Waters drew deep breaths and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. From the farther room he could hear now no more than confused and inarticulate murmurings; but he was not curious about the rest. He knew just what was going on the fatuous interrogatory as to name, surname, age, birthplace, nationality, father, mother, trade, married or single, civil status, and all the rest of the rigmarole involved in every contact with the Russian police. He had seen it many times and endured it himself often enough. Just now he had another matter to think of.
"Honorable word!" he repeated. "It's a wonder she couldn't find something different to say. Now I got to fool her. I got to, I."
The window showed him the pit of the courtyard; its frame was not yet caulked with cotton-wool and sealed with brown paper for the winter. He got it open and leaned out, feeling to either side for a spout, a pipe, anything that would give him handhold to climb down by. There was nothing of the kind; but directly below him he could make out the mass of the great square stack of furnace-wood built against the wall. From the sill to the top of the stack was a drop of full twenty feet.
He measured it with his eyes as best he could in the darkness. It was a chance, a not impossible one, but ugly enough. At any rate, it was the only one, if he were to get out and leave that "honorable word" untarnished. It never occurred to him that she might take it less seriously than he.
Waters, who dreamed, who stood by and gazed when life became turbulent and vivid, did not hesitate now. There was time for nothing but action, if he was to substitute a worthy sacrifice for his spoiled gift.
Seated upon the sill, he managed to draw the inner window shut and to latch it through the ventilating pane; the outer one he had to leave swinging and trust that she might find or not demand an explanation for it. This done, he was left, with his back to the house, seated upon the sill, a ledge perhaps a foot wide, with his legs swinging above the twenty-foot drop. In order to make it with a chance for safety, he had so to change his posture that he could hang by his hands from the sill, thus reducing the sheer fall by some six feet.
The dull windows of the courtyard watched him like stagnant eyes as, leaning aside, he labored to turn and lower himself. His experience at sea and upon the gantries in the yards should have helped him; but the past days, with their chill and insufficient food, had done their work on nerve and muscle, and he was still straining to turn and get his weight on to his hands when he slipped.
In the outer room, the catechism was running, or crawling, its ritual course.
"Father's nationality?" the policeman was inquiring, with his notebook upheld to the light and! a stub of flat pencil poised for the answer. A noise from the courtyard reached him. "What's that?" he inquired.
"Sounds like wood slipping off the stack," volunteered a citizen, and the dvornik, whose business it had been to pile it, and who had trouble enough on his hands already, sighed and drooped.