on purpose for what's happened? To be sinned against instead of sinning,
in all the papers, would have set one up as an honest man for life. I
thought, God forgive me, of poor old Barraclough or somebody of that
kind. And to think it should be 'the friend in whom my soul confided'!
Not that I ever did confide in him, Bunny, much as I love this lad."

Despite the tense of that last statement, it was the old Raffles who was
speaking now, the incisively cynical old Raffles that I still knew the
best, the Raffles of the impudent quotations and jaunty _jeux d'esprit_.
This Raffles only meant half he said--but had generally done the other
half! I met his mood by reminding him (out of his own _Whitaker_) that
the sun rose at 3.51, in case he thought of breaking in anywhere that
night. I had the honour of making Raffles smile.

"I did think of it, Bunny," said he. "But there's only one crib that we
could crack in decency for this money; and our Mr. Shylock's is not the
sort of city that Caesar himself would have taken _ex itinere_. It's a
case for the _testudo_ and all the rest of it. You must remember that
I've been there, Bunny; at least I've visited his 'moving tent,' if one
may jump from an ancient to an 'Ancient and Modern.' And if that was as
impregnable as I found it, his permanent citadel must be perched upon the
very rock of defence!"

"You must tell me about that, Raffles," said I, tiring a little of his
kaleidoscopic metaphors. Let him be as allusive as he liked when there
was no risky work on hand, and I was his lucky and delighted audience
till all hours of the night or morning. But for a deed of darkness I
wanted fewer fireworks, a steadier light from his intellectual
lantern. And yet these were the very moments that inspired his
pyrotechnic displays.