face as he held the door wide for my escape.

"You told me a lie!" I gasped in whispers.

"I did nothing of the sort," he replied. "The furniture's the
furniture of Hector Carruthers; but the house is the house of Lord
Lochmaben. Look here!"

He had stooped, and was smoothing out the discarded envelope of a
telegram. "Lord Lochmaben," I read in pencil by the dim light;
and the case was plain to me on the spot. My friends had let their
house, furnished, as anybody but Raffles would have explained to me
in the beginning.

"All right," I said. "Shut the door."

And he not only shut it without a sound, but drew a bolt that might
have been sheathed in rubber.

In another minute we were at work upon the study-door, I with the
tiny lantern and the bottle of rock-oil, he with the brace and the
largest bit. The Yale lock he had given up at a glance. It was
placed high up in the door, feet above the handle, and the chain of
holes with which Raffles had soon surrounded it were bored on a
level with his eyes. Yet the clock in the hall chimed again, and
two ringing strokes resounded through the silent house before we
gained admittance to the room.

Raffle's next care was to muffle the bell on the shuttered window
(with a silk handkerchief from the hat-stand) and to prepare an