Jimmy’s nerves were always in pretty good order, but at the sight of this apparition he certainly jumped.
“Great Scot!” he said.
The curtain again became agitated by some unseen force, violently this time, and from its depths a plaintive voice made itself heard.
“Dash it all,” said the voice, “I’ve stuck!”
There was another upheaval, and his lordship emerged, his yellow locks ruffled and upstanding, his face crimson.
“Caught my head in a coat or something,” he explained at large. “Halloa, Pitt!”
Pressed rigid against the wall, Molly had listened with growing astonishment to the movements on the other side of the curtain. Her mystification deepened every moment. It seemed to her that the room was still in darkness. She could hear the sound of breathing; and then the light of the lantern caught her eye. Who could this be, and why had he not switched on the electric light?
She strained her ears to catch a sound. For a while she heard nothing except the soft breathing. Then came a voice that she knew well; and, abandoning her hiding-place, she came out into the room, and found Jimmy standing with a lamp in his hand over some dark object in the corner of the room.
It was a full minute after Jimmy’s first exclamation of surprise before either of them spoke again. The light of the lamp hurt Molly’s eyes. She put up a hand to shade them. It seemed to her that they had been standing like this for years.
Jimmy had not moved. There was something in his attitude which filled Molly with a vague fear. In the shadow behind the lamp he looked shapeless and inhuman.