end. But I had opened the window and leaned out
before I saw it for myself.

"You don't mean to say that's Thornaby House?"

I was not familiar with the view from my back windows.

"Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look through your own race-glass.
It has been the most useful thing of all."

But before I had the glass in focus more scales had fallen from my
eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so much of Raffles these last few
weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight o'clock in
the evening, and waited at this very window, with these very glasses
at his eyes. I saw through them sharply now. The one lighted window
pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into the dark circle of my
vision. I could not see into the actual room, but the shadows of those
within were quite distinct on the lowered blind. I even thought a
black thread still dangled against the square of light. It was, it
must be, the window to which the intrepid Parrington had descended
from the one above.

"Exactly!" said Raffles in answer to my exclamation. "And that's the
window I have been watching these last few weeks. By daylight you can
see the whole lot above the ground floor on this side of the house;
and by good luck one of them is the room in which the master of the
house arrays himself in all his nightly glory. It was easily spotted
by watching at the right time. I saw him shaved one morning before you
were up! In the evening his valet stays behind to put things straight;
and that has been the very mischief. In the end I had to find out
something about the man, and wire to him from his girl to meet her
outside at eight o'clock. Of course he pretends he was at his post at
the time: that I foresaw, and did the poor fellow's work before my
own. I folded and put away every garment before I permitted myself to
rag the room."

"I wonder you had time!"

"It took me one more minute, and it put the clock on exactly fifteen.
By the way, I did that literally, of course, in the case of the clock
they found. It's an old dodge, to stop a clock and alter the time; but
you must admit that it looked as though one had wrapped it up all
ready to cart away. There was thus any amount of _prima-facie_
evidence of the robbery having taken place when we were all at table.
As a matter of fact, Lord Thornaby left his dressing-room one minute,
his valet followed him the minute after, and I entered the minute
after that."

"Through the window?"

"To