hundreds of other young fellows about town. He was consistently
mysterious about that and other details, of which it seemed to me
that I had already earned the right to know everything. I could
not but remember how he had led me into my first felony, by means
of a trick, while yet uncertain whether he could trust me or not.

That I could no longer afford to resent, but I did resent his
want of confidence in me now. I said nothing about it, but it
rankled every day, and never more than in the week that succeeded
the Rosenthall dinner. When I met Raffles at the club he would
tell me nothing; when I went to his rooms he was out, or
pretended to be.

One day he told me he was getting on well, but slowly; it was a
more ticklish game than he had thought; but when I began to ask
questions he would say no more. Then and there, in my annoyance,
I took my own decision. Since he would tell me nothing of the
result of his vigils, I determined to keep one on my own account,
and that very evening found my way to the millionaire's front
gates.

The house he was occupying is, I believe, quite the largest in
the St. John's Wood district. It stands in the angle formed by
two broad thoroughfares, neither of which, as it happens, is a
'bus route, and I doubt if many quieter spots exist within the
four-mile radius. Quiet also was the great square house, in its
garden of grass-plots and shrubs; the lights were low, the
millionaire and his friends obviously spending their evening
elsewhere. The garden walls were only a few feet high. In one
there was a side door opening into a glass passage; in the other