"North wind coming up," agreed Worth, stepping to the farther window.
"It's bringing in the fog," she said; then abruptly, giving me the first hint that little Miss Wallace considered herself on the job, "Will it not latch by itself if you jam it shut hard?"
"It will not." I illustrated with a bang. The latch still remained open. "I must close it by hand." I pushed the hasp into the keeper, and, snap—the lever shot back and it was fast.
"But a window like that couldn't be opened from outside, even without the locking lever," she remarked, gazing again toward the Marin shore.
"A man with the know—a burglar—can open the ordinary window latch in less than a minute," I told her. "With a jimmy pinched between the sash and the sill, a recurring pressure starts the latch back; nothing to hold it. This—unless he cuts the glass—is burglar-proof."
Worth, at her shoulder, now looked down the sheer descent which exaggerated the seven stories of the St. Dunstan; because of its crowning position on the hill and the intersection of streets, we looked over the roofs of the houses before us, far above their chimney tops. I caught his eye and grinned across the girl's head, suggesting,
"Besides, we weren't trying to find how some one could break into this room, but how they could break out. Even if the latches had not been locked, there wouldn't be an answer in these windows—unless Clayte could fly."
"Might have climbed from one window ledge to the next and so made his way to the fire-escape," Worth said, but I shook my head.
"He'd be seen from the windows by the tenants on six floors—and nobody saw him. Might as well take the elevator or the stairs—which he didn't."
But the girl wasn't listening to any of this. Her expression attentive, alert, she was passing her hand around the edge of the glass of either sash, as though she still dwelt on my suggestion of cutting the pane; and as we watched her, she murmured to herself,