e 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 practise of gymnastics, to keep up my
schoolboy 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 horror ran through me again as I listened. No! dead silence still in
the passage--I had only heard the night air blowing softly into the
room. The next moment I was on the window-sill--and the next I had a
firm grip on the water-pipe with my hands and knees.

I slid down into the street easily and quietly, as I thought I should,
and immediately set off at the top of my speed to a branch "Prefecture"
of Police, which I knew was situated in the immediate neighbourhood. A
"Sub-prefect," and several picked men among his subordinates, happened
to be up, maturing, I believe, some scheme for discovering the
perpetrator of a mysterious murder which all Paris was talking of just
then. When I began my story, in a breathless hurry and in very bad
French, I could see that the Sub-prefect suspected me of being a drunken
Englishman who had robbed somebody; but he soon altered his opinion as I
went on, and before I had anything like concluded, he shoved all the
papers before him into a drawer, put on his hat, supplied me with
another (for I was bareheaded), ordered a file of soldiers, desired his
expert followers to get ready all sorts of tools for breaking open doors
and ripping up brick flooring, and took my arm, in the most friendly and
familiar manner possible, to lead me with him out of the house. I will
venture to say that when the Sub-prefect was a little boy, and was taken
for the first tim