But the watchman refused to be hurried. “There ain’t no way out but this,” he declared, “unless he done a high dive from the fire-escape.”
Caruth started. He had forgotten the dangerous combination of open platforms and loose-hung ladders plastered across the hall windows on each floor. If Wilkins had taken that means of escape, as was entirely probable, he must be well out of reach, and no way to find him would remain except the slow appeal to the police. He would call up the headquarters and——
Suddenly he recalled his visitor. Would she care to have the affair made public? Certainly he could not act without consulting her.
The watchman’s voice broke on him. That individual had switched on the lights in the hall, and had gone back to where a closed door gave on an alley. “We’ll take a look at that Jacob’s ladder just to satisfy you, Mr. Caruth,” he called. “See here!” He threw open the door and let Caruth step out into the night.
At first the alley seemed dark, but soon objects began to stand out in the faint light. First the skyline showed, clear against the towering sides of the chasm, then the iron of the fire-escape disentangled itself from the darkness and began to show in rectangular tracery.
Before Caruth could distinguish more, the watchman uttered an exclamation. “By George!” he cried. “Somebody has been on that escape. It’s been let down.”
Caruth looked where the other pointed. Plainly discernible now to his distended pupils, the lowest stretch of the iron ladder trailed across his field of vision. Some one had cut loose the fastenings that held it high in the air, out of reach of casual sneak thieves, and had lowered it to the ground.
Wilkins’s selection of a route was obvious. But it was also obvious that he was gone.
Caruth turned disconsolately away. He was beginning to wonder what had become of Miss Fitzhugh. When he had started down the stairs, she had been close behind him, and he had expected her to follow, but though more than time enough for her to reach the bottom had elapsed, she had not appeared. His first thought was that she had remained above out of some belated care for her reputation. Then, quickly following, came the possibility of a more sinister explanation.
The incidents of the night to his mind admitted but one explanation. Despite her American name (which might well have been assumed) the girl was a Russian, and he who says Russia nowadays connotes revolution, plots, arrests, and all the rest of the melodrama. The girl might be a nihilist or she might be a police spy, but he was sure that she must be one or the other. And Wilkins was her enemy. She had recognized him as such—not at first, but toward the end, when he had tricked her by his feint of throwing the letter in the fire. Caruth remembered her every word. And he had left her alone! How did he know that Wilkins had gone? How did he know that he had not concealed himself and waited——