“I can remember the occasion well,” old George continued, “because that night I was alarmed and startled by strange noises from the empty rooms upstairs, which I very naturally and properly concluded were caused——”
He stopped, and glancing fearfully about the room, went on in a lower tone.
“By certain spirits,” he whispered mysteriously, and pointed and leered first at one and then another of the occupants of the room.
There was something very eerie in the performance of the strange old man with the queerly-working face, and more than one hardened criminal present shivered a little.
Connor broke the silence that fell on the room.
“So that’s how it was done, eh? One held you in conversation while the other got upstairs and hid himself? Well, boys, you’ve heard the old man. What d’ye say?”
Vinnis shifted in his seat and turned his great unemotional face to where the old man stood, still fumbling with his hat and muttering to himself beneath his breath; in some strange region whither his poor wandering mind had taken him he was holding a conversation with an imaginary person. Connor could see his eyebrows working, and caught scraps of sentences, now in some strange dead tongue, now in the stilted English of the schoolmaster.
It was Vinnis who spoke for the assembled company.
“The old man knows a darned sight too much,” he said in his level tone. “I’m for——”
He did not finish his sentence. Connor took a swift survey of the men.