The cry came from above. Tightly clutching the window frame I leapt forward and peered up in the darkness. As I did so, a coil of stout rope fell past me and disappeared. Now a rope was hanging down across the window from above. I stretched out an arm, and was just able to clutch it. "Is it fast?" I shouted. "Yes--fast to an iron staple that supports the chimney. Get out, quick! Quick!" "Go down first--go down!" I shouted up. "_I tell you to get out_!" the girl's voice cried. This was no time for courtesies. The girl said we must go, and so... I was pulled back violently from the window and flung on to the floor. A man was clutching at the rope. It was Paulton. At the same instant a shout of laughter sounded in the room. Scrambling to my feet, I saw Faulkner laughing. Had the man any nerves at all? Did he know what fear meant? "Paulton did that," he exclaimed. "I think he's the limit. Look at him sliding down--the cur! Who is the girl above?" "I don't know, and don't care!" I cried. "Do for the love of Heaven, follow down. I'm suffocating. The fire will be on us in an instant." "And leave the girl!" he said in a tone of reproach and surprise. "You can't mean it, Ashton." "She won't go first--she said so." "Won't she?" He went over to the window, leaned out as I had done, and looked up as best he could. "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.