From the window to the platform, there was no rope.
"This is most extraordinary!" murmured Martial, thoughtfully.
"Very strange!" approved M. de Courtornieu.
"How the devil could they have reached the base of the tower?"
"That is what I cannot understand."
But Martial found another cause for surprise.
On examining the rope that remained--the one which had been used in
making the second descent--he discovered that it was not a single piece.
Two pieces had been knotted together. The longest piece had evidently
been too short.
How did this happen? Could the duke have made a mistake in the height of
the cliff? or had the abbe measured the rope incorrectly?
But Martial had also measured it with his eye, and it had seemed to
him that the rope was much longer, fully a third longer, than it now
appeared.
"There must have been some accident," he remarked to his father and to
the marquis; "but what?"
"Well, what does it matter?" replied the marquis, "you have the
compromising letter, have you not?"
But Martial's was one of those minds that never rest when confronted by
an unsolved problem.
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