"But didn't he send a bird from it?"
"Well, of course. Well, then, since there is an opening of some sort, the thing for us now to do is to get at Dees, and he will tell us how to work out his release. I believe that it can be done, if he is really in the north-west tower, for the north wall of the castle rises sheer from the river-cliffs, which are only some thirty feet high."
Langler sat up at my words, and for the rest of that evening we were discussing this thing on every side.
The next (Monday) morning I rode five miles towards Speisendorf, where I got a boy to buy for me forty metres of rope, and on coming home spent the remainder of the day in my room making a rope-ladder; on the Tuesday I purloined two hooks from a shanty in the cow-yard to fasten to my ladder; and at midnight of that same day I was face to face with Max Dees.
I shall never forget that night, that experience, it was so tenebrous and windy, all was like a scene in Erebus—the castle, the cliffs, the forests, not a light anywhere on the earth or in the heaven, and my heart, like the midnight thief's, was in my mouth. We left the guest-court by stealth, hurried down the forest, and at the river launched the fishing-boat which I had previously fixed upon—a nasty piece of work, for that small river falls some five feet, and by ill luck the tide was at ebb, so we had to push down the boat through slush, and when we had got under the castle I had to climb through more slush to the cliff. Langler remained in the boat, for there was nothing to make her fast to. Above some ivy grew on the cliff, but none below.
At a cranny where the cliff-surface was more broken I now began to cast the ladder; but I had cruel luck at first, every cast making a racket of which all the jackdaws on the rock and the very soul of the night seemed to be conscious, and I regretted keenly that we had not tried our luck with the wooden ladder of the guest-court, much too short though it was. However, after a few throws, the grapples caught fifteen feet up, and in the end, by three stages, I stepped over a crucifix at the top at a point where a yew and an ash grew out of the bush at the cliff-edge; and now not two feet from the edge was the north wall of the north-west tower, and in it a window almost level with the ground.
At that window I lay on my right side, I called upon Max Dees: and at once, startling me, a hungry breath was with me; "yes," it whispered, "I am here, you are come to deliver me—tell me!"
"Yes, Dees," I whispered, "we are two——"
"Gott!" he whispered, "speak low."
I told him that his message sent out by the wren had come to us, and asked what we were to do for him.