“Gee, there’s nothing to it!” he murmured, drawing back and gazing up at the narrow opening through which the faint sounds evidently came. “I must get up there and have one look, at least. I then could hear, too, all that may be said. I’ll take a chance with these bars, by thunder, let come what may.”
Grasping two of them, Patsy found that they were firmly fixed in the stonework. Drawing himself up until he could place his feet on the stone sill, which was about four feet from the ground, he then stood erect and found that his eyes came directly opposite the opening at the top of the window.
Pressing nearer, still clutching the bars in order to maintain his position, with his sturdy figure outlined like a black silhouette against the lighted curtain, Patsy gazed cautiously into the room, with ears alert to catch every word that was uttered.
The room, like the exterior of the house, presented an appearance of remarkable solidarity. Huge timbers supported the dark oak ceiling, smoke-begrimed and defaced with age.
Two of the wainscoted walls were flanked with deep shelves, filled with bottles, vials, jugs, carboys, and no end of paraphernalia required in a chemist’s laboratory.
A zinc-covered table occupied one side of the room. It was littered with like articles. A Bunsen burner was in operation under a retort held in a tripod, and in which[Pg 23] a dark fluid was bubbling furiously, while drops of distillation fell slowly from the end of a metal coil into a vial placed to receive them.
All this was visible in the white light from several electric lamps, as were the faces and figures of the three occupants of the spacious room, which obviously was a chemist’s laboratory.
One was a gaunt, angular man of nearly sixty, with a wrinkled, hard-featured face, thin lips, and a square jaw, a hooked nose and sunken eyes, that gleamed and glittered venomously in their cavernous sockets.
It was, plainly enough, the face of a man whose life had been a continuous round, not of enjoyments, but of disappointments, until his nature had soured and his soul rebelled, and early ambition died from his calloused heart.
Another was a woman of about the same age and of much the same aspect, as if she had been the partner of his vain hopes and consequent woes, as indeed she had. Both were cheaply and carelessly clad, bordering close upon slovenly. They were seated on common wooden chairs near the zinc-covered table.