Nicky was about to open his lips; his eye caught a gesture of Tom’s. While leaning forward, chin on hand, elbow on knee, as if listening alertly, Tom was scratching his left ear absently. Cliff was folding his arms.
It was the secret sign-manual of their order—the Mystery Boys—by which Tom signified a call for a communication by gesture and Cliff, by folding his arms, indicated his agreement. Nicky folded his arms at the same instant, and then saw Tom grasp his coat lapel in his left hand.
That sign meant the third section of their secret oath—“Telling all, I tell nothing!”
Nicky clasped his hands on his knees, a sign that he agreed.
It all took place without apparent meaning and in a very brief time so that, although he made a sign of impatience, the tall man and his companion, leaning against the wall by the companionway, seemed to discern no hidden meaning in Nicky’s delayed answer.
“Come! Answer! Why were you among the islands?”
“I was trying to figure out why we were there,” Nicky replied, a candid look on his face. “You see, we had the ‘flu’ back at our school and we went to Jamaica to join this boy’s father—” he made a gesture toward Cliff and continued. “A young fellow was helping Cliff’s father collect old relics of the Indians and he brought us up to those islands in a sloop with a colored pilot—just for a lark on our part. I think he meant to get a canoe and maybe take us with him up the Harney River to the edge of the Everglades—or into them, to collect some things from the Seminoles.”
That was a part of Mr. Neale’s plan, if they did not find the treasure, or, perhaps, even if they did; so Nicky told the truth, though not all of it. Cliff unclasped his hands as if signifying that Nicky had done well.
“Si—yes, that is reasonable,” commented the tall man. “What then?”
Tom made no gesture, which Nicky correctly judged to mean that as long as he had told the man by the companionway about the can and the parchment he might as well repeat the story.