The Story Continued by Marian Halcombe

I had heard the Count say that he meant to examine the rooms on each side of the library, and the staircase as well, before he entered on any explanation with Sir Percival. This expression of his intentions was necessarily sufficient to inform me that the library was the room in which he proposed that the conversation should take place. The one moment of time which was long enough to bring me to that conclusion was also the moment which showed me a means of baffling his precautions⁠—or, in other words, of hearing what he and Sir Percival said to each other, without the risk of descending at all into the lower regions of the house. In speaking of the rooms on the ground floor I have mentioned incidentally the verandah outside them, on which they all opened by means of French windows, extending from the cornice to the floor. The top of this verandah was flat, the rainwater being carried off from it by pipes into tanks which helped to supply the house. On the narrow leaden roof, which ran along past the bedrooms, and which was rather less, I should think, than three feet below the sills of the window, a row of flowerpots was ranged, with wide intervals between each pot⁠—the whole being protected from falling in high winds by an ornamental iron railing along the edge of the roof. The plan which had now occurred to me was to get out at my sitting-room window on to this roof, to creep along noiselessly till I reached that part of it which was immediately over the library window, and to crouch down between the flowerpots, with my ear against the outer railing. If Sir Percival and the Count sat and smoked