From the front the windows looked out at no great distance on the high road. Signals were possible. They would lodge—imprison her at the back, and surely on the upper floor. But even that, on this side, had six windows, and he searched their flat glitter in vain for a peg to hang a guess upon.
He had almost made up his mind to creep to that open scullery door and try his luck when, from the third window from the right, behind the glass there shone something white.
Now the first window in this row was next the end of the house; the second, over the roof of the scullery; and the third had beneath it a straight drop—some seventeen feet of unbroken wall—to the ground.
There was, indeed, three feet below the window-sill a rough string-course, which might give to a fugitive a moment's finger-hold before dropping to earth. But the fall between shoes and ground would be some two and a half yards—a serious matter even for an acrobat so placed that he could not watch his feet.
And how should man or woman escaping get even the moment's grasp of that two-inch projection of stone?
It was, then, a safe room for a prison.
Bad glass refracted grotesquely the white shape behind it, but could not make its movement unfeminine; and, when the lower sash was slowly raised until it jammed about a foot above the sill, and two hands showed their fingers under the frame straining to force it higher, Dick's heart leapt to the belief that they were those pretty, expressive hands he had watched so often in lazy pleasure.
He was upon the point of making a signal above the edge of his cover when a footfall checked him.
A woman, dressed in a blue overall and carrying an empty japanned bucket, was hurrying from the scullery along the grimy track to the coal-shed.
This out-house was so near to the watcher, that he could hear the pretty, eager, flaxen-haired, savage-faced little woman muttering to herself as she scraped and shovelled. He could, after a fashion, speak the Taal, and knew her more distinct phrases for European Dutch.