Keel nodded and turned, holding himself precariously with his hands on one slope of the roof while his legs dangled down the other. Then he was hitching himself forward again, and Dick followed.
Now their way was along cornices, clinging by fingertips while the wind lashed them from below; along copings, so weathered that they could not stand but must embrace the frigid stone with legs and arms; down rabbeted quoins and along the gutters of roofs, inching, spread-eagled.
The moon was high when they reached what might have been the end of the world: a steep curb roof, slanting down almost vertically to a curious, wide ledge nearly twenty feet below. Beyond that and on either side there was a chasm which even the rays of the high moon did not fill; it went down and down, and ended only in black shadow.
Standing at a wary distance from Keel, Dick glanced at him uneasily. This was a dead end; there was no way to go on from here. But Keel was turning his back on the gulf, lowering himself carefully until he hung by his hands from the cornice, his body flattened along the
lower slope. His face shone pale, upturned in the moonlight. Then he was gone with a sliding rush, and peering down, Dick saw him safe on the ledge below.
For the first time since the beginning of the adventure, Dick felt foreboding strike his heart. Were they going down into that endless moonlit canyon -- over the ledge and down?
"Afraid?" Keel called up softly.
Dick set his jaw. He turned and gripped the curb as Keel had done, then let himself down. The smooth leads were clammy and cold against his body. He swallowed hard; he couldn't see anything below him, and it was hard to make his hands let go. But there was no turning back; his fingers relaxed, then gripped frantically as the slope rushed upward. His feet struck the ledge with a jar. He came upright, dizzy and shaken.
Keel was standing a short distance away, staring across emptiness to the closed and shuttered building opposite. Directly across from him, there was a little iron balcony which Dick had not noticed before. It looked deceptively close. It was set a little lower than the level on which they were standing. But the two buildings, as well as Dick could judge, were at least fifteen feet apart.
"This is where the tackle would have helped," said Keel, without turning his head. Dick saw what he meant. There was a projecting cornice above the balcony; if you could catch a hook on that, you could swing across quite easily. But without a rope, it was out of the question. It was fifteen feet or more -- a standing jump, in heavy clothes, and with that chasm under you. You would have to jump headforemost, as if into a pool; it would take more nerve than most men had.
Keel was removing his gloves, with jerky motions. He wiped his palms on his jacket; Dick saw that there were beads of sweat on his forehead. He stepped back until his heels met the base of the, roof. He steadied himself with his hands on the leads, and looked across at Dick. His face was strained; there was something like appeal in his eyes.
Dick watched, unable to speak.
Keel straightened, swung his arms, and stepped forward to the front of the ledge.
"Keel, don't!" said Dick suddenly, with his heart at his throat.
Keel shook his head and stepped back again. He took a deep, painful breath and let it out. He breathed in again, held it, with his eyes still fixed on the balcony across. "Shut up," he said suddenly. "Oh, God." His eyes closed; his teeth showed in a grimace.
"Keel, listen -- we'll bang on the roofs -- attract somebody's attention."
"Never," said Keel. He breathed deep again, hesitated, then with a curious grunt he started forward. His foot struck the front of the ledge: he launched himself out in a hard, flat dive.
Watching, Dick felt the blood drain from his head. The other man seemed to hang in midair, arms Outstretched. Then Keel's hands struck and clutched at the iron bars. They slipped; Keel's body went reeling under and hit the wall with a thud. There was a moment when he seemed to be hanging there, unsupported, half in shadow below the balcony. Dick heard a gasping cry, and then Keel was falling, silently, past stage after stage of the moonlit masonry wall, dwindling: the darkness swallowed him silently up, and then, after another long moment, there was a distant slapping sound that echoed and died away.
13
Dick pressed his back against the leads to keep from falling. His knees had turned to water; he was breathing in great gulps that hurt his chest, and the rooftop world was swinging slowly, nauseously around him.
When it steadied, he looked out across a desolate sea of roofs -- angular, flat, sharp-peaked, blunt, set at all angles; here a church-like spire, there two twin minarets, yonder a flattened dome. In all that expanse, not a warm light showed; even the glow at the top of the Tower had gone out. He was alone.
Now he understood what Keel had hoped to do at the end of this journey -- reach that balcony and disappear through the door behind it, to leave him here on the ledge, afraid to make the jump and unable to get back the way he had come. It would have worked; it had worked ... Dick turned his eyes away from the balcony. Whatever happened, even if he died here of cold and exposure, he knew he could never bring himself to jump.
What other choice did he have? The roof was sheer at his back, impossible to climb. That left the three sides of the ledge itself, and kneeling down cautiously, hating himself for the effort it took, he peered over each of them in turn. On the right, there was sheer masonry, unornatnented; not a fly could get down that wall. Straight ahead, letting his head hang over, he could just make out the dim gleam of some ornamental stonework a dozen feet down; below that, nothing that offered any hope, and even that far it would be impossible to descend without climbing tackle.
On the left, the building abutted the gable-end of a somewhat lower roof, set back ten feet or so. The next building was of the same height and had a pyramidal roof; then there seemed to be a gap. Both roofs had stout gutters, and it looked to Dick as if he could make his way around that pyramidal roof on either side toward the east. It would be something, a beginning -- if only he could get from the ledge to the first roof.
But the wall on this side was as sheer as the other; only a faint continuation of the front wall's ornamental ridge -- a mere toe-hold, and that too far down to be of any use. No, Keel had known what he was doing; there was only one way to get to this ledge, and only one way to get off it. He was trapped.
He stood erect, looking and listening. Nothing had changed; there was no movement and no sound, except the faint, far-off singing of the wind. He forced himself to turn slowly, inspecting with minutest care every visible wall and roof: there might be some small thing he had missed that would save him. But everything was the same as before; every window was shuttered and barred.
Now that he was standing still, the cold numbed his body. He realized suddenly that this was the beginning of his death.
At that thought, his heart began hammering again; life ran thickly at his throat, impossible to deny. He dropped down on his knees again at the left side of the ledge, staring at the distant roofs and then at the blank wall below him -- concentrating fiercely, as if by an effort of will he could create a way across.
Moonlight was slanting down the wall, picking out every tiny irregularity. The more he stared, the more it seemed to him that some of those dark spots were actually pits in the masonry. There was a cluster of them directly below, and then a few more at random intervals to the left. About halfway to the next roof, a shallow groove began; if he could reach that, with his toes on the narrow ridge -- It began to seem remotely possible; but that first five feet of wall, with emptiness yawning under it: that was a horror.