“What happened?” she asked.
“He came round here like a mad bull, and when he tried to climb the ladder I pitched him over, ladder and all. It’s a nuisance; I shall have to make a new ladder.”
Manon laughed. She liked Paul’s shrewdness, his smile of restraint.
“And now I must get you down.”
She happened to know that old Durand carried a length of stout rope in the locker under the back seat of the car. He had told her it was there. “If we break down, well, I have a tow-rope.” He liked thoroughness, to be prepared for all eventualities.
The rope served its purpose. Manon threw up the coil, and at the third attempt Brent caught it. He fastened the end to one of the rafters and slid down.
“That’s that,” he said tersely.
Manon looked at him with eyes that were brighter than the eyes of a man.
XXII
Anatole Durand was away for two hours, and when he returned to the Café de la Victoire he found that Brent had extemporized a ladder out of some lengths of timber and was at work again on the roof of the house. The gale of the preceding night had been a warning to Manon’s partner, and he was in a hurry to get the whole roof covered in before the wind rose again. Manon was helping at the foot of the ladder, and making further use of Monsieur Durand’s rope. She had knotted a big loop at one end of it, a loop which would grip a couple of sheets of iron, so that Paul could draw them up.