E. W. Hornung_A J Raffles 03 Read Free

myself."
    And he jingled the skeleton bunch that he carried on a chain as
honest men carry their latchkeys.
    "You forget the inner doors and the safe."
    "True. You might be useful to me there. But I still don't like
leading you in where it isn't absolutely necessary, Bunny."
    "Then let me lead you, I answered, and forthwith marched across the
broad, secluded road, with the great houses standing back on either
side in their ample gardens, as though the one opposite belonged to
me. I thought Raffles had stayed behind, for I never heard him at
my heels, yet there he was when I turned round at the gate.
    "I must teach you the step," he whispered, shaking his head. "You
shouldn't use your heel at all. Here's a grass border for you: walk
it as you would the plank! Gravel makes a noise, and flower-beds
tell a tale. Wait - I must carry you across this."
    It was the sweep of the drive, and in the dim light from above the
door, the soft gravel, ploughed into ridges by the night's wheels,
threatened an alarm at every step. Yet Raffles, with me in his
arms, crossed the zone of peril softly as the pard.
    "Shoes in your pocket - that's the beauty of pumps!" he whispered
on the step; his light bunch tinkled faintly; a couple of keys he
stooped and tried, with the touch of a humane dentist; the third
let us into the porch. And as we stood together on the mat, as he
was gradually closing the door, a clock within chimed a half-hour
in fashion so thrillingly familiar to me that I caught Raffles by
the arm. My half-hours of happiness had flown to just such chimes!
I looked wildly about me in the dim light. Hat-stand and oak
settee belonged equally to my past. And Raffles was smiling in my
face as he held the door wide for my escape.
    "You told me a lie!" I gasped in whispers.
    "I did nothing of the sort," he replied. "The furniture's the
furniture of Hector Carruthers; but the house is the house of Lord
Lochmaben. Look here!"
    He had stooped, and was smoothing out the discarded envelope of a
telegram. "Lord Lochmaben," I read in pencil by the dim light;
and the case was plain to me on the spot. My friends had let their
house, furnished, as anybody but Raffles would have explained to me
in the beginning.
    "All right," I said. "Shut the door."
    And he not only shut it without a sound, but drew a bolt that might
have been sheathed in rubber.
    In another minute we were at work upon the study-door, I with the
tiny lantern and the bottle of rock-oil, he with the brace and the
largest bit. The Yale lock he had given up at a glance. It was
placed high up in the door, feet above the handle, and the chain of
holes with which Raffles had soon surrounded it were bored on a
level with his eyes. Yet the clock in the hall chimed again, and
two ringing strokes resounded through the silent house before we
gained admittance to the room.
    Raffle's next care was to muffle the bell on the shuttered window
(with a silk handkerchief from the hat-stand) and to prepare an
emergency exit by opening first the shutters and then the window
itself. Luckily it was a still night, and very little wind came
in to embarrass us. He then began operations on the safe, revealed
by me behind its folding screen of books, while I stood sentry on
the threshold. I may have stood there for a dozen minutes,
listening to the loud hall clock and to the gentle dentistry of
Raffles in the mouth of the safe behind me, when a third sound
thrilled my every nerve. It was the equally cautious opening of a
door in the gallery overhead.
    I moistened my lips to whisper a word of warning to Raffles. But
his ears had been as quick as mine, and something longer. His
lantern darkened as I turned my head; next moment I felt his breath
upon the back of my neck. It was now too late even for a whisper,
and quite out of the question to close the mutilated door. There
we could only stand, I on the threshold, Raffles at my elbow, while
one carrying a candle crept down the stairs.
    The study-door was at right