Now just at the place where this man hung there was, as Paul had observed earlier in the evening, a small window, a window crossed by iron bars.
A grated window in a palace suggests the idea that the room thus secured is used for the preservation of things valuable; at any rate this was Paul's idea. He believed that the fellow was quietly removing the iron bars with the view of procuring whatever it was that lay behind them.
It was an extremely hazardous enterprise. True, the man was favored by the darkness, and by the noise of wind and rain, but at any moment he was liable to be surprised by the night-watch going its rounds, either in the courtyard below or on the roof above.
Two sentinels paced the very battlements overlooking this court. Earlier in the evening Paul had heard their footsteps overhead and their challenges. Were they asleep? If not, they must be keeping a very lax watch to permit this man to perform such work under their very eyes.
Then the truth flashed upon Paul. The man himself was a soldier, one of the two appointed to patrol this particular part of the roof. The other was his confederate. Both were engaged in some nefarious work. Treason was afoot in the palace!
Rejecting his first impulse, which was to steal quietly downstairs and summon the guard, Paul resolved to tackle the two single-handed. As there was no staircase from his room to the roof, he determined to mount to the battlements by means of a water-pipe adjacent to his window.
Thrusting a loaded pistol within his breast, he stepped out upon the window-sill, and pulling himself up by the water-pipe silently and quickly, he clambered over the battlements without detection. Keeping within an embrasure, he peered out along the roof. There, a few yards distant, outlined against the sky, was the tall, cloaked figure of a sentinel leaning upon his rifle and with his eyes turned towards the grated window.
Paul, glancing in the same direction, could no longer see the man hanging in mid-air. A faint glow of light stole through the mysterious window. Hence Paul concluded that the fellow was now within the chamber occupied upon the matter that had brought him there.
Stealing noiselessly forward, Paul suddenly clapped his hand upon the sentinel's shoulder, and, pointing to the grated window he cried,—
"Do you intend to arrest that villain, or are you his confederate?"