on which he
usually left to me.

"Then you shall hear all about it, Bunny, if you'll do what I ask you."

"Ask away, old chap, and the thing's done."

"Switch off the electric lights."

"All of them?"

"I think so."

"There, then."

"Now go to the back window and up with the blind."

"Well?"

"I'm coming to you. Splendid! I never had a look so late as this.
It's the only window left alight in the house!"

His cheek against the pane, he was pointing slightly downward and very
much aslant through a long lane of mews to a little square light like a
yellow tile at the end. But I had opened the window and leaned out
before I saw it for myself.

"You don't mean to say that's Thornaby House?"

I was not familiar with the view from my back windows.

"Of course I do, you rabbit! Have a look through your own race-glass.
It has been the most useful thing of all."

But before I had the glass in focus more scales had fallen from my
eyes; and now I knew why I had seen so much of Raffles these last few
weeks, and why he had always come between seven and eight o'clock in
the evening, and waited at this very window, with these very glasses at
his eyes. I saw through them sharply now. The one lighted window
pointed out by Raffles came tumbling into the dark circle of my vision.
I could not see into the actual room, but the shadows of those within
were quite distinct on the lowered blind. I even thought a black
thread still dangled against the square of light. It was, it must be,
the window to which the intrepid Parrington had descended from the one
above.

"Exactly!" said Raffles in answer to my exclamation. "And that's the
window I have been watching these last few weeks. By daylight you can
see the whole lot above the ground floor on this side of the house; and
by good luck one of them is the room in which the master of the house
arrays himself in all his nightly glory. It was easily spotted by
watching at the right time. I saw him shaved one morning before you
were up! In the evening his valet stays behind to put things straight;
and that has been the very mischief. In the end I had to find out
something about the man, and wire to him from his girl to meet her
outside at eight o'clock. Of course he pretends he was at his post at
the time: that I foresaw, and did the poor fellow's work before my own.
I folded and put away every garment before I permitted myself to rag
the room."

"I wonder you had t