Here I rested a few minutes, putting up my feet to keep
them dry, untying my shoes to save time, and generally facing the
task before me with a coolness which I strove to make worthy of my
absent chief. But mine was a self-conscious quality, as far removed
from the original as any other deliberate imitation of genius. I
actually struck a match on my trousers, and lit one of the shorter
Sullivans. Raffles himself would not have done such a thing at such
a moment. But I wished to tell him that I had done it; and in truth
I was not more than pleasurably afraid; I had rather that impersonal
curiosity as to the issue which has been the saving of me in still
more precarious situations. I even grew impatient for the fray, and
could not after all sit still as long as I had intended. So it
happened that I was finishing my cigarette on the edge of the wet
lawn, and about to slip off my shoes before stepping across the
gravel to the conservatory door, when a most singular sound arrested
me in the act. It was a muffled gasping somewhere overhead. I stood
like stone; and my listening attitude must have been visible against
the milky sheen of the lawn, for a labored voice hailed me sternly
from a window.
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