...
He was now immediately opposite the minaret, at an elevation of about
twenty feet above the roof he wished to reach, and as far away, or perhaps
a trifle farther.
Still he detected no signs of life about that nest of spies: if the
wireless were in operation its apparatus was well-housed; there was no
sound of the spark, never a glimmer of its violet flash.
Laboriously--the knot completed to his satisfaction--Lanyard returned via
the eastern arm of the E, paying out the coiled cable as he progressed,
working round to the north side of the court.
Once again pausing opposite the minaret, he knotted the end of the cable
loosely round an upright connecting with the sixth level, let it slide
down, followed it, repeated the process, and rested finally on the fifth.
Now his ordeal approached a climax which he contemplated with what calmness
he could while securing the rope beneath the arms.
In another sixty seconds or less it must be demonstrated whether his dead
reckoning would set him down safe and sound on the roof or dash him against
the walls of the Seventy-ninth Street house, to swing back and dangle
impotently in mid-air till daylight and police discovered him--unless,
escaping injury, he were able to pull himself up hand over hand to the
girder.
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