Raffles
had been wrong about me all. these years; now was my chance to set
him right. It was galling to feel that he had no confidence in my
coolness or my nerve, when neither had ever failed him at a pinch.
I had been loyal to him through rough and smooth. In many an ugly
corner I had stood as firm as Raffles himself. I was his right
hand, and yet he never hesitated to make me his catspaw. This time,
at all. events, I should be neither one nor the other; this time I
was the understudy playing lead at last; and I wish I could think
that Raffles ever realized with what gusto I threw myself into his
part.
Thus I was first out of a crowded theatre train at Esher next night,
and first down the stairs into the open air. The night was close
and cloudy; and the road to Hampton Court, even now that the suburban
builder has marked much of it for his own, is one of the darkest I
know. The first mile is still a narrow avenue, a mere tunnel of
leaves at midsummer; but at that time there was not a lighted pane
or cranny by the way. Naturally, it was in this blind reach that
I fancied I was being followed.
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