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-fade 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 be sure. I was waiting below in the garden. You have to pay
for your garden in town, in more ways than one. You know the wall,
of course, and that jolly old postern? The lock was beneath
contempt."
"But what about the window? It's on the first floor, isn't it?"
Raffles took up the cane which he had laid down with his overcoat.
It was a stout bamboo with a polished ferule. He unscrewed the
ferule, and shook out of the cane a diminishing series of smaller
canes, exactly like a child's fishing-rod, which I afterward found
to have been their former state. A double hook of steel was now
produced and quickly attached to the tip of the top joint; then
Raffles undid three buttons of his waistcoat; and lapped round and
round his waist was the finest of Manila ropes, with the neatest
of foot-loops at regular intervals.
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