Free The Trail of Fear by Anthony Armstrong

window. Rezaire followed him.
    â€œYou’ll have to help me, Sam,” he whispered.
    â€œJust do as I do. Get out backward and stand in the gutter, leaning forward and supporting yourself as well on the slates with your hands. Then work along crab fashion.”
    Fearfully Rezaire obeyed him. The slight fog had drifted away and he could see right up the roof ahead of him to the ridge whence he had clung and then fallen. He stayed there motionless for a moment, feeling quite giddy with the fear that he might fall again, when there would be nothing to save him. He dared not look down between his legs. His heels projected over space. At his side Sam began to shuffle slowly along. He could hear the soft padding of his hands on the tiles and the scrape of his feet on the gutter which, old and rusted, bent perilously under the movement. But though the gutter, the only thing between them and the garden forty feet below, twisted and creaked, it did not break. The minutes seemed like hours, but at last they found themselves crouched at the side of the next attic window which was shut.
    â€œWe’ll have to go on,” whispered Sam. “I don’t think we can get in.”
    â€œNo, no, I can’t,” returned Rezaire, who had by now quite lost his nerve.
    As if in support of his appeal they heard voices somewhere in between the two roofs and saw a head appear for a moment to the left silhouetted against the sky. They kept very still, and the head disappeared. But it was evident the police were still on the roof and were now doing what they might have done a short while before with more success—climbing up at intervals to look down the far slope of the roofs. And at that moment Rezaire’s fingers on the window-panes stuck into something soft and clinging. It was a mass of cobwebs.
    He at once whispered excitedly to Sam: “Sam, I believe this house is empty. I know there is an empty one in the street. We can force the window. There’ll be no one inside. Quick!”
    The moment Sam had grasped the significance of the statement, he took out his long thin knife and in a moment he carefully pressed back the hasp. The window creaked open. But even as they crawled in, Rezaire heard the scraping of feet on the roof and saw the head again peering over the crest of the roof, this time much nearer. He fell hurriedly into the room in a heap, not knowing whether he had been seen or not.
    Inside was pitch blackness and the stale musty smell of a room that has not been lived in for a long tune. He could hear Sam moving somewhere to his right, though their feet trod light on the thick carpet of dust. He felt in his pockets for a match, but at that moment there was a little scrape and a glow appeared in Sam’s shielding hands. It showed them a bare unfurnished attic, similar to the one they had left, with a door at the far side. Then the match went out, followed by Sam’s whisper: “Can’t see much, even with a light.”
    â€œBest move in the dark,” suggested Rezaire. “We’ll give the game away if we show lights in an empty house.”
    â€œDo you think they’re after us?”
    â€œDon’t know.” He told Sam about the head he had seen. “They may have seen us from the roof and passed the word down below.”
    They made their way over to the door and softly turning the handle, opened it. The thick dead silence of a house that has been empty for months met them. It seemed eerie, almost uncanny. There was no tick of a clock or creak of furniture, nothing but the dead silence. After a moment Rezaire stepped out onto the landing and with Sam close behind him began to search for the banisters of the staircase.
    They reached the second floor without mishap. Then Sam muttered: “I wish we’d gotten a torch.”
    â€œDoesn’t matter,” answered Rezaire. “We can find our way down all right. Much better not to show a