'Well, Ken' she said. 'We're here. And also we're beaten. Can you pick a Yale lock?' 'No.'
Her reflection faced me out of the mirror. 'At this time to-morrow night,' she went on, 'we're supposed to be in the Blue Train going felicitously to the South of France. What's the betting we don't make it? We can't get that envelope now-'
I made sulphurous remarks to the effect that we would make the train, and that the envelope was within reach. This room lay directly in line with Keppel's suite, with only the thickness of a wall between. I went to the window and looked out past the blowing curtains. The tricks of eighteenth century builders had their merits: just outside, and only a couple of feet below the window there was a stone ledge running the whole length of the building on that side. It passed beneath Keppel's windows as well. It ran sixty feet above the gardens and trees behind the Library, and the cloisters of the Cathedral School; but it was a good two feet wide, as safe as a path to walk on. Although the moon was partly behind the shoulder of the building, still I could see that path with great clearness in the skim-milk light.
'Do you think you'd better?' said Evelyn quietly, from behind my shoulder.
There was a good clasp-knife in the pocket of Charters's coat. I gave Evelyn directions.
'We don't know when Keppel will be in, but it may be any minute. Stay here, and keep the door to the hall partly open. You've got a straight view down the length of it, of the lift and the staircase. If anyone comes up-'
'What does Keppel look like?'
'I don't know — wait! Bowers said something about him. Little, with a lot of greyish hair sticking up, and he limps. That's distinctive enough. But if you see anybody who looks dangerous '
She nodded, and glanced round quickly. Then she picked up the tooth-glass from the wash-stand.
'Right you are, old boy. If you can burgle a window, leave it open and we'll leave this one open too. If I see anyone coming close, I'll shut the door, and then throw this glass down on the hearth and smash it. You should be able to hear it like a shot. Only, Ken, for God's sake be caref — '
I climbed out. We have all seen the thing done on the films: where the spectacle of a person shuffling with shaky legs along a ledge is supposed to be funny. It is not funny. It is not as easy as it looks. At first you have no difficulty with your feet or legs, but from the waist up to the shoulders you seem to be shaking and swaying out over the edge. For some reason you feel naked. You notice sounds more: the surge of wind rustling in trees sixty feet below, or the gritty scrape of your own shoes. When you see the world below, it seems to swing outward and the whole business becomes only half real. But that is when your knees and legs begin to shake.
I was pressing my left shoulder to the wall, and groping ahead in the grime with my right hand. There was a sensation of rocking tipsily before I got my fingers round the frame of the nearest window. So far as I could see, there were four windows in Keppel's suite. I held on to the frame of the nearest one, feeling hot all over, and edged forward.
The window was wide open.
Wide open. Even the blind was up, and the blind moved or flapped gently when a vast rustling of wind rose in the trees below. The window was an empty black rectangle, into which very little light could penetrate. And I did not like it.
It seemed to invite too much. It seemed to lure you in, as though even the blind were whispering. My natural instinct was to put my hand through, take hold of the sill on the inside, and pull myself through. Yet there are other whispers as well, and in the brain a tiny bell gives warning. Even when you are stuck like a poultice to the wall sixty feet up, something whispers like the wind in the trees. Look out, it says. Don't touch that window. Don't touch
With my right hand I got the clasp-knife out of my pocket, and pressed the catch that snapped open the blade. I poked it inside, felt about in empty air, and ran it along the sash. Nothing. Along the sill there seemed to run, as far as I could discern in the dim light, a tiny groove. I drew the blade of the knife along it.
Look out, I tell you. Don't touch that window. Don't touch —.
And then, with a crash like a guillotine, the window fell.
It seemed to leap or spring at me, because the dim light flashed on its pane as it dropped, and the crash filled the world with noise. I went back like a hinge, flapping against the wall, and only my grip on the window- frame kept me up. That window snapped off the blade of the knife as it might have snapped off something else. For I had caught a gleam of something else as it fell. There was good reason for that, groove in the sill. Into the underside of the window was fastened a whetted blade, the whole length of the window. If I had automatically reached inside and taken hold of the inner edge, the pressure of my fingers or the weight of my hand across the sill would have brought down that miniature guillotine. And four of my fingers would now be lying on the sill, shorn off just above the palm.
These thoughts go fast. I know they go fast, because the knife had fallen out of my hand when I lurched back against the wall. And the whole explanation and picture of that little guillotine went through my head before I heard the knife slap in the branches of a tree below.
I stood for a second, and shut my eyes. I would have given a thousand pounds for just two seconds to relax my legs and sit down.
If all the windows were fitted up like this, it was useless to try getting in. But I was now more afraid to go back than to go forward, since it meant letting go something to which I could hold. I shut my mind against fancies, and edged along the intervening distance to the next window; but the fancies were thick nevertheless. The next window was closed, but it was not locked. I gave it an experimental push with shaky fingers on the glass, and it raised about an inch, then an inch more. There seemed to be no groove inside. It must be tested. I caught the side of my loose coat, wrenched it round and up, and thrust it through the aperture; then yanked the window shut.
The coat was not sliced by another such neat mechanism, as I discovered when I pulled it out. I pushed the window up, risked my luck against more guillotine booby-traps, and tumbled through to safety.
Curtains were drawn over this window. It was very dark inside the room, for the dim light showed only the edge of a colourless carpet. I stood entangled in the curtains, wiping my forehead with them. The only other light was under the sill of the door leading to the hall. There seemed to be nothing sinister here. After a decent interval for the stiffening of the legs, I struck a match.
It was a study, right enough. The match showed books somewhere, and a couple of etchings on the wall. Moreover, I had got the desk first shot; it was against the wall between the two windows, and I found it when my hand moved to the left. It was a desk after the French pattern, high, narrow, and with a folding lid, made of polished rosewood and certainly not of a sort to safeguard valuables. The key was in the lock. I struck another match and opened the lid. There were pigeon-holes on either side, stuffed with papers-except the pigeon-hole on the upper left-hand side. Here, exactly according to plan, there was a solitary envelope. I touched it gingerly, but no trap showed a fang. It was only when I pulled it out (the flap was gummed down, and it was sealed with red wax) that I felt something on my fingers.
Lamp-black.
A thick coating of it had been smeared on the wood round the envelope, so that whoever touched it would take away traces. I stood staring at it, trying to find the trap.
It could have been no actual noise in the room which made me turn round, except perhaps the faint flapping of the blind. Nor was there even an impression that anyone had moved. Yet I struck a third match, and moved forward into the room..
The first thing I saw was a small round table on which stood a bottle bearing a red-and-blue label, and a single glass. Then, beyond it, a long table with a padded chair. Then a reddish smoking-cap stuck up at an angle; then eyeballs glazed with death, and a face distorted with strychnine. And, just before the match burnt my fingers and went out, I saw Paul Hogenauer sitting in the chair grinning at me.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Guillotine-Window
There are sights which do not penetrate deeply into the mind because the mind refuses to credit them. The mind says: You didn't see this. You couldn't have seen it. The thing remains stuck there as flat and shallow as a picture post-card, but as vivid. Then common sense begins to assert itself, and your five wits to tick again, and you realize that you did see it.
