I stooped over the body of Ivanovitch, found the air revolver and slipped it into my pocket. Then, leaving them where they lay, I walked to the door of the room, switched out the lights, opened the door and went out. I had walked out under the open sky!
In the faint starlight I could make out the shadowy forms of trees and bushes all around me. A little way off loomed the bulk of a huge house. I turned away from it, leaving the path that connected it with the stone house in which I had been imprisoned, and struck off through the trees to find a way out.
There was light enough to see faintly where I was walking and to make out the outlines of things close at hand. But I was afraid of detection by some guard who might be prowling about the place, and I stuck closely to the shadow of the trees wherever I could. And at last, keeping in a straight line, by looking over my shoulder at the bulk of the house as long as I could see it, I came to the thing I sought. It was a brick wall, at least ten feet high and perfectly smooth.
Close by, however, a big tree stretched its branches over the wall. If I could climb it I could let myself down on to the top of the wall and so drop down on the other side.
I went to the tree and looked up, and at the same moment a hand fell on my shoulder and a voice spoke at my ear. The words were Russian and I could not understand them. But the man’s presence and action were clear enough and this was no time for parley. I turned quickly and struck him in the face with the hand on which I wore the ring. He gave a hoarse cry and staggered back, and I swung myself up into the tree and began to climb.
By feeling my way carefully I managed to get out on a limb that overhung the wall. My weight made it sag until I could step off on to the wall. Here with the limb still in my hands I looked down.
The ring had not yet lost its effectiveness; for in the starlight I could make out the body of a man, prone on the ground beneath me, his face turned up to the sky.
And so I released the branch, scrambled down the outer side of the wall until I was hanging by my hands, and let go, landing with a thud on the soft ground at the foot of the wall.
I was free!