inst some electric switches, and while his back was turned I
tried one of these without thinking. In an instant hall and staircase
were flooded with light; in another Raffles was upon me in a fury, and
all was dark once more. He had not said a word, but I heard him
breathing through his teeth.

Nor was there anything to tell me now. The mere flash of electric
light upon a hall of chaos and uncarpeted stairs, and on the face of
Raffles as he sprang to switch it off, had been enough even for me.

"So this is how you have taken the house," said I in his own
undertone. "'Taken' is good; 'taken' is beautiful!"

"Did you think I'd done it through an agent?" he snarled. "Upon my
word, Bunny, I did you the credit of supposing you saw the joke all
the time!"

"Why shouldn't you take a house," I asked, "and pay for it?"

"Why should I," he retorted, "within three miles of the Albany?
Besides, I should have had no peace; and I meant every word I said
about my Rest Cure."

"You are actually staying in a house where you've broken in to steal?"

"Not to steal, Bunny! I haven't stolen a thing. But staying here I
certainly am, and having the most complete rest a busy man could
wish."

"There'll be no rest for me!"

Raffles laughed as he struck a match. I had followed him into what
would have been the back drawing-room in the ordinary little London
house; the inspector of prisons had converted it into a separate study
by filling the folding doors with book-shelves, which I scanned at
once for the congenial works of which Raffles had spoken. I was not
able to carry my examination very far. Raffles had lighted a candle,
stuck (by its own grease) in the crown of an opera hat, which he
opened the moment the wick caught. The light thus struck the ceiling
in an oval shaft, which left the rest of the room almost as dark as
it had been before.

"Sorry, Bunny!" said Raffles, sitting on one pedestal of a desk from
which the top had been removed, and setting his makeshift lantern on
the other. "In broad daylight, when it can't be spotted from the
outside, you shall have as much artificial light as you like. If you
want to do some writing, that's the top of the desk on end against the
mantlepiece. You'll never have a better chance so far as interruption
goes. But no midnight oil or electricity! You observe that their last
care was to fix up these shutters; they appear to have taken the top
off the desk to get at 'em without standing on