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Hmm ... well, if you go back to the looking glass, the first floor equivalent of the door across the hall lead to the gallery, while the first floor equivalent of the door to your right lead to an office. If all of the walls continue to be built more or less right on top of the ones below through the entire floor, then that means the room behind the door across the hall is going to be larger, much larger than the room behind the door to your right. From there, it is simply a matter of playing the stakes; if there are Family Patents here - and may the Maker grant you Mercy if there aren't - then with all other things being held equal, you are more likely to find them in a larger room. Moreover, you have to figure that a larger room is more likely to be a library or archive or ... whatever the proper word is. Not wanting to spend any more of your already thrice-spent time, you hold your 'stick-decanter aloft, and with long, confident but still soft strides you close the distance.
You pull at the door, and it swings freely - to reveal a second door, barred, of steel or cast iron. The sight of it is so unexpected - and so unwelcome to a practicing thief - that you actually let slip a throttled gasp. Once you recovered and assured yourself that the unexpected exclamation has engendered any response, you bring your self to try the door. It is as you had feared; the door is locked. But of course, you don't spend the talents on a door like this and not lock it. You are sorely tempted to kick the damned thing, until you recall that you are just wearing footwraps ... and you manage to see what lies beyond the bars. Bookshelves, rows and rows of them. You are looking at them in profile, but even so, you can see that they are not empty as they were in the other room. The water in the decanter half of the 'stick-decanter shifts its weight, back and forth. You definitely have enough to perform an Ice-Lockpick on this keyway ... but you don't know how long the bondsman and the Guards are going to be, nor do you know what they will think if they find a puddle of water around the lock. You suppose you could try looking for another way in - after all, there is a lot of this house that you haven't seen yet - but you have to imagine that if there is another way in, it is going to be similarly secured. That said, if it was out of the way, perhaps a puddle of water might go unnoticed long enough to dry. Or if you could accept Estranging something else, then you could wipe up the puddle. Or just accept that if a puddle is found, no one is going to assume that the lock was picked ... unless of course, the door that was left locked is now unlocked. But what in the Heights of Hell can you do about that? Pick the lock closed behind you?
Actually, you could do that ... but if you should, well, that ... oh damn it. You can barely think straight, and you have to work your way through all of these stupid questions ...
