“That’s right,” John pressed the boy’s arm hard. “Dim light. That looks a little queer. Not a flashlight, too steady for that. Candle probably. Would you bring a candle to such a place if you had a right to be there?”
“Guess not,” said Jimmie, as a chill ran up his spine.
Just then some hoot owl in a pine let out a prodigious laughing hoot. Jimmie jumped. John laughed low.
“Nerves,” he whispered. “We all have ’em.”
“Come on,” he led the way in the dark. “The window to the right is almost covered by ivy and there’s a stone seat beneath it just high enough to stand on.”
One more breathless moment and they were at the window looking in. There were three men in the room, Jimmie could see that at once. Only two faces could be seen. The third was entirely in the shadows but his hands beneath the light could be seen plainly.
It was an unusual light, the stub of a candle with a small copper shade which fitted over it.
The hands of the man who could not be seen were unusual hands. Long, slender, white and flexible, they might belong to a writer, a musician, a painter, or a card-shark.
The hands were doing strange things. They were disappearing, one at a time, and coming back into the light bringing each time probably from a pocket, something resembling a large egg.
“May be real eggs,” Jimmie thought. “Blown eggs of some rare bird.”