Chapter 8
WITH quick steps, Colt led the way back to the kitchen— a thoroughly modern, electrified kitchen in this old-fashioned house of the period of President McKinley. Realising the enigma we were called upon to solve, I looked around me carefully. We were on the second floor; the kitchen had two windows overlooking a backyard, with a tree in the centre. At first glance these windows seemed the natural means of escape. But a nearer examination increased Colt's perplexity. There was a sheer drop of thirty feet to the pavement of the yard.
"From here," the Commissioner pointed out, "we are almost as far from the ground as was Josie LaTour when she fell. And there is, as you see, no sign of a rope to go up or down— and literally no toe-hold in that sheer wall above or below us."
"It co
