She Fell Among Thieves

by Yates, Dornford

  She turned and left me standing: and almost at once Lafone came in with my meal. And then she left me, still standing: and I had the cell to myself.

  9

  I Take My Life in My Hands

  The castle clock roused me by chiming a quarter to eight, and I found myself still standing and still regarding the doorway where Vanity Fair had stood.

  I sat down on my pallet and put my head in my hands.

  ‘She has to get a room ready…a room at a house in the hills.’

  I could see that room – that hold. I could see the strength of its walls, its inaccessible window, the weight of its ponderous door. And the vision tore at my heart. The beautiful singing-bird had had a fine cage – of which we had opened the door, to let it go free: and now that it had tasted freedom, it was to be taken again and kept in a box. ‘And the last state of that man was worse than the first.’

  I can think of no office more dreadful than to condemn to misery someone to gladden whom you are ready to sell your soul: and I think in the next ten minutes I aged ten months.

  At last I looked up, to see on the stone before me the paper which I had let fall.

  Bring Miss Jenny at once to Bayonne. Drop the bearer of this note at Bordeaux.

  The hag was damnably clever. Suspicious as Bell would be, he would see slight danger in taking his charge to Bayonne; while the order to drop Marc at Bordeaux would make him dissociate Marc from the Château Jezreel. He had, of course, never seen him. When first I had stayed at the castle, Marc was not there.

  The castle clock struck again.

  Idly I regarded my watch.

  Marc was not yet at Anise. He could hardly be there before ten. If they left at half-past ten, the Rolls could be at Carlos by four tomorrow morning, but not before. And now it was eight.

  Instinctively I turned to the window.

  The light was failing. Any moment dusk would come in. To attempt to escape by that way might well be hopeless: but it would be hopeless, unless I could determine by daylight the line I must take in the dark. If night were to fall before I had made my survey, the chance which might be there would pass out of my reach and would only return with the daylight – at four tomorrow morning…when Marc was nearing Carlos, with the singing-bird in his hand.

  With trembling fingers I put my tray aside and turned to the instant business of breaking my chain.

  Though the cuff lay close to my ankle, it was not tight, and by turning up the leg of my trousers I was able to lay a second thickness of flannel between the steel and my flesh. In other words, I turned up one leg of my trousers four inches instead of two, taking care to keep all the flannel within the cuff. I then took the slices of beef which lay on a dish on the tray and stuffed them into the ‘turn-up’, to make a still thicker cushion between the steel and my flesh. Then I sat down on my pallet and slowly turned head over heels.

  By the time I had completed six somersaults, the chain, which could not turn with me, had shrunk to one half of its length: and when I had turned four more, its links were so locked together that it was almost rigid and less resembled a chain than a strangely distorted bar. I set out to turn my last somersault.

  This I could not complete, for the chain was now too short to allow my leg to descend, and I lay on my back on the pallet with my right leg perhaps ten inches up in the air. Luck, of course, had been with me: by contracting so far, but no further, the chain had played into my hands.

  I swung my right leg forward, well over my head. Then I brought it back like a flail, as hard as ever I could.

  For an instant I thought that I had broken the bone, for I heard a snap, and a stab of pain, like a flame, ran up to my knee. Then I knew that the chain was broken, and when I got to my feet, my leg felt stiff and sore, but no more than that.

  Swiftly I stepped to the window, pushed the casement open and put out my head…

  The sill of the window was low, and I do not like heights. I recoiled instinctively. Then I took a firm grip of the stone-work and looked out again.

  I was at least eighty feet up: directly below me the balustrade of the terrace was joining the wall of the tower: since the terrace was twenty feet wide, I was exactly that distance from the edge of the roof of the house: this edge was well below me – I made out, about forty feet: though this did not appear from within, the tower was octagonal, and my window was in the third face, if you count from the wall of the house: the sill of my window projected a short two inches beyond the face of the tower, and I saw no other projection of any kind.

  I sat back on my heels and wiped the sweat from my face.

  Vanity Fair was right, and I was wrong. I had thought the tower less high and my outlook more to the east. Sheets or trapese, only an ape could have leaped to the roof from my window. The bare thought of such a venture made me feel weak at the knees.

  I lifted my head.

  The shadows were falling now. I could see a long slice of the valley, but after a little its lovely detail was blurred. And the hanging forests beside it were losing their dainty colours and melting into a bulwark that served to make up a skyline, but nothing more. Very soon there would be nothing to see but the folds in the curtains of darkness made by the topless hills.

  I remembered the night when out of my tribulation I stumbled upon the pathway which led to the Cirque des Morts: I saw Jean plodding before me and the rugged face of the country slowly shaping beneath the pencil of dawn: I saw the smile of the pleasance and the immemorial magic of sun and dew: and I saw a straight, girlish figure, standing ready to plunge, by the side of a pool…

  With a groan of desperation, I put my head out of the casement, to measure once more a chance too slight to be measured, because it did not exist.

