"Hurry," Stoddard said. "Over here, quickly!"
I stumbled across the board spacings until I was standing beside Stoddard and peering up at what the beam of his flashlight revealed on the ceiling—a ragged, open hole, which he'd made by tearing several coatings of insulation from the spot.
For a minute, I couldn't make out anything in that flash beam glare. Stoddard had hold of my arm, and was saying one word over and over, urgently.
"Look. Look. Look!"
Then my eyes got adjusted to the light change, and I was aware that I was gazing up into the interior of the crazy belfry atop the monstrous house. Gazing up into the interior, while voices, quite loud and clearly distinguishable, were talking in a language which I didn't recognize immediately. As far as my vision was concerned, I might as well have been looking at a sort of grayish vaporish screen of some sort, that was all I saw.
"Shhhh!" Stoddard hissed now. "Don't say a word. Just listen to them!"
I held my breath, although it wasn't necessary. As I said, the voices coming down from that belfry were audible enough to have been a scant ten or twelve feet away. But I held my breath anyway, meanwhile straining my eyes to pierce that gray screen of vapor on which the light was focused.
And then I got it. The voices were talking in German, two of them, both harsh, masculine.
"What in the hell," I began. "Is there a short wave set up there or—"
Stoddard cut me off. "Can't you see it yet?" he hissed.