"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. "Hullo, Pitt!"
Pressed rigidly 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 torch caught her eye. Who could this be, and why had he not switched on the regular room lights?
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 the torch 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 torch 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 that filled Molly with a vague fear. In the shadow behind the torch, he looked shapeless and inhuman.
"You're hurting my eyes," she said, at last.
"I'm sorry," said Jimmy. "I didn't think. Is that better?" He turned the light from her face. Something in his voice and the apologetic haste with which he moved the torch seemed to relax the strain of the situation. The feeling of stunned surprise began to leave her. She found herself thinking coherently again.
The relief was but momentary. Why was Jimmy in the room at that time? Why had he a torch? What had he been doing? The questions shot from her brain like sparks from an anvil.