He was in villainous guise, which I knew of old, now that
I knew the unhappy wearer. His face was grimy, and dexterously
plastered with a growth of reddish hair; his clothes were those in
which he had followed cabs from the London termini; his boots were
muffled in thick socks; and I had laid him low with a bloody scalp
that filled my cup of horror. I groaned aloud as I knelt over him
and felt his heart. And I was answered by a bronchial whistle
from the door.
"Jolly well done!" cheered my asthmatical friend. "I heard the
whole thing - only hope my mother didn't. We must keep it from
her if we can."
I could have cursed the creature's mother from my full heart; yet
even with my hand on that of Raffles, as I felt his feeble pulse,
I told myself that this served him right. Even had I brained him,
the fault had been his, not mine. And it was a characteristic, an
inveterate fault, that galled me for all. my anguish: to trust and
yet distrust me to the end, to race through England in the night,
to spy upon me at his work - to do it himself after all.!
"Is he dead?" wheezed the asthmatic coolly.
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