My relief when at last I grasped the railing, climbed over, and found myself upon a wooden platform, was truly inexpressible.
"Come on, Weymouth!" rapped Nayland Smith. "This ladder has to be lowered back down the trap before another visitor arrives!"
Taking short, staccato breaths at every step, Inspector Weymouth ascended, ungainly, that frail and moving stair. Arrived beside me, he wiped the perspiration from his face and forehead.
"I wouldn't do it again for a hundred pounds!" he said hoarsely.
"You don't have to!" snapped Smith.
Back he hauled the ladder, shouldered it, and stepping to a square opening in one corner of the rickety platform, lowered it cautiously down.
"Have you a knife with a corkscrew in it?" he demanded.
Weymouth had one, which he produced. Nayland Smith screwed it into the weather-worn frame, and by that means reclosed the trapdoor softly, then—
"Look," he said, "there is the house of hashish!"