“Go down at once,” he shouted in a tone of extraordinary firmness. “We don’t move until you do.”
I suppose his commanding tone made her realise he really meant to wait. Anyway, a moment later a girl’s figure appeared, swinging above the window. She rested her feet upon the window-sill, and looked at us.
“Don’t be frightened,” she said. “It is tied very firmly, and the staple can’t give way.”
“Don’t be frightened!” And this from the “chit of a girl,” as I had called her the night before when she had so cleverly induced us to stay in the room. She was just visible now in the blackness beneath, as she slid down the rope with remarkable agility.
“Go ahead, Ashton,” Faulkner said, as the rope slackened. “I’ll steady the rope while you go down. Don’t get excited! There’s lots of time.”
Smoke was floating up from the window now as though the window were a chimney. My smarting eyes met Faulkner’s as I clutched the rope with both hands and prepared to swing out. His eyes were bloodshot, red and swollen. Yet he was actually smiling. And he had lit another cigarette!
It was with a feeling of intense relief, that as I looked up from the ground, I saw Faulkner swing out on the rope from the fourth storey window, twisting round and round like a joint upon a roasting jack. It is said that in moments of acute crisis thoughts, absurd in their triviality, sometimes take prominence. It was so now. As I watched, with halting breath, Faulkner’s hunched-up figure slowly sliding down like a monkey on a string, only one thought was in my mind.
Would he, when he reached the ground, have that cigarette between his lips?
He reached the ground, and I went up to him. In an access of emotion I grasped him by the hand.
“You are a hero, old chap!” I exclaimed. “A perfect hero!”