And I will not say what my first act was
when I found myself alone with my white elephant in the middle of
the room; enough that the siphon was still doing its work when the
glass slipped through my fingers to the floor.
"Bunny!"
It was Raffles. Yet for a moment I looked about me quite in vain.
He was not at the window; he was not at the open door. And yet
Raffles it had been, or at all. events his voice, and that bubbling
over with fun and satisfaction, be his body where it might. In the
end I dropped my eyes, and there was his living face in the middle
of the lid of the chest, like that of the saint upon its charger.
But Raffles was alive, Raffles was laughing as though his vocal
cords would snap - there was neither tragedy nor illusion in the
apparition of Raffles. A life-size Jack-in-the-box, he had thrust
his head through a lid within the lid, cut by himself between the
two iron bands that ran round the chest like the straps of a
portmanteau. He must have been busy at it when I found him
pretending to pack, if not far into that night, for it was a very
perfect piece of work; and even as I stared without a word, and he
crouched laughing in my face, an arm came squeezing out, keys in
hand; one was turned in either of the two great padlocks, the whole
lid lifted, and out stepped Raffles like the conjurer he was.
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