"Don't take too big a chance, Ben, the girl——"
"Don't worry. The girl is worth fifty cases to me. But I mean to save both."
21
I went home for some things I needed, and in less than half an hour after the telephone talk I was back in front of the Lexington avenue house, still at the wheel of my taxi. I had, however, changed my clothes in the meantime. I did not want the chauffeur's uniform I had worn earlier to figure in any description that might be circulated in the gang.
Passing the house slowly I surveyed it from pavement to roof. All the windows were dark. The basement windows were open, but were protected as is customary by heavy bars. The first floor and the second floor windows were closed. The two windows on the top floor which were above the cornice, stood open.
Turning the corner, I came to a stop outside the rear door of the saloon I have mentioned. It was after the legal closing hour, but they were serving drinks in the back room. I went in and ordered a beer. The desk and the hotel register were in this room. You entered from a narrow lobby from which rose the steep stairs. I paid for my drink and took it. Choosing a moment when the waiter was in the bar, I rose to leave. In the lobby I turned to the right instead of the left and mounted the stairs. There was no one to question me.
In one side pocket I carried a small but efficient kit of tools, in the other a bottle of chloroform and a roll of cotton. My pistol was in my hip pocket.
I went up the three flights without meeting any one, lighted by a red globe on each landing. There was a fourth flight ending at a closed door which I figured must give on the roof. It was bolted on the inside, of course, and I presently found myself out under the stars.
This building, you will remember, was half a story higher than the row of dwellings which adjoined it. It was therefore a drop of only six feet from the parapet of one roof to the parapet of the other. Easy enough to go; a little more difficult perhaps to return that way. From the parapet I stepped noiselessly to the roof of the first dwelling, and crossed the two intervening roofs to the house I meant to enter. I had nearly two hours before Mr. Dunsany would put the police in motion, ample time, I judged. Probably the first few minutes in the house would decide success or failure.