"Open, fools, dolts, wretches!" shouted the Governor, and then turned despairingly to the German.
"What--what next?" demanded von Hildemaller fiercely, panting half-way through the sentence.
"There's something wrong. I cannot make these dolts of servants of mine hear me. The place is locked, and yet I left the door unlatched when I came down to visit you but a few moments ago. The thing is inexplicable."
If the Turkish governor found the matter hard of understanding and difficult to explain, the wily, cunning von Hildemaller rapidly saw to the bottom of it. A man such as he, gifted with a scheming brain, was just the one to realize that prisoners interned in such a place and escaped from their cell were yet not at large nor at liberty. This was just the reckless sort of thing that those British subalterns would do. It was like their effrontery to usurp the place of the Governor himself and secrete themselves in his quarters.
"Bah!" he yelped in the face of the Turk. "Then your servants are not the only dolts and fools that I know of. Can you not see that the door has been locked from within--or rather bolted? You are shut out of your own quarters, and by whom? By whom, tell me? By none other than those two whom we are seeking. Break the door open! Beat it in! Call for men to bring hammers!"
It was indeed time for Geoff to be moving, for if the Governor and his companion were making a considerable din outside that door, shouts were coming from other parts of the prison. Those of the soldiers who had not entirely lost their heads, or who had not absolutely been bereft of their better senses by the violence of the Governor and the German, were now making a complete search of the place, while some of them were at that moment dragging the outside door of the prison open. Geoff clambered through the window, gripped the knotted rope, and began to slide rapidly downwards. Yet he was not to reach the ground without a further, if only a small, adventure; for that improvised rope, strained as it had been by supporting Philip's weight, succumbed to that of our hero. It parted at one of the knots a foot above his head and some thirty from the ground, and a moment later Geoff found himself plunging on to one of those cushions which they had so thoughtfully dropped to provide against such an occasion. There Philip gripped him and steadied him, helping him to his feet.