“I’m going up first,” said Jane, in a low tone of rage. “I won’t be guillotined on a public fire-escape. Which floor is it?”
“The top,” said Arnold sulkily, and without more ado Jane went up the ladder.
It was exactly like a rather horrid dream. The ladder was very cold and very gritty, and you climbed, and climbed, and went on climbing without arriving anywhere.
Pictures of the Eiffel Tower and New York skyscrapers flitted through Jane’s mind. She also remembered interesting paragraphs about how many million pennies placed on end would reach to the moon. And at long, long last the escape ended at a window-sill with a parapet-enclosed space beneath it.
Jane sat down on the window-sill and shut her eyes tight. She had a horrid feeling that the building was rocking a little. After a moment Arnold crawled over the edge of the coping, dragging his plank. He was panting.
“This,” he said, with his mouth close to Jane’s ear—“this window only leads to the landing where the lift shaft ends. We’ve got to get across to the next one, which is inside Molloy’s flat. That’s what the plank is for.”
“You’re blowing down my neck,” said Jane.
Arnold Todhunter felt that he had never met a girl whom he disliked so much. Extraordinary that she should look so like Renata and be so different.
He knelt just inside the parapet, and pushed the board slowly out into the dark until it rested on the parapet of the next window.
“Will you go first, or shall I?” he whispered.