“No,” gasped Gwendoline, “only the window. Father’s room is next to hers, but that’s always locked.”
“Which is his?” asked Rollison.
She pointed towards the right, and then called her stepmother’s name again, but there was no response. A maid came hurrying along, greatly alarmed, and up the stairs ran a white-haired man, the butler, followed by a younger man whom Rollison had not seen before.
Rollison pushed past the maid and reached the door on the left of Hilda’s bedroom. It was ajar. He entered a small sitting-room, hurried across it, opened the window and looked out. It was a long drop to the ground, but there were window-ledges and cornices on which he could stand and get a grip.
He climbed out as Gwendoline came in with the butler and the maid close behind her.
“Put a ladder beneath Hilda’s window,” Rollison called.
He was clinging to the window sill with both hands, his head and shoulders above the level of the sill. He touched the top of the window below with his feet, let it take his weight, and then measured the distance to the next window—one which looked too small for Hilda’s room but might be a bathroom or dressing-room. There would be no great difficulty in getting to that, nor from it to the next room. He caught a glimpse of Renfrew behind Gwendoline, as he leaned sideways. He kept one hand on the sill—and, as he was groping for a hold on the next window ledge, he felt a sharp pain in the hand with which he was keeping his balance, a pain so sharp and so unexpected that he released his hold.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ROLLISON toppled backwards.
He had no grip with either hand, but he was standing on the ledge below; but for that he would have fallen without a chance of recovery. He tried to sway forward and grasped at a ledge, but it slipped from the tips of his fingers. By then he was almost upright, and his feet were still on the ledge; so he leapt backwards, in the hope of falling on his feet.
There was a lawn, with a stone path criss-crossing it, immediately beneath him.
He hit the lawn with his heels and pitched backwards. The back of his head struck the lawn, not two inches from the path, and the pain shot across his head, so violent that he gasped aloud. He felt a queer whirring sound in his head as his senses reeled. He was incapable of conscious effort, but instinctively tried to sit up, only to fail and to collapse again.
Out of the dimness and the growing darkness, he heard a voice.
“Don’t move, Guv’nor, don’t move, yer ruddy fool!” A hand pressed his shoulder to the grass, and then he was conscious of fingers touching his head. He felt no great pain. After a pause, the same voice came again. “Well, nothing’s broke, anyway.”
Someone else spoke. Rollison thought it was Gwendoline, but he did not know for certain. He felt himself being lifted to a sitting position, and there seemed to be nothing but voices and people crowding about him. He opened his eyes, and could see the people vaguely: two men in uniform, Gwendoline, the old butler and the younger man, who was putting a ladder beneath a window. There were other men in plain clothes. It dawned on him that the police had arrived.
A stocky man bent over him and he heard a gruff voice say:
“You can’t keep out of trouble, can you?”
It was Cray, the police-surgeon.
“Fell right on “is ‘ead, ‘e did,” said the man who had first spoken, and Rollison recognized the driver of his taxi.
“Head, eh?” said Cray. “All right, Rollison, I won’t hurt.” His fingers pressed Rollison’s cranium. “Now—feel anything?” Rollison shook his head and the pressure moved to another spot. “Anything there? . . . Or there? . . . What about that?”
Rollison drew in his breath and forced himself to speak.
“I’m—all—right. Get into—Hilda’s—room.”
“Hilda?” echoed Cray, and looked up at one of the plainclothes men, an inspector from Scotland Yard.
“He means Mrs. Barrington-Ley, sir,” said the butler, out of breath.
The Inspector and others turned, and, as Rollison sat up, supported by the taxi driver who was on his knees behind him, he saw a policeman start to climb the ladder. A little comedy was enacted then, when the Inspector pulled at the man’s coat and told him to come down, then began to go up first.
“Take it easy, man,” said Cray, still standing in front of Rollison. “They’ll do what they can.”
“Help me up,” said Rollison.
“You’ll be much better” began Cray.
“Help me up!”
The taxi driver put his hands beneath Rollison’s arm-pits and Cray took his forearms. Rollison was dizzy as he reached his feet and would have fallen but for their support. He stared towards the window, where the Inspector was peering in. The uniformed policeman was half-way up the ladder, behind him.
Then the Inspector bent his elbow and cracked it against the glass. The report as the glass broke was like a pistol shot.
The man would not have done that unless faced with an emergency. Slowly, Rollison moved towards the house, and the cabby and Cray went with him, one on either side.
