A Thief in the Night | Page 7

the narrow passage into Palace Gardens. He knew the house as well as I
did. We made our first survey from the other side of the road. And the
house was not quite in darkness; there was a dim light over the door, a
brighter one in the stables, which stood still farther back from the road.
"That's a bit of a bore," said Raffles. "The ladies have been out
somewhere - trust them to spoil the show! They would get to bed
before the stable folk, but insomnia is the curse of their sex and our
profession. Somebody's not home yet; that will be the son of the house;
but he's a beauty, who may not come home at all."
"Another Alick Carruthers," I murmured, recalling the one I liked least
of all the household, as I remembered it.
"They might be brothers," rejoined Raffles, who knew all the loose fish
about town. "Well, I'm not sure that I shall want you after all, Bunny."

"Why not?"
"If the front door's only on the latch, and you're right about the lock, I
shall walk in as though I were the son of the house 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