  I shall never forget the masonry of that tower. Inch by inch I scanned it with hungry eyes – for anything that a desperate man could lay hold on, for anything that could raise a hope that was dead. And I scanned it in vain. It presented no handhold at all, within or out of my reach.

  Frantically, I tried to look upward, craning my neck.

  And then I saw the drip-course…

  I drew in my head, turned on to my back and put out my head again.

  I give it the name of drip-course, for that was what it appeared: but it may have been just decoration intended to please the eye. In fact it was a stone ledge, protruding at least two inches from the face of the tower. That it ran right round the tower, there could be no doubt. The tower was roofed with a conical cap of slates, and there were no eaves and no gutter that I could see: and the drip-course lay just midway between the first of the slates and my window-sill.

  Carefully, I measured the distance – and found it near seven feet up.

  I drew myself into my cell and sat up on the window-seat.

  I had discovered a handhold which was within my reach. Once my hands were upon it, if I had the strength to hold on, I could shuffle my way round the tower until I hung over the junction of the tower with the roof of Jezreel. (I think I have said before that the tower rose out of the roof, as a chimney-stack which is built half within the house and half without.) The further I could shuffle, because of the pitch of the roof, the less would be the distance which I should have to fall and the safer would be my landing upon the slates. In a word, if Fortune were ready to help me from first to last, the drip-course offered a definite chance of escape.

  If Fortune were ready to help me…

  The protasis was vital. I could not see the top of the ledge, and a drip-course is sometimes loaded – with a slant of mortar, sloping away from the wall. In that case there was no handhold… Then again, I am no feather-weight, and unless I could make good progress, I could not hold on until I was over the roof. And when I let myself go, even though I fell on the saddle between the tower and the roof, a twenty-feet fall is no joke for a heavy man.

  I had found a possible way: but I liked that way so little that there and then I got up and examined the door. But that, of course, was hopeless. Jack
Sheppard could never have forced it without his bar.

  There was nothing for it but the drip-course. And since it was growing dark, and since the peril was such that the longer one stared upon it the fouler it seemed, I made my preparations to brave it at once.

  Not to make any bones about it, my case was this. If I stayed where I was in my cell, the game was lost. Jenny, Virginia, Mansel – all three were doomed. And I should very soon die at the hands of Vanity Fair. If I could make good my escape, the four of us might be saved. If I sought to escape – and failed, we were no worse off than before. In a word, I had nothing to lose – not even my life.

  But I must be fair to myself. I have not a head for heights. And had I been free and a beggar, I would not have essayed to reach the roof by that drip-course though my success was to make me a millionaire.

  One thing I was spared, and that was any fear of being disturbed. When Lafone had brought my dinner, she had taken up the linen and put it within my reach – a gesture which made it clear that I was to make my own bed, and, as there was no lamp in the room, I had no doubt at all that I was to be left to myself until the next day. There was, of course, always the grill: but though Vanity Fair might think it worth while to make sure that her prisoner was safe, I did not think she would do so till just before she retired.

  The chain, as luck would have it, had broken quite close to my cuff, so at least I was not to be plagued by a length of loose links: but before I did anything else, I plucked the beef out of my trousers and slid the cuff into its room.

  Then I turned to the wash-stand. This something resembled a tripod and was made of enamelled iron. I stripped it of basin and slop-pail, carried the frame to the window and laid it across the recess. Then I took one of my sheets and fastened one end to the wash-stand, drawing the knots as tight as ever I could.

  Except that I drank some water, I made no more preparation – because there was none I could make: it is, of course, the unhappy lot of a captive who means to break out, that however shocking the risks his escape will entail, his precautions must be so makeshift as scarce to deserve that name.

  For the twentieth time I wiped the sweat from my hands: then I took my seat on the wash-stand, now on its side, and leaned back slowly on to the window-seat.

  Holding fast to the sheet, I worked my way gradually forward until my head and shoulders were out in the air. And there I rested a moment, to measure once more my distance and judge as well as I could the movements I had to make.

  The casement was three feet high, and my plan was this – to pass backwards out of the casement and then stand up on the sill: still holding the sheet with my left hand, I could then put up my right and take hold of the ledge: and when I had hold of the ledge, I could let the sheet go.

  But for the fall of night, to this day I do not believe that I should have made the attempt: but the light was now so dim that the ledge itself was only just to be seen, and since, if I was to go, I must go at once, I sat up without more delay and, bending well forward, began to project myself backwards out of the tower.

  (Here, perhaps, I should say that, since I knew where the ledge was, whether or not I could see it was really of no account: for all that, I am perfectly sure that, so foolish and weak is the flesh, nothing on earth would have got me out of that casement, when once it was dark.)

  As I thrust myself out of the tower I gradually pulled myself up by means of the sheet, and a moment later I was standing on the sill of the window with all of my body outside and my face to the wall. Holding fast to the sheet with my left hand, I put up my right, but I was trembling so much that I had to bring it back to the sheet and to wait for a moment or two until my nerve had come back.

  It goes without saying, of course, that I was streaming with sweat, and I now was beset with a fear that the slippery state of my hands would betray the most resolute grip. And that made me sweat the more… Indeed, my condition was piteous. But at last the attack died down, and again I put up my hand.

