ime!"

"It took me one more minute, and it put the clock on exactly fifteen.
By the way, I did that literally, of course, in the case of the clock
they found. It's an old dodge, to stop a clock and alter the time; but
you must admit that it looked as though one had wrapped it up all ready
to cart away. There was thus any amount of prima-fade evidence of the
robbery having taken place when we were all at table. As a matter of
fact, Lord Thornaby left his dressing-room one minute, his valet
followed him the minute after, and I entered the minute after that."

"Through the window?"

"To be sure. I was waiting below in the garden. You have to pay for
your garden in town, in more ways than one. You know the wall, of
course, and that jolly old postern? The lock was beneath contempt."

"But what about the window? It's on the first floor, isn't it?"

Raffles took up the cane which he had laid down with his overcoat. It
was a stout bamboo with a polished ferule. He unscrewed the ferule,
and shook out of the cane a diminishing series of smaller canes,
exactly like a child's fishing-rod, which I afterward found to have
been their former state. A double hook of steel was now produced and
quickly attached to the tip of the top joint; then Raffles undid three
buttons of his waistcoat; and lapped round and round his waist was the
finest of Manila ropes, with the neatest of foot-loops at regular
intervals.

"Is it necessary to go any further?" asked Raffles when he had unwound
the rope. "This end is made fast to that end of the hook, the other
half of the hook fits over anything that comes its way, and you leave
your rod dangling while you swarm up your line. Of course, you must
know what you've got to hook on to; but a man who has had a porcelain
bath fixed in his dressing-room is the man for me. The pipes were all
outside, and fixed to the wall in just the right place. You see I had
made a reconnaissance by day in addition to many by night; it would
hardly have been worth while constructing my ladder on chance."

"So you made it on purpose!"

"My dear Bunny," said Raffles, as he wound the hemp girdle round his
waist once more, "I never did care for ladder work, but I always said
that if I ever used a ladder it should be the best of its kind yet
invented. This one may come in useful again."

"But how long did the whole thing take you?"

"From mother earth, to mother earth? About five minutes, to-night, and