The castle was built foursquare, as college buildings, about a great courtyard. Its roof was flat and paved and so made a spacious rampart, which the battlements fenced upon one hand and a massive balustrade upon the other.
Indeed, standing there in the starlight, we seemed to be upon some ectype of the walls of Babylon, upon which, if I rightly remember, six chariots could be driven abreast.
Peering between the balusters, I could see the ripple of the water of which the bookseller had written and could hear it fall out of the basin on its way to the terrace and the cliff.
Now the basin was our first objective: and, since a rope provides the most silent path, we let one fall to the courtyard, and Carson and I went down.
We gained the basin and passed to the channel it fed. This was ten inches deep, and its floor was as smooth as glass. I followed the channel along till I came to the arch. This was shut by a gate, beneath which the water flowed. The gate was of iron and exactly fitted the arch: a man might have lain in the channel and crawled underneath, but, no doubt to foil such cunning, the channel was barred with a grating, through which the water fussed. I tested the bars and found them firm as rock.
I made my way back to Carson, and together we sought the rope down which we had come. Upon this Carson pulled twice, when a hundredweight of fine rope was lowered into our arms. We carried this to the grating and laid it down. To its end were attached three floats weighted with lead. With these in my hand, I thrust my arm under the grating as far as I could. Then I released them, and Carson paid out the rope. Now if there was another grating, this would arrest the floats: but, if there was not, the floats would leap with the water and carry the rope down the cliff. With a hand on the sliding rope, I waited for the check. But none came: only a sudden pull told us that the floats had leapt. There were eight hundred feet of cord, and, when we had paid them all out, we returned for more. Six hundred feet more we lowered, and that was as much as we had. The end we made fast to the grating below the water line. Then we went back to the rope down which we had come, and at a signal the others pulled us up.
Whatever the night might bring forth, we had taken at least one trick; for, though this time we might fail to release Adèle, we had now a way up to the terrace which the enemy would not dream of and a desperate man might take.
We were now beneath the shadow of the tower to the right of the gateway as you came from the wood: the southwest tower, from which Adèle had signalled, lay the length of the castle away.
So far as we knew, there were two ways into that tower from the open air—one by the roof and another by the steps from the terrace upon which we had seen Adèle. The windows which lighted the tower were not to be reached, and the conical roof of the tower gave us no hope. And, since the way by the roof was plainly the first to try, we began to steal over the pavement, one by one.
Mansel went first: the rest of us followed, at one-minute intervals. Only Rowley stood fast, with a signal cord in each hand.
I had gone most of the way, when I felt a hand on my arm.
At once I stopped, and Hanbury, who was before me, spoke in my ear.
“There’s an alarm-cord, knee-high, two paces from where you stand. Tell Carson and then come on.”
He left me to wait for Carson and disappeared.
I was desperately afraid of fouling the cord, so I went on my stomach until the danger was past. I afterwards found that the others had done the same.
Mansel and Hanbury were waiting, when I came to the tower. And, as we had expected, there was a door. …
The door was of wood, very massive and studded with iron. It was shut and locked, or bolted, upon the other side. Whether we could have forced it, I do not know: but Jack Sheppard himself could not have had it open without making noise enough to awaken the dead.
And there, of course, was our principal handicap.
The door of Adèle’s apartment was sure to be locked; but that we were ready to force, no matter what noise we made: until, however, we were standing without her door, we dared make no manner of sound, for, the instant the alarm was raised, Rose Noble was certain to fly to his prisoner’s side and, if he was there before us, to put her life in the balance against our further advance.
There was nothing to be done but to try the terrace steps.
In silence we passed to the battlements, and from there looked down upon the terrace and the sliding ribbon of water that cut it in two. It was quieter here than in the courtyard, where the four walls gave back sound; the steady rustle of the cascade was only just to be heard.
In a moment a rope was dangling, and Mansel and George went down.
That the steps would offer an entrance we had great hope, for the bookseller’s guide had said nothing of any door, but only that the steps led out of the “gallery of stone.”
Carson and I stood like statues, he holding the signal cord and I with the rope in my hand.
Two gentle pulls from below told us to take the strain, and a moment later Hanbury was by our side.
He put his lips to
