“How silly of me to do that!” she grumbled, examining her arm. Her sleeve, she saw, was torn, and blood was running from a place where the skin had been scraped off. “It looks as if I’ll have to be packed in cotton wool to keep from getting hurt—but this is not finishing my work, and Felipe may come out here any minute.”
Hurriedly she searched for an inconspicuous place to fasten the end of the cord. Finally noticing the hand-wrought hinge on the door, she decided that this offered a good hiding place.
She began at once to wind the cord into a small tight ball, and as she pulled the end of the cord, the heavy rope attached to it started to crawl snakelike up the wall. When at last the rope hung in several long loops at the edge of the roof, she fastened the cord to the door hinge and jammed the ball into the crack above.
“That’ll be all right as long as the door isn’t closed,” she said, “and it seldom is—at least, it hasn’t been closed since we’ve been here. It doesn’t show much from here, and it can’t be seen from the inside of the office.”
Leaning against the balcony rail, she and Peggy surveyed the wall approvingly. The string was almost invisible, and the loops of rope at the top were scarcely noticeable, so high were they above the street.
“No one would ever see that unless they were looking for it,” agreed Peggy. “But how’re you going to get it down? Didn’t you say you were going back up there?”
“Sure I am, but that’s simple enough,” Jo Ann replied. “When I loosen the string the rope is heavy enough to drop down of its own accord.”
Hearing a sudden noise behind them just then, they started guiltily. There stood Felipe in the doorway. Immediately Jo Ann wondered how long he had been there and how much he had seen.
“I’m glad he couldn’t understand what we were talking about,” she said to Peggy. “He’s the perfect watchdog, all right.”
Smiling now as they realized how nearly they had come to giving themselves away, they strolled nonchalantly around the balcony and entered the room from the farther side.