One last desperate endeavor. A toe caught. She swung the other foot over. She clung there a moment. Then, after executing a revolving motion, she lay panting atop the beam, beneath the cupola.
Ah! How sweet life was! How cool the air from the cupola that fanned her cheek! How good it all was!
But there remained much to be done. She roused herself; dragged herself to her knees, then stood erect in the cupola.
At once there came a wild and noisy whirring of wings. Pigeons were sleeping there.
She caught her breath. Would the gangsters hear? Would they find her? She wore the bus boy’s brown uniform. They would understand. She would never return alive. And life was so sweet!
The pigeons were gone. There came no other sound. If the gangsters had heard they had thought nothing of it. Who would?
The slats of the cupola fitted loosely into grooves. She had only to lift them out. She took out five and laid them down without a sound. Then she crept out into the moonlight.
One look told her that at the end farthest from her, the barn ended in a lean-to. The eaves of this lean-to reached within ten feet of the ground. Close by these eaves was an old straw pile.
“What could be sweeter?” She straddled the ridge of the roof, then hunched herself along until she was at the end. There, by clinging to the edge, she let herself down to the roof of the lean-to. Down the lean-to roof she glided. Then, with a spring, she landed on the straw pile.
She slipped, did a somersault, then tumbled into a patch of weeds.