I, in my obduracy, went to foul extremes. I drew plans of all the floors from memory. I actually descended upon my friends in the neighborhood, with the sole object of obtaining snapshots over our own old garden wall. Even Raffles could not keep his eyebrows down when I showed him the prints one morning in the Albany. But he confined his open criticisms to the house. "Built in the late 'sixties, I see," said Raffles, "or else very early in the 'seventies." "Exactly when it was built," I replied. "But that's worthy of a sixpenny detective, Raffles! How on earth did you know?" "That slate tower bang over the porch, with the dormer windows and the iron railing and flag-staff atop makes us a present of the period. You see them on almost every house of a certain size built about thirty years ago. They are quite the most useless excrescences I know." "Ours wasn't," I answered, with some warmth. "It was my _sanctum sanctorum_ in the holidays. I smoked my first pipe up there, and wrote my first verses!" Raffles laid a kindly hand upon my shoulder. "Bunny, Bunny, you can rob the old place, and yet you can't hear a word against it!" "That's different," said I relentlessly. "The tower was there in my time, but the man I mean to rob was not." "You really do mean to do it, Bunny?" "By myself, if necessary!" I averred. "Not again, Bunny, not again," rejoined Raffles, laughing as he shook his head. "But do you think the man has enough to make it worth our while to go so far afield?" "Far afield! It's not forty miles on the London and Brighton." "Well, that's as bad as a hundred on most lines. And when did you say it was to be?" "Friday week." "I don't much like a Friday, Bunny. Why make it one?" "It's the night of their Hunt Point-to-Point. They wind up the season with it every year; and the bloated Guillemard usually sweeps the board with his fancy flyers." "You mean the man in your old house?" "Yes; and he tops up with no end of dinner there," I went on, "to his hunting pals and the bloods who ride for him. If the festive board doesn't groan under a new regiment of challenge cups, it will be no fault of theirs, and old Guillemard will have to do them top-hole all the same." "So it's a case of common pot-hunting," remarked Raffles, eyeing me shrewdly through the cigarette smoke. "Not for us, my dear fellow," I made answer in his own tone. "I wouldn't ask you to break into the next set of chambers here in the Albany for a few pieces of modern silver, Raffles. Not that we need scorn the cups if we get a chance of lifting them, and if Guillemard does so in the first instance. It's by no means certain that he will. But it is pretty certain to be a lively night for him and his pals--and a vulnerable one for the best bedroom!" "Capital!" said Raffles, throwing coits of smoke between his smiles. "Still, if it's a dinner-party, the hostess won't leave her jewels upstairs. She'll wear them, my boy."