He did not even pause to resume his disguise, but ran to the shaft, cursing as he went.

There he stopped like a man shot, his figure stiffened, his arms thrown out straight before him; his eyes, wide and full of terror, stared between the skids rising from the shaft to the brace above.
Dick Haddon was not there.

The space was empty, the rope's end moved lazily in the wind.
The revulsion of feeling was terrible: it left the strong man as weak as a child, it turned the desperate criminal into a mumbling coward.

Rogers staggered to the shaft and examined the rope.

It had broken where one strand was cut; the other strands were frayed out.