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 chai