dress myself in my upper clothing--and to consider of how I should
escape. If I betrayed by the smallest noise that the attempt to
suffocate me had failed, I was certain to be murdered. Had I made any
noise already? I listened intently, looking towards the door.

No! no footsteps in the passage outside--no sound of a tread, light or
heavy, in the room above--absolute silence everywhere. Besides locking
and bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which
I had found under the bed. To remove this chest (my blood ran cold as I
thought of what its contents might be!) without making some disturbance
was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through the house,
now barred up for the night, was sheer insanity. Only one chance was
left me--the window. I stole to it on tiptoe.

My bedroom was on the first floor, above an entresol, and looked into a
back street. I raised my hand to open the window, knowing that on that
action hung, by the merest hairbreadth, my chance of safety. They keep
vigilant watch in a house of murder. If any part of the frame cracked,
if the hinge creaked, I was a lost man! It must have occupied me at
least five minutes, reckoning by time--five _hours_, reckoning by
suspense--to open that window. I succeeded in doing it silently--in
doing it with all the dexterity of a house-breaker--and then looked down
into the street. To leap the distance beneath me would be almost certain
destruction! Next, I looked round at the sides of the house. Down the
left side ran a thick water-pipe--it passed close by the outer edge of
the window. The moment I saw the pipe I knew I was saved. My breath came
and went freely for the first time since I had seen the canopy of the
bed moving down upon me!

To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed