This made him pause at once. For the rope to
be drawn up, or for Boris to show himself before that lighted window
for even the moment of a swift descent, might well be fatal. That was
one point, but he speedily devised a way of overcoming that.
There was another danger to be considered, and it took him longer to
calculate this. Naturally there was a patrol about the house. Fred
himself had had to avoid the sentry, making his steady round. Now he lay
in the bushes and timed the man's appearances for nearly half an hour.
There were two men, as a matter of fact, and they met on each circling
of the house. Fortunately, their meeting came at the very end of the
garden. So Fred was able to work out a sort of mental chart of their
movements, and to confirm it by timing them. The two sentries met on his
side of the house at the eastern end. The first walked west, the second
north. The one who walked west had his back to Fred and to the window
where Boris waited for a minute. Then he, too, turned north. Then came a
blessed interval of just a minute, in which neither sentry was in sight.
Altogether, there was a period of almost two minutes in which no eye
would be fixed on Boris's window, unless the sentry chanced to turn and
look back.
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