If I could only attract the policeman's attention, but how?
My sister was close to the door listening, and every instant we dreaded hearing them coming up the kitchen stairs. I could not understand Bogie not barking, and Joe not waking, for where I was I could distinctly hear the men moving about in the pantry and kitchen.
“I wonder,” I said to my sister, “if I could put something across from this balcony to the stonework by the front steps? It seems such a little distance, and if I could step across, I could open the front gate in an instant, and run after the policeman. I shall try.”
“You will fall and kill yourself,” my sister said; “the space is much wider than you think.”
But I was determined to try; for if I let that policeman go out of sight, what horrors might happen in the twenty minutes before he would come back.
The idea of one of the girls waking and calling out, or Joe waking and being shot or stabbed, gave me a feeling of desperation, as though I alone could and must save them.
Luckily the house was splendidly built, every window-sash sliding noiselessly and easily in its groove. I opened the one nearest to the hall door steps, and saw that the stone ledge abutted to within about two feet of the low balcony of the window; but I was too nervous to trust myself to spring across even that distance. At that moment my sister whispered:—
“I hear somebody coming up the kitchen stairs!”
Desperately I cast my eyes round the room for something to bridge the open space, that would bear my weight, if only for a moment. The fender-stool caught my eye; that might do, it was strong, and more than long enough. In an instant we had it across, and I was out of the window and down the front steps.
As I turned the handle of the heavy iron gate, I looked down at the front kitchen window. A man stood in the kitchen, and he looked up and saw me—such a horrible-looking ruffian, too. Fear lent wings to my feet, and I flew up the road. The watchman was just entering the park from the opposite end; he saw me, and sounded his whistle; the policeman turned and ran towards me. I was too exhausted to speak, and he caught me, just as, having gasped “Thieves at 50!” (the number of our house), I fell forward in a dead swoon.