wrinkled
and bloated by the heat of the hottest room, and handed it to Raffles
with my thumb upon the leaded paragraphs.
"Delightful!" said he when he had read them. "More thieves than one,
and the coal-cellar of all. places as a way in! I certainly tried to
give it that appearance. I left enough candle-grease there to make
those coals burn bravely. But it looked up into a blind backyard,
Bunny, and a boy of eight couldn't have squeezed through the trap.
Long may that theory keep them happy at Scotland Yard!"
"But what about the fellow you knocked out?" I asked. "That was not
like you, Raffles."
Raffles blew pensive rings as he lay back on my sofa, his black hair
tumbled on the cushion, his pale profile as clear and sharp against
the light as though slashed out with the scissors.
"I know it wasn't, Bunny," he said regretfully. "But things like
that, as the poet will tell you, are really inseparable from
victories like mine. It had taken me a couple of hours to break
out of that strong-room; I was devoting a third to the harmless
task of simulating the appearance of having broken in; and it was
then I heard the fellow's stealthy step.
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