Instantly the light went out.
"Wait!" he heard her voice say sharply over his head. She was standing by the window fumbling with the woodwork, and in a moment he heard the click of a knob and then, just opposite his head, the screening grill slipped aside and an aperture appeared.
"Quick!" admonished the voice, and quickly indeed he drew himself up and in, reflecting whimsically as he did so that this girl had first helped him out of a hole and then into one.
The next moment she had moved the grill into place and lifted the cover she had placed over her triplet of candles on a stand.
Triumphant, her eyes dancing, her teeth a gleam of light between those scarlet lips of hers, she looked at him for the admiration she saw twinkling back at her in his eyes.
"But not me—no!" she protested, her supple hands gesturing towards the magic casement. "I found it here. It is very old—you understand? Some other, long ago, found time dull and so—"
Delightedly she shared the flavor of that secret of the vagabond lady of long ago who had devised this cunning entrance for her lover.
On some dark night like this, with the gatekeeper drowsy with old wine, some other stripling had climbed that worn façade before him and slipped through the secret space and stood triumphantly before some daring, laughing girl who had cast aside for him her veil and her fear of death.
What ingenuity, Ryder wondered fleetly, had smuggled in the carpenter for the contrivance, what jewels had gone to the bribing, what lies had been told!... And what had been the end of it all?
Evidently not the discovery of the opening....