“All right,” said Peggy, scrambling up on the wall. “It’s through!” she called a moment later.
“Now—you see the stick hangs across the opening, making sort of an anchor for the rope,” Jo Ann explained. “Isn’t it lucky for me that hole was in the right place? I’d surely hate to drive another iron bar in this wall. It’s terrible!”
“Wh-ew!” Peggy gasped as she looked down over the wall. “It’s so high on this side of the house, you’d break every bone in your body if you fell on these cobblestones!”
“Cut out the dramatics, Peg,” scolded Jo Ann. “I’ll be careful. Tell me if the loop on the end of the rope comes just a little below the window,” she added, testing the knots in the rope.
“Yes, it’s all right.”
“Fine! Everything’s ready, then—ready for the great adventure—the solving of the mystery.” The next moment Jo Ann was over the edge of the wall.
Peggy watched, breathless, till Jo Ann disappeared; then, throwing herself across the wall and oblivious of the intense heat of the stones, she watched anxiously as Jo Ann descended the sheer side of the building.
With the utmost caution Jo Ann slowly made her way down the rope. Carefully she lowered herself from knot to knot. A false move might be dangerous. “It’s lots more dangerous than I realized,” she told herself.
On a level with the window she stopped. Then, while standing in the loop on the end of the rope and clinging tightly to it with one hand, she tried to get a fingerhold in the opening. Unfortunately, on a wall that was over two feet thick and perfectly smooth, it was not possible; moreover, it was exceedingly difficult for her, while clinging to a rope high in the air, to crawl into an opening only two feet high and four feet across. Holding tightly to the rope with both hands, she finally swung her feet into the window, but could get no further. In this half-sitting position her head and shoulders came above the top of the opening.
“To think I’m in the window and yet can’t look inside!” she exclaimed aloud.