“I can make it,” said Falconer, surely.  “Now how much time shall I allow you for your sawing—­fifteen minutes?”

“Guess you’d better,” Billy reflected, and they compared watches.

It was tremendously difficult to arrive at any sort of concerted action on this bewildering expedition, but they were hoping to achieve it.  Their plan had the simplicity of all desperate measures.  One from below and one from above they were to make their way to that rose room and fight the way out with the girl.  They considered it wiser to come from two directions, for if one were discovered and the alarm raised, the other had still a chance of getting off with Arlee, and if one were trying to escape, the other could cover his flight.  They had drawn straws for their positions, and Billy had been slightly relieved that the entrance from below, which he considered a trifle more difficult, had fallen to him.  He felt responsible, as well as he might, for Falconer’s neck.

Now he steadied one narrow ladder of poles while Falconer crept up it and then drew it up after him; and after a few moments of waiting, crouched in the shadow, Billy saw the Englishman’s figure reappear against the sky on top of a higher roof.  The route over the old buildings had been found, so Billy turned and crept forward along the wall, carrying the last long ladder of poles in his hand.  It was an unwieldy thing to carry and it distracted his attention harassingly.

“My job,” said he to himself, “is evidently to make a racket and draw their fire from below while that red-headed chap carries Arlee off from above.  Well, I hope to the Lord he does.  When I think of her here——­”

But it was unnerving to think of her here, so he didn’t.  He kept his mind steadily on the plan.  He had reached the stone steps that led from the garden to the harem now, and laying down his pole-like ladder he slipped up them and turned the handle.

But the door was locked.  Fearful lest the grating of the knob should have roused some watcher, he ran down the steps and hurried into the shadow of the banquet hall, where he stood close beside a pillar until he satisfied himself of the objects in the court beyond.  He saw an edge of light along the crack of a closed door to the left on the ground floor of the selamlik, and in the higher stories above that a couple of windows showed a pale illumination.  On the right, in the harem, only one window betrayed a ray of light.  Altogether the old pile was as gloomy and gruesome as a tomb.

Billy stared across the court to where the columned vestibule, uniting the two Ls, indicated the door.  He had been told a watchman slept there, but he could see nothing now but vague outlines of the arches of the vestibule.  To the left was the open passage left for the entry of the automobile and horses, but this, too, was roofed so that a black shadow lay over it.  But for that watchman Billy would have made his way to those doors to draw back the bars in readiness, but fearful of raising an alarm, he judged it was better to leave escape to chance and turn his attention to his entry.