trouble if you're going to stay behind and put him in the way of
releasing himself before he gives up the ghost. Perhaps you will
go and think it over while I wash my bags and dry 'em at the
gas stove. It will take me at least an hour, which will just give
me time to finish the last volume of Kinglake."

Long before he was ready to go, however, I was waiting in the hall,
clothed indeed, but not in a mind which I care to recall. Once or
twice I peered into the dining-room where Raffles sat before the
stove, without letting him hear me. He, too, was ready for the
street at a moment's notice; but a steam ascended from his left leg,
as he sat immersed in his red volume. Into the study I never went
again; but Raffles did, to restore to its proper shelf this and
every other book he had taken out and so destroy that clew to the
manner of man who had made himself at home in the house. On his
last visit I heard him whisk off the dust-sheet; then he waited a
minute; and when he came out it was to lead the way into the open
air as though the accursed house belonged to him.

"We shall be seen," I whispered at his heels. "Raffles, Raffles,
there's a policeman at the corner!"

"I know him intimately," replied Raffles, turning, however, the
other way. "He accosted me on Monday, when I explained that I was
an old soldier of the colonel's regiment, who came in every few
days to air the place and send on any odd letters. You see, I have
always carried one or two about me, redirected to that address in
Switzerland, and when I showed them to him it was all. right. But
after that it was no use listening at the letter-box for a clear
coast, was it?"