...Is he perchance the only guard on an empty floor full of secrets.

Yes! because no one should be there!

There is a central hallway with two doors, one on the left and one on the right.

He'll try the one on the left.

It isn't locked. There are two gargoyle statues flanking the door to the room and a small bust of a gargoyle on the bedside table.

The stone cracks, and he sees a mouth. The lips are pale, almost the color of the stone. The mouth has sharp teeth, like a shark’s, and a long prehensile tongue that must be a foot long. He can feel the warmth of its breath on his skin. It snarls at him angrily.

Don't! Like! That!

He jumps backward and then gets ahold of himself.

It spits something at Oswald; the honeylike substance barely misses.

Not getting poisoned or drugged or marked today, fucker!

He carefully makes his way back into the hallway, and then tries the other door.

Well as people who might come into the room go Oswald's the friendliest possible face, really. "I've looked through the desk but not at the books."

He heads for the shelves. "Anything useful so far?"

"Some accounts. You can hold onto them if you want."

The books are carefully organized by topic. Fiction ranges from classics to modern work but reflects exquisitely good taste. There's a variety of valuable history texts and rare books worth a middle-class salary, but no evidence of esoteric or occult titles.

The exception is what appears to be a rare copy of the Gateway to Godhead (which was banned by the Vatican and placed on the Index Librorum Prohibotorum in 1875). Inspection, however, reveals that it is only the dust jacket for that book, disguising a thin ledger describing an occult rite.

"...here's something."

He's also looking at the accounts, but he looks over. "...Oh, it certainly is."

Well. She can try slipping the occult book into her purse? She's not sure how much more room she has in her purse, but hey, it's not a big book.

"Bedroom's across the hall. There was a Mouth there when I left but who knows."

"Do you want to look again?"

"Yeah. I didn't actually manage to go in. It spat Nectar at me."

"Well, that's not great. Hardly surprising, I guess. I wonder if there's any way to... shield against it, or something."

"I've got... the rosary? Which isn't much of a shield. But it might ossify the thing."

"I wanted to see if it was temporary first, a lot of times they are."

"I thought that only worked if somebody'd done some kind of - ritual of self-denial over it, or something."

" - oh, this is the rosary you got from the gardener?"

"Yeah. It's been months, but--" he shrugs.

"Well. Maybe, then. I somehow doubt it'll be gone when you open the door. Maybe it'll be just what you need. I was kind of talking about a physical shield against the spit, though."

"Oh. Uh. My... jacket? Ugh, they're going to notice if part of my outfit just goes missing." He hates having a pseudo-uniform.

"Yeah, that's no good. I don't see any easily useable planks of wood sitting around, though. Maybe you'll just have to dodge it? It probably can't spit too many times one after another, right?"

"Well, it worked the last time." Without further ado they can head across the hall.