CHAPTER VI
I
The picture gallery of Rudge Hall, the receptacle of what Mrs. Soapy Molloy had called the antiques and all like that, was situated on the second floor of that historic edifice. To Mr. Carmody, at five-thirty on the following morning, as he propped against the broad sill of the window facing the moat a ladder, which he had discovered in one of the barns, it looked much higher. He felt, as he gazed upward, like an inexpert Jack about to mount the longest bean stalk on record.
Even as a boy, Lester Carmody had never been a great climber. While his young companions, reckless of risk to life and limb, had swarmed to the top of apple trees, Mr. Carmody had preferred to roam about on solid ground, hunting in the grass for windfalls. He had always hated heights, and this morning found him more prejudiced against them than ever. It says much for crime as a wholesome influence in a man's life that the lure of the nefarious job which he had undertaken should have induced him eventually after much hesitation to set foot on the ladder's lowest rung. Nothing but a single-minded desire to do down an innocent insurance company could have lent him the necessary courage.
Mind having triumphed over matter to this extent, Mr. Carmody found the going easier. Carefully refraining from looking down, he went doggedly upward. Only the sound of his somewhat stertorous breathing broke the hushed stillness of the summer morning. As far as the weather was concerned, it was the start of a perfect day. But Mr. Carmody paid no attention to the sunbeams creeping over the dewy grass, nor, when the quiet was broken by the first piping of birds, did he pause to listen. He had not, he considered, time for that sort of thing. He was to have ample leisure later, but of this he was not aware.
He continued to climb, using the extreme of caution—a method which, while it helped to ease his mind, necessarily rendered progress slow. Before long, he was suffering from a feeling that he had been climbing this ladder all his life. The thing seemed to have no end. He was now, he felt, at such a distance from the earth that he wondered the air was not more rarefied, and it appeared incredible to him that he should not long since have reached the window sill.
Looking up at this point, a thing he had not dared to do before, he found that steady perseverance had brought about its usual result. The sill was only a few inches above his head, and with the realization of this fact there came to him something that was almost a careless jauntiness. He quickened his pace, and treading heavily on an upper rung snapped it in two as if it had been matchwood.
When this accident occurred, he had been on a level with the sill and just about to step warily on to it. The effect of the breaking of the rung was to make him execute this movement at about fifteen times the speed which he had contemplated. There was a moment in which the whole universe seemed to dissolve, and then he was on the sill, his fingers clinging with a passionate grip to a small piece of lead piping that protruded from the wall and his legs swinging dizzily over the abyss. The ladder, urged outward by his last frenzied kick, tottered for an instant, then fell to the ground.
The events just described, though it seemed longer to the principal actor in them, had occupied perhaps six seconds. They left Mr. Carmody in a world that jumped and swam before his eyes, feeling as though somebody had extracted his heart and replaced it with some kind of lively firework. This substitute, whatever it was, appeared to be fizzing and leaping inside his chest, and its gyrations interfered with his breathing. For some minutes his only conscious thought was that he felt extremely ill. Then becoming by slow degrees more composed, he was enabled to examine the situation.