One of these he abstracted, relocked the safe, and stepped out of
the room, locking the door behind him. Up the stairs he mounted
to the bedroom wherein he had left the sleeper. Having entered,
he locked the door from within, placed the keys and the torch
upon the table, and crept out again upon the dizzy ledge.
Poised there, high above the thoroughfare below, a great nausea
attacked him. Glancing to the right, in the direction of the
window through which he had come, he perceived Madame de Medici
leaning out and beckoning to him. Her arm gleamed whitely in the
faint light. A new courage came to him. He succeeded, crouched
there upon the narrow ledge, in relowering the window, and
leaving it in the state in which he had found it, he stood up and
essayed that sickly stride to the adjoining ledge. He
accomplished it, knelt, and crept back into the room from which
he had started. . . .
The head of an ivory image of Buddha loomed up out of the utter
darkness, growing and growing until it seemed like a great
mountain. He could not believe that there was so much ivory in
the world, and he felt it with his fingers, wonderingly. As he
did so it began to shrink, and shrink, and shrink, and shrink,
until it was no larger than a seated human figure.
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