“That won’t do!” Brentin said, decisively, after a few moments’ survey. “The run’s too far over that bridge and down across the grass. Besides, we should want rope ladders before we could get down the wall. Come, gentlemen, let us try this way.”
We went to the extreme right of the terrace, and there, miraculously enough, we found at once the very thing we wanted. Mr. Brentin merely pointed at it in silence, keeping his attitude till we had all grasped the situation. It was a rickety gate at the head of an evidently unused flight of steps, leading down on to the railway line below. Beside it stood a weather-worn board with “Défense d’entrée au public” on it. It looked singularly out of place amid all that smart newness; but there it was, the very thing we were in search of.
The railway below ran six or eight feet above the sea, without any protecting parapet to speak of. Just at the angle where the pigeon-shooting ground jutted out there was a sort of broken space, where, for some reason (perhaps to allow the employés to descend), rocks were piled up from the shore. A boat could be there in waiting; the yacht could lie thirty yards off; if we had designed the place ourselves, we couldn’t have done it better.
Mr. Brentin slowly pointed a fateful finger down the steps, across the line, to the corner where the shore lay so close and handy.
“Do you observe it, gentlemen?” he whispered, awe-struck—“do you take it all in? There is no tide in the Mediterranean; the edge of the sea will always be there. Even if the night turns out as black as velvet we could find the boat there blindfold.”
It was a solemn moment, broken only by the jingle of omnibus bells. I felt like Wolfe when he first spied the broken path that led up the cliff face from the St. Lawrence to the Heights of Abraham.
By accident or design, Brentin gave Teddy Parsons’s white Homburg hat a tilt with his elbow; it tumbled off down the face of the terrace and fell out of sight on to the line.
“There’s your chance, Teddy,” I said. “Run down the steps and fetch your hat. You can see if there’s another gate at the bottom where that bunch of cactus is.”
Teddy came back breathless. “There’s no sort of obstruction,” he gasped. “It’s a clear run all the way. Only we shall have to be careful, if the night’s dark; some of the steps are broken.” Poor Teddy, how prophetic!
We entered the rooms for the first time after dinner.