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..