You should never have dreamt that I had been at your
elbow; you would have believed in yourself, and in my belief in you,
and the rest would have been silence till the grave. So I dodged
you at Waterloo, and I tried not to let you know that I was
following you from Esher station. But you suspected somebody was;
you stopped to listen more than once; after the second time I
dropped behind, but gained on you by taking the short cut by Imber
Court and over the foot-bridge where I left my coat and hat. I was
actually in the garden before you were. I saw you smoke your
Sullivan, and I was rather proud of you for it, though you must
never do that sort of thing again. I heard almost every word
between you and the poor devil upstairs. And up to a certain point,
Bunny, I really thought you played the scene to perfection."
The station lights were twinkling ahead of us in the fading velvet
of the summer's night. I let them increase and multiply before
I spoke.
"And where," I asked, "did you think I first went wrong?"
"In going in-doors at all.," said Raffles. "If I had done that, I
should have done exactly what you did from that point on.
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