"Fool! The house may be watched. Why do you shrink from me? Are you afraid?"
"No." But the speaker's lips and face are white. "Can we not have a light?"
"Not here. I have matches and a candle with me. There is a screen in the office--here is the door--step in, softly, softly! Now, help me move the screen before the window. Come, ghost, spectre, or vision, show yourself!"
"For God's sake, stop!"
"Coward! Ah, that lightning flash! And now the thunder! Listen to the rain. It is a deluge."
They stoop and light the candle, crouching by the writing-table.
"Keep the light near the ground. The window is masked, but if the candle is raised its glimmer might be seen from the Square. Move this way. Nearer to this dumb image of wax in its hooded chair. It would be a rare achievement to breathe life into it, to compel it to speak, and reveal where the treasure we seek is hidden."
So low are their voices that it would be impossible for any person acquainted with the speakers to recognise them by that sound. They are standing at the back of the hooded chair, and the waxwork figure of the Chinaman, with its fixed and pallid face, stares straight at vacancy.
"Speak!" whispers the bolder of the two, in savage derision, and shakes the chair--so violently that the Charles the Second cane it holds in its hand slips and falls to the ground.
"I recall a story," he continues, picking up the stick, and still in a whispered voice, "of a treasure of great value being concealed for generations in a cane like this. If this were hollow it could be used for just such a purpose. What are these protuberances round the rim? Hold the light closer, closer! A circlet of old English letters."