a noise?
This seemed the only course.

He crept from his hiding-place, stole to the door, listened: all was
silent. Then he tiptoed along the landing until he came to the dark
passage at the end. It ran across the breadth of the house. He went
along it, past a closed door which might be the door of Minghal Khan's
bedroom, and reached a staircase. Without doubt this would bring him to
the back door. He went down, passed the kitchens, which were in
darkness, and came to a door which a rapid inspection assured him was
neither bolted nor locked. Opening it just enough to allow him to
squeeze through, he gently closed it behind him, and found himself in a
walled-in garden, with a circular fountain in the middle. A colonnade
ran along three sides of it, supported on slender pillars. There was a
door on the fourth side, but this he soon proved to be securely locked.
It was an easy matter to swarm up one of the pillars, climb the roof of
the colonnade, and from that gain the top of the wall a little below.
Then dropping on the outer side he alighted in a narrow lane. It was
pitch dark; he could not see his way, and knew not whether to turn to
the right hand or to the left; but choosing the left at random, he
groped his way along, through puddles and heaps of ill-smelling refuse,
following the erratic windings of the lane until he came, as he had
hoped, to the street in which the house was situated. Here he got a
little light from a few smoky oil-lamps that hung at irregular intervals
from brackets on the walls. From the sounds he heard before him he
guessed that the street led into the Chandni Chauk, and in less than a
minute he came to that thoroughfare. There were many people about;
though the gates of the city were shut, the hour was not yet late; and
he judged from the laughter proceeding from many half-open doors that
some of Bakht Khan's soldiers were being entertained by the residents.

He walked slowly, and no one paid him any attention. Should he go at
once to the walls, he asked himself, and try to find some way of
quitting the city? He bethought himself of his goods in the serai. If he
left them, without any word of explanation, the bhatiyara might become
suspicious. Even if that gave rise to no immediate danger, he thought it
unwise to make any difficulties for himself when he should return to the
city, as no doubt he would do. So he went back to the serai, and told
the keeper that he had met an old acquaintance (