"Fight our way out and bolt!" he answered, with a mouth that meant it, and a fine gay glitter of the eyes. I shot out of my chair. "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?" I was not familiar with the view from my back windows. "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.