tread, light or
heavy, in the room above--absolute silence everywhere. Besides locking
and bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which
I had found under the bed. To remove this chest (my blood ran cold as
I thought of what its contents _might_ be!) without making some
disturbance was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through
the house, now barred up for the night, was sheer insanity. Only one
chance was left me--the window. I stole to it on tiptoe.

My bedroom was on the first floor, above an _entresol,_ and looked into
a back street, which you have sketched in your view. I raised my hand
to open the window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest
hair-breadth, my chance of safety. They keep vigilant watch in a House
of Murder. If any part of the frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was
a lost man! It must have occupied me at least five minutes, reckoning
by time--five _hours,_ reckoning by suspense--to open that window. I
succeeded in doing it silently--in doing it with all the dexterity of
a house-breaker--and then looked down into the street. To leap the
distance beneath me would be almost certain destruction! Next, I
looked round at the sides of the house. Down the left side ran a thick
water-pipe which you have drawn--it passed close by the outer edge of
the window. The moment I saw the pipe I knew I was saved. My breath came
and went freely for the first time since I had seen the canopy of the
bed moving down upon me!

To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed
difficult and dangerous enough--to _me_ the prospect of slipping down
the pipe into the street did not suggest even a thought of peril. I had
always been accustomed, by the practice of gymnastics, to keep up my
school-boy powers as a daring and expert climber; and knew that my head,
hands, and feet would serve me faithfully in any hazards of ascent
or descent. I had already got one leg over the window-sill, when I
remembered the handkerchief filled with money under my pillow. I
could well have afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully
determined that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their
plunder as well as their victim. So I went back to the bed and tied the
heavy handkerchief at my back by my cravat.

Just as I had made it tight and fixed it in a comfortable place, I
thought I heard a sound of breathing outside the door. The chill feeling
of horro