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.
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