Because such associations filled his eyes again, there seemed no end to
them. Somebody was playing the piano near some open window, and playing
almost as well as Lettice did, and playing one of her things! Pocket
could not bear to listen or look out any longer, and he dressed as
quietly as he could. He had almost resolved to slip out without a word,
whatever else he did, if the opportunity offered. It simply never
occurred to him, until he made the discovery, that anybody would dare
to lock him in his room!
Yet they had done it; that infernal old German doctor had had the cheek
to do it; and the effect on the boy, who so expressed the situation to
himself, was rather remarkable. A wholly ineffectual tug or two told
him he was on the wrong side of the door for applying mere bodily
strength, that either he must raise an ignominious shout for freedom or
else achieve it for himself by way of the window. Unathletic as he
always had been, he was sportsman enough not to hesitate an instant
between the two alternatives; and on again looking out of the window,
saw his way down at a glance.
Immediately underneath was another window, opening on a leaded balcony
over the bow-window in the drawing-room. To shift his bedstead with the
least possible noise, to tie a sheet to it, and to slide down the sheet
till he had but a few feet to drop into the balcony, was the work of a
very few minutes to one as excitedly determined as Pocket had become on
finding himself a prisoner. Thought they would lock him in, did they?
They would just find out their mistake! It was exactly the same mood in
which he had scaled the upright palings in defiance of the policeman
who said he might not sleep in the Park.
The balcony window was open, the room within empty. It was obviously
Baumgartner’s bedroom. There was a camp bedstead worthy of an old
campaigner, a large roll-top desk, and a waste-paper basket which
argued either a voluminous correspondence or imperfect domestic
service; it would have furnished scent for no short paper-chase.
Otherwise the room was tidy enough, and so eloquent of Baumgartner
himself, in its uncompromising severity, that Pocket breathed more
freely on the landing. And in the hall he felt absolutely safe, for he
had gained it without the creaking of a stair, and there on the pegs
hung his hat, but neither the cloak nor the weird wide-awake affected
by his host.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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