Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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He sprang up from the bales of goods and contrived to pass through the opening. This done he closed it.

He now found himself on the leads of a flat roof.

The building was immensely high, as most structures of this nature usually are.

As far as the eye could reach the chimneys and roofs of the houses of the city lay before him like one vast panorama.

He stood on a dizzy height, from which there did not appear to be any means of escape.

He began to despair, but a shuffling noise at the trap-door moved him to further action.

He ran to the extreme end of the roof, and found, much to his delight, the roofs of houses, some twelve or thirteen feet below.

He looked over the parapet of the warehouse at the roof beneath him.

He cast a furtive glance at the trap, which he discovered was being removed.

The police were on his track.

Urged almost to desperation, he laid hold of one of the coping stones of the parapet; he threw his legs and body over, and then for a moment or so hung in mid air.

To let go and drop on the roof of one of the houses was indeed a desperate alternative.