If there had not been that ladder under the window; if there had not been those footprints on the carpet in the gallery; if there had not been that open window, I might have been led to think that this man had a right to be there, and that he was there as a matter of course and for reasons about which as yet I knew nothing.
"Having so placed my people, I again left the chateau, hurried to my ladder, and, replacing it, climbed up, revolver in hand.
"You see now what I mean about the ladder," went on the detective; "it's the only old piece of furniture here and the first thing that caught that cockney eye of mine.
He got briskly off the table on which he was sitting (for the only chair was allotted to Sir Walter) and ran rapidly up the ladder to the platform above.
Sir Walter's private secretary seemed more and more threatened with inappropriate slumber, and, having been the last to climb up the ladder, seemed now to lack the energy even to climb down again.
Bazin uttered a profound sigh and went out to look for the ladder. Presently a good, solid, wooden ladder was placed against the window.
Besides, at that moment he put his foot on the first step of the ladder and began his descent.
They descended into the plain by the ladder. Planchet met them hard by the shed.
The man in the water began suddenly to climb up the ladder, and I hastened away from the rail to fetch some clothes.
"But all this doesn't tell me how you came to hang on to our side ladder," I inquired, in the hardly audible murmurs we used, after he had told me something more of the proceedings on board the Sephora once the bad weather was over.
"Who'd have thought of finding a ladder hanging over at night in a ship anchored out here!
A few yards from the storeroom a ladder rose from the corridor through an aperture in the ceiling.
In conformity with such Wieroo architecture as he had already observed, the well through which the ladder rose continually canted at an angle from the perpendicular.
"Come!" And he turned toward the shaft and the ladder that he had ascended from the river.
There is no telling how long Kit might have stood upon the
ladder, addressing his master and mistress by turns, and generally turning towards the wrong person, if Barbara had not at that moment come running up to say that a messenger from the office had brought a note, which, with an expression of some surprise at Kit's oratorical appearance, she put into her master's hand.