because I cannot bear you to think of me as you do, I
will prove that I am not the hypocrite and the liar you think me. You
will not trust me, but I will trust you."

I looked up into her eyes, and knew a pagan joy when they faltered
before my searching gaze. She threw herself upon her knees beside me,
and the faint exquisite perfume inseparable from my memories of her,
became perceptible, and seemed as of old to intoxicate me. The lock
clicked... and I was free.

Karamaneh rose swiftly to her feet as I stood upright and outstretched
my cramped arms. For one delirious moment her bewitching face was close
to mine, and the dictates of madness almost ruled; but I clenched my
teeth and turned sharply aside. I could not trust myself to speak.

With Fu-Manchu's marmoset again gamboling before us, she walked through
the curtained doorway into the room beyond. It was in darkness, but
I could see the slave-girl in front of me, a slim silhouette, as she
walked to a screened window, and, opening the screen in the manner of a
folding door, also threw up the window.

"Look!" she whispered.

I crept forward and stood beside her. I found myself looking down into
Museum Street from a first-floor window! Belated traffic still passed
along New Oxford Street on the left, but not a solitary figure was
visible to the right, as far as I could see, and that was nearly to the
railings of the Museum. Immediately opposite, in one of the flats which
I had noticed earlier in the evening, another window was opened. I
turned, and in the reflected light saw that Karamaneh held a cord in her
hand. Our eyes met in the semi-darkness.

She began to haul the cord into the window, and, looking upward, I
perceived that it was looped in some way over the telegraph cables which
crossed the street at that point. It was a slender cord, and it appeared
to be passed across a joint in the cables almost immediately above the
center of the roadway. As it was hauled in, a second and stronger line
attached to it was pulled, in turn, over the cables, and thence in by
the window. Karamaneh twisted a length of it around a metal bracket
fastened in the wall, and placed a light wooden crossbar in my hand.

"Make sure that there is no one in the street," she said, craning out
and looking to right and left, "then swing across. The length of the
rope is just sufficient to enable you to swing through the open window
opposite, and there is a mattress inside to drop upon.