He knew enough. He rose to his full height, and his eyes seemed a little
closer together; an ugly smile curved his lips. His gaze travelled over
the objects in the room, the bare stools and table, the lanthorn, the
wine-pitcher; beyond these, in a corner, the cloak and straw on the low
bed. The light, cold and grey, fell cheerlessly on the dull chamber, and
showed it in harmony with the ominous whisper which grew in the gallery;
with the stern-faced listener who stood, his one hand on the door. He
looked, but he found nothing to his purpose, nothing to serve his end,
whatever his end was; and with a quick light step he left the door,
mounted the window recess, and, poised on the very edge, looked down.
If he thought to escape that way his hope was desperate. The depth to
the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet. But Peridol had told
the truth. Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime,
here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a
tiny runnel of moisture which sluggishly crept across it to the slow
stream beyond. This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall
below the window, and more than accounted for the absence of bars or
fastenings. But, leaning far out, he saw that it ended at the angle of
the building, at a point twenty feet or so to the right of his position.
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