ng to this day. I hear my mad knock at the
double doors; they fly open in the middle, and it is like some
sumptuous and solemn rite. A long slice of silken-legged lackey is
seen on either hand; a very prelate of a butler bows a benediction from
the sanctuary steps. I breathe more freely when I reach a book-lined
library where a mere handful of men do not overflow the Persian rug
before the fire. One of them is Raffles, who is talking to a large man
with the brow of a demi-god and the eyes and jowl of a degenerate
bulldog. And this is our noble host.

Lord Thornaby stared at me with inscrutable stolidity as we shook
hands, and at once handed me over to a tall, ungainly man whom he
addressed as Ernest, but whose surname I never learned. Ernest in turn
introduced me, with a shy and clumsy courtesy, to the two remaining
guests. They were the pair who had driven up in the hansom; one turned
out to be Kingsmill, Q.C.; the other I knew at a glance from his
photographs as Parrington, the backwoods novelist. They were admirable
foils to each other, the barrister being plump and dapper, with a
Napoleonic cast of countenance, and the author one of the shaggiest
dogs I have ever seen in evening-clothes. Neither took much stock of
me, but both had an eye on Raffles as I exchanged a few words with each
in turn. Dinner, however, was immediately announced, and the six of us
had soon taken our places round a brilliant little table stranded in a
great dark room.

I had not been prepared for so small a party, and at first I felt
relieved. If the worst came to the worst, I was fool enough to say in
my heart, they were but two to one. But I was soon sighing for that
safety which the adage associates with numbers. We were far too few
for the confidential duologue with one's neighbor in which I, at least,
would have taken refuge from the perils of a general conversation. And
the general conversation soon resolved itself into an attack, so subtly
concerted and so artistically delivered that I could not conceive how
Raffles should ever know it for an attack, and that against himself, or
how to warn him of his peril. But to this day I am not convinced that I
also was honored by the suspicions of the club; it may have been so,
and they may have ignored me for the bigger game.

It was Lord Thornaby himself who fired the first shot, over the very
sherry. He had Raffles on his right hand, and the backwoodsman of
letters on his left.