time, and generally facing the task before me with a coolness
which I strove to make worthy of my absent chief. But mine was a
self-conscious quality, as far removed from the original as any other
deliberate imitation of genius. I actually struck a match on my
trousers, and lit one of the shorter Sullivans. Raffles himself would
not have done such a thing at such a moment. But I wished to tell him
that I had done it; and in truth I was not more than pleasurably
afraid; I had rather that impersonal curiosity as to the issue which
has been the saving of me in still more precarious situations. I even
grew impatient for the fray, and could not after all sit still as long
as I had intended. So it happened that I was finishing my cigarette on
the edge of the wet lawn, and about to slip off my shoes before
stepping across the gravel to the conservatory door, when a most
singular sound arrested me in the act. It was a muffled gasping
somewhere overhead. I stood like stone; and my listening attitude must
have been visible against the milky sheen of the lawn, for a labored
voice hailed me sternly from a window.

"Who on earth are you?" it wheezed.

"A detective officer," I replied, "sent down by the Burglary Insurance
Company."

Not a moment had I paused for my precious fable. It had all been
prepared for me by Raffles, in case of need. I was merely repeating a
lesson in which I had been closely schooled. But at the window there
was pause enough, filled only by the uncanny wheezing of the man I
could not see.

"I don't see why they should have sent you down," he said at length.
"We are being quite well looked after by the local police; they're
giving us a special call every hour."

"I know that, Mr. Medlicott," I rejoined on my own account. "I met one
of them at the corner just now, and we passed the time of night."

My heart was knocking me to bits. I had started for myself at last.

"Did you get my name from him?" pursued my questioner, in a suspicious
wheeze.

"No; they gave me that before I started," I replied. "But I'm sorry
you saw me, sir; it's a mere matter of routine, and not intended to
annoy anybody. I propose to keep a watch on the place all night, but I
own it wasn't necessary to trespass as I've done. I'll take myself off
the actual premises, if you prefer it."

This again was all my own; and it met with a success that might have
given me confidence.

"Not a bit of it," replied young Med