ight was the one for me, and in an instant we were racing
along the upper corridor with the chuckle-headed pack at our heels.
Here it was all but dark--they were the servants' bedrooms that we
were passing now--but I knew what I was doing. Round the last corner
to the right, through the first door to the left and we were in the
room underneath the tower. In our time a long step-ladder had led to
the tower itself. I rushed in the dark to the old corner. Thank God,
the ladder was there still! It leaped under us as we rushed aloft like
one quadruped. The breakneck trap-door was still protected by a curved
brass stanchion; this I grasped with one hand, and then Raffles with
the other as I felt my feet firm upon the tower floor. In he sprawled
after me, and down went the trap-door with a bang upon the leading
hound.

I hoped to feel his dead-weight shake the house, as he crashed upon
the floor below; but the fellow must have ducked, and no crash came.
Meanwhile not a word passed between Raffles and me; he had followed
me, as I had led him, without waste of breath upon a single syllable.
But the merry lot below were still yelling and bellowing in full cry.

"Gone to ground!" screamed one.

"Where's the terrier?" screeched another.

But their host of the mighty girth--a man like a soda-water bottle,
from my one glimpse of him on his feet--seemed sobered rather than
stunned by the crack on that head of his. We heard his fine voice no
more, but we could feel him straining every thew against the trap-door
upon which Raffles and I stood side by side. At least I thought
Raffles was standing, until he asked me to strike a light, when I
found him on his knees instead of on his feet, busy screwing down the
trap-door with his gimlet. He carried three or four gimlets for
wedging doors, and he drove them all in to the handle, while I pulled
at the stanchion and pushed with my feet.

[Illustration: Down went the trap-door with a bang.]

But the upward pressure ceased before our efforts. We heard the ladder
creak again under a ponderous and slow descent; and we stood upright
in the dim flicker of a candle-end that I had lit and left burning on
the floor. Raffles glanced at the four small windows in turn and then
at me.

"Is there any way out at all?" he whispered, as no other being would
or could have whispered to the man who had led him into such a trap.
"We've no rope-ladder, you know."

"Thanks to me," I groaned. "The whole th