"Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look through your own race-glass.
It has been the most useful thing of all."
But before I had the glass in focus more scales had fallen from my
eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so much of Raffles these last few
weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight o'clock in
the evening, and waited at this very window, with these very glasses at
his eyes. I saw through them sharply now. The one lighted window
pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into the dark circle of my vision.
I could not see into the actual room, but the shadows of those within
were quite distinct on the lowered blind. I even thought a black
thread still dangled against the square of light. It was, it must be,
the window to which the intrepid Parrington had descended from the one
above.
"Exactly!" said Raffles in answer to my exclamation. "And that's the
window I have been watching these last few weeks. By daylight you can
see the whole lot above the ground floor on this side of the house; and
by good luck one of them is the room in which the master of the house
arrays himself in all his nightly glory. It was easily spotted by
watching at the right time. I saw him shaved one morning before you
were up! In the evening his valet stays behind to put things straight;
and that has been the very mischief. In the end I had to find out
something about the man, and wire to him from his girl to meet her
outside at eight o'clock. Of course he pretends he was at his post at
the time: that I foresaw, and did the poor fellow's work before my own.
I folded and put away every garment before I permitted myself to rag
the room."
"I wonder you had time!"
"It took me one more minute, and it put the clock on exactly fifteen.
By the way, I did that literally, of course, in the case of the clock
they found. It's an old dodge, to stop a clock and alter the time; but
you must admit that it looked as though one had wrapped it up all ready
to cart away. There was thus any amount of _prima-facie_ evidence of the
robbery having taken place when we were all at table. As a matter of
fact, Lord Thornaby left his dressing-room one minute, his valet
followed him the minute after, and I entered the minute after that."
"Through the window?"
"To be sure. I was waiting below in the garden. You have to pay for
your garden in town, in more ways than one. You know the wall, of
course, and that jolly old postern? The lock was beneath contempt."
"But what about the window? It's on the first floor, isn't it?"
Raffles took up the cane which he had laid down with his overcoat. It
was a stout bamboo with a polished ferule. He unscrewed the ferule,
and shook out of the cane a diminishing series of smaller canes,
exactly like a child's fishing-rod, which I afterward found to have
been their former state. A double hook of steel was now produced and
quickly attached to the tip of the top joint; then Raffles undid three
buttons of his waistcoat; and lapped round and round his waist was the
finest of Manila ropes, with the neatest of foot-loops at regular
intervals.
"Is it necessary to go any further?" asked Raffles when he had unwound
the rope. "This end is made fast to that end of the hook, the other
half of the hook fits over anything that comes its way, and you leave
your rod dangling while you swarm up your line. Of course, you must
know what you've got to hook on to; but a man who has had a porcelain
bath fixed in his dressing-room is the man for me. The pipes were all
outside, and fixed to the wall in just the right place. You see I had
made a reconnaissance by day in addition to many by night; it would
hardly have been worth while constructing my ladder on chance."
"So you made it on purpose!"
"My dear Bunny," said Raffles, as he wound the hemp girdle round his
waist once more, "I never did care for ladder work, but I always said
that if I ever used a ladder it should be the best of its kind yet
invented. This one may come in useful again."
"But how long did the whole thing take you?"
"From mother earth, to mother earth? About five minutes, to-night, and
one of those was spent in doing another man's work."
"What!" I cried. "You mean to tell me you climbed up and down, in and
out, and broke into that cupboard and that big tin box, and wedged up
the doors and cleared out with a peer's robes and all the rest of it in
five minutes?"
"Of course I don't, and of course I didn't."
"Then what do you mean, and what did you do?"
"Made two bites at the cherry, Bunny! I had a dress rehearsal in the
dead of last night, and it was then I took the swag. Our noble friend
was snoring next door all the time, but the effort may still stand high
among my small exploits, for I not only took all I wanted, but left the
whole place exactly as I found it, and shut things after me like a good
little boy. All that took a good deal longer; to-night I had simply to
rag the room a bit, sweep up some studs and links, and leave ample
evidence of having boned those rotten robes _to-night_. That, if you
come to think of it, was what you writing chaps would call the
quintessential Q.E.F. I have not only shown these dear Criminologists
that I couldn't possibly have done this trick, but that there's some
other fellow who could and did, and whom they've been perfect asses to
confuse with me."
You may figure me as gazing on Raffles all this time in mute and rapt
amazement. But I had long been past that pitch. If he had told me now
that he had broken into the Bank of England, or the Tower, I should not
have disbelieved him for a moment. I was prepared to go home with him
to the Albany and find the regalia under his bed. And I took down my
overcoat as he put on his. But Raffles would not hear of my
accompanying him that night.
"No, my dear Bunny, I am short of sleep and fed up with excitement. You
mayn't believe it--you may look upon me as a plaster devil--but those
five minutes you wot of were rather too crowded even for my taste. The
dinner was nominally at a quarter to eight, and I don't mind telling
you now that I counted on twice as long as I had. But no one came until
twelve minutes to, and so our host took his time. I didn't want to be
the last to arrive, and I was in the drawing-room five minutes before
the hour. But it was a quicker thing than I care about, when all is
said."
And his last word on the matter, as he nodded and went his way, may
well be mine; for one need be no criminologist, much less a member of
the Criminologists' Club, to remember what Raffles did with the robes
and coronet of the Right Hon. the Earl of Thornaby, K.G. He did with
them exactly what he might have been expected to do by the gentlemen
with whom he had foregathered; and he did it in a manner so
characteristic of himself as surely to remove from their minds the last
aura of the idea that he and himself were the same person. Carter
Paterson was out of the question, and any labelling or addressing to be
avoided on obvious grounds. But Raffles stabled the white elephants in
the cloak-room at Charing Cross--and sent Lord Thornaby the ticket.