The night was so dark that Tom could easily approach the house, though he kept a keen lookout against running unexpectedly into anyone. Cautiously he surveyed the house from all sides. The two lower floors were in darkness and had a closed-up appearance. Through one of the rear attic windows, however, a bright light shone and the sash was raised.
“Sanderson, Don Emilio and some of the others may be meeting up there,” thought Halstead with a sudden thrill of wonder. “Oh, if I can only find a way to get up there and listen!”
As he stood, well in the shadow of a carriage shed, staring up at that lighted window, a hum of low voices came to his ears.
“Gracious!” muttered the young skipper, stepping further back into the shadow. “There’s crowd enough down here on the ground.”
On came a group of men, trudging like laborers going to their toil. Dark as the night was, not one of them carried a lantern. From their course it looked as though they came up from the shore. In his eagerness Tom bent forward more, that he might scan them. His eyes were keen-sighted in the dark.
“There’s Don Emilio,” Halstead told himself. “I’d know him by his size and his walk. And there’s Jonas French. There’s the little brown chap, I think, who helped to capture Joe the other night. And that stooping figure at the rear is Sanderson. But there are four others.”
“I am not used to this hard work, but I will do all I can,” Tom heard Don Emilio complain, as the group stopped before one of the larger outbuildings, while Sanderson drew out a key and unfastened a padlock.
“Whew!” Tom Halstead thrilled more intensely than before when he saw the men come out of the other building, two and two, each pair carrying a long box. “This must be one of their big nights. Yet what on earth is up?”
He was destined, soon, to be able to make a good guess.