Jimgrim by Talbot Mundy

We entered a long, narrow room, roughly beamed, with two small windows on the northern side, through which there was a view of snow-topped mountains. Across the full width of the western end there was a platform, about three feet high, untidily loaded with Eastern rugs, and on a heap of those sat Dorje, cross-legged, leaning back against a pile of cushions. He took almost no notice of us when a man in leather closed the door behind us -- one glance under heavy eyelids and then attention again to a box-like instrument in front of him, as if he were playing chess and studying the next few moves ahead. To right and left of him, lolling but looking insolently capable of violence, were eight men.

Grim, dressed as when I last saw him, sat on a rug on the floor with his back to the wall near a hearth on which a dozen sticks are burning. Grim smiled, nodded, then resumed his far-away stare through one of the windows. He, too, might have been playing chess; his right hand moved at intervals as if he hesitated which line of attack to develop. Jeff sat opposite to Grim, and it was several minutes before I guessed that the movements of Grim's right hand were signals which Jeff was reading while he pretended to stare at the fire. Chullunder Ghose, near Jeff, was studying the signals too.