Safe for the moment, she considered her next move. That the man would, in time, be able to wreck that door she did not doubt. “Sure to be an axe down there,” she told herself.
Wildly her eyes searched the circular platform. In an obscure spot she saw a coil of rope.
“Stout,” she told herself, “but too short. Never reach the ground.” Dizzily she surveyed the scene below. Beneath her for the most part were rocks. Between these were narrow patches of grass. “Nice place to land!” she grumbled.
To the right and some twenty feet from the tower was a huge fir tree. In her distress she fancied that its branches reached out to her, offering aid.
“If only I could!” she murmured.
Seizing the rope, she tied one end to a beam, then leaning far out, watched the other end drop as it unfolded coil by coil. This came to an end at last. “Still thirty feet,” she thought with fresh panic. “Be killed sure.”
Standing quite still, she listened. There came no sound. “Gone down. May not come back.” She uttered a low prayer.
She was thinking now, wondering how this man had come here, all the way across the ridge from Duncan’s Bay. “Probably someone was after him. Should be,” she told herself. “Came here to escape. He—”
Breaking in upon her thoughts came a terrific crash. A blow had been aimed at the trap door.
“Got an axe. Door won’t last.” She was half way over the ledge. Ten seconds later, bracing her feet against the wall, she was going down the rope hand over hand.