Part 47 (1/2)

'Hallo!' he cried. 'Where are you, my friend?'

'Here,' I answered, from the head of the stairs.

As he advanced, I came out of the darkness to meet him, staggering under the bundle of pallets which I had seen lying by the stair-head.

He whistled.

'What are you going to do with those?' he said.

'By your leave, I want this rope,' I answered.

'What will you do with it?' he asked soberly. He was one of those even-tempered men to whom excitement, irritation, fear, are all foreign.

'Make a loop and throw it over the little pinnacle on the top of yonder dormer,' I answered briefly, 'and use it for a hand-rail.'

'Can you throw it over?'

'I think so.'

'The pinnacle will hold?'

'I hope so.'

He shrugged his shoulders, and stood for a moment staring at me as I unwound the rope and formed a noose. At length: 'But the noise, my friend?' he said. 'If you miss the first time, and the second, the rope falling and sliding over the tiles will give the alarm.'

'Two cats ran along the ridge a while ago,' I answered. 'Once, and, perhaps, twice, the noise will be set down to them. The third time I must succeed.'

I thought it likely that he would forbid the attempt; but he did not.

On the contrary, he silently took hold of my belt, that I might lean out the farther and use my hands with greater freedom. Against the window I placed the bundle of pallets; setting one foot on them and the other heel on the pipe outside, I found I could whirl the loop with some chance of success.

Still, it was an anxious moment. As I craned over the dark street and, poising myself, fixed my eyes on the black, slender spirelet which surmounted the neighbouring window, I felt a shudder more than once run through me. I shrank from looking down. At last I threw: the rope fell short. Luckily it dropped clear of the window, and came home again against the wall below me, and so made no noise. The second time I threw with better heart; but I had the same fortune, except that I nearly overbalanced myself, and, for a moment, shut my eyes in terror.

The third time, letting out a little more rope, I struck the pinnacle, but below the k.n.o.b. The rope fell on the tiles, and slid down them with some noise, and for a full minute I stood motionless, half inside the room and half outside, expecting each instant to see a head thrust out of the other window. But no one appeared, no one spoke, though the light was still obscured at intervals; and presently I took courage to make a fourth attempt. I flung, and this time the rope fell with a dull thud on the tiles, and stopped there: the noose was round the pinnacle.

Gently I drew it tight, and then, letting it hang, I slipped back into the room, where we had before taken the precaution to put out the light. Herr Krapp asked me in a whisper if the rope was fast.

'Yes,' I said. 'I must secure this end to something.'

He pa.s.sed it round the hinge of the left-hand shutter and made it safe. Then for a moment we stood together in the darkness.

'All right?' he said.

'All right,' I answered hoa.r.s.ely.

The next moment the thing was done. I was outside, the rope in my hands, my feet on the bending pipe, the cool night air round my temples--below me, sheer giddiness, dancing lights, and blackness. For the moment I tottered. I balanced myself where I stood, and clung to the rope, shutting my eyes. If the pinnacle had given way then, I must have fallen like a plummet and been killed. One crash against the wall below, one grip at the rope as it tore its way through my fingers--and an end!

But the pinnacle held, and in a few seconds I gained wit and courage.

One step, then another, and then a third, taken warily, along the pipe, as I have seen rope-walkers take them at Heritzburg fair, and I was almost within reach of my goal. Two more, and, stooping, I could touch, with my right hand, the tiles of the little gable, while my left, raised above my head, still clutched the rope.

Then came an anxious moment. I had to pa.s.s under the rope, which was between me and the street, and between me and the window also--the window, my goal. I did it; but in my new position I found a new difficulty, and a grim one, confronting me. Standing outside the rope now, with my right hand clinging to it, I could not, with all my stretching, reach with my other hand any part of the window, or anything of which I could get a firm grip. The smooth tiles and crumbling mortar of the little gable gave no hold, while the rope, my grip on which I dared not for my life relax, prevented me stooping sufficiently to reach the sill or the window-case.