He raised himself on his elbows and glanced upward. The parapet was above him, and not difficult to scale, but to reach the edge of it he would have to stand up straight on the narrow ledge upon which he now was stretched.
Verbeck took a deep breath and started drawing up his knees. Presently he was in a kneeling position. Then, inch by inch, he raised his body. His hands crept up the face of the wall before him, stretched out and grasped the edge of the parapet.
Once more he was forced to draw himself up. He was very quiet about it, too. He did not know but that Landers might be directly above him, ready to receive him, or to thrust him over.
He got his elbows over the edge, and stopped to breathe and to listen. He could hear Kowen and Lawrence pounding on the door, and he found that Landers and the women were not near.
Verbeck began to think that good fortune was with him. He continued to draw himself up, and finally was stretched, panting, on the top of the parapet.
He was in no hurry, now. He had no intention of clashing physically with Landers while in an exhausted condition. There was no way, he thought, in which Landers and the women could escape from the roof except through the door at which the sheriff and Lawrence were pounding.
Verbeck waited until he felt refreshed, and then slipped down to the roof. Noiselessly he made his way across it toward the door. He came to a chimney, and stopped beside it, to watch and listen.
He had no weapon on him, and he knew that Landers had a vapor gun. One shot from that might render him unconscious, put him out of the fight. He could hear Landers and the women talking not very far from where he stood.
"They can't get through that door for some time," Landers was saying. "I'm going to telephone."
"He'll not come!" Mamie Blanchard wailed. "Why didn't we go down the stairs instead of up? We might have known we would have been caught in a trap."