I could imagine from the speaker’s quick inquiry that he was licking his lips. The tone of his voice suggested it.
“I almost wish I hadn’t,” grumbled Scoop.
“You run into my stair trap,” the old man told us, with a kind of smug grin on his thin face, when he had joined us at the foot of the stairs, having lighted his way down with a candle.
I saw right off what he meant. He had fixed a string on the stairs, connected to the hinged board and the balanced pan. In the darkness Scoop had stepped on the string without knowing that it was there, springing the trap and thereby sounding the alarm of our presence in the enemy’s territory.
The old man held out his hand, rubbing his thumb and fingers. [[87]]
“Well,” he said, as a hint for us to hurry up and give him his money.
“You must have something up there,” said Scoop, pointing up the stairs, “that you don’t want us to see.”
“What I’ve got up there,” came the quick, sharp response, “you hain’t goin’ to see. An’ if you know what’s good fur you, you’ll keep away from here nights after this.”
He stuck his candle on a beam and counted the money that we gave him. In the flickering light he made a queer picture. There was something about him that gave me the shivers.
What was his secret? What was he doing upstairs that should require him to set a stair trap so that he would be warned of our near-by presence in case we came into the mill?