The skylight might
be, probably was, directly over the stair well, and open clear to the
basement of the house--but it was his only chance. He swung his body
well out, let go--and dropped. With the impetus he smashed against a
wall, was flung back from it in a sort of rebound, and his hands closed,
gripping fiercely, on banisters. It had been the stair well beyond any
question of doubt, but his swing had sent him clear of it.
Above, they had not yet reached the skylight. Jimmie Dale snatched a
precious moment to listen, as he rose, and found himself, apart from
bruises, perhaps unhurt. There was commotion, too, in this house below,
the alarm had extended and spread along the block--but the commotion was
all in the FRONT of the house--the street was the lure.
Jimmie Dale started down the stairs, and in an instant he had gained the
landing. In another he had slipped to the rear of the hall--somewhere
there, from the hall itself, from one of the rear rooms, there must be
an exit to the fire escape. To attempt to leave by the front way was
certain capture.
They were yelling, shouting down now through the sky-light above, as
Jimmie Dale softly raised the window sash at the rear of the hall. The
fire escape was there. Shouts from along the corridor, from the tenement
dwellers who had been crowding their neighbours' rooms, craning their
necks probably from the front windows, answered the shouts now from the
roof and the skylight; doors opened; forms rushed out--but it was dark
in the corridor, only a murky yellow at the upper end from the opened
doors.
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