"You see this house is a story higher than the city wall. A rope flung from that window gives a hurried man safe conduct to the open country without the necessity of passing through a gate."
"True," said the Emperor, with a smile; "but your hurried man would lose some valuable time in filing through these stout bars. He would be a ghost indeed to pass between them."
"Not if he knew their secret."
Saying this, Siegfried laid hold of an iron stanchion, one of two that stood perpendicular on either side of the window-aperture from top to ledge, pressed against the thick stone wall. The stanchion left the stone under Siegfried's efforts, and proved to be shaped like an elongated letter E, with three bolts of equal length that fitted into three holes drilled in the side of the window-opening, one at top and bottom, and the third in the middle. The Baron pushed outward the heavy iron grating, which swung on hinges, pulling from the wall three bars with round loops at the end of each, into which the three bolts had interlocked when the grating was closed, and the E-like stanchion placed in position.
"A most ingenious arrangement," cried the Emperor, "lacking only the rope."
"A rope lies there," said Siegfried, kicking the coil with his foot, where it rested on the floor and had escaped notice in the gathering darkness. "It is fastened to a ring in the wall."
"What a device for a lover!" exclaimed Rodolph.
"It is intended for a man's safety rather than his danger," said Siegfried, with the slightest possible touch of austerity in his voice.
The Emperor laughed.