No! no footsteps in the passage outside—­no sound of a tread, light or heavy, in the room above—­absolute silence everywhere.  Besides locking and bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which I had found under the bed.  To remove this chest (my blood ran cold as I thought of what its contents might be!) without making some disturbance was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through the house, now barred up for the night, was sheer insanity.  Only one chance was left me—­the window.  I stole to it on tiptoe.

My bedroom was on the first floor, above an entresol, and looked into a back street.  I raised my hand to open the window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest hairbreadth, my chance of safety.  They keep vigilant watch in a house of murder.  If any part of the frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was a lost man!  It must have occupied me at least five minutes, reckoning by time—­five hours, reckoning by suspense—­to open that window.  I succeeded in doing it silently—­in doing it with all the dexterity of a house-breaker—­and then looked down into the street.  To leap the distance beneath me would be almost certain destruction!  Next, I looked round at the sides of the house.  Down the left side ran a thick water-pipe—­it passed close by the outer edge of the window.  The moment I saw the pipe I knew I was saved.  My breath came and went freely for the first time since I had seen the canopy of the bed moving down upon me!

To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed difficult and dangerous enough—­to me the prospect of slipping down the pipe into the street did not suggest even a thought of peril.  I had always been accustomed, by the practice of gymnastics, to keep up my school-boy powers as a daring and expert climber; and knew that my head, hands, and feet would serve me faithfully in any hazards of ascent or descent.  I had already got one leg over the window-sill, when I remembered the handkerchief filled with money under my pillow.  I could well have afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully determined that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their plunder as well as their victim.  So I went back to the bed and tied the heavy handkerchief at my back by my cravat.

Just as I had made it tight and fixed it in a comfortable place, I thought I heard a sound of breathing outside the door.  The chill feeling of horror ran through me again as I listened.  No! dead silence still in the passage—­I had only heard the night air blowing softly into the room.  The next moment I was on the window-sill, and the next I had a firm grip on the water-pipe with my hands and knees.