"You mean to tell me you really did start with the bare idea of
finding a place to hide in for a night?"

"Of course I did."

"It was to be the mere reconnoitre you pretended?"

"There was no pretence about it, Bunny."

"Then why on earth go and do what you did?"

"The reason would be obvious to anyone but you," said Raffles,
still with no unkindly scorn. "It was the temptation of a
minute--the final impulse of the fraction of a second, when
Roberto saw that I was tempted, and let me see that he saw it.
It's not a thing I care to do, and I sha'n't be happy till the
papers tell me the poor devil is alive. But a knock-out shot was
the only chance for us then."

"Why? You don't get run in for being tempted, nor yet for
showing that you are!"

"But I should have deserved running in if I hadn't yielded to
such a temptation as that, Bunny. It was a chance in a hundred
thousand! We might go there every day of our lives, and never
again be the only outsiders in the room, with the
billiard-marking Johnnie practically out of ear-shot at one and
the same time. It was a gift from the gods; not to have taken
it would have been flying in the face of Providence."