I took all this in, and then I turned to the right and looked at the next house. I saw as much as I expected; more, enough to set my heart beating. The dormer window next to that from which I leaned, and on a level with it, was open; if I might judge from the stream of light which poured through it, and was every now and then cut off as if by a moving figure that passed at intervals between the casement and the candle. Who or what this was I could not say. It might be Marie; it might not. But at the mere thought I leaned out farther, and greedily measured the distance between us.
Alas! between the dormer-gable in which I stood and the one in the next house lay twelve feet of steep roof, on which a cat would have been puzzled to stand. Its edge towards the street was guarded by no gutter, ledge, or coping-stone, but ended smoothly in a frail, wooden waterpipe, four inches square. Below that, yawned a sheer, giddy drop, sixty feet to the pavement of the street. I drew in my head with a shiver, and found Herr Krapp at my elbow.
'Well,' he said, 'what do you see?'
'The next window is open,' I answered. 'How can I get to it?'
'Ah!' he replied dryly, 'I did not undertake that you should.' He took my place at the window and leaned out in his turn. He had set the candle in a corner where it was sheltered from the draught. I strode to it, and moved it a little in sheer impatience--I was burning to be at the window again. As I came back, crunching the scraps of mortar underfoot, my eyes fell on a bit of old dusty rope lying coiled on the floor, and in a second I saw a way. When Herr Krapp turned from the window he missed me.
'Hallo!' he cried. 'Where are you, my friend?'
'Here,' I answered, from the head of the stairs.
As he advanced, I came out of the darkness to meet him, staggering under the bundle of pallets which I had seen lying by the stair-head. He whistled.
'What are you going to do with those?' he said.
'By your leave, I want this rope,' I answered.