the lock and I realized that I was a prisoner. I heard the woman's
footfalls die away down the corridor.

That distant clock cleaved the silence of the night with twelve
ponderous strokes. Then the chimes played a pretty jingling little tune
that rang out clearly in the still, rain-washed air.

I stood petrified and reflected on my next move.

Twelve o'clock! I had eight hours' grace before Stelze, the man of
mystery and might, arrived to unmask me and hand me over to the tender
mercies of Madame and of Karl. Before eight o'clock arrived I must--so I
summed up my position--be clear of the hotel and in the train for the
German frontier--if I could get a train--else I must be out of
Rotterdam, by that hour.

But I must _act_ and act without delay. There was no knowing when that
dead man lying on the floor might procure me another visit from Madame
and her myrmidons. The sooner I was out of that house of death the
better.

The door was solid; the lock was strong. That I discovered without any
trouble. In any case, I reflected, the front-door of the hotel would be
barred and bolted at this hour of the night, and I could scarcely dare
hope to escape by the front without detection, even if Karl were not
actually in the entrance hall. There must be a back entrance to the
hotel, I thought, for I had seen that the windows of my room opened on
to the narrow street lining the canal which ran at the back of the
house.

Escape by the windows was impossible. The front of the house dropped
sheer down and there was nothing to give one a foothold. But I
remembered the window in the _cabinet de toilette_ giving on to the
little air-shaft. That seemed to offer a slender chance of escape.

For the second time that night I opened the casement and inhaled the
fetid odours arising from the narrow court. All the windows looking,
like mine, upon the air-shaft were shrouded in darkness; only a light
still burned in the window beneath the grating with the iron stair to
the little yard. What was at the foot of the stair I could not descry,
but I thought I could recognize the outline of a door.

From the window of the _cabinet de toilette_ to the yard the sides of
the house, cased in stained and dirty stucco, fell sheer away. Measured
with the eye the drop from window to the pavement was about fifty feet.
With a rope and something to break one's fall, it might, I fancied, be
managed....

From that on, things moved swiftly. First with my