"Our which?" Hank stared at me curiously. "Oh, you mean—Why, hell, Jim, we ain't dead yet!"
At this point another voice intruded itself into the conversation. The dry, resigned voice of Mr. Grimper.
"No, not yet, gentlemen. But I am afraid it is time to prepare for that fate. For we are hopelessly secured, the doors are locked and bolted upon us, and in a few minutes the room will be a furnace of flame!"
I shuddered. Of course his prophecy was not news to me. But it made our peril more real to hear it thus spoken.
His words, however, completely failed to disturb the placidity of Horsesense Hank. Hank just said, "Why, 'lo, Mr. Grimper! I was hopin' you'd snap out of it purty soon. Die? Why, we ain't agonna die. Not sence them Nazies was too dumb to tie us up."
My heart gave a sudden leap; I had to swallow before I could choke, "Tie us—What do you mean, Hank? We are tied—and to something far above our heads. We can't even reach the bar we're chained to—"
"We don't have to, Jim. They give us a loophole almost within reach. You notice that there skylight chain is a right thin one. I can't get these rope loops off'n my wrists but I think I c'n squeeze the skylight chain through a loop."
He straightened his legs, and I realized suddenly he had purposely kept them slightly bent at the knees during the time our enemies had been in the room. Now his toes gave him a reasonable foothold on the floor. Using this, he leaped up and gripped the steel chain above his ropes ... drew himself up hand-over-hand until he was swinging comfortably in the loop.
What he did then was weird and inexplicable to me—until, of course, a long time afterward. He pushed the steel chain through one of the rope loops about his wrist, pulled a wide, metal bight through this opening, stepped into the loop—and dropped lightly to the floor, free!