"You don't mean to tell me you had a hand in the job?"
"I had the only hand in it, my dear Bunny."
"Nonsense! You were sitting at table at the time. No, but you may
have taken some other fellow into the show. I always thought you
would!"
"One's quite enough, Bunny," said Raffles dryly; he leaned back in his
chair and took out another cigarette. And I accepted of yet another
from his case; for it was no use losing one's temper with Raffles; and
his incredible statement was not, after all, to be ignored.
"Of course," I went on, "if you really had brought off this thing on
your own, I should be the last to criticise your means of reaching such
an end. You have not only scored off a far superior force, which had
laid itself out to score off you, but you have put them in the wrong
about you, and they'll eat out of your hand for the rest of their days.
But don't ask me to believe that you've done all this alone! By
George," I cried, in a sudden wave of enthusiasm, "I don't care how
you've done it or who has helped you. It's the biggest thing you ever
did in your life!"
And certainly I had never seen Raffles look more radiant, or better
pleased with the world and himself, or nearer that elation which he
usually left to me.
"Then you shall hear all about it, Bunny, if you'll do what I ask you."
"Ask away, old chap, and the thing's done."
"Switch off the electric lights."
"All of them?"
"I think so."
"There, then."
"Now go to the back window and up with the blind."
"Well?"
"I'm coming to you. Splendid! I never had a look so late as this.
It's the only window left alight in the house!"
His cheek against the pane, he was pointing slightly downward and very
much aslant through a long lane of mews to a little square light like a
yellow tile at the end. But I had opened the window and leaned out
before I saw it for myself.
"You don't mean to say that's Thornaby House?"