I looked down. It made my stomach heave a little. The pavement was a long, long way below. I could see the French windows that led back into the main living room about ten feet away. If I could break in through them, I could open the door and let Lauren out and at least we’d be on the way to safety. But the windows were too far away, and although they had a narrow ledge of their own, there was no way I could reach it. Unless . . .
This was a warehouse and like all the other warehouses it had a hook on a metal arm jutting out of the wall—in this case exactly halfway between the two windows and about a yard above them. In the old days it would have been used to hoist goods up from the street on a rope. The rope was gone, of course. But rope was at least one thing we had in plenty.
I squeezed myself back into the room.
“No way out—eh?” Lauren muttered.
“There might be.” I explained what I had in mind.
“You’re crazy,” she said. “You can’t do it.”
“I’ve got to do it,” I said. “Better crazy than dead.”
Ten minutes later I was half in and half out again, but this time with a length of rope around my waist. We’d taken the rope that Himmell had used to tie us up and knotted it into a single length. There was a good twelve feet of it. I held the slack in my hand and now I began to swing it a bit like a lasso. Then I threw it, holding on to the end. The loop flew out toward the hook, missed, and fell. I pulled it in and tried again. I hooked it on the fourth attempt.
So there I am, five stories up, leaning out of a window. There’s a rope leading from me to a hook and then back again, and I tie the end around my waist, too. Remember that isosceles triangle I mentioned? Well, it’s a bit like that. The two windows are the lower corners. The hook is the point at the top. All I have to do is jump and the rope will swing me across like a pendulum from one side to the other. At least that’s the general idea.
I didn’t much like it. In fact I hated it. But I was running out of time and there didn’t seem to be any other way.
I jumped.
For a giddy second I swung in the air, one shoulder scraping across the brickwork. But then my scrabbling hands somehow managed to grab hold of the edge of the French windows. I pulled, dangling in midair, supported only by the rope, my legs kicking at nothing. I pulled with all my strength. And then I was crouching on the ledge, trying hard not to look down, my heart beating in my chest like it would rather be someplace else.
I stayed where I was until I’d gotten my breath back, afraid of falling back into space. The ledge could only have been six inches wide and my whole body was pressed against the windowpanes. Without looking back into the street, I reached down and pulled off my shoe. Slowly I lifted it up. It was cold out there, but the sweat was running down inside my shirt. My eyes were fixed on the grand piano on the other side of the window. Somehow looking at it made me forget where I was and what I was doing. I held the shoe firmly in one hand, then brought it swinging forward. The heel hit the window, smashing it. I dropped the shoe into the room, then, avoiding the jagged edges of broken glass, slipped my hand through, found the lock, turned it. The window opened. With a sigh of relief I eased my way inside, then untied the rope and pulled it in after me.
I hadn’t gotten very far, but at least I was still alive.
Gott and Himmell had left the tea things out. I put my shoe back on and took a swig of milk out of the jug. Then I went over to the door and drew back the bolt.
Lauren raised an eyebrow when she saw me. “So you made it?” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. I would have said more, but for some reason my teeth were chattering at about one hundred and fifty miles per hour. It must have been even colder out there than I’d thought.
Lauren tried the door that led to the staircase. It was locked. Then she strolled across to the broken window and looked out.
“That’s great, Nick,” she drawled. “We’re out of the closet but we can’t get out of the room. There’s nobody near enough to hear us shouting for help. You’ve sent our German friends on a wild-goose chase, and when they get back they’re going to string you up and use you for target practice. We don’t have enough rope to climb down with and we don’t have any guns.”
“That’s about it,” I agreed.
“Then you’d better think up something fast, kid.” She pointed out of the window. “Because here they come right now.”
THE LAST CHORD
I ran back over to the window. Lauren was right. The blue van was at the end of Bayly Street. It would have reached us already if a truck hadn’t backed out of the construction site, blocking its path. Now it was stuck there while some guy in a yellow hat tried to direct the driver. Fortunately it was a tricky maneuver. They’d be stuck there for maybe another couple of minutes. How had they gotten back from Victoria so quickly? I played back what had happened in my mind and realized that my great escape had probably taken about an hour. It’s amazing how time flies when you’re having fun.
Lauren was in the kitchen, rummaging through the drawers. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m looking for a knife.” She held up a whisk.
“This is all I can find.”
“They’ve got guns,” I reminded her. “You’re not going to get very far trying to whisk them.”
“I know. I know.” She threw the whisk over her shoulder. “So what are we going to do?”
What were we going to do? If we yelled for help, the only people who would hear us would be Gott and Himmell. The noise from the construction site would see to that. Even if we found a knife, it would be no defense against automatic pistols. There was no way out and any minute now they’d be coming in. I looked out of the window. The truck seemed to be pinned at an angle across the road. The man in the yellow hat was frantically giving directions, swatting at invisible flies. I heard the truck grind into gear. It began to edge backward. Soon the road would clear and the blue van would come. It would come right underneath the window. I tried to remember where it had stopped when they brought me here. That time they’d parked in front of the door. Would they park there again? Perhaps.
“Lauren,” I said.
“Yes?” She’d found a corkscrew and a dessert spoon.
“Quickly . . .”
The window that I’d broken in through was, like I said, a French window. It came all the way down to the floor. I looked out again. The truck had almost completed its turn. The man in the yellow hat was walking away, his job done.
“The piano,” I said.
“The piano?”
“Come on!”
“Nick—this is no time for a concert.”
“That’s not what I have in mind.”
I got my shoulder down to the piano and began to push. It was on wheels which helped, but even so, it must have weighed a ton. It was a Bechstein, a great chunk of black wood with a gleaming white ivory smile. God knows how much it had cost, but if this is what you needed to be a pianist, it made a good argument for taking up the triangle. Lauren had figured out what I was doing and now she stood there, staring.
“Honey,” she said. “You can’t be serious.”
“Deadly serious,” I said.
“Deadly,” she agreed.
She came over and joined me. With the two of us pushing, the piano moved more easily. Inch by inch we drew closer to the open window. It was going to be a close fit, but the piano would just about slide through the frame. It occurred to me that that was probably how they’d gotten it in here in the first place. How long had it taken them to hoist it up? The return journey was certainly going to be a hell of a lot faster.