I felt rather relieved then, because
I knew he hadn't actually broken into the hotel. He walked down
Salisbury Lane very slowly. A policeman was just coming up.
"Goodnight, officer," I heard him say to the policeman, and he
asked him for a match. The policeman supplied the match, and the
other man lighted a cigarette, and proceeded further down the lane.
By cricking your neck from my window, Mr Babylon, you can get
a glimpse of the Embankment and the river. I saw the man cross
the Embankment, and lean over the river wall, where he seemed to
be talking to some one. He then walked along the Embankment to
Westminster and that was the last I saw of him. I waited a minute
or two for him to come back, but he didn't come back, and so I
thought it was about time I began to make inquiries into the affair.
I went downstairs instantly, and out of the hotel, through the
quadrangle, into Salisbury Lane, and I looked over those railings.
There was a ladder on the other side, by which it was perfectly
easy - once you had got over the railings - to climb down into the
yard. I was horribly afraid lest someone might walk up Salisbury
Lane and catch me in the act of negotiating those railings, but no
one did, and I surmounted them, with no worse damage than a torn
skirt. I crossed the yard on tiptoe, and I found that in the wall,
close to the ground and almost exactly under my window, there
was an iron grating, about one foot by fourteen inches.
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