That was enough for Barnes. It needed but that discouraging cry to rouse his fighting spirit to a pitch that bordered on recklessness. His courage took fire, and blazed up in one mighty flame. Nothing,-- nothing could stop him now.
Hastily he wrote: "If you do not come at once, we will force our way into the house and fight it out with them all. My friend is coming up the vines. Let him enter the window. Tell him where to go and he will do the rest. He is a miracle man. Nothing is impossible to him. If he does not return in ten minutes, I shall follow."
There was no response to this. The head reappeared in the window, but no word came down.
Sprouse whispered: "I am going up. She will not commit you to anything. We have to take the matter into our own hands. Stay here. If you hear a commotion in the house, run for it. Don't wait for me. I'll probably be done for."
"I'll do just as I damn please about running," said Barnes, and there was a deep thrill in his whisper. "Good luck. God help you if they catch you."
"Not even He could help me then. Good-bye. I'll do what I can to induce her to drop out of the window if anything goes wrong with me down stairs."
He searched among the leaves and found the thick vine. A moment later he was silently scaling the wall of the house, feeling his way carefully, testing every precarious foothold, dragging himself painfully upwards by means of the most uncanny, animal-like strength and stealth.
Barnes could not recall drawing a single breath from the instant the man left his side until the faintly luminous square above his head was obliterated by the black of his body as it wriggled over the ledge.
He was never to forget the almost interminable age that he spent, flattened against the vines, waiting for a signal from aloft. He recalled, with dire uneasiness, Miss Cameron's statement that a guard was stationed beneath her window throughout the night. Evidently she was mistaken. Sprouse would not have overlooked a peril like that, and yet as he crouched there, scarcely breathing, he wondered how long it would be before the missing guard returned to his post and he would be compelled to fight for his life. The fine, cold rain fell gently about him; moist tendrils and leaves caressed his face; owls hooted with ghastly vehemence, as if determined to awaken all the sleepers for miles around; and frogs chattered loudly in gleeful anticipation of the frenzied dash he would have to make through the black maze.