difficult and dangerous enough--to _me_ the prospect of slipping down
the pipe into the street did not suggest even a thought of peril. I had
always been accustomed, by the practice of gymnastics, to keep up my
school-boy powers as a daring and expert climber; and knew that my head,
hands, and feet would serve me faithfully in any hazards of ascent
or descent. I had already got one leg over the window-sill, when I
remembered the handkerchief filled with money under my pillow. I
could well have afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully
determined that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their
plunder as well as their victim. So I went back to the bed and tied the
heavy handkerchief at my back by my cravat.

Just as I had made it tight and fixed it in a comfortable place, I
thought I heard a sound of breathing outside the door. The chill feeling
of horror ran through me again as I listened. No! dead silence still
in the passage--I had only heard the night air blowing softly into the
room. The next moment I was on the window-sill, and the next I had a
firm grip on the water-pipe with my hands and knees.

I slid down into the street easily and quietly, as I thought I should,
and immediately set off at the top of my speed to a branch "prefecture"
of Police, which I knew was situated in the immediate neighbourhood. A
"subprefect," and several picked men among his subordinates, happened to
be up, maturing, I believe, some scheme for discovering the perpetrator
of a mysterious murder which all Paris was talking of just then. When
I began my story, in a breathless hurry and in very bad French, I could
see that the subprefect suspected me of being a drunken Englishman who
had robbed somebody; but he soon altered his opinion as I went on, and
before I had anything like concluded, he shoved all the papers before
him into a drawer, put on his hat, supplied me with another (for I was