infrastructure into a clandestine passage between street crime and Drake’s hidden domestic world.

The sewer is itself a place where concealment has accumulated over time. Its sinking ground has formed pools that hinder maintenance, and bodies left there with Deener’s help may later be carried into the Thames River during high water and treated as drownings. This history gives the route a grim practical significance: the passage is not merely an entrance but part of a wider system used to hide evidence. Deener’s knowledge of it makes the house reachable by people who need to avoid ordinary scrutiny.

Interior and Occupants

The house’s interior is organized around spaces that conceal as much as they reveal. During the rescue, Langdon St. Ives and William Keeble enter by the sewer and find themselves on the second floor of a dim hallway. The atmosphere is unusually still; activity below suggests that other people are present, while the muted voices and noise from the kitchen make it difficult to know who is where. Winnifred Keeble has entered separately in the disguise of a washerwoman, taking a route through the back door. The rescuers must move carefully, uncertain which door might expose them or lead to danger.

The rooms also distribute the house’s secrets vertically. Dorothy is believed to be on the third floor, guarded by Drake’s men, while the second-floor corridor offers no certainty about what lies behind its doors. A great open hall extends through the building, with a balustrade overlooking it from above. From there, St. Ives can see the spacecraft below and later observe Drake in the hall. The house thus combines ordinary domestic divisions—rooms, corridors, a kitchen—with an unusually large central space that gives its owner room to display and protect the vessel.

The house’s inhabitants and intruders encounter it under sharply different conditions. For Dorothy, it is the place where she is held; for Drake, it is a controlled base from which he can move between private rooms and the street. St. Ives and Keeble enter as rescuers, unsure of the layout and alert to the danger of opening the wrong door. The interior’s secrecy is therefore not simply architectural: it determines who can move freely and who must proceed cautiously.

Rescue and the Box

The rescue party’s immediate objective is to find Dorothy and get her out. A sob from a room prompts Keeble to call to her, and the reunited Keebles escort her toward the street. She is bewildered and drugged, so William carries her as the group hurries to leave. While they descend, St. Ives stays behind and moves toward the upper landing, avoiding a confrontation with the house’s occupants.

The house also contains objects tied to the competing plans around it. St. Ives sees Drake enter the great hall with a leather bag, struggle with its clasp, and then force it open. Drake removes a Keeble box from a mirrored buffet, puts it in the bag, and leaves. The episode shows the box being kept inside the residence and Drake departing with it even as the rescue is underway. The house therefore holds both a captive and an object sought by several parties, but the two are not recovered together: Dorothy is taken out by the Keebles, while Drake carries the box away.

The Ship and the House’s Transformation

After the others leave, St. Ives turns his attention to the spacecraft in the center of the hall. Its unusual appearance has led him to wonder what Drake intends to do with it; from above, its presence is part of the house’s mystery. In the hall, St. Ives recognizes a family resemblance between this vessel and his own spacecraft, despite their distant origins. He opens the curtains, admitting midafternoon light into a room that appears to have been kept dim, and then begins working the ship’s controls.

The house’s apparent control quickly breaks down. Ghouls attempt to restrain the craft by tying it to furniture, but St. Ives finds a button that spins the vessel and then presses a succession of others. The ship shudders, slides across the floor, and rises through the window in a burst that tears through the surrounding glass and climbing vines. It carries a chair and a dangling ghoul with it. St. Ives cannot steady the vessel; it tumbles above the city and heads south and west, apparently toward the Channel. The launch changes the house from a hidden enclosure into the point of departure for an uncontrolled flight, leaving Drake’s private stronghold behind while its most extraordinary possession escapes.