"You gave them the slip on Friday, but they must have known your game and lain in wait for you here, one or other of them, ever since. It's my belief Dan Levy put them up to it, and the yarn about the letter was just to tempt you into this trap and get you caught in the act. He didn't want a copy one bit; for God's sake, don't stop to finish it now!" "I don't agree with you," said Raffles without looking up, "and I don't do things by halves, Your precious detectives must have patience, Bunny, and so must you." He held his watch to the bulb. "In about twenty minutes there'll be real danger, but we couldn't be safer in our beds for the next ten. So perhaps you'll let me finish without further interruption, or else get out by yourself as you came in." I turned away from Raffles and his light, and blundered back to the landing. The blood boiled in my veins. Here had I fought and groped my way to his side, through difficulties it might have taxed even him to surmount, as one man swims ashore with a rope from the wreck, at the same mortal risk, with the same humane purpose. And not a word of thanks, not one syllable of congratulation, but "get out by yourself as you came in!" I had more than half a mind to get out, and for good; nay, as I stood and listened on the landing, I could have found it in my outraged heart to welcome those very sleuthhounds from the square, with a cordon of police behind them. Yet my boiling blood ran cold when warm breath smote my cheek and a hand my shoulder at one and the same awful moment. "Raffles!" I cried in a strangled voice. "Hush, Bunny!" he chuckled in my ear. "Didn't you know who it was?" "I never heard you; why did you steal on me like that?" "You see you're not the only one who can do it, Bunny! I own it would have served me right if you'd brought the square about our ears." "Have you finished in there?" I asked gruffly. "Rather!" "Then you'd better hurry up and put everything as you found it." "It's all done, Bunny; red tape tied on such a perfect forgery that the crux will be to prove it is one; safe locked up, and every paper in its place." "I never heard a sound." "I never made one," said Raffles, leading me upstairs by the arm. "You see how you put me on my mettle, Bunny, old boy!" I said no more till we reached the self-contained flat at the top of the house; then I begged Raffles to be quiet in a lower whisper than his own. "Why, Bunny? Do you think there are people inside?" "Aren't there?" I cried aloud in my relief. "You flatter me, Bunny!" laughed Raffles, as we groped our way in. "This is where they keep their John Bulldog, a magnificent figure of a commissionaire with the V.C. itself on his manly bosom. Catch me come when he was at home; one of us would have had to die, and it would have been a shame either way. Poor pussy, then, poor puss!" We had reached the kitchen and the cat was rubbing itself against Raffles's legs. "But how on earth did you get rid of him for the night?"