  I did not look up, for my face was against the wall, but my fingers encountered the ledge and then crept up to its top… With an effort I got them upon it – another inch and it would have been out of my reach… Slowly I pushed them on till their tips were against the tower…and then I took hold.

  I shall never forget that moment.

  The ledge was not a drip-course. It was a little stone gutter, more or less choked with dirt which the rain of the night before had made into mud.

  I have often thought since – and Mansel agrees with me – that had it not been a gutter, but only a ledge, my fingers must have slipped off it before I had reached the roof. Be that as it may, from the moment I found it a gutter, I knew no more fear. Indeed, to be honest, I could have shouted and sung – and laughed at the depths below me because they had lost their sting.

  Such jubilation was natural. From the time that I saw the ledge, it had been a question of handhold and nothing else. Any fool can hold on to a gutter… But I had not dreamed of such luck. Who would ever expect a gutter six feet from the top of a wall?

  I must have let go the sheet and put up my other hand, but those things I did without thinking, for the next thing that I remember was finding half a slate in the gutter and pitching it into the meadows out of my way.

  I think that will show the confidence which I had found. It was out of reason, of course. I was doing a dangerous thing. But it saw me through my gauntlet: and I moved two feet at a time until I judged I was hanging above the saddle – that is to say, the centre of the junction of the tower with the roof of Jezreel.

  It was by now so dark that, except for outlines, I could see nothing at all. I could see the shape of the tower where it stood up against the sky, and turning my head, I could see the line of the ridge-pole that held up the roof of Jezreel. But I could not see what was below me. I judged that the saddle was roughly twenty feet down: I assumed that some sort of gully would lie between the tower and the roof: but judgment and assumption alike were really no more than guesswork, and indeed, for all I knew, I was not hanging above the saddle at all.

  I moved a few inches further and tried to think what to do.

  That the worst of the danger was over was perfectly clear. More. From being as good as hopeless, my position had become very strong; for if I could complete my escape, I should have the game in my hand. But I had to land on that roof.

  I purposely use the word ‘land’. It was no good my meeting that roof to find I was not on the saddle but on the south or west slope – to roll and slide down its pitch and then fall some forty feet to the terrace or meadows below: it was no good my meeting that roof to find myself on the saddle with a broken leg bent beneath me, or something worse: I had to make a good landing: if I was not to make a good landing, for all the good I had done I might as well have stayed in my cell.

  Now as I came round the tower, I had passed a window exactly like that of my cell. I had not seen it, of course, but my knees had brushed against it as I went by. And now it came to my mind that, if I went on, I might come to another window. This might be beyond the saddle; but, if it was not too far round, I might be able to use it to help myself down. I confess that how I should use it was not at all clear: I could kick in the glass and rest my feet on the sill: but, without my sheet to take hold of, I did not see how I could let the gutter go. Still, anything was better than hanging thus in mid-air. Besides – it was no good pretending – my fingers were growing tired.

  I had moved, I suppose, some three feet, when my knees struck against some obstruction, projecting out of the tower. At once I put down a hand, to see what it was. I found a vertical bar.

  In that instant I knew the truth.

  I had come to another window: and, because it gave to the roof, that window was barred.

  With a leaping heart, I left my faithful gutter and took to the bars…

  I had now gained some seven feet, but strain my eyes as I would, I could not see what was below me or where I was. This fact, however,
worried me very much less, for the window would not have been barred, if the roof below had not offered a chance of escape. All the same, having got so far, I simply was not prepared to take any leap in the dark. With success, so to speak, at my feet, the idea of failure seemed monstrous as never before: and after searching in vain for any sort of excrescence which would let me still further down, I decided to take off my belt and do what I could with that.

  It was whilst I was unbuckling my belt that I first became aware that my arms could not much longer support my weight.

  The mind so rules the body that, though for at least five minutes I had imposed on my muscles a heavy continuous strain, my relief at finding the gutter, and then the bars, had each time suppressed the protests which they would have normally made. But now they spoke out, themselves demanding relief – which I could not give. Before I had freed my belt, I had to put back my left hand, because my right could no longer hold me alone: and when, after resting a moment, I tried again to drag the belt from its loops, I found that I could not do it, because I had no hand to spare.

  In vain I repented my haste in leaving the gutter. If I had not been so quick to take to the bars, by placing my toes on the window-sill I could have rested my arms: but now, though I sought to climb up with some frantic idea of getting one foot on the sill, I had not the strength to do it, and the frenzied effort I made only served to hurry the sands which were fast running out.

  I pulled myself together.

  To kick and struggle was futile. In another thirty seconds I should simply have to let go. Better to drop quietly and so be ready to make the best of – of whatever lay below me…down in the dark.

  For the last time I peered down over my shoulder…

  Then –

  ‘Well done, indeed, William,’ said Mansel. ‘I was coming to look for you. Hold on a second or two. There’s a slater’s ladder just here.’

  ‘You’ll have to be quick,’ I said somehow. ‘I – I’m damned near through.’