"A bedroom off the hall."
"Good!"
She followed his thought. "But I don't think we can risk that. One of the Italians is patrolling the hall. That's why they haven't locked the door. I caught a glimpse of him just now, coming toward the foot of the stairs."
He stared at her frowningly, then, walking to the bed, stripped it with an arm-swing and seized the sheets.
"Then it's simply a question of lowering you from the front," he cried, curtly. "I'll lower you as far as I can, and we'll have to risk a drop of a few feet. Snow's safe."
As he spoke, he was hurriedly tearing and roping the sheets. "Used to do this at school when I was a kid," he explained. "Quite like old times. Now get on the coat and shoes, please."
She needed the reminder. She was staring at this visitor, who had the face of the man she knew and the voice and manner of a stranger. All trace of young Devon's debonair indifference was gone. He had the cold eyes and set jaw of a determined man, busy at some task which would assuredly be done, but his air of detachment equaled her own.
When she was ready, and still with his new air of businesslike concentration on the job in hand, he adjusted the linen ropes, and after a preliminary survey of the grounds, led her through the window and out on the veranda roof. Here he briefly told her what to do, suiting action to words with entire efficiency, and assuming her unquestioning obedience as a matter of course.
The lowering was not the simple exercise he had expected, any more than the upward climb had been. Light as she was, it was clear that her unsupported weight would be a heavy drag upon a body resting insecurely on a slippery roof with nothing more substantial than snow and ice to cling to. But eventually she was down, a little shaken but unhurt, and he was beside her.
"Now, let's see how fast you can run," he suggested; and for the first time his whispered voice held a ring of the youth she knew. "Shaw's watchers may suddenly begin to watch, or even to see